Attack of the perv!

Today I became aware of a pervy perverson who has been exposing himself to young girls at the library. He sits down next to them at a table and shows them his junk. Of course, by the time I find out about it he's long gone, although I think I know who it is.

So we called the police just so they could write up a report. And if he comes back in again we'll trespass him right away, so it's not a major issue, but it's just another in a long line of exasperating issues for us to deal with.

We are truly seeing all facets of society. This facet, I would definitely like to see less of!

Caution: Dangerous Donations Ahead!

Today a customer brought in a box of books to donate. Our clerical supervisor carried them into the workroom and started looking through them to see if there was anything worth keeping. She noticed some blue fabric and thought it might be a handkerchief or something. But when she picked it up, she immediately squealed, "PANTIES!!!" and threw them across the room. They weren't clean, either.

I have to say, that's the best laugh I've had at work in a long time. Yay for disgusting customers!! :)

Public service isn't for sissies

Librarians who think public libraries are these wonderful places where people can have free access to information aren't in public service. People don't come to the library to be enlightened, they come to use the free computers. They come to check out DVDs. They come to steal from us. They come to break things. They come to yell at the poor clerks who are just trying to do their jobs. They demand to be waited on RIGHT THIS MINUTE and cannot seem to grasp the concept of waiting their turn.

At the moment I am completely and totally sick of public service. I cannot wait until I can retire and not have to deal with these pigs who come in here every day and trash the place.

Can't sleep? Blog!

It's the middle of the night (well, about 4 a.m.) and I can't sleep. I've been thinking lately that I should start blogging about the library again - it's the craziest place!

Here are some random things that have happened recently:

The guy from an earlier post who kept telling me he was moving away and then showing up again has been an almost daily presence these days. I think he has a bit of a crush on me - last week he told me my ID badge photo doesn't do me justice. Unfortunately, he's so weird that I'm not really flattered, I'm uncomfortable. He spends hours and hours on the computer and fills out complaint cards whenever anyone else uses their cell phones or has a noisy child. One suggestion he submitted was for us to configure the computers to allow him to immediately report anyone violating the noise policy to the librarians at the reference desk - that way, he could avoid any possible retribution from the offending party. He's such a tattletale! (And a chickenshit!) And what is he doing on the computer that is so important he has to have absolute quiet? Playing online games. Sigh...

With the state of the economy these days, our computer classes have been full to bursting lately. We have a limited number of seats in our classroom so once the tickets are gone (we start giving them out a half hour before the start of the class), that's that - it's first come, first served. A few weeks ago a woman missed getting a ticket and you would have thought someone died, she was so upset. She was so angry she was actually crying. I was very apologetic but firm - I mean, we only have so many seats! What did she want me to do, kick someone else out so she could come in? She was a total baby about it. When I reminded her we would be repeating the same class next month, she said, "I will never come in here AGAIN!" Perhaps she had just lost her job and was frantic about it - I guess I should be more understanding, but she was hard to deal with.

In other news, I am so SICK of cleaning up after people! Every single day, I pick up all sorts of trash that people leave behind - food wrappers, water bottles, drink cups, you name it. Plus, nobody EVER pushes their chair in when they get up. How hard would it be to simply push the chair back in? People leave stacks of stuff wherever they happen to be - wadded up papers, library books, magazines - and the shelves are always a disaster area. As soon as we straighten them up, I swear, within ten minutes they are a mess again. It's embarrassing to go out to the shelves and see the books falling all over the place all the time. We try to keep up with it but with upwards of 35,000 people in here every month it's almost impossible. People are pigs.

Not only are they pigs but they are also thieves. We've had a big increase in the number of stolen DVDs lately. I think we've been discovered by the thieves who used to steal DVDs from the Main Library but now can't do so as easily because they (Main) put their DVDs back in security cases. Which we DON'T want to do. For one thing, there aren't enough of them floating around anymore - when we got self-check machines, the powers that be decided to put security strips on the discs themselves and got rid of the security cases. Plus, they take up a LOT of room on the shelf and really make it impossible for people to use the self-check, so we can't really go back to them. We don't know what to do about this - we are so busy and aren't getting any more staff, so it's not like we can police the DVD area. And even if we did (I've actually been trying to, but haven't seen anything suspicious at all), I think it would be next to impossible for us to catch someone in the act. What we need is a security guard at the gate. But of course there's no money for that, so we'll just continue to lose DVDs until we don't have anything left. Sigh...

I can't wait to retire.

Heartwarming

I just realized it's been weeks since I posted anything - where does the time go? This is a tough time of year to find time for anything other than working, shopping, cooking, and visiting, but I do have a sweet story to share.

Last week a Stephanie Meyer book (can't remember which one but it doesn't really matter - they're ALL heavily requested right now) came up on hold for a young girl. Her mom answered when we called to let her know it was available, and she asked us to participate in a little scheme she cooked up. Seems she had bought the book for her daughter but instead of giving it directly to her, she wanted us to hand to her daughter when she came to pick up her hold.

I was lucky enough to be at the reference desk when they came in the next morning. When she asked for the book on hold for her, I gave her the copy her mother bought for her, onto which her mom had clipped a sweet note explaining that it was hers. It took her a few minutes to read the note, during which time mom was waiting with her cell phone camera ready to capture that moment when she realized what was going on. She looked up, caught her mother's eye and flew into her arms, shouting "thank you, thank you, thank you!!" and "I love you so much!" It was really very sweet and heartwarming.

Of course, we lost a circulation but at least the next person got their copy faster!

Crazy alert!

In the last week or so we've had a crazy man in the library. He comes in nearly every day and spends literally all day on the computer working on some kind of complicated-looking spreadsheet, so obviously he has some skillz. Most of the time he's pretty quiet (although he clears his throat an awful lot), but every now and then he starts talking loudly to himself about cell phones and surveillance, so I guess he's got some kind of conspiracy theory that "they" are spying on him through cell phones.

When he starts getting agitated, of course the other customers complain. But he seems to be aware when he needs to calm himself down: he leaves his computer and goes all the way back in the corner of the stacks and lies down on the floor for a few minutes. He always manages to get back to his computer before it times out, though. Must have some kind of sixth sense, 'cause I don't think he owns a watch. I've seen him on the floor and even though we have a "no sleeping" policy, I don't really want to confront him 'cause, well for starters, he's crazy, AND I think he's actually doing something that helps him be LESS crazy, at least for the next little while. So, you know, he's dealing with it.

This evening a guy came up and said he thought he saw this guy on America's Most Wanted, so of course I looked him up right away but didn't see anyone who looked enough like him to be alarmed. At least not about THAT, anyway.

Another guy came up and said he thinks we ought to get this guy some help with his illness. So what, we're supposed to call in a psychiatrist? We actually did call the police the other night just for a consultation but since the guy isn't really doing anything illegal there wasn't much of anything he could do.

The other problem is that he's not at all clean and smells pretty bad. We actually have a policy about that, too (we have a policy for nearly everything), but that's another thing I don't really want to confront him about. "Excuse me, sir, I know you're crazy but I noticed that your body odor is disgusting. I'm sorry, but our policy requires you to maintain acceptable bodily hygiene. If you can't do that you will have to leave." Can you imagine THAT encounter? Not only that, but bathing is prohibited in the library as well, so he can't even GET clean in our library.

All the staff is aware of him and basically our approach is to leave him alone unless he starts getting loud, whereupon we will approach him and politely ask, "Is everything all right, sir? Is there anything I can help you with?" We've also taken to disabling the computers next to where he's sitting to reduce his olfactory impact on other customers.

I've noticed that people like him seem to move on after a while, so maybe we'll get lucky and he'll stop coming.

Reference question of the day

Today a man came in asking for information on "duke langers". Never having heard of it (them?), I asked if he knew anything else. He replied that his buddy at work kept talking about it, but all he would say was that it was a species in Cambodia. I searched "duke" and "cambodia" in Google but no luck. Then I tried "langers" instead and, lo and behold, found out that douc langurs are a highly endangered species of monkey in Cambodia that's been in the news because recently a huge, previously unknown population of douc langurs was discovered.

It was a short investigation (took about 3 minutes) but a fun one nevertheless. In the days before the Internet, I wonder how long it would have taken me to come across this?

Customers are everywhere

Today I attended a leadership seminar with a man who was until recently (he's been promoted) the manager of one of the other libraries in our system. He related a hilarious story to which I'm sure I won't do justice, but I just HAD to share it here.

A couple of months ago he had just finished his workout at the gym and went in to take a shower. As he was coming out of the shower (completely naked, as men tend to be in locker room situations, or so I assume), a man (also completely naked) recognized him as a library person and started haranguing him about a circulation issue. Apparently the man had instructed his wife to go to the library to pick up a book that was on hold for him but unfortunately did not empower her by giving her his library card first. So of course the staff person would not allow her to check out her husband's item (we take confidentiality of circulation information VERY seriously at my library - how do WE know if she's actually his wife? What if she's a vindictive EX-wife - imagine how much trouble THAT could cause!), and she had to go home without it. He was extremely upset and went on and on about it for quite some time.

Imagine yourself stepping out of the shower, naked and dripping wet, and having to respond to something like this. He laughs about it now but I'm sure at the time it was all quite unsettling.

I feel grateful that I live in a different area of town from where I work.

The clock strikes back

In an earlier post I talked about an accident that happened when I responded to a request for help with the A/V equipment in our conference room. The group using the room had hung their homemade clock over the door so when I went in the room, of course it fell off and shattered into a million pieces. I felt terrible about it but at the same time was annoyed that they were stupid enough to hang it in such a precarious spot.

Well, I finally heard back from them in sort of a roundabout way. The leader sent a whiney message to our meeting room librarian and complained that we have treated his group very rudely over the past several months, citing the clock incident as one of several examples. He said, and I quote, "Also, I used to have a Laurel & Hardy clock, specially crafted by one of my group's members, that I would hang on the back door of the conference room at each meeting. About three months ago, one of the librarians opened the door to address me, and the clock fell to the floor into a broken, unrepairable state without a single word of apology from the librarian."

Man, that really burns me up. I DID apologize - I remember saying, "Oh, I'm so sorry!" and then attempting to help pick up the pieces, but the group members were so horrified that they yelled at me not to bother. They could clearly see it was an accident but were so grumpy about it that I could think was, "why the hell did you have it hanging in THAT particular spot?" So I was angry that their stupidity had caused me to be the agent of destruction, and I guess I wasn't abject enough in my apology.

Of course I had to respond to him, and I'm pleased to say that I (mostly) took the high ground and sent back a genuine apology (because, truly, I am sorry it happened). From his reply it seemed he was mollified, so all's well that ends well, I guess.

Ah, the sweet smell of tobacco, and other random thoughts

One of the clerks came to my office today to say that a woman was complaining because some guys were smoking cigars outside. Instead of saying "So what?" (which was of course my initial response), I said "Okay, I'll go check it out." Walking out into our lobby I noticed a slightly sweet smell and thought, "That smells good." I walked outside and saw no-one, but then noticed the woman who had complained coming out. I thought I could avoid her (sorry, this is the real me here - I do things like that now and then) by coming in the other door as she walked out the main exit but no, she had to come around and intercept me. Drat. She said "Do you smell that?" and I thought it would be better to say no than to admit that I thought it smelled good. She pointed out two young men who had just walked into the library and said they had been standing outside the exit smoking cigars and that was offensive to her. "I mean, there are children walking in and out of here!"

Now I am pretty much an anti-smoking fanatic - I hate being around people smoking cigarettes and go out of my way to avoid it wherever possible. But this woman was complaining about these guys smoking OUTSIDE, an area over which I really have no control. If they just HAD to smoke, at least they weren't trying to do it indoors - now that would have gotten a reaction from me. But as it was, there was little I could do but tell her I was very sorry about what had happened.

Why do I always have to apologize for everything anyone does that offends someone else? I'm getting mighty sick of these holier-than-thou people who think the world revolves around their preferences.

Today was pretty sucky from the get-go, though. Our accident-prone children's librarian (well, she always seems to have something wrong) called in to say she couldn't come to work because she was on medication for a pulled muscle. I didn't say to her, "Now what were you doing that caused you to pull a muscle?" No, I was polite and thanked her for letting me know, then hung up and cursed her with all my might. We were already short-staffed due to someone on vacation, so I had to re-work the schedule to fill in at the children's desk. I ended up being on the desk nearly the whole day. Which is totally exhausting at my library (remember, we get at least 30,000 people coming in this building on a monthly basis - sometimes more).

Add to that, the issue that I talked about in an earlier post about our renewal limits has reached the attention of the director, who wants to FORM A TASK FORCE to look into it!! Rather than just making a decision, she wants to form a committee that will endlessly argue about this issue (oh, a recap - some staff have taken our 2-renewal policy a step further and will not allow customers to check items out again or transfer them to another card when the renewal limit is reached because "it's not fair - other people should have a chance at finding this material on the shelf." It's my position that as long as nobody has placed a hold request, who gives a crap - let 'em have it! I don't understand why some staff want to argue with customers about something this inconsequential - I just want the circs!), and then make a recommendation to the two circulation-related committees WE ALREADY HAVE!! And guess who she was hoping would be the chair of the committee - me!

Luckily I am not being forced to chair the committee and it's a good thing because I don't really believe it's necessary. Just make a freakin' decision already. She keeps talking about getting "buy-in" from the staff, but I don't believe she's serious about doing whatever the staff would actually recommend, so the buy-in is just a sham. I guess it would depend on who is selected to serve on the committee - I mean, if it's all people who already agree with what she wants to do, then I guess she can pretend she's getting buy-in, but what if the committee recommends something that she doesn't want? Will she go with what they say? I seriously doubt it. In this case, I don't think buy-in is necessary - the current practice at many libraries is causing a great deal of customer dissatisfaction, so the administration just needs to clarify the policy regarding renewals so staff won't keep making up their own procedures.

There's of course a larger issue that somehow this tiny controversy has gotten linked to, and that is the serious divide between the librarians and the clerks, to which I have alluded before. In this particular controversy, most of the librarians tend to be fairly flexible about allowing people to have a new checkout of materials they've already renewed twice, and most clerks are adamant about NOT allowing the new checkout. So it's becoming a divisive issue and this task force is supposed to be some kind of an attempt to start somewhere in addressing this issue.

Which makes me even less inclined to want to chair it. I'm no negotiator and have no wish to mediate between the two groups. I just want to do my job, get my work done, and go home when I'm done for the day. Now I wish I had never opened my big mouth and brought it up with the circulation manager in the first place. Crap.

Hate sucks

Every Tuesday a big stack of our local free newspaper is delivered to my library. It's a popular publication containing local entertainment news and commentary. This morning we discovered that someone had placed hate literature associating presidential candidate Barack Obama with extremist black militant groups into random copies of the newspaper. The flyer includes quotes such as, "Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy."

What kind of person would do such a thing? This is defamation of character at best, and in my opinion constitutes the worst kind of hate-mongering that frightened, small-minded people are capable of. We are sickened.

We went through the papers and pulled out (and SHREDDED!) all of the flyers we could find, hoping and praying we don't find any more. Between now and the election I am sure we will have to check these papers regularly for more of this political terrorism.

This sucks.

California dreamin' is over - now it's Kentucky woman!

Here's an update on a customer I blogged about in a recent post: he came up to the reference desk the other night and told me that he had indeed gone to California but decided not to stay. Seems his father (who must be pretty old, as this guy has to be at least in his late 50s or early 60s) and he didn't get along, and his father told him to "just go!"

So now he's back. He still hates it here, though, so his new plan is to move to Kentucky to stay with his girlfriend, who lives in Glasgow, a small town in south-central Kentucky not too far from Bowling Green (which is itself a fairly small town, most notably known as the hometown of Western Kentucky University).

It's interesting what customers will tell you about their personal lives. I'm not sure why he decided to talk to me in the first place - to my recollection, I have never helped him with a reference question or had any customer service type of interaction with him - but now it seems he feels obligated to update me on his plans whenever something changes.

I'm not sure when he's actually going to Kentucky, but I have a feeling he will tell me when he does.

Defending the regular

We have a regular customer (actually, he's here so much he practically lives at the library) named Jim (AKA Hairy Legs). I've blogged about him in an earlier post. He's annoying but harmless. He drives a battered old pickup truck stuffed full of his belongings, with everything but the kitchen sink strapped onto it. I'm not kidding - this man has a rubber raft, six coolers, a bike, a kayak, a surfboard, a trash can and god knows what else strapped to the roof and back of his truck. I don't honestly know how he keeps it all from falling off! The staff and I have often wondered whether his truck is his home - seems pretty likely.

The other day a snooty-looking woman came in and conspiratorially said to me, "What's the story on that truck out there?" I knew perfectly well what truck she was talking about but played dumb, not wanting to get into any kind of gossip with this totally unknown person. She said, "You know, the one with all that stuff strapped to it!" I admitted I recognized the truck she was talking about, but then she asked "Do you know who drives it?" Suspicious of her motives, I lied and said "No, I have no idea. Why do you need to know?" She said, "Well, I was just curious. I mean, it's RIDICULOUS!! Is that person homeless? Who would carry that kind of crap around with them? Honestly, it's really disgusting."

Now, I don't really care for Jim - he's a pain in our ass - but this woman just pissed me off with her snooty, holier-than-thou attitude. What a snob. I actually felt very defensive of him - in a way, he's one of our own. Weird.

So I basically continued to play dumb and she wandered away.

Goin' to California with an achin' in my heart

About a month ago one of our regular customers (kinda crazy but pretty nice) was leaving at closing time and told me, "This is the last time you'll see me - I'm moving to California tomorrow. I don't like it here." I wished him well and said goodnight.

The next night he was back again and said his plans got delayed for a couple of days but that he wouldn't be back after that. "Good luck to you," I said, "Hope things go well for you in California!"

I sort of forgot about him until the other night, when I saw him sitting at his accustomed spot at one of the computers. He wouldn't look at me and didn't say anything so I figured I'd leave him alone, but I do wonder what happened. Did he go and find out he didn't like California either? Did something happen that prevented him from going? Is he just so crazy that he made the whole thing up in the first place?

It does make me curious...

Why do they care???

My library system has 2-renewal limit policy, meaning that a customer can't renew an item more than twice. It's a good policy; it makes it harder for people to keep our stuff forever simply by renewing over and over.

Unfortunately, over the years, clerical staff have developed an *extension* to the policy that is pretty much impossible to explain or defend when customers complain. There is now a widely accepted practice of not allowing customers to return an item and then check it back out on someone else's card (wife or husband, for example). When customers ask why, they are told that it gives other customers a chance at the material and makes things more fair. I have even heard staff members telling customers that there is a "24-hour waiting period" before materials can be checked back out again.

This is ridiculous - there is no 24-hour waiting period, and we have no policy that prevents customers from switching items from one library card to another. Not only that, but it's truly impossible to enforce. If a frustrated customer left the circulation desk and came over to the reference desk and asked for the item, the librarian would simply do his/her job and go look for the item, and, finding it on the sorting shelf in the workroom, would give it to the customer with no questions asked, allowing the customer to check it out on the self-check with the clerks being none the wiser.

Recently I questioned this practice with the systemwide clerical services manager. Although he agreed with me that we can't defend this practice because there is no policy to back it up, he said that when he brought it up at a meeting of the clerical supervisors from around the system, they absolutely FREAKED about it and were vehemently opposed to changing the practice. They seem to have such a personal stake in it but I don't fully understand why - why do they care so much?

For my part, I just want the circ stats!

I understand the origin of the practice - a concern that people are hogging stuff and not letting anyone else get a chance at it. But if a staff member has that concern, all they need do is place a hold request on that specific item and the next time the customers try to get it, the hold request will prevent them from checking it out again. So in my mind there is a simple solution to their concerns.

My theory is that many clerical staff members feel essentially powerless - they are frontline staff who take an incredible amount of crap from people all day long and have to work so hard moving materials around, but they don't really get to control who gets to do what at the library - the high muckety-mucks make all the decisions. So when they get an opportunity to say "you can't do that," I think it makes them feel like they're in control, EVEN IF IT MEANS AN ARGUMENT WITH A CUSTOMER!

However, in spite of their objections, I understand that sometime in the next few weeks the administration is going to come out with a clarification that reinforces that we have no policy preventing customers from switching items from one library card to another.

At that time I will have to tell my staff that they need to stop doing this, and I'm not looking forward to the resistance and resentment that I know are inevitable. Every time a librarian bends "the rules" when a customer complains, the clerks get PO'd because we're not supporting them. But sometimes the rules need to be bent; everything isn't black and white all the time.

It will just be one more thing to reinforce the divide between the clerks and the librarians, which is truly unfortunate. What I wish is that I could figure out some ways to make us all feel part of a single team that's working together to do the best job we can, but so far I'm not succeeding. Sigh...

Flag anxiety

About a month ago I noticed that our US flag was looking pretty tattered. It was less than six months old but I guess recent storms and high winds had really beaten it up a bit. I asked our supply clerk to order a new one, which she did fairly quickly, but we haven't gotten it yet.

On 9/11 an extremely irate customer informed me that not only was our flag not at half-staff (as it was supposed to be on a national day of mourning), it was extremely tattered. Luckily I was able to tell him that we had a new flag on order but that it hadn't come in yet. I checked my email and lo and behold there was a message from the administration that the flag was supposed to be flown at half-staff that day. The message had been sent exactly two minutes before we opened! They always wait until the last possible second to tell us the important stuff. Granted, I should have been on top of it myself, but I was on the desk and we were incredibly busy that morning, so I just blanked on it.

Anyway, I promised the customer I would lower it to half-staff right away and he went away relatively happy.

Yesterday the new flag STILL hadn't arrived, so I had no choice but to go out and buy one myself ($36! Of course, we have no mechanism for me to get reimbursed). My boss is coming out today for a meeting and she always notices details like that, and just LOVES putting me on the spot. One day someone had put an Olympics bumper sticker on the front door, and of course I didn't know it was there. She came out for our meeting later that day and very pointedly asked me what was the deal with the sticker on the front door. She seemed delighted when I didn't know anything about it. Sigh...

I know I'm supposed to be aware of everything that's going on in my library at every single moment and handle all of it immediately but sometimes it just isn't possible. But at least my boss can't get her jollies today from telling me the flag is tattered! (She is sure to find something else, though - she's good at that.)

Free still beats cheap

A young guy (fantasy, RPG-type) came in today to ask for a book. While I was looking for it, he stated that he used to live near a discount bookstore, where they would order any book he wanted at a cheap price. I countered with, "Now you can get them for free!" to which he replied, "Yeah, but I have to give 'em back." Well, there is that.

I still think free beats cheap any day. And (dare I admit this?) I can't remember the last time I actually bought a book. Why would I buy books when I can get pretty much any book I could possibly want, for free? Plus, I don't have to lug big boxes of books around when I move.

Working at the library does have some advantages.

Ah, September!

I can really tell school has started back again but they're just gearing up for the heavy work later in the year. Tonight I was on the reference desk for two hours and had maybe 5 customers. Wonderful!

It's sad that what I'm happy about is NOT having people come in the library, but after the summer we've had, we're thrilled to have a few quiet times here and there. It won't last long.

Too busy to be good

Here's a sad fact: the busier your library gets, the worse the service. Because of course there are never enough staff members to help all the customers who want you to do something for them ALL AT THE SAME TIME. It's impossible to give quality service when you have six people waiting impatiently and interrupting while you are trying to help someone else. Everyone comes in at the same time and wants service NOW. Not to mention the phone ringing off the hook.

Today I feel like an absolutely terrible librarian. We do not have time to fully assist anyone, and as a result, pretty much everyone who came in today is getting bad service.

It IS possible to be too popular. Sigh...

Non sequitur

Do you ever get the feeling there is another whole reality going on of which you are totally unaware?

A man just walked by and said "Whatever it is, I didn't do it!" I have no idea what he's talking about.