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.

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...

Regulars

Every public library has regulars who are there nearly every day, and my library is no exception. Most of them are, well, a bit odd.

For instance, there's the guy the staff calls "Hairy Legs" for obvious reasons. He's in his late 50s and I suppose he's retired because he spends most of his days in the library. He stands impatiently outside the front door at opening time and rushes in the second the doors are open to get on his favorite computer (#12) before anyone else gets to it. In order to do that, he literally runs to press the Enter key on computers 1-11 to make the signup system think someone is signing in to use those computers so he can get #12. It causes a lot of confusion for everyone who is right behind him (there is always a line to get on the computers when we open) so I asked him not to do it anymore. I thought he had stopped, but I found out that he still does it, but only when I'm not around.

After several hours on the computer he then signs up for a study room so he can "work on his book." Yeah, right - most of the time he's in there sleeping. Definitely against our policy but I just don't have the energy to fight him on it.

He's a big tattletale, too, always telling us whenever he thinks someone else isn't following the rules. Ironic, since he never does himself. Sigh...

Then there's the shushing lady. She's in every day playing computer games from a thumb drive she brings with her. I'd say she's in her late 30s or early 40s, and the main thing I notice about her is that she HATES anyone making noise, especially children. Lots of families use my library so we often have kids crying, usually as their parents are checking out. The minute this woman hears a kid crying she shouts "Be QUIET!" or "Oh, my god!" to let the child know that she is not pleased. I'm sure this is an effective way to quiet the child, who is usually all the way across the room. She got into it the other day with the guy on the computer next to her because he tried to get her to chill out about another screaming child. I mean, the kid was with his mom who was just trying to get her books checked out. She couldn't get him to be quiet (you know, sometimes there's NOTHING you can do), and she was trying to get out of the library as quickly as possible, but the shushing woman is so self-centered that she didn't care what the situation was. The ironic thing is that she has her headphones turned up so loud that we can hear her stupid game all the way over at the reference desk. We all hate her because she's just so mean.

Oh, and I can't forget our resident perv. Mid-40s, ruddy, pock-marked complexion, beer gut, spends hours on the computer looking at photos of scantily clad (but not nude) young women and chatting with I don't know who. He's often on his bluetooth as well. He used to be very loud on the phone until I went over and told him to quiet down a few weeks ago. He got PO'd, of course, and raised his voice at me (he's kinda scary) but since then has been pretty quiet. I guess he knows we can kick him out at any time, so he's always just on the edge of violating our code of conduct, but never really goes across that line.

And then there's our live-in family. For the last two months we have had a family of four literally living in the library. They are there every day from the minute we open until the minute we close, even on weekends. Mom & dad don't speak English very well (I think they are Russian, which is neither here nor there but I think it's sort of interesting) so their two kids do most of the talking for the family. The parents & teenage son all get on a computer immediately and spend their entire day doing that. (I should say here that we are "blessed" with enough public computers so that there's almost never a time when all computers are full - therefore, everyone can stay on their computer pretty much as long as they want because there's never a queue on the signup system. Other than first thing in the morning when everyone comes in at the same time, there's never anyone waiting to get on a computer.)

They wouldn't really be a problem except for their 6-year-old daughter. Mom & dad leave her with her teenage brother in the teen area, where she wreaks havoc all day long. They all pretty much ignore her, so she's always getting into something. The other day I saw her grabbing handfuls of rubber bands out of our rubber band can that we leave out for people to use when they pick up their hold requests. Anyway, she was just taking them out and strewing them all over the place. I often find big stacks of stuff just pulled off the shelves and scattered about, and I'm pretty sure she's the culprit. Today I found her pressing buttons at random on the printer because she found out that she could print out the configuration sheets and test prints that way. She had a stack of paper a quarter of an inch thick! And when I did a cleanup in the teen area I found juice boxes and cheese stick wrappers all over the place. I guess that's their regular diet.

I've debated about kicking them out but it's obvious they don't have anywhere else to go. And other than the daughter, they really don't cause any problems. And in her case, heck, she's only 6 years old! She doesn't know how to behave, and they obviously aren't teaching her. It's actually a pretty sad situation.

We have other regulars, too - people who spend hours just hanging out, looking at magazines, reading books, using computers. Not that there's anything wrong with that - it's what we DO. But I often wonder what their life must be like that spending all day every day at the public library is the most appealing option.