food for fines

it was a pretty good day at the library. it started off slow and then started to grow right after my cocircworker commented that it would be 'dead' in the library for the Christmas week. it is a little known theory of quantum physics that things will 'get busier' in direct proportion to how many times the words 'it's slow' are spoken. we went from 1.00023% busy to 65.99325046% busy within the space of 20 minutes and 22 seconds. very difficult mathematical acrobatics...don't even try it.

we are holding the annual and terminally depressing 'Food For Fines' until December 23. FFF works like this: if you have an overdue item, no matter how long it has been 'overdue', you can bring in one canned good (or, as the director wrote in the flyer "can good") for each overdue item and have your fines waived. we hope this will raise food for the local women's shelter AND help us get back some long overdue items. even if your fine has maxed out to $15, bring in one canned good and we call it even. simple. not really.

patrons have a way of making something simple terribly complex. so, we had one patron, whom we all know to be LOADED with $$ come into the library with a box of pasta and 3 canned items to waive an old fine accrued in November. she does this every single year. we expained how FFF works. the funny thing was, she only had a fine of $3.30. she paid the fine and let us keep the food. that was cool.

we had a young lady come in with 2 boxes of spaghetti and 2 canned items. she wanted to pay off her fines AND, by the way, could she also get a new library card. i told her the charge to replace a card was only $1 and, unfortunately, we could not take food for it. i looked her up and YES she had fines from 2000, 2001 and 2003 totalling $18. she thrust the food at me, "here ya go!" and i patiently explained how food for fines worked. AGAIN. well, she was very pleasant, paid her old fine (i told her she didn't have to until she planned on using the library) and let us keep the food. so, not a bad day.

this year, we had to make a point of telling people that we would not accept expired food items and we printed it on all our flyers, in the newspaper and on our sign outside! in the past, we would receive so much expired food, we would through a third of it away! ah, such middle 'class' patrons.