several times a day, a patron will bring up items to be checked out. they will place them nicely on the desk and then...just stand there. sometimes, they say 'hi' and i'll say 'hi' back. they just stand there. so, after a beat, i ask them for their library card and they gasp and say something along the lines of, "oh, yes, you need my card." yep, i do. i'm sure i have moaned about this before, but it was particularly bad night for this. i MUST know, do these people stand at the grocery checkout and must be prompted by the cashier to cough up the dough?
then i had a nasty, large, bully of a woman come into the library tonight and demand a computer with a color printer. actually, first she asked for a 'computer color copier' and i had to figure out if she meant a color copier or a color printer. i told her that our two computers that have a color printer attached were being used by patrons and they had some time to go. she said, "i just need it for 2 minutes!" i told her i understood, but patrons were using the computers, they were guaranteed an hour and i would not bother them. she said, "i will go ask them. it's just 2 minutes! i need my paper for class! i have class!" then she asked me what i meant by 'patron'. i answered, "PEOPLE. people were using the two computers with a color printer!" she was so pushy and nasty and belligerent. i told her that she will NOT bother my patrons and she continued to yell that she needed papers for her class. finally, i sent her to reference and before she got there, i got ahold of the reference librarian and told her this lady was nasty and i know she heard me. i also asked the reference librarian to tell the lady there was a 50 cent per page charge for color copies and the woman yelled, "i will pay 10 DOLLARs! just give me my papers! i need them for Class tonight, right now!" i don't know how she got her papers, but she paid my cocircworker for them because she did not want to talk to me again. YAY! she really did think nothing of interrupting another patron, ask them to stop what they were working on (one kid was working on a school paper), ask them to get up and let her sit her fat ass down to do her own work. another patron who just checked on to a computer with no color printer offered to wait so she could use his computer (a nice young man), but it just made things worse becasue i had to tell the bully that that computer had only a black and white printer and she didn't BELIEVE me. like, i was lying. oh dear God, i hate people! why did you make so many nasty ones? (and why do the frequent libraries?)
i also had another woman who wanted to pick up a book that her friend put on hold. our policy is, if the person who the hold is for cannot make it in, they must call us to let us know who will pick it up. before my time, we had a very bad experience with a husband and wife...one picked up a book for the other which the other did not want his or her spouse to see. i heard that the fallout was very bad and the town got involved. so, we try to be strict(er) about this. anyway, the woman wanted to call her friend on her cell phone and have me use her phone to talk to her friend. i DO NOT want anyone's nasty, germ infested cell phone anywhere near my face, so i gave her the library # and asked her friend to call me. argh! it is never easy. then, the same woman returned a DVD with no DVD in the DVD case and i, luckily, caught her as she was leaving to give her the case back so she could collect the DVD. she asked, "so, this means i have to come back?" duh, yeah, unless you want to pay for the DVD outright. so, she came back before we closed. she gave me the complete DVD set and picked out two more DVDs and stepped up to the counter. she didn't have her card. it was in the car. so, since i knew her name from earlier, i just looked her up and checked her out rather than have her go to her car. this is another thing about cards i don't understand. if you know you are going to the library, if it is a planned trip, why do these people not make sure they have their cards on them? it's not that hard, is it?
we had a man come in to search our lost and found for his winter jacket that he lost "a couple of weeks ago." we had another man leave a printed (out) copy of his completed tax return (with every bit of personal info) in one of our printers. we had another kid leave his completed book report in the printer. the printers are right next to the computer, too. we could not reach either of them tonight. other than that, the night wasn't too bad, but i am getting increasingly worried about the switch. i really dread that.
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