Mornings

I went to work early and the the stacks were quiet. I was the first one in, even before the cleaning crew arrived. The morning sun was streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows on the east side of the building and it was breathtaking. 

Not a speck of dust was floating through the air. Not a voice to be heard. It was just me and my favorite place to be. It was so quiet. Reverent almost. I had come around a corner to turn the lights on, but the sun was so glorious, I left them off.

It was so peaceful and calming.

Soon enough the cleaning crew would arrive as would be my co-workers and the tranquility would be broken in the busy-ness of the morning duties, but for now, the peace was all mine to enjoy. I just stood there in the morning light and sighed. I told the ghosties how lucky they are to be in such a wonderful place.... to be able to enjoy this regularly.

I didn't even take a picture for you. I was going to, but I thought the moment would be lost and that the photo wouldn't do any justice to the peace I was feeling.

No. Instead, I kept the moment all for myself and enjoyed.

Calf Shit

I swear it was calf shit.

The guy said it was cat shit. If it was, that cat was very ill and needs medications.

I was directly handed five books. Two of them were handed to me separately. Those two were fine. The next three were on one stack. All together. I took the first one off of the stack to scan, but noticed that something crumby was on it. As I'm going to wipe it off the crumbs, I'm noticing that the back is sticky. Then I noticed the smell.

I realized it was sticky and smelly and wet.... I grabbed the sanitizing wipes, but when I got it wet, the smell got even worse and then I looked at the other two books on the counter.  There was something oozing out from between them. I lifted them and WHAMO!!!!!

Stink to high heaven. It was terrible! I went to wipe it off, but it was just awful! I had to get that stench out of the way! I just kept wiping. The patron was still there and I asked him if he had any idea what was on these books. Without bothering to investigate, he just said, "I don't know."

His theory was that it was cat shit. Well, cats don't lift one book, shit on it, put it back down, lift the next book, shit on that, put it back down and then lift a third and extremely heavy book, shit on it and put it back down and squish and squash it all over the edges!

Well, I'll save the rest of the shit details, but suffice it to say, he was charged over $100.00 for the damaged items.

Nasty.

Never a dull moment.

New Pages - The People Kind, Not The Paper Kind

Our Pages are new. Some of the funny things they did to us, unintentionally, or not.... :)

Locked the bathroom doors at night. This one we couldn't figure out for some time.  At first, the cleaning crew thought that someone was already INSIDE the bathrooms in the morning before we opened in the mornings.

Didn't lock the main doors at closing time. We've had nightmares about this! Then, lo' and behold! It actually happened.  My co-workers couldn't figure out how patrons were still getting in.  Finally, someone asked one of the Pages if the doors were locked. The answer was: "Oh, I'm supposed to lock the doors at night?" Yes. That is their job - lock the doors 5 min. prior to closing time.

Turned off all of our computer monitors - then in the morning we couldn't figure out why our computers weren't working.

Left their dirty dishes in the sink so long that they molded and I threw them away.  Left their dirty dishes out - all over - the work room areas. I happen to HATE THIS!!

Swearing Patrons and Swinging Babies!

Angry patrons. How do YOU handle them?  We have a book at the Circulation Desk that we leave up there for us to read when we have a minute of down time. It's called, "Diffusing the Angry Patron".

Well, sometimes, in the heat of the moment, a flustered librarian will struggle to remember all that they've read!  For example....

A guy came in with a fine.  We have a policy that if there is a fine on the patron account of more than $1.00, they cannot use their card or the free internet without some sort of discussion and approval from one of the librarians.  I happened to be the librarian "on desk" at that time. His fine wasn't even that terrible. Honestly, I think his fine was under $50.00 or something.

We are pretty generous. We want people to come back. We understand that times are tough and things are forgotten in the busyness of life.  So, usually, we are happy to take ANY amount of payment from the patrons. NOT to totally CLEAR the fine away, but as a good faith gesture.  This way, we can say the patron made an effort to clear the fines, but didn't have enough on hand. I will start out by asking for half of the amount owed. After that, I simply say, "I don't want to take your last dime. What can you pay today?"  After I get some sort of payment from them, I will allow them to check out their items or utilize the internet if that is what they need.  I will, especially, work with the patron if they are doing any sort of employment search online. Afterall, times are TOUGH!

Anyway, this guy comes in one night and he is totally IRATE that he cannot use his card. I explain the fine. He's ticked and denies the fine. I ask if there is anything he can put down on the fine.  This is when he gets EXTREMELY rude.  He gets his wife/girlfriend involved. She comes up to the counter, polite at first, to ask what's wrong. I explain the fine. She denies the fine.  At this time, I explained that any adjustments on the fine need to come from the Director or the Assistant Director.  They want to speak to someone. That's fine with me!

So, now Bossman comes onto the scene. Angry patrons are handled very well by Bossman. However, they should NEVER swear or cop an attitude with Bossman. This guy did both. Bossman told him that behaviour was unacceptable.  Angry patrons didn't stop and then MOCKED Bossman. Oh good gaawd!

Police are called. Angry patron guy leaves with a baby in a car seat -- swinging his arms up into the air, all while holding on to that car seat!  I thought for sure that the baby was going to go FLIPPING OUT OF the carseat!

So, apparently, we are crazy, unreasonable and don't know what the hell! LOL

Yea.... okay. We can go with that.

Would a Ghostie Need to Use the Phone?

For two days in a row, we came in to work and found phones off the cradles.

Of course, we blamed the ghosties.

Would a Ghostie need to use the phone to make a phone call? A very LONG DISTANCE phone call? Who would they call?  Did they try to call a loved one?  Would they even know how to use a modern telephone!?

We don't really think it was a ghostie that used the phone. In all reality, it was a coworker! She left the phone off the cradle, put the phone on intercom/speaker and blasted her music through it after hours.

Ha HA!!! IT got your attention though, didn't it?! :)

A Soapy Mess.....

My co-worker had to use the employee restroom. This is her story really.....

She was sitting on the can - now bear with me - it really is kinda funny....

Anyway, she was sitting on the can and realized that the floor was wet. Not only was the floor wet, but it was puddling.  To which she was wondering if the sink plumbing or the toilet plumbing was leaking.  As she is sitting there pondering the situation, she realizes that she can hear liquid dripping.

So, she looks around - under the sink and behind her at the toilet plumbing.  Nothing.

Where the hell is that dripping coming from?  As she looks towards the sink again, she notices that the liquid soap dispenser is literally pouring out of the dispenser!

At least it wasn't poop!

So she finishes her business and tells me to call the DPW guys. I'm thinking that I can clean this up without calling a DPW guy! So, I get a mop and the mop bucket with clear, cold water......

A liquid soap dispenser holds approximately 1- 1/2 cups of liquid soap, but I tell you, when it's all over the floor of a 4x6' tiled bathroom floor, it may as well been 100 cups! Soak it up in the mop. Sure, no problem. It's made to FOAM, so now try to rinse the mop and squeeze out the soap without creating too much foam.

Yea. That works great.....

Three buckets of mop water later, the floor was still kinda foaming in tile grout.

That was fun.

Busy Day....

We had a busy day today!

Typically, we average.... maybe 400 people a day. Give or take. However, on this busy day, we had a head count of 850 people!

Summer is here. So is our Summer Reading Program activities. I'm sure that had something to do with this high number. By the end of the day, we were all brain dead and uber tired.  But through it all, we were still laughing at closing time.

I love my job!

Ghostie Hunters at the library!

Bossman decided that it would be fun if his ghost hunting friends came to our library and "did their thing".  It isn't the first time they've been here.  There were here about 10 years ago (maybe) in June as well.  I wasn't there at that time, so I'm not sure how it went, but my co-workers tell me that LAST time there were too many people.

We had 12 people there last night, but only 3-4 on the floor, at a time. Several of us were barefooted or in stocking'd feet.  See pic below.

As I go thru my sound bytes, I will post them here.  Hope we captured something!  For now, I am off to transcribe what I captured.

My digital recorder and our barefooted camera lady!

Missing Chairs?

How does a library suddenly lose chairs? We jokingly blamed the ghosties, but seriously.... where the heck can chairs disappear to? It isn't like a patron can just roll one out of the library. Nor can they tuck a chair into their book bag!

These aren't tiny little kid chairs from the Children's section. They were regular chairs! Not the folding kind. The hard plastic kind.

UPDATE 10/25/14: It's still a mystery. The chairs have not been found.

Library Witchies and New Friends

I meet some very interesting people over the Circulation Desk.  One lady is a self-proclaimed "Kitchen Witch"  basically, she's into herbs and the great things that the herbs can do for your body.  Instead of calling prayers - prayers, she calls them spells.  They both sound and read the same to me.  No flaming please. Anyway, my witchy friend has taught me quite a few things so far. I've only been talking to her for a few months, but already, I like what she has to say.

Another friend that I made over the Circulation Desk is into witchy stuff as well. However, the witchy stuff isn't what made us friends. With this woman, we found out that we liked a natural way of living and shared book titles. We also shared DVD titles and later I found out she liked D&D as well. I invited her over. As a matter of fact, she is coming over with her boyfriend for Thanksgiving.

Another new friend - my co-worker. I call her my "Roomie". She's younger than me and so much fun. She's also into fun fashion. I like her style, but I'm not brave enough when I look through my closet. Usually, when I'm getting dressed in the mornings, my hubbs will hear me say, "I wish *** was here."  to which he laughs and will reply, "But you're not dressed."  To which I reply, "I know, that's why I wish she was here." HAHAHAHAA - so she can help me put an outfit together --- not for any other kink reason... no matter what I've written about library erotica! LOL

I've also made a friend that I swear I was related to in another life. Yes, I do believe in reincarnation.  I've also learned to knit and made some knitting friends.  Awesome.

Poop Incident

We had another poop incident at the library.  We just had a poop incident April! Then, there was another  pee incident, in which the April Pooper, peed his pants while sitting at an internet computer. I got to clean that one up. Some people should drink more clear fluids! YIKES!

Now, late June and we've had another poop incident.  This time, the culprit used the upstairs public bathroom.  It had appeared that the patron tried to clean things up, to no avail. It just wasn't good enough.  Another patron came to the desk to inform us of the the mishap. 

After watching the security cameras, it appears that a boy was the culprit. He went back three times - was he trying to clean it up bit-by-bit? Or was he returning to see if someone else had cleaned it up for him?  Whatever the case, it didn't get thoroughly, until one of our Directors went in there are got the job done correctly.  So, sigh... now we have to keep on eye on the boy. Now that it's summer, he tends to linger around the library all day long.

This poop incident was far easier to forgive than our adult male pooper!

Smoke at the Library

We've had an interesting year... I wonder how it will all end...

Usually, where there is smoke, there is fire. Fortunately, in this instance, there really was ONLY smoke. Albeit, the smoke went throughout the entire library.  There was a machine belt in the furnace that stopped moving and smoked up the place.

It was so stinky in the building!! Very thankful for the fire crew that came out asap!

Overheard Conversations

"I always thought people came to the library to get books and information. I never thought that people would come to the library to poo all over the floor."

"I had no idea what I was getting into when I started working at the library."
"What do you mean?"
"I never considered that it would be necessary to have a psychology degree to check out books."

Help

We received a strange FAX today. All it said was, "Help".

Bossman had the police investigate.

Seems that a local business was trying out new FAX lines, transposed two numbers and we got the funny inter-office FAX, albeit in a completely different building!

We had fun making up stories on why a person would send out a FAX asking for help.

"Maybe they are stuck in a room - as a hostage - with nothing but a FAX machine."
"Why don't they use the FAX machine to call 911 and ask for help?"
"Maybe the FAX machine only sends FAX's."

"Maybe they are being held as a hostage and this was all they could do."

"Maybe..."
"Maybe..."
"Maybe it's a joke."

"Why would anyone send out a 'crank-FAX'?"
"Like a crank phone call?"
"Yeah. Why would anyone do that? That's dumb"

Maybe someone really does need help!"

Body Odors

Sometimes there are a few patrons that smell wonderful. Sometimes there are a few patrons that don't smell so wonderful.

One "Not-so-wonderful" odor actually caused damaged and furniture needed to be shampooed.  We really don't know what to do if the patron returns and wants to relax there again --- other than have the furniture re-cleaned.  This patron is really very kind, it's just that the odor is terrible. I mean terrible too!  One of us has almost vomited - and I really have a hard time of it, myself.  What I do to help get through the several hours of strong odor is to load up on hand lotion and then keep my hands close to my face.

Afterwards, when I know for sure that the strong odoriferating patron has left the building, I spray Febreeze in the computer area. 

I have no snarky comments about the very kind, but smelly patron - I don't think this patron can help themself in that area.  I'm sad for those that can't help their odor.

Not everyone can wear Stetson or Love's Baby Soft.

Poo, P * * n and Piss

P * * n - I do not want to write out the word for inappropriate adult computer sites and pictures because I do NOT want anything nasty to attach to my site or your computer.  If anything happens I will be so upset. I am guessing that you will be able to discern the definition of the "P-word".

At any rate, we've had less and less of the adult "P-word" incidents since it was suggested to rearrange a couple of the internet computers. No more hiding in the corner to do "the nasty" with a computer screen. I can't understand how someone becomes so desperate for that type of gratification - that they will go to a public place - in broad daylight and "get off" in front of strangers and children. It's just gross.

The poo incidents... we've had several over the years. Many we now chuckle at!  

There was the incident where the pooper would take a step - shake a leg - and shake a turd out of the pant leg - take a few more steps - shake a leg - and shake another turd out of the same pant leg.  I believe three turds in all were shook out of the pant leg and onto the carpet.

Another time a young pooper - about 12 years old - went to the bathroom and either missed the toilet bowl or played catch.  We really aren't sure. At anyrate, the 12 year old pooper smeared poo all over the seat, stall walls, toilet paper dispenser, sink, countertop and soap dispenser. Unfortunately, by the time we found the mess, it was dried.  Did you know that some poo, when dried and smeared on flat surfaces, resembles thick tar?!?!  We really didn't want to believe it was poo, so we just couldn't imagine what it was. It wasn't until the disposable moistened cleaning supplies hit the "tar-like" substance that we knew, without a doubt, that it was, indeed, poo. We could tell because the smell came out.  "To refreshen scent, just add moisture." BLECH!!!

Recently, there was the adult pooper that went to the bathroom, didn't arrive in time, poo'd facing the WRONG WAY, stepped in it, turned around, tried to get it into the toilet, missed and tried again. Finally, upon complete elimination, decided to rinse out socks and unmentionables in the toilet - we are guessing the toilet was flushed first.... and then proceeded to walk back thru the library - stocking footed and continued to use the internet computers.  THEN,  a different patron came to tell us of the mess in the bathroom. We figured out who it was, approached the person and actually made the pooper clean it up. This was an awful episode of poopdom.  Shit was EVERYWHERE!! The walls, the floor, BEHIND the toilet.... and the stench! Good Lord! What do people EAT????!!!  After the pooper cleaned up as best a messy pooper could, the Asst. Director cleaned up again. THREE times actually.  Yes, action against said pooper was taken and the police were also involved later.

Piss is a nasty word and my Grandmother did NOT like ladies saying it. However, piss is piss and the smell is what it is.  Three cushioned chairs had to be replaced due to peeing patrons, We now have hard plastic chairs for the computer areas.  One day a patron came to tell us that there was pee sprayed all over the walls and stalls in the mens room.  We made a sign: Please urinate in the urinals, not on the floors or the walls.  We found the sign - pissed on - in the bottom of the urinal.  So, sassy me - I made another sign... we found it a day or so later in the garbage of the mens room. WTF ever! However, the wall urinating seemed to stop... for now.

The three P's.... what the hell are people thinking?! What would their Mothers or Grandmothers think? What horrendous manners. What is WITH people?!!!

Shooting Threat At The Library

A man walks into the library with his social worker.

The man does not like to hear what the social worker has to say.

Man says, "I'm going to get my automatic assault rifle and take you and everyone in this library out."

Man then leaves the library.

Social workers comes to the desk asking for assistance.

The library is locked down.

The police are immediately there.

The interior is secured.

The exterior is secured.

The man is apprehended.

Bonding time with my co-workers, priceless.

Keeping the three young children there occupied while another is on the phone with their mothers, priceless.

Going home and ingesting valium and rum punch smoothies, a good way to calm down.

Going home and talking with my Dad and favorite Auntie, priceless.