Ignoramus

I had a funnily confused patron come into the library the other day. She came to the circ desk and said that she had found a title that belonged to our library, according to the catalogue, and she needed to know where to go to retrieve the book. Miracle of miracles, she had noted which of our various collections it belonged to, which is an unusual thing for most people who come to the desk wondering where they need to go to find their books. When I told her which floor that particular collection was on, however, she asked, "How do I find the book?". Sadly, this student had unwittingly failed to record the most important piece of information: the call number. When I asked her if she had the call number of the book, she looked at me with confusion, having never heard the term before. I should add that I'm someone who not only wears her heart on her sleeve, but who can't hide her amusement, no matter the inappropriateness. So my eyes betrayed my inner laughter as I explained that call numbers are the system we use to organize the books. How on earth did someone get to university without ever having encountered a library call number, you ask? I'm heartily sorry to say that I have absolutely no clue as to the answer to that question. Fortunately for her, the student did remember the title of the book and I was able to provide her with the call number.

A little while later, I left the circ desk to take my dinner break. As I approached the doorway to the stairwell, the same clueless patron came up to me with the book she was looking for in hand. She said, "This book isn't as big as I had expected". Then came silence as she looked to me for an answer. The book was, in fact, more like a pamphlet in size and length, but I didn't see what that had to do with me. Eyes laughing once more, I asked, "What would you like me to do?" (make the book bigger?). She asked where the computers were so that she could search the catalogue again. I pointed her in the right direction and made my way to my office, shaking my head in disbelief and chuckling all the way.

Next, please.

Bloggin' a floggin'...

I joined the well-known fitness gym called “Curves” last week and went for my third workout yesterday morning. There were a couple of young women there who, it seemed, were just starting the programme, but they were already very slim. Of course, weight is no indication of fitness, and these girls had a bit of struggle getting through the circuit. Anyway, the Curves coach working yesterday morning was a little bit on the heavy side, even though it’s apparent that she is in pretty good shape fitness-wise. I got the feeling, however, that when Skinny 1 and Skinny 2 had finished the workout and the coach decided they needed some ab training afterwards, it wasn’t because these girls had asked or even wanted to be pushed further. I heard Skinny 1 say, while being led to the mats, that she only wanted to do aerobic exercises for now. I can’t say for sure (because I wasn’t inside her mind) but I think the coach took particular delight in making these pretty, thin young things do crunches. Watching their expressions while they aggravatingly pushed themselves and complained probably made the coach feel that there can be, indeed, a little justice created for the fatter women of the world.

After this amusing incident I reflected on how I could go about finding a little justice for library workers everywhere. Sure, the union buttons that say “library workers make libraries work” is effective in a rah-rah, “Heck No! We Won’t Go!” kinda a way (which isn’t at all my style). But I think it would be totally cool if, instead of demanding fines, we demanded push-ups, or more embarrassingly, jumping jacks. More people can do jumping jacks than push-ups, and the flailing limbs of those who can’t (wusses!) would make the “punishment” all the more entertaining, worthwhile, and deterring. While aiming for people’s wallets is often an effective means to convincing them to see things your way, a physical punishment (short of beating certain patrons to a pulp with their own body parts…. ahh, to dream! See libraryosis.blogspot.com) in which they have to do all the work would be ideal. That or announcing over the P.A. the patrons’s name and amount owing whenever he or she wants to sign out a book might be enough to scare them into bringing their books back on time. This is exactly why I don’t like the union: no creativity whatsoever is encouraged or allowed!

Then there are some of the library employees, who deserve some sense and a reality check knocked into them from time to time. Why are so many librarians so territorial about collections, going so far as to keep the readers (!) from getting their hands on “their” books, never mind the lowly circulation clerks and book sorters. Sometimes I want to grab one of these anti-social, ego-maniacal biddies and shake them while screaming “THESE BOOKS DON’T BELONG TO YOU!! NOW GET THEM ON THE SHELF BEFORE THEY GET AS OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE READING PUBLIC AS YOU ARE OR WE’LL PUT YOU IN COMPACT STORAGE, TOO!!”. BuT wHaT dO i KnOw...

Next, please.

Saying too little

I helped an interesting patron today who comes into the library fairly regularly. She lives a bit far away and always has late fines on her numerous books, but pays them without an argument. The first few times I had dealt with her I had thought she took life too seriously, judging from her rather solemn demeanour (we humans make instantaneous judgments based on superficial impressions; I'm guilty of doing that more often than I'd like to admit). Just before Christmas I found out, however, that this patron's husband was dying in a downtown hospital, and that she hoped he would make it through the holiday. I overheard her telling my boss about this, just after she had paid another fairly large fine. My boss felt terrible about having taken her money when the woman had a good excuse for not bringing the books back on time, and felt worse for the circumstances she had heard about. Today the patron told me that her husband had passed away.

The odd thing about this patron is that she told me such personal news today (which, for her, has nothing to do with paying her fines because she insists on paying them regardless), but clearly didn't want to say too much, much like the manner in which she mentioned it to my boss before Christmas. I wanted to ask if her husband had made it through the holidays at least, but it quickly became clear to me that there was no room for my question in the silence that followed her serious announcement. Clearly it's up to her to divulge/discuss what she wants on the topic; I mean, she's the one who's suffering the loss of her husband (as a newly married woman, I don't even want to begin to imagine...). I just found her personality to be a strangely balanced combination of private and cathartic, as though she needs to tell people about a very sad and personal thing that's happened to her (in single, demure yet business-like sentences) but doesn't expect a particular reaction from people, or even their sympathy really. I get the impression that this woman has been a very serious person most of her life, but naturally I cannot know that for sure.

I guess the need to reach out, and to unimportant people like circulation desk clerks, can be expressed in many misunderstood ways.

Next, please.

Getting screwed

I live and work in a highly multicultural city, and therefore am very accustomed to cracking the code of what people mean when their english is buried under a heavy accent. Out of the six full-time staff in the circulation department of my library, for example, four were not born in Canada. This wasn't surprising to me at all when I took the job, and I'm actually quite grateful for the diversity. It's especially helpful when you get an irate patron accusing you of racism, and your boss, who is pretty obviously from around the same part of the world as said patron, tells him that he shouldn't accuse people of discrimination just because he was asked to do something he didn't want to do. I'll get into that story another time perhaps.

Anyway, I had to laugh the other day when one of my co-workers, a lady from Hong Kong, left a note for the boss. We have a book drop box on the inside of the library next to the entrance, and it's connected to the outside by its pull door so that people can access the box when we're closed. The top half of the wall that separates the box from the pull is a window. On top of the box rests a sturdy sign that faces the window to inform patrons of our library hours. Before Christmas, this sign could be taken down whenever we needed to change the hours and/or message with those little plastic numbers and letters. When we got back to work after the holidays recently, Hong Kong lady discovered that someone had screwed the frame of the sign to the top of the drop box (perhaps to secure it), making it impossible to change the hours within it. So she a wrote a note to the boss that began like this:

"Some one screwed our board for changing hours."

I caught a glimpse of the note tucked in between some pages of the circulation desktop calendar, and I couldn't help but giggle to myself. English obviously isn't this woman's first language, and sometimes it's difficult to understand what she's saying because of her thick accent. Her written stuff, though, is pricelessly entertaining. I once proofread a reference letter she was writing for her nephew (which is something I enjoy doing), and I barely managed to contain my amusement at the hilarity of her backwards, and grammatically challenged, sentences. You gotta love foreigners. They're nearly as entertaining as our patrons sometimes...

Next, please.

So it's complicated...

This older lady approached me at the circ desk tonight. She told me that she was having problems with her laptop computer. When she plugged it in and tried to turn it on, it said to plug it in to an A/C outlet. I don't know anything about electricity, but I assumed this meant that the battery wasn't working and she needed to plug the thing in. When she plugged it in, she said, nothing happened except that the computer continued to tell her to plug it into an A/C outlet (I don't know how it told her. I guess there was a message on the screen).

So I say: "Did you try plugging it into another outlet?"

Silence. Then:

"Oh, another outlet? No, no I didn't. But I just brought it to Northern Star" (whatever the hell that is) "and it was working fine there. They told me everything was fine. And then I came back here and now it's again telling me to plug it into an A/C outlet".

"Well," says I, "the only thing I can suggest is that you try another outlet. We have a few that don't work, here and there, so maybe you chose one that doesn't work".

"So it's complicated," she says, then "if I find one that works, will it be reliable?"

"I guess so. I haven't heard any complaints about outlets that weren't working upstairs anyway" I reply.

"So it's complicated, its complicated" she repeats.

And then our elderly patron, whose life has suddenly become complicated, decides to say no more, takes up her bag and leaves the library. Just then I notice her getup. You know those cheap, faux carpet bags that really kitschy women who knit and host candle parties carry around with them? This patron had a bag, pants and a jacket made out the same kind of material (but in different patterns).

I can't tell if she was slow of comprehension or if my advice was genuinely useless to her. I just thought it was funny how trying out another outlet to plug in her computer was complicated. And I think she makes her own carpet clothes.

Next, please.

It's a Christmas miracle!

I had never witnessed an incident of personal accountability like I did a couple of weeks ago. A man approached the circulation desk near the end of the day on a Friday. There were 3 of us there, getting ready to close up shop, and it took a little bit of effort on the part of this patron to get our attention. And when we found out what he wanted us to do, we all stood there in awed admiration.

This patron showed us a book that he had been using. He had never signed it out, but had read it only while in the libary. He showed us how it had been damaged by water, and admitted that he had spilt the water on it while he was using the book. The pages were obviously thickened and separated because of water damage, but the book itself wasn't in horrible condition, just a little worn-looking. Then the patron produced a new copy of the book, still in its Amazon.com wrapper, and told us that he would like to replace the book he had damaged. My supervisor was so suprised at this man's honesty that she hastily admitted to never having seen such a thing before. We all had stopped what we were doing and just stood there, not knowing how to take the new book from the kindly man. My supervisor finally took the old book, ripped off the barcode and gave it to him in exchange for the new one. We didn't, after all, need two copies. So the patron got a copy out of the deal, but he certainly wasn't expecting it. At one point I said, "well, now you'll have 3 dates for Saturday if you want". He smiled shyly, but really just wanted to hand in the new book and get out of there. I don't blame him. People who are genuinely charitable don't wish for a scene to be caused in honour of their good will. But I certainly won't forget this Christmas miracle for a very long time.

Next, please.

A note on surviving the weirdos from another planet

This post isn't about library patrons, but about the kinds of weird people the library attracts. One of my co-workers told me that there used to be a foot fetishist who came to the library who would crawl around under the study carrels and touch women's unshod feet. Pretty creepy. And then there was a woman who liked to urinate on the floor between the shelves of a particular book collection. Someone saw her and asked what she was doing. Sadly, these freaks appeared long before my time. But new and equally interesting people still find their way to my workplace, it's just a matter of being at the right place at the right time. And for one brief moment a couple of weeks ago, I was.

I was sitting at the circulation desk with my supervisor, and we were chatting in between helping patrons. Suddenly, I started feeling really anxious just as this odd-looking character came through the door. He was quite short and stalky, with bleached hair and pronounced facial features. He walked up to where my supervisor was sitting and plunked down a cerlox-bound booklet, with a bright yellow cover, on the counter in front of her. She looked at it without saying a word, and the weirdo said, "here you go. There's an ISBN number on it", implying that the booklet be catalogued and shelved. He left right after, and I was so relieved. There was just something 'off' about this guy. I asked my supervisor if she had ever been given a book by someone off the street before, and she said no. She wanted to toss it out, and I asked to keep it. The title is, "Have You Taken your Meds?..Today!".

I've tried to read some of the poems in the book, but they really don't make much sense. Let's just say they could use a lot of editing, some clarification of the author's thoughts, and perhaps removal of the hand-written editing, including little notes the author had written to himself about the poems and their publication. On the cover he claims the poems are "notes on surviving", and I assume he means surviving psychiatric treatment. They must have done something really scary to this guy to cause him to produce the kind of nonsensical stuff he has written. I think the doodle on the cover of the oval-shaped alien head and antennae, with his first initials and surname inserted where the eyes should be, tells us where his mind is, and perhaps where he hopes to be going.

Next, please.