Fines, fines, everywhere fines
I finally had my chance to set a patron straight, and with heaps of justification. On Saturday some foolish girl tried to charge out several books, and the card she gave me was expired. She then pointed out that that was her sister's card she was using because she had left hers at home. I asked for some ID so that I could charge the books out on her account. Her library account was expired as well because she isn't in school at the moment. Not only that, but she had an $1872 fine on some books she hasn't returned. Naturally, I was floored by the amount, but didn't make a big deal about it. I told her there was no way she was going to get any books out with a fine like that, never mind her card being expired.
A little later on the girl reappeared at the circulation desk. I was in the middle of trying to solve a problem with another patron, and she got tired of waiting. So she asked if there was any way she could sign out the books she wanted. I looked at her and said flat out, "you have almost $2000 worth of fines. There is no way in hell you'll be taking out books with a fine like that". The guy I was helping out gasped at the amount, then shook his head, laughing quietly. She then asked if the fine could be waived because she still had the books she was being fined for, which are three years overdue, at home. She thought that returning them would remove the fines. I wondered to myself what planet this girl was hatched on. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I then told her that she had books that didn't belong to her, that she had no right to keep them, that other people have needed those items over the last three years, and that they were costing her 50 cents a day each in late dues. After telling me that she had simply forgotten about them, she claimed that she had had a serious, near-death health crisis that had kept her from returning the books. I said that she would need to provide extensive documentation to prove that she had been so ill, and the other patron, who felt sorry for the maroon, agreed with me. He then turned to me and said that illness should be considered a good excuse, and I said for illness to account for a three-year delay in the returning of books she had better have been in a coma. He laughed again, still disbelieving what was going on.
The clincher came when we found out which library the books belonged to, and the other patron and I both laughed out loud when the girl told us. As it turned out, her overdue books were from the strictest, most red-China-run library on campus. I said to her that she could try to argue her case to the people at that library, but if the way they treat their employees is any indication of how they treat their library users, she was in big trouble. I said that if they didn't shoot her on the spot, they'd definitely expect full payment of that hefty fine she owed them, on top of demanding an immediate return of their books; she had done herself in big time.
The twit finally resigned herself to the fact that there was no way she was leaving my library with the books she wanted to sign out. She walked away, and I turned to the other patron and said, "so, what was that little problem of yours...?". He smiled and said "'little' is right!".
I made sure to write a note in the girl's account about her telling me that she still had the books that were so grossly overdue. You see, it would save her money if she were to say that she had lost the books and then paid the $145 fee (per book) to replace them. I don't want her to get away with doing that, not on my watch. Maybe I take this job too damned seriously sometimes, but that kind of extraordinary selfishness is just not acceptable to me, especially when we're all so fortunate to have the opportunities that we do in this place.
Next, please.