Craaaazy Saturday, part 2
posted Sunday, 8 January 2006
Arg, it always gets crazy-busy at lunchtime!
Her brother-in-law needs to take the driving test and wants to print out test questions. Unfortunately they're only available as a randomly-generated click-the-bubble test online and can't be printed. But he can use our computers to do it.
Ancient Greece books are over here, you can take out 2 on the subject.
One of our slightly weird regulars asks me to look up the postal code of a government office he has on a piece of paper and then promptly walks away. All righty, then...
It looks like he's done the same thing to the on-call, writing down 3 titles he wants her to look up before taking off. Unless there are two such rudesters here today. That's one of my big pet peeves, as you can maybe tell. I'm doing the work for you, the least you can do is wait for the answer, bucko.
Ancient Greece boy brings over a self-checkout receipt for three books and asks me if it's for two or three books. Well, the receipt's for 3, which is over the 2 book limit that I just told you. And you're actually holding 4 books, so what's up? I check them all in and make him start again, choosing 2. Turns out the one wasn't checked out, so it's a good thing he asked. His mom seems to be freaking out in Chinese that I took some of the books back, but tough. If he's asking for the topic now, there will be 30 more kids asking by next week.
Yup, it was the same rude dude who left without the answer. He did deign to come and get them eventually, though.
ARG!! After storytime (which is only attended by 2 little girls and their dad) life gets INSANE:
A mom and daughter need atlases. No prob. Then the mom (who is fortunately very nice and actually seems to want to help her child) comes back and says that the girl has a science project to do on, wait for it, "life on earth." That's what the teacher has assigned, period. He also apparently hasn't even started teaching the "life on earth" unit. I have no idea what to show her, but end up basically showing her all of the 500's to the 600's ("here's oceans, dinosaurs, plants, bugs, wildlife...") The mom and I share a laugh about the ridiculousness of the assignment and then she says that she's just going to start reading up on it.
A pushy regular patron wants to use the phone (I've had trouble with her being demanding before, particularly about coloring sheets for the kid she tutors who is too old for coloring sheets). On-call refuses, as she should, but the woman follows me over to circ and says that I've always been nice, blah blah... I cave. I tell her I'll get in trouble if anyone finds out I've done it, so I'm only doing it once and it has to be super-fast. She seems to understand and she is super fast and super-appreciative. Ah well, sometimes you just have to know when to give in. And sometimes you just want their loud, complaining voices to stop.
Two boys are working really hard on their Ancient Mesopotamia project, actually finding some books for themselves and asking for help intelligently when they need it. One also recognizes me from our summer reading club school visits, which is nice, and we have a chat about how well he does with getting the stickers each year. Unfortunately, the copier says it's out of dry ink and no-one has a clue on where we might keep it or what we'd do with it, so I copy their reference book on the staff copier for them.
Another girl needs Michael Flatley info (there was one on Tuesday)! What the hell? I ask if her whole class is doing a project on him and she says yes. Way to go, teacher - no sense in actually finding out who the library might have some information about before sending an entire class to do a project on someone that we have not a SINGLE book about. I help her with the Internet and we eventually find what she needs - a picture with about 2 or 3 sentences of information about him. Well, it's more than 2 sentences, but it's going to have to do, I've now searched through enough pictures of the dude to last me a lifetime. Good thing I don't have a phobia about him like Chandler from Friends.
I help the on-call to look up Samurai Girl (which is catalogued even though most YA series aren't, so she was confused) and Kodocha graphic novels.
Flatley girl asks if he might be in the World Book, so we check just in case, but he's not important enough (there's an understatement) to have made it in.
Just as I'm heading to the World Book, the on-call says "...but TLL might know..." A former storytime mom needs easy readers ("like Dick and Jane") for her daughter. Apparently the daughter is bored with the super-easy earliest readers (which are indeed boring) and the mom thinks she'll like D&J because mommy learned to read with them. Apparently she's just placed a hold on some and, in the coolest children's librarian moment I'm likely to have for some time, I reach into the paperback reader shelf and pull out a Dick and Jane. :) She's delighted and impressed.
I should've known the World's Loudest Family couldn't survive a day without the Internet. They come bustling in, Damien panting and looking like he's about to pass out. He gets on the kid's station (without signing up with me, even though he knows he's supposed to) and is moving around in his chair like a junkie while it loads. He's making little sounds and talking to himself and totally writhing around in his chair. At one point I hear him say something about having to go to the bathroom, but he stays glued to the chair. He yells "Mommy!!" I tell him not to yell. Mommy of course ignores him, as she's engrossed in her own NeoPets (the three of them come in every day for NeoPets). He shrieks out "Mommy!!" again and I think he's about to wet himself as he gets up and moves within slightly closer shouting distance of his mom, who continues to ignore him. His bladder gets the better of him and he orders me to save his place at the computer, he has to go to the bathroom. I give him the key without a lesson in manners because I'm concerned he's about to make a puddle on the floor. When he gets back, he continues to yell at mom from across the room and then finally goes over to loudly tell her about some disturbing, "horrible" thing on the screen, something about someone wanting to kill one of his NeoPets or something.
At 5ish minutes til closing, a dad comes in and says all day his son has been asking him for a story about hippos. Fortunately I'm able to dig out The Blushful Hippopotamus and I also come across Hurty Feelings while looking for a different hippo book.
As we were locking up, Phil asked me how the day had gone. I said okay, but very busy. And added "At least we didn't have a problem with Methadone Man!" Phil replied "I wrote up a report. He was asking people for money upstairs." Oh.