Oh dear, I've just noticed that this is from Valentine's Day - I'm so behind. Yep, I had to work on Valentine's Day - boo!
Wow, everyone must be doing Valentine's Day things bright and early this morning. The library's actually quiet, that never happens, there are only three people using the Internet and I haven't been asked a question yet and we've been open for almost 10 minutes.
Yes, as I told you yesterday, you live in the area, so you need to get a card for the Internet. Why yes, it would save you a lot of time if you just got your own card instead of asking us to log you in every day.
Oh, of course, I spoke too soon, it suddenly gets crazy.
Dude, take your bloody phone off speaker! He turns it down one notch and continues yelling into it – he's on Craigslist looking for a room to rent. Just as I decide to give him 2 minutes, our guard comes and hustles him out, yay guard!
Several family washroom keys and signups for the kids' computer.
Everyone gets one hour on the Internet per day. It's linked to your card. No, it's not unlimited visits, just one hour once per day. She's actually really nice about it, she just can't quite figure out how it we magically keep track, I guess.
I have to make Craigslist dude take the phone outside again.
A woman is asking my colleague if the resume she wrote on our computer will still be there. Um, no. The she wants to know about writing a cover letter and if she needs a book for it. I'm assuming last time she was in, she wanted someone to do the resume for her it for her and she was pointed to the resume books and told to do it herself. I have a feeling she's going to be lots of fun today. (And she is. I have to tell the on-call not to sit with her and help her, or she'll expect it every time. Mean but realistic, I'm the one who's here all the time and has to deal with the fallout of "But they did it for me last time...")
A woman is weirdly concerned that she couldn't find our video of Othello in the online catalogue, yet it was on the shelf. Probably because there are a dozen things with the title Othello and you'd have to look at each one to determine it was the right video. Which I show her how to do. 5 minutes later she's still sitting, puzzled, at the catalogue, but I don't know how much more I can explain and she has what wants, so I don't see the problem.
Oh, here's that diabetes book you wanted, I couldn't find it at first because of the tiny type in white on the spine – or maybe my own diabetes is starting to ruin my eyes.
A woman has a whole list o' books she wants, the only one we have in right now is Collapse by Jared Diamond. I'm glad we had at least one. She asks for good reads and from a quick look at our paperback shelf I offer her Jodi Picoult (whom I've never read but I know people like her), Maeve Binchy, and Joanna Trollope. And she notices and has read some Sophie Kinsella, which I would have recommended. No matter how many new shipments of paperbacks we get, I can never find any good ones in a hurry. And our fiction section is upstairs, too far away for off-the-cuff reader's advisory. But oh well, at least we had Collapse.
Books on fire for a project due tomorrow. I have one about heat and combustion, that's it.
"Where are your science books?" You need to be more specific... "Just anything." What's your project on? "Whales."
The keyboard isn't working.... let's see....(crawl around on floor) – it came unplugged, there we go.
Books about mold for science fair....nope, can't see any. (It later turns out that you have to look under fungi, who knew? But 2 of our 3 books have been stolen, anyway.)
Fairy books.
Kung Fu Panda and Pokemon books.
A woman in a poncho wants Schindler's List, the book. Unfortunately we don't have a copy here and she doesn't want to place a hold.
I hear a tiny person singing Old MacDonald, complete with quacking.
Books about how Canada is connected to the rest of the world? Not really, but here's the Canada section – and this one at least has a section on our relations with the US.
A tiny little girl comes up and takes a colouring page, speaking to me in Chinese. No idea what she said, but she's adorable. She has little ear-thingies on the hood of her jacket! She comes back and says more, and then points to a man I assume (and hope) is her dad and toddles after him.
Confusion over who's supposed to be using the Word processor.
Oh, I think it was the little Chinese girl who was singing! Now she's moved on to the ABC's. She's killin' me with her cuteness – she comes running back on her tiny legs to return the bathroom key and when I say thank you, she replies, "Shank yuuuuuu!"
And, as usual on Saturday, it gets fairly quiet and then crazy with 15 minutes left. We can't get rid of one mother and girl until we tell them the circ computers shut down automatically and we cannot sign out any more books. Even then it takes a couple of tries to get them out the door.