Tales From the Library

Hilarious library question of the day:

2012-10-09T22:30:00.000-05:00

Manifesto: "Do you get danger pay for working in a library with wifi?"
Me: "...No."
Manifesto: "Oh. You should."

On new students.

2012-09-01T22:11:00.000-05:00

You are in university now. Do you really need your mom to come with you to get your student ID card? And on top of that, you really couldn't look up where to go & how to do it on your own - mom had to do that too? How old are you, 4?

Don't drink and dial?

2012-05-18T21:57:00.004-05:00

One of my friends posted this on her Facebook last week and I thought I'd share.

M: "Good morning, Library. M Speaking."
Patron: (Heavy breathing, slurring) "Do you have a book on aboriginal medicine and modern medicine? All that in one book?"
M: "Well, the University of M has a lot of books, so I don't know off the top of my head, but I can certainly check for you!"
Patron: "And to use the book, you need to be a student?"
M: "You need to be affiliated with the University of M in some way, yes. Staff at (hospital) have access though! Can I get your phone number?"
Patron: "I do have a card... with special instructions, just for me... I have a staff number."
M: "Can I have the card number? The 14 digit, right on the front. If I look for this book, I'll need to contact you."
Patron: "I'll call next week."
M: "What is your name, sir?"
Patron: "God." *Click*

And on today's episode of "manning the circulation desk"....

2012-05-06T18:00:00.002-05:00

psych health patient: What's the date today? April 14th?
me: 13th.
psych health patient: Oh, when's the world supposed to end?
me: Not til december.
psych health patient: Good, I've still got some time then.
me: Yep.

And in other news, according to Manifesto, one of our chairs "smells like someone had diarrhea in it."

Got any books?

2012-04-13T19:57:00.001-05:00

From Mr. TGS in Canada:

Child: "Are there any books here?"
Me: "I don't know... I think there are..."
Child: "Any GOOD books?"
Me: "Oh no, we don't keep those here."

^ Moments like those make me love my job.

Question of the day:

2012-04-08T18:28:00.000-05:00

Patron: "Where are those cubicle things?"
Me: *blank stare*
Patron: "Like, where people study."

I'm not sure who is made of more jello than brains today, me or him?!

I really get a kick out of my blog stats sometimes...

2012-04-07T14:55:00.001-05:00

Just checking my stats today and saw that someone found this blog by searching for "farting library patrons".

Well my friend, looks like you have come to the right place! Hahaha!

Someone also found this blog by searching for "of what help is library science to religion".

So, dear readers, of what help IS library science to religion?!

Questions from Manifesto:

2012-03-31T12:32:00.004-05:00

We have a patron from the psychiatric ward who comes in on a regular basis & is always spending hours typing out long documents (hence the nickname Manifesto) & always seems to lose them. Here are some of the questions he has asked over the past few weeks, notice that he seems to have some huge issues with Gmail. He also wears two pairs of pants at a time and for lunch, he'll bring in a plastic bag with six plain buns in it & occasionally a carton of milk. He has a bowl haircut that is about 2 inches above the top of his ear...we like to call it the anti-monk.

"Does Gmail work the same on the weekends as on the weekdays? I saved some emails last night and now they're not there anymore."

"I saved a document to my email, and when I came in the next day to open it, the computer told me I need a Japanese translator to open the file! Do you think my Gmail account has been hacked?"

"I just logged into all of my Gmail accounts at once, I have 3 or 4 of them, and then your computer system logged me out! Do you know what's wrong with the computers?" (Maybe just try logging into one email at a time, sir....)

"I was at another library yesterday, and I hadn't been there in a month, but when I opened up YouTube it already had me logged in!! Do you know why it would do that?" (Surprise surprise, he had logged into Gmail just before that happened.)

"Does the library always have human bones on display?"

"Are these real Mac computers?" (He then proceedes to start moving around the monitor & tower to inspect for signs on authentic "Mac-ness".)

"Do staff...monitor the security of these computers? I left for about three hours & when I came back someone had logged me off the computer and I lost all of my work." (Uh no...the computers will log you off automatically. This was also the THIRD time in a week he had come to the desk with this scenario.)

At one point he had gone past a church with a lot of people outside earlier in the day & asked one of my coworkers what she thought was going on. Her response: "maybe a choir practice!" And then he started to go on some tangent comparing a 9-5 job to religion.

Last night he had also decided that the mouse he had been using for several hours was "too greasy", so he proceeded to take a pile of hand sanitizer & start scrubbing the crap out of it. We do lysol all of our computers on a weekly basis & it got to the point where I actually had to go up to him & tell him to stop before he damaged our equipment.

Paranormal evidence @ the library.

2012-03-10T13:22:00.000-06:00

From Lisa in Canada:

During one of my first shifts at my new library job, a friendly older gentleman approached the desk and started making small talk with me while I set him up with an internet pass. He asked me if I believed in ghosts and I said yes. He said "well then I have a treat for you!" He then pulled out his digital camera and proceeded to scroll through the pictures until he found the one he wanted. He zoomed in on something and showed me the camera. It was a photograph of a forest with a strange glowing blue orb. He explained that it was a floating eyeball, and on closer inspection it actually did look like one! At this point my coworker at the computer beside me turned her screen to face me and gave me the look. She had opened up a Word document and typed in giant letters, PLEASE STOP TALKING TO THIS MAN!!!! Later on, she told me that he was a regular who likes to us our computers to upload his ghost phenomenon photographs.

Well....I liked him!

Feces @ the library: take two.

2012-03-05T14:24:00.020-06:00

From H.K. in Canada:

One day, apparently the public washroom on our second floor was occupied when an older lady desperately needed to use it. So instead of waiting, she decided to defecate in one of the nearby garbage cans. After doing so, she came downstairs to the circulation desk and told us what she had done, and that we should "do something about it." She then left and never came back. (Some of us speculate she was a mental patient at the nearby mental hospital.)
Luckily our janitor arrived shortly after to clean up the mess.

Gettin' your jollies @ the library.

2012-02-20T18:16:00.022-06:00

From H.K. in Canada:

One Saturday afternoon several years ago, a male patron came into the library (we are an academic library) asking for access to the internet (we often give out temporary passes to visitors). His only identification was his prison inmate ID card! This was the first red flag.

He went up to the second floor and proceeded to watch poronography at one of the computer terminals. A female student came down to the circulation desk and complained about it. My coworker went upstairs to verify, and he was indeed watching porn and masturbating under the table. We then called security who went upstairs to remove him. When they approached him he said, "Wait til I'm finished."

Security dragged him out anyway, thank God. He was not happy.

Farting @ the library.

2012-02-12T21:09:00.000-06:00

From Miss L. in Canada:

Back in my library school days I did a 2 week work placement in an elementary school library. During a storytime with the kindergarteners one afternoon, a boy in the middle of the group let an adult-male sized fart rip. There was a moment of dead silence, then the boy next to him stuck out his arm and pointed in his face and exclaimed, "Say excuse me!!!!" The culprit turned bright red and bowed his head in shame. I nearly died trying not to laugh. That was the best moment of the entire work placement.

Science vs. religion @ the library.

2012-02-04T10:32:00.000-06:00

From Maria who works in an Acquaculture Library:

One day we had a local scientist come in and demand our copy of the Koran (Quran). Which, obviously, we had no copy of as we are a strictly acquaculture/fisheries/ocean focused library. My coworker and I spent a good 10 minutes explaining to him that we are a science-based library with no religious materials. He then asked if we had a copy of the Bible, and if we did have a copy of the Bible, why didn't we have a copy of the Koran? (He jumped to conclusions on this one.) I then explained that we didn't hold a copy of the Bible either. He then told us that we should get one.

And that was the end of the Koran emergency - he really needed a copy of it for up in his office I guess.

Doctors @ the library.

2012-01-29T17:53:00.001-06:00

Story #1:
This weekend a would-be doctor came in with a ripped, crumpled piece of a Tim Horton's sandwich wrapper with a bunch of chicken scratch written all over it - it was apparently citation information for a study guide that he needed ASAP for an exam. Looks like he'll do well in the field, because I can never read my prescriptions from doctors. Messy handwriting: check.

Story #2:
Medical intern calls from airplane. Asks us to look through all of the books he dropped off the day before for a prescription he left inside one of them. Didn't know what the book was called. Can't remember what the prescription was for. Or who it was for. All he could remember was that he had slightly damaged the book before dropping it in the returns bin.

I am not a lawyer.

2012-01-22T19:00:00.001-06:00

After regaling me with tales of his fight against the government over the value of his house, and how this somehow put him in the hospital, I get one of the infamous questions:

Patron: Do you think I should sue them?
Me: ...I can't give you that kind of advice.

Awkward.

My coworkers are awesome.

2012-01-20T18:34:00.000-06:00

Last weekend we had a patron come in wanting to check out a very expensive medical textbook. Coworker #1 looked up his account and found that his account had expired and he had two unreturned items from almost a year ago (one of them was another copy of the very same expensive textbook). She then explained to him that due to the status of his account, he could not check out the book (this was a reserve item kept behind our circulation desk). He then proceeded to reach over the counter (one of my biggest pet peeves) and grab the book anyways! Saying "oh, I'm just going to look at it anyways" and backing away all while #1 is explaining that he needs to clear up the issues with his account before he can use reserve materials.

Shortly after this, Coworker #2 came back from lunch and found out what the situation was. Keep in mind this girl is tiny - maybe 5 feet tall - always very fashionable, and wearing a classic pair of kitten heels, and she wasn't having any of it! She walked up to the patron sitting at the computer and said "sir, I'm going to have to take that book back from you" and explained once again that due to the status of his account he was not able to take the book from the reserves section. He acted innocent and gave the book back. After getting back to the desk, she realized that he hadn't complained because he was still using the CD-ROM from the book! So she marched back over to him and took the CD-ROM back too.

All of the sudden he was thanking them and being polite, meanwhile when it had been just one girl earlier in the day, he was incredibly rude and pushy. Funny how that works.

Don't mess with the little people!

Christmas holidays @ an academic library.

2012-01-13T17:36:00.001-06:00

Services the library does not provide (no matter how many times you try to rephrase the question):

- Logging in to your son's account (over the phone no less) to see what he owes the university money for. If it's that important, tell him to get his butt out of bed and come down to the library where he can use one of our computers to login himself.
- Write up tax receipts for donations to the university.
- Allow you to come behind the desk and use OUR circulation terminal to browse the internet because the internet on our public terminals is temporarily down.
- Look up eBay auctions for you over the phone so that you can "save a trip".
- Stay open past our regular hours so that you can stare at us like a creep while you "wait for your friend".
- And no, we don't have a special storage locker in the library for you to store your books in every day.

Anyone else have some fun Christmas stories to share?

Scary stuff...

2012-01-08T18:23:00.002-06:00

Nothing is scarier than when a very weird library patron tries to use his firearms license as a form of ID.

BUSTED. Big time.

2011-10-05T19:19:00.003-05:00

This one reminds me of a time back when I was still shelving at the public library. I made the mistake of going to use the public ladies room (it was so much closer than the staff bathroom) and walked in on two gross-looking girls getting all hot and heavy in the middle of the bathroom! They couldn't even be bothered to go in a stall! (I say that as if it would somehow have been better?)
Or there was the time I found a used condom in the stacks.
Oh, or the time a teenage girl was sitting in her teenage boyfriend's lap and they were making out on and off for about an hour...in front of everyone. Lovely, people. Just lovely.

Now on to our story from Ed in Melbourne:

I was on a date with a lovely young lady - it was our third or fourth date, and things were going along very well and it was pretty obvious that we were getting to the point of being crazy about each other. So, we went along to the Supreme Court Library (where else do you take a hot date?)
We found our way up to the top floor where there are wonderful views across Melbourne - it's a domed roof with windows looking out in all directions. Coming off this domed roof are surrounding rooms, filled from floor to ceiling with shelves, and we found ourselves in a room surrounded by old, massive volumes of legislation from the 1800s. There was nobody in sight, and it looked like there hadn't been a soul in the room for years.
So, being the passionate couple that we were, we started to...ahem...show our affection for each other. Which involved clothes being left on the floor, and both of us enjoying each other's company. Very much.
And we were into the moment, into each other, and for several moments didn't notice the judge, and the supreme court librarian who had turned up (who knows for how long?) at the end of the aisle who yelled out at us.
Suffice to say, we were both banned from coming back to the supreme court library.

Puppet show preview?

2011-08-31T19:09:00.001-05:00

This one from Kathleen in Texas. Pretty sad that sometimes the parents are worse than the children.

When I managed a small branch library, a young, over-earnest (and very entitled) mother came to me before the puppet show scheduled for that afternoon. She wanted to know if she could pre-screen the show for appropriateness for a 2-year-old. With a very straight face, I explained that this was a live performance and therefore could not be previewed at all. I also explained that this would be a capacity crowd and that it was not appropriate for a 2-year-old, and more suited to a 5-8 year-old audience. She was adamant that she pre-screen the puppet show until I had to just say “no.” I was busy handing out tickets to children and explaining to parents that the show would be very full and that if they could, please send the child in alone.

Most parents were very understanding and went to sit elsewhere in the branch. As I was helping another customer just before the show started, I saw uber-mom sneak into the show with her 2-year-old who promptly began to scream when the lights went out. The puppeteers actually had to stop the show and ask her to remove her child before they could be heard over the poor toddler’s cries (and these ladies had some good lungs on them, too). Of course, no one involved in this got an apology from the mom; not the staff, the puppeteers or the other members of the audience. Some folks got no ‘couth. Nope, no ‘couth at all.

Chat rooms @ the library.

2011-08-27T15:04:00.001-05:00

Another one about the Facebook stalker I've mentioned previously.

Long before the Facebook stalking incident occured, when I was still a fairly new employee, she came up to me asking if I could help her with the chat program on her computer, as it wasn't working. At this point I wasn't familiar with her antics and figured she was trying to use the Ask A Librarian feature. As I get to the screen I realize it is in fact one of those creepy hookup/dating/"meet your soulmate" chat rooms (I can't remember the name) with some flashy graphic featuring all kinds of nice, lurid pictures.

My response? That the university has probably disabled the chat room because the computers are meant to be used for research and studying only (not 100% true, but whatever). To which I get the incredibly displeased and snarky reply of "OH, WELL THAT SUCKS."

I've never understood why so many people insist on looking at porn or doing other similar weird stuff on public computers...maybe its time to invest in your own computer and internet connection at home so the rest of us don't have to watch in horror. Oh, and not to mention all the other hundreds of people waiting in line to use the computers for legitimate purposes.

I've seen it all: porn and sex chatrooms (men have actually been busted masturbating under the table at our city's public library!), gambling (and other similar scams), and of course the ever-popular farmville addiction.
What kinds of strange/gross computer usage have you all had the pleasure of witnessing?

Canadian Government = Nazis?

2011-08-13T16:48:00.002-05:00

A patron just compared the Canadian government (asking him to provide details about the equity in his recently sold home) to the nazi's pulling out gold teeth in extermination camps during World War II. He went on to give an incredibly graphic and detailed description of this. This somehow relates to him seeing me at a bus stop several months ago (this was his conversation starter), but I have no idea how and am now just thoroughly confused.

The day a patron CLIMBED THE LIBRARY

2011-08-09T14:32:00.001-05:00

I should start with a description of the library: my city's main branch has 4 floors. One wall is composed almost entirely of windows with a type of design similar to scaffolding that extends outwards on the inside of the building over the reading terrace. Similar to this:

One day last year I came to work and shortly after the entire building was being evacuated. I looked up and there was a young man STANDING ON THE SCAFFOLDING on the fourth floor. Hence why we had to evacuate; one misstep and he could have fallen four floors down as around the reading terrace it is an open design. Shortly after the building was emptied the police and emergency services showed up and had to climb up and rescue the guy.

Apparently he and his girlfriend had gotten into an argument in the library earlier that day and she had broken up with him and told him "he should kill himself". So he climbed the scaffolding intending to jump off. But of course once he got up there, he decided that he wanted to live, but couldn't figure out how to climb back down!

Crazy library patrons: at least climb the OUTSIDE of the building. Or even better: avoid having your crazy break up arguments inside the library altogether.

Feces @ the library.

2011-08-03T19:40:00.001-05:00

Has anyone ever been walking around in the stacks only to come across a steaming pile of human feces on the floor? Not even far from the public washrooms?
I have.

I also once had a mother come up to me while I was shelving and ask if it was okay to change her baby's diaper on the floor inbetween the stacks. I informed her that there was a changing table in the ladies room that she could use. She said she didn't want to do that because "he might fall off". But she was also worried that someone might walk by and see her changing her baby (duh). I told her she could do whatever she was most comfortable with, but that I couldn't guarantee that no one would walk by. I am almost 100% sure it wasn't in my job description to "stand guard" over mothers who don't want to use the proper changing tables provided.

Always check the shrubs

2011-07-25T10:58:00.001-05:00

From Dee in Iowa:

Today we had a group of community service in and I had them washing the windows on the outside. They came back in with three of our cake pans that they had found in the bushes. I called the patron who said we were closed when he tried to return them last night. He added that the Rec. Center side of the building was also closed and that the pans would not fit in the drop box (not true—we tried and they fit) so he had no choice but to “hide” them in the bushes. He was going to call today to let us know where the cake pans were “hidden” but “forgot”. I was so flabbergasted that I “forgot” to remind him that he could call/e-mail or even return them to his local library and they would mail the pans back to us. I am going to do that now so he won’t need to “hide” library material from now on. Anyway, the moral of the story is always check the plantings around your library for “hidden” treasure. We are still shaking our heads in wonderment.