The Driving Insane

Coworker and I watched a man walk deliberately to our desk. When he was at an appropriate distance, my coworker said nicely, "May we help you?"

He brusquely replied "NO YOU MAY NOT," and without breaking stride walked right past the desk.

At the same time I was helping the 2.5 cent haggler (below), I was also attempting to help an older lady: 1. learn how to use the microfilm reader, 2. locate two specific items in the paper, and 3. print them out. This is much more complicated than you might imagine. She didn't want to buy a full-value print card either because she only needed to print out 2 pages. (She ended up printing 10.)

She finally located the first item and I showed her how to center it and print it. She was unhappy because the date of the newspaper did not show in the print out, so then I had to try to convince her that it would be physically impossible to do that because of the size of the newspaper, and the size of the printer paper.

So then she located the next item and I was helping her position that one for printing as well, when I noticed that she had started crying...quite a lot. We were looking at a picture from 1956 that was of her deceased father. I printed out the first one. Too dark. I lightened it. Still too dark. I lightened it some more. The final closing announcement went off. I told her to print out the remaining 6 copies she wanted--all she had to do was push the green button--while I shut down the computers. I looked up to see my coworker returning from locking the front door. crap. I looked over at the crying old lady. She was just sitting there with her hands in her lap. I asked her what she was doing and told her we were closed and she said, "Well I was waiting for you to finish printing them for me." crappity crap.

There are only so many episodes a person can deal with concurrently, you know?

I was explaining the rather complex printing process to a woman the other day. She didn't want to purchase a full-value ($1) print card because she only needed to print 3 pages. I gave her an empty card and told her the smallest amount she could add to the card was 40 cents, even though 3 copies at 12.5 cents would only be, what? 37.5 cents? (I don't know what brilliant mind decided to charge 12.5 cents per copy, but that is a subject for another rant.)

She looked troubled and ready to argue with me over the extra 2.5 cents, so I hurried to assure her that she could hang on to the card and use it again at a later date. She replied, "Oh good. I wouldn't want to get ripped off" without a trace of irony.

So far my new job has proven to be rather dull (with the exception of one very ditzy coworker), but I did happen upon something interesting when visiting a branch one day. A man in his mid to late 20s was seated at a table right in the middle of the library working on a craft project. He had his hot glue gun plugged in, and his supplies spread out. As I passed the table I got a better look at his project. He was hot gluing plastic gem stones onto his brand new pair of tennis shoes.

Now why didn't I ever think of that?

This incident did not happen at my library, but I would not have been terribly shocked if it had. A man asked if he could kiss a woman's feet as part of his so-called sociology experiment. Um...riiiight.