Saturday

What I'm doing between questions: praying for sinus relief, and working on end-of-month stuff

9:00 with the kids

• Where are the Spanish fiction books? [they do move around...sigh]
• GED books [I direct her to the adult section, but she heads to circ instead...]
• Where to check out books
• [phone] Hours today

10:00 still with the kids

• [phone] Renew book
• Pufferfish, specifically in encyclopedias [yes, this I can do!]
• Pokemon DVDs

11:00 Librarian T took pity on me and did my hour

12:00 back with the kids instead of at Ref thanks to Librarian T again

• Pay to print

Thursday

What I'm doing between questions: waking up, trying to kill the sinus headache, and poring over subject heading changes; and email.

9:00 in the children's room

• I'm not quite late this morning, but pretty close. Not an issue since there is not a soul in here.
• At 9:30 someone comes in to print something from the computers in front...and leaves
• New IT guy has questions 
• New residents looking around...

10:00 in the children's room

• Raising chickens
• Book two in the Prydain Chronicles [yes of course we have Lloyd Alexander books... ;-)]
• Anne of Avonlea [our copy is checked out, but we have it on CD]
• All three of these questions are from the same family--sensing a theme?
• We have bathrooms in here for kids [I catch a mom leaving for the adult area with her toddler]
• ...and she's back with the key
• Printing procedures
• "Religious" Easter DVDs

I was out at Reference, back and forth, much of the afternoon backing up the New Boss when stuff he wasn't sure about occurred.

5:00

• Sewing machine ratings, etc.
• The Monkees [our disc is checked out and he doesn't want to hold it, or get anything from another library...poor guy, totally tweaking, with a broken/injured foot to boot]
• Help getting online + tax forms/efiling, etc.
• Refresh time immediately for efiler
• Refresh time for someone else too
• More tax questions, from another very antsy guy [is everyone tweaking but me?]
• "Where is the print button?" [stupid Microsoft and their control button or whatever they call it]
• Help with efiling (same patron)
• Next Margaret Maron book on CD after the one the patron just finished

Thursday Wednesday

What I'm doing between questions: steaming. Librarian J called in with a headache on a day when there are already three librarians on vacation. Her 8-hour shift starts at noon, but she called at 9  to tell us she would have the headache all day. Right. Bitch.

11:00

• Pay to print
• "Does everything delete when I log out?" [yes, your ICE stuff will go away...not the usual ICE demog either]
• "What's my PIN?" [you make it up]
• Help printing the St. Joseph prayer [and much chattering from him in between]
• Pay to print
• Stapler and job folder
• Register new patron in SAM born in 1935 and sharp as a tack with computers
• Pen, or pencil [golf pencils are fine, yay]
• "Washroom?" 
• Opening an Apple document on our (Microsoft) computers [I have no idea--nothing I try helps, and he's willing to wait till he gets to work so it's all good]
• Extend time for new SAM user
• Pay to print, and do we fax, and where can I make a copy
• Refresh time

12:00

• Fax
• Refresh time
• Can I look up his card number? [No because he's not our patron, but I give him a daypass]
• Fax woman comes back looking for 50 Shades of Grey; "everyone says I should read it" [and voilà we have one on the shelf!! wow]
• Reference station #26 not printing [I go reboot it and leave a note for staff]
• Where's the fiction section?
• Request slips
• Day pass for SAM
• Help with printing
• [phone] IRS publication 525 [no we don't have it, but it's online...]
• Director walks past the study rooms and then comes to tell me that there's a guy in there using a typewriter, which he obviously brought in himself [wow!]
• Pencil and paper
• Online test proctoring [help!! I don't know the password]
• Fax
• Add money to SAM account
• ....where the heck is the Director NOW--he's supposed to be here so I can eat? [he forgot]

3:00

• ...and back. Proctoring is over thank God and I'm hoping the IRS dude has been and gone....
• James Blish Star Trek books [ours have all gone away, and I can't ILL them because his card is outside our system]
• And no, I can't make you a card, you'll need to go up to circ [where they, I hope, will break the news that if you have a library card in another town you can't get one here, and by telling us you're homeless, you won't get a card here either, not for checking out books, sorry]
• Add money and time to SAM account
• [meanwhile, I'm emailing with colleagues about "Hogwarts" being changed by LC from an "imaginary place" to an "imaginary organization"]
• Ah, the dude needing a library card and James Blish books is the typist--he's leaving with his giant box
• [phone] Renew materials [why was this sent to me??]
• Day pass for internet
• Problem with card...blah blah...needs to pay down fine...I send him to circ
• [phone] Patron was notified that an ebook he put on hold is available, but when he checked his account, the wrong book is showing up and the one he wants is still unavailable...I have no idea, which is bad considering that this guy is one of the Town Pests
• Today's papers
• ...and she's back because she needs the classifieds
• ...and also Sunday's classifieds
• There is NO Kleenex here, or in the workroom :(
• Refresh time
• Movie from another consortium library, which I can't get cuz he has the wrong kind of card, so I explain the whole deal to him; "we're working on it" he says... whatever that means
• Refresh time x2
• Today's local paper

4:00

• All the papers are back
• Guest pass
• Today's classifieds (of course, I actually put them away for a change)
• Guest pass not working [I reboot the computer]
• IRS dude arrives {bummer} asking what looks to me like a self-evident question, but it's not obvious to him, so we get him set up to use the internet to read Pub. 575
• ....aaaaand spppaaazzzzz occurs -- that is, it got terribly busy

Monday, post-vacation

What I'm doing between questions: checking our ordered items to see if I missed any that are actually on the shelves.

1:00

• Lots of DVD TV shows for chatty patron who totally reminds me of my mother-in-law in all the good ways
• Head of Circ here to collect money for deposit
• Pay to print
• "Is this (Mortal something or other) the first in the series?" [honey, it's the ONLY in the series...]
• Pay to print
• How to work the printer, and then send a fax
• Pay to print
• The Social Worker is definitely in today...more life-stories in the past 40 minutes than I've heard in a awhile
• Can't download Amazon MP3 Downloader software onto our computers, so yeah...bring a flash drive next time and maybe it'll work...
• Fax
• Help logging in [she just forgot to hit 'enter'], and then help getting into email too

2:00

• Reading a local listserv about cell-phone policies while watching one of the regular (nice) patrons run back and forth from computer to study room as he sorts something out online with a ?credit card? or something
• Propagation of Venus fly-traps, not using Wikipedia [I hate profs]
• Books on hearing, deafness, etc. [we have...two...grrr]
• [phone] When is the next Intro to the Internet class? [no clue--the schedule is only updated through the end of March]
• [The] Invisible Man [the one by Wells, not Ellison, and yes we have it for the young man]
• Color in interior decorating

Saturday

What I'm doing between questions: downloading orders, checking next month's Bookletters, and generally keeping out of the way of the BIG NOISY PROGRAM going on from 10 to 3 today.

9:00 in the children's room

• Help with printing [ah, yes, yesterday was St. Baldrick's Day...]
• Easter books + CD sets [yes, but...this rack is all Spanish...yeah, the English ones are on that rack]
• Circulation's money drawer key is MIA [see above re BIG NOISY PROGRAM that involved clearing the whole circ desk off last night so the caterers could set up food stations on it. Yes, this program is Mayhem Incarnate]
• Highlighter
• Volunteers are trickling in ... and chatting
• Cleaning guy is cleaning the cleaned bathrooms [sigh] and chatting
• Yeah, keeping this up-to-date today is going to be impossible. I'm thinking "Monet" rather than "Warhol"
• More people start arriving for the program...noise level is increasing
• CD woman stops to say she can't read or write but she likes stories that's why she's taking 9 sets home...and she loves our library [she is LD, by the way, but quite nice]
• ...it has begun...

10:00 in the children's room

• [phone] Cataloger from another library in our consortium calling because her director wants her to transcribe ALL the contents from the Harvard Classics series. Here's the contents for the "Chaucer to Gray" volume. Yeah, this director is clinical
• "Sleuth or Dare" series for kids [we don't own--I do order requests for them, thankfully only three books so far]
• "DAD! This [section of the program] is COOL! [gotta love that]
• Bathroom keys are in and out and there's a LOT of chitchat with custodial dude...

11:00

• The Prizewinning Skill spot is near the Reference Desk, so I get to hear a lot of "No, I won, really" "No you did NOT; you have to do it [according to the rules]" etc.]
• Look up PIN number for internet
• Just exactly how ignorant do you have to be to walk BEHIND a staff desk (a four-sided area) without realizing it?
• Pay to print x2
• Day of the week for 11/28/12
• Flurry of fubar'd internet passwords
• If former-Librarian L comes for the program, Librarian J has something to give her and I'm supposed to tell her (L) if I see her
• Recorder + piano music (scores) [uhm, we have each individually, but not together, but he's pretty happy with what I did find]
• Fax x 2
• Werewolf in need of "tunic" [i.e., Teutonic] knights information...that she hasn't already printed off and read...omg 
• Then a discussion of appropriate scoring for the program going on ensues between werewolf and her son
• Scratch paper
• [phone] Who wrote The Hippopotamus? [7 letters--yes for a crossword--I think it's T.S. Eliot's poem, not a book]

12:00

• [I have now finished page one (of three) of the April Bookletters list, which I began looking at over an hour ago]
• Dude sits down at a computer and starts muttering about noise. I tell him it's going to be loud today because of the program and he says sarcastically, "That's a smart idea" while shaking his head. Dude, you can always come back tomorrow when it will be slightly quieter....
• Graphic novels [what age?] for teens [back to the mass of (noisy) people by the front door]
• "This is the noisiest this library will ever be" [yeah, while we're open anyway, lol]
• "The one day you won't shush us" [only if the adults start screaming, lol]
• Yes [that happened so long ago that I forgot what "Yes" was for]
• [phone] Tax forms
• Crabby dude finished up and left while I was running around
• Tax forms (same woman as was on the phone)
• [phone] Where to pay city water bill? [CityHall, and there's a slot in the side door for when they are closed]
• Can I turn on the fireplace in the reading room [absolutely!]
• Prizewinner shows off the car he won -- woot [I think it's the kid who made me a crown several weeks ago]
• Is Librarian J here? [yeah, but she's eating lunch...so the woman takes it upon herself to check her office...ok, then]
• Pay to print
• Notary [not a single one of the five on staff are here today]
• Current Reader's Digest
• Black pen

Thursday

What I'm doing between questions: cutting out large bunnies for storytime

1:00 in the children's room

• The new director just told me that he'll be at the Reference Desk alone for two hours this afternoon, so he "may" be calling me [yeah, I'll find something unobtrusive to do in the nonfiction section near the desk..."may" my Aunt Fanny]
• There's a little guy hooting while he's playing; it's quite relaxing to listen to hooting while I work....
• Bathroom key (the hooter)

Wednesday

What I'm doing between questions: the printer went crazy last night and printed a lot of gobbledegook pages, so I'm sorting the gooky pages apart from the clean ones to reuse

12:00

• When I first get out here, Librarian B is giving out permanent guest-passes to a couple [cuz, yeah, I suck: I was late]
• Drums, specifically tuning
• [phone] Baron von [Werewolf's last name] in Luxembourg...blah blah [I dig up something that she wants me to print so that's good]
• [phone] Test proctoring
• Renew time for the guest-pass couple

2:00

• "Habemus Papam!"  Not that we know who, or what name he's chosen
• Dora the Explorer Spanish for kids CDs [yes, they're here]
• ABC and 123 books [well, grandma is at least trying to educate the baby, even if she does pronounce  it "liberry"]
• Historical fiction for a ten-year-old
• Bathroom key
• Board-book grandma stops to chat about the books she's got
• Both bathroom keys are back (one went out while I was looking for historical fiction)
• Paper clip?
• Mr. Popper's Penguins [yup on the shelf]
• The new Pope is 76. Uhm. Is the Vatican eventually going to run out of Oldies?
• [phone] Can't log into patron record... [I change password and she tries again, successfully, and now is changing her password back to whatever she had]
• No price on overdue book [it went out on the fly and we don't enter prices in that case so...]

Tuesday

What I'm doing between questions: leftover item requests from yesterday and this morning, and then checking a list I created this morning of materials added to the catalog by [library that doesn't have a cataloger on staff and it shows]. This is in response to the email I got this morning from them indicating they didn't realize their bib records aren't up to snuff: "Can you send us a copy of the criteria regarding 'quality of record'." Uhm, dumbass, that's why we have meetings, and training sessions and lists of rules...oh, but wait, you haven't been to a meeting in 6 months. Out of the first 75 records on that list, 37 are screwed up. The other half have been fixed by other libraries when we've added our copies, or they just got lucky with OCLC records.

3:00

• Help with copier
• IT guy is replacing all the computers under the giant light fixture that just got a new bulb
• Dude emailed a request for the audio & book version of a specific Bible [uhm, no, there is no such thing in that version, sorry--email to him to explain it all since a call would just get way too complex]
• Pay to print
• It's blizzarding outside: third Tuesday straight, though this one wasn't "promo'd"
• More help with copier (same person)
• Royal land patents and Commonwealth land grants...Commonwealth of Virginia [ok, who's the crackhead who took this request? Like Virginia's gonna ILL this too us?]
  
• Read-alikes for The Time-Traveler's Wife and/or The Help [ugh thank God for Novelist that boots up my brain and I suggest A Discovery of Witches and Jennifer Chiaverini's books...and show the husband how to get into Novelist himself so he can show his wife]
• Guest pass
• [phone] Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet [yup, here, now on hold shelf for patron]
• Pay to print
• Today's classifieds
• Look up library card number...which is expired, and her new number isn't in SAM, so....ok done

4:00 in with teh kidz

• It's a madhouse in here when I arrive
• Mom From Hell from last Friday is here, along with S holding at least 4 empty puppet bags and dealing with several young middle-schoolers
• "Dork Diaries" series [yup]
• Dora the Explorer books [yup]
• Dick & Jane books [yup--and please don't suck on the giant lizard puppet's tail...]
• Lots of random stuff strewn everywhere on the floor
• Pretty much everyone clears out by 4:15 [I'm that scary just sitting here]
• Girl-bookmarks, i.e., not the free Jack the Giant Slayer movie ones [that's what we've got, sorry]
• I freak out a mom-friend by saying I just saw her son--thinking she was here looking for him [she's expecting me to say something like, "...and he was misbehaving..." but he wasn't]
• Graphic novels
• Tail-sucker says "Whoops!" when I remind him about the tail sucking [lol--he's adorable]
• Beginning readers in Spanish
• [phone] Va calling to say she'll be late
• Books for babies? [I explain that he can check out whatever he wants...]
• MUCH quieter when I leave at the end of my shift

Monday [grey and grody outside]

What I'm doing between questions:

1:00

• Admin Asst. comes out to close a file--which won't close, and then the computer borks so I have to reboot from scratch. Great start
• Explanation of printing
• Jobs folder
• Pay to print
• Classified ads 
• Guest pass
• [phone] Werewolf needs a "fat" German-English dictionary [now on the hold shelf for her]
• Guest guy can't get resume open...because he used Word Perfect...sigh
• ....and with that all hell broke loose and I have no idea what-all went on...

4:00

• ...deep calming breaths...I hate when panic in my non-work life bleeds over into work
• Very cranky dad with very sassy daughter, who needs to clean her room before she can watch the DVDs she's picked out according to cranky dad
• New director is excited that ALL the lights are lit--first time since he arrived that all the bulbs have been replaced....
• Help, and a calming voice, about doing a report on the Department of Justice [mom's freaking out, but she leaves happy when I tell her the DOJ has a pretty good overview on their website, and there's stuff in the online databases]
• Ivy + Bean books [yup got 'em]
• Books about Thomas Edison

5:00

• Right off the bat we have a non-English speaker with a new computer running Windows 8 needing to get online but her wi-fi is off [no one here has used  Win8 yet, but I figure it out eventually with help from Vi's translating skills]
• Birdhouses, building of [plenty of those around]
• Help sending an attachment [how kids save their docs to work on at home]
• It smells very strongly of soy sauce here today--wth?
• Refresh time online
• Books on concussions for a research paper
• Help Librarian B with...something or other
• Help with printing (and consolidating into fewer pages)
• Pay to print

Friday (ranty)

What I'm doing between questions: intermittently running around the workroom, and sitting in here being bored

1:00

• Bathroom key  ... and returned
• The entire staff is wack today, apparently
• I think we have a home-school family here--lots of 'old' (i.e. school-aged) kids, including one REALLY LOUD one in the play area "doo doo-DOO-doo-dooDOOdoo-doo ..."]
• Really, I used to like kids...today they are just annoying...*

*OK, no, it's really home-schooled families that get my goat. First of all, these kids today range from 7ish to 17ish. Secondly, they're (well, the boys anyway) cocky little shits who refuse help from me when I know they need it (books on Cuba and Russia and several other countries--we don't have any?? Riiiight....). They all walk like they have sticks up their butts, or slouchy-cool. One is all in camo. The mom is pretty much completely ignoring them--she shushed the kid in the play area (alone, may I add, in the play area) from 40 feet away! Thanks for lowering the general decibal level. When the kids come over to her, she keeps talking to the other person sitting by her at the computer. I would bet cash-money that no one will put anything away in the play area.

The same (youngest) kid is wearing a puppet everywhere he goes like a glove; God alone knows where the bag for it is. Oh, and he just wandered into the storytime room to see the fish...so I have to go roust him and tell him to look from the OUTSIDE. No comment, no awareness whatsoever, from Mom. Now Custodial Guy insists on cleaning up in the play area since the kid isn't in there anymore. No comment, no awareness from Mom. Oh! There are actually TWO families here: second mom and her daughter leave: daughter is pigeon-toed, wearing snow boots, and drag-thunking her feet with every step she takes.

Oh, and NOW, NOW, it's my fault that I'm "yelling at" her kid for asking where the bags are for the 4 puppets Custodial Guy just brought to me. She snatches them up and puts them back on the spinner, THEN she goes in to the play area and starts bossing Custodial Guy around--"stop picking up!"--and telling him that her son "was going to" clean up. Riiiight. After they leave the room, CG walks up to me and asks why she's yelling at him. And the coup de grace: CG finds three activity kits scattered all over the room, not counting (of course) the one the family actually checked out.

Mind you: I started typing the rant a good 20 minutes before I "knew" they were going to be a problem. Custodial Guy asked me how I actually could tell; what I did NOT say is "cuz they're home-schooled" but that's clearly part of the problem. These kids simply do not know how to behave in public.   I need a drink.

Thursday (oooh, sunshine outside!!!)

What I'm doing between questions:

1:00 in the children's room

• My eyes are incredibly screwed up this week ('tis the season) and I just put in drops before coming in here; now my eyes are so blurry I actually can't see anything close up at all!
• Books placed on hold haven't come [yes, they're in transit] ; but they're for a 10-year-old and they're picture books [I find her some other historical fiction options that are more appropriate]
• Bathroom key
• Returned... "Did you get a haircut?" [well, every 5-6 weeks, but yeah, I whacked off all my long hair almost a year ago] "It's cute."
• The above reminds me of an exchange with a coworker earlier this week: "I love your gray hair!!" [thanks, I work hard on it, lol]

4:00 in the children's room

• On my way out here, the director catches me to say that there are kids in here "canoodling" [there does seem to be a larger-than-normal contingent of upper middle-schoolers/young high-schoolers that I'll have to keep an eye on]
• And a family comes in the room: mom & dad sit down at computers and the mom directs the kids to "go in there" (the play area) [yes, this is Ikea's playroom, right, ugh]
• I go warn the teens to keep it PG- or better yet G-rated
• "Did anyone turn in a coat?" [uhm, no] ; "ok, maybe my sister has it..."
• Pencil (mother of the year)
• Pencil & paper
• Dr. Seuss books [not many here, since it's been Dr. Seuss Week at school (etc.) all week]
• How to print [M.o.t.Y.]
• "I need to go to ta baffoom!" "Give me 5 minutes...." [guess who said the latter]
• Spongebob books [in the kids' graphic novels]
• What order do the Penderwick books go in? [I sort it out for her]
• ...so, over 10 minutes later, and "baffoom" boy is still here...clearly they don't know we have a baffroom he can use in here [and he insists on YELLING into the play area to tell his sibling]
• They finally leave. And the teens have gone too.

Weds.

What I'm doing between questions: database cleanup, and downloading order records; also RSS feeds.

9:00 in the kids' room

• Bathroom keys [custodian supervisor checking up on his work]
• I check on the message that was left yesterday...
• ...and talk to the random people who thought there was storytime today...
• yawn

12:00  in the kids' room

• Printing issue [printer hasn't been used yet today so it needs some time to warm up...and eventually her boarding pass appears]

Tuesday

SNOW DAY!!!!

Monday

What I'm doing between questions: ha ha ha

1:00

• Disabled girl needs all kinds of music, and she's not totally clear on the title of the new(ish) Heart CD [however, we find a lot of what she wants]
• Pencil
• Help with tax forms
• Local weekly paper
• 1966 Ford tractor parts
• A book in French [ILL'd]
• Pencil woman--who sets off alarm bells in my head from long ago (like 10 years ago) interactions--requests a book on some sort of quacky medical b.s. that no one in the system owns [I do an ILL request and note that no, we should not buy this]
• ...and some other stuff that ate up the last half hour completely and caused me to run for my desk in the workroom at the end of my shift, and that I mercifully forgot along with the concept of hitting "publish" on this post....