11:00 a.m.
- Quick primer on "how to do the Reference Desk" since I haven't been out here for months (long story)
- "Can I use the phone for an emergency call?" [it's re: a case number, she doesn't have a phone--homeless--so, yeah....and as I expected it's been 10 minutes so far: she's nucking futs. This shelter she's been staying at has "poisoned her with cancer" (multiple repetitions of this one) and she's suing them for throwing her out; ohmygod, it's a crazytown rant. Bless the woman on the other end of the phone] I'm getting lots and lots of names: Betty W...n, Donna, LaVerne, Kim D....n, Ron W...s, John S....z, Sofia, [Kim has apparently wants this woman's legs cut off, or otherwise kill her; also the hospital stole her ovaries, uterus and fallopian tubes so they could rape her]
I love my job! - 35 minutes later...Librarian H arrives to look for her son in the paper (not this week?) and she says the woman (who had just left) has been in to get a guest pass so I was able to pass long some of the warning bells
1:00 p.m.
- Help with printing
- Scratch paper
- Do we have a calculator for a test? [yup--buried deep, but functional]
- Help printing Amazon return label
- ...and the line commences....
- "How much to scan and email to myself?" [free]
- How to save doc to desktop to download to resume site [it amazes me that people trust that we'll delete it from the computer and don't even ask]
- [other stuff I don't remember]
- Circ person arrives with 15-item list of DVDs for patron. I place 5 on hold and set the list aside for doing more later this week
5:00 p.m.
- Finagling with Publisher and Word [if I could manipulate the doc myself, I'd figure it out, but the guy is about at my level so I just tell him to keep trying stuff, or Google the hack]
- Print from phone [dude's barely ESL-literate, it takes 20 minutes, but we get it done eventually]
- Look up card number for a known cutie-pie
- Calculator is returned, after she passed her test [w00t!]
- Consumer Reports [ultimately, the information she needs is behind the paywall online, and we don't have access--we should do that, derp]
- There was more, but I spent so much time with those big questions that I have no memory of what I was doing in the gaps