What I'm doing between questions: mostly Death Date authority checking
11:00 in the children's room
- Ran "Claims Returned" list for items over a year in that status...came up with three; after discussion with Head of Circ, I mark them missing to be caught next missing list I run
- I check all the people using computers in here; all seem to be kids or here with kids, so that's good [I did find one
- Bathroom key...and he needs help [he's one of the several sets of triplets in town, so mom's off after the others and I go unlock the door for him]
- ...and I close the door from adult Ref into the kids' room while I'm at the bathrooms
- A/C blowers go off throughout the building, and I hear footsteps on the roof
- Key is back
- Pay to print
- I buzz the IT guy who's here to ask why two of the YA computers, which are currently being used, show up on SAM as "PC IS DOWN" [puzzling]
- And the room is almost completely empty now--time for the kids to go home and eat lunch?
12:00 in the children's room
- [phone] Renew books
- Front door isn't closing right--I find the reason, but have to ask someone else to actually come fix it [voila]
- Brand new-to-the-library mom and son (and baby in a sling) come in, peering around [I tell them I'm here if they need anything, but they're just exploring]
- Pay to print
- I close the door into the adult reference area...again...wtf, ppl!
- There's a little guy in the play area who keeps saying, "Mummaa!" every 60 to 90 seconds [this is the sort of thing that made me cuh-razy when I had a little guy]
- Pay to print
What I'm doing between questions:
7:00 in the children's room
- The Gruesome Twosome (of cousins/sisters/friends) is back
- Scratch paper, and the pencil he set down as he ran out [I've already stolen it, lol]
- Three moms and at least 7 kids walk in, with strollers [technically, three of the kids are rolled in]
- "My nephew forgot his password..."
- While I'm looking that up, her daughter arrives doing the pee pee dance and utters the magic word to mom in a whisper: "baño" [so I get out the key]
- ...and then go log the nephew into the internet
- Hunger games? Actually, Mockingjay? [I throw her completely by finding two copies and asking "Which one?"]
- "Slow down!!" [he skids to a stop by the 'shopping baskets']
- I return to find the Twosome taking a large stack of the dwindling pile of scratch paper, just like last time they were here
- Key is back [and nephew is "very happy, thank you!"]
- Ruby the Copycat [got it, twice, irony firmly in place]
- (to one of the Twosome who is back for more paper) "Hey leave a little for the rest of the world, ok?" [she takes two]
- [phone] Help with My Media Mall [transfer to Reference]
- (to the other of the Twosome, the same comment) Her reply: "I'm just taking one for me and one for my cousin" and she takes four [eyeroll]
- Myth-o-mania books [all checked out, she says most of them are out to her, but she's missing a couple, which are with someone else right now--oh well, she already has holds on them]
- [worrisome text from home--waiting for a clarification call]
- Bathroom key
- "Slow down, slow down" [older boy chasing younger boy; they both do as told]
- "Can I go to the bathroom?" [I get the other key]
- [Disturbing call from home which I take in the workroom--will be leaving early]
- Bathroom keys returned while I'm away from this desk
- [And a very upsetting text from home--I'm outta here now]
What I'm doing between questions: trying to get organized, and then giving up and checking series that have been added or changed in the past (holy cats!) year.
12:00
- I think we have three LDS missionaries now--women--replacing the two guys we had a couple of weeks ago. Two of them need to print, and load me up with pennies
- Kid on his cell talking fairly quietly and playing facebook games
- Gotta love chair dancers
- Nearby-city-cardholder added to SAM
- Kid still on phone
- Reset logs for #3 LDS chick
- Fashion note : men weighing over 350 lbs. with super-extra-wide feet should NOT WEAR CROCS!
- Two girls show up to "sneak up on" the chair dancer...talk to him quietly, leave, come back, poke him in the arm, leave ... and he follows them. The girl he's here with does the "wtf?" thing with her hand as he walks away, but stays put.
- Kid still on phone -- finally, I got tell him to cut it short (as if) and remind (or tell) him we have a no cell phone policy [he hangs up, logs off the computer and goes into the kids' room]
- GED books
- Vacuum sealer (for canned/preserving) ratings [there isn't anything out there, certainly nothing recent]
- Envy Up, Scorn Down [will have to ILL it for her]
1:00
- Scratch paper/pencil
- "Thanks!" [from the nearby-city-cardholder]
- Pay to print [she hands me her card and then gets distracted and starts panicking because she can't find her card in her purse...lol...been there, done that]
- New Grisham and Iles books [I place the holds for when they're released, and do order request slips so we can get them ordered]
- Scratch paper
- Headphones [nope, none here--plus whoever's in the kids' room, who sent her here is 10 steps away from the box of new ones; I'm 30 yards away...really ppl?]
- YA prizewinner here to pick up prize [portable speakers]
5:00
- Cop walkthrough...whee
- {crickets} 5:30
- Wailing tiny baby wails for
5 10 15 minutes [I think the parents live here all day everyday]
What I'm doing between questions: searching the new-release of the 1940 census...found my parents...my dad's job is listed as "Evangelist" and he's living 300 miles from his parents. WTF??
9:00 in the children's room
- I don't actually get in here till 9:20 because the [distance] bookdrop hadn't been emptied for over a week, which meant I picked up 81 items today, loaded 'em in my car, drove 'em here, unloaded 'em, stacked 'em on a cart, and hauled them to the circ desk...plus I was late starting out
- First question of the day: a very cute, happy toddler who 'needed' a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse DVD, which I did find [after turning on the computer and logging it on]
- Pokemon Diamond and Pearl graphic novels [all 10 are checked out :(], but Pokemon chapter books are HERE!! [a few, anyway]
- 9:30, and I'm turning on the computers, finally, and hanging up posters that have fallen down
11:00
- Fax
- "Can I print from my laptop?" [not yet, but he has a card so I go through the procedure for that with him]
- Pay to print
- Day pass for internet [she's doing a FAFSA, so I immediately add more time to her allotment]
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine DVD [I place a hold; his sister walks over and he informs her she has a pimple on her eyelid (I can't see it) and I tell him he needs to not say that stuff to his sister ... lol]
- Today's classifieds
- [phone] Tigers in Red Weather [there are TWO books, different authors, with that title--how weird is that? And our copy is out so I reserve it for her. Also, she has a book on the holdshelf she's been waiting for, and we need to buy another copy of the latest Jennifer Weiner book as we have scads of holds on it...including this patron]
- Ads are back
- "You used to have a collection of state atlases..." [they're now shelved in with the books instead of in the atlas stand]
- Laptop guy can't find his library card so I give him a day-pass and explain how to print
- FAFSA woman is done, inside of 35 minutes!
12:00
- Laptop guy comes over to pay me to print
- Photocopies (staple puller, etc.) and how to transfer VHS to DVD [I have a machine at home, but I send her to some local businesses that might be able to do it for her; if she gets stuck, I tell her to call back and I'll dig out the machine and bring it in]
- Look up password [which is HANDS DOWN the best password I've ever seen anyone use...and which he writes down on a paper and labels it "Library Pass"--way to be secure!--pay to print, pay fines, blah blah]...and then forgot to note that his card expired in April, so I extend it through today
- Pop-up blocker help
- Needy expired guy (who is actually very nice) needs to know how he will now something has printed [it won't, till you release it] -- and it didn't print, why? [he's printing from Mapquest, so don't use File-Print, use the printer icon on the screen]
- Pencil & scratch paper
- Pay to print
What I'm doing between questions:
1:00
- [phone] Help with MyMediaMall and an iPad [hate these questions!]
- Pay to print
- Day pass for internet
- "Where are the movies?" [you've passed them--I show him where they are]
- [phone] MMM person calls back...omg omg omg omg I'm in help-desk hell [I hate these calls!]
- "What's my password?" [newbie; you make it up....while I'm "helping" the MMM woman]
- Ethernet cable [still on the phone]
- Renew time [still on the phone]
- [what institution? no, you don't have to fill in anything but the required fields in Adobe--omg...really?]
- Finally she tells me she'll call back [thank you Jeebus!!]
- Copy of job ad in folder
- Fax, and fine payment
- Newbie can't get online [cuz her card never got entered...oops]
- [phone] Same woman--so I send it to to our techie person
5:00
- New policy of giving bathroom keys only to kids or kids-with-parents means wall-eyed guy needs to go to the adult area to the bathroom (and perhaps will ask himself why bother going in the kids' room to use computers*) [come school season, we're supposed to start shooing adults out of all the kids' and YA areas to the adult areas to use computers--that's gonna be AWESOME fun!]
- Mom and I are chatting about her cutesy-boy (about age 3): "He prefers reading to teleVISion [she's English] and I want to keep it that way!" [absolutely!!]
- OK, so the guy who called the cops several months ago to 'help' me...just called them again to 'help' Librarian J because there was a guy in the adult area shouting into his phone and (maybe?) made a rude/vaguely threatening remark to the other guy, who reacted by calling the po-po and freaking the fuck out till they came...meanwhile, Loud & Obnoxious left the building [Librarian J is far from heroic, but even she was like, "WHY? WHY did you call the cops??"] [I think this patron needs a nickname...he is in EVERY DAY]
*
Nope. Oh well; one can do nothing else but try...
What I'm doing between questions: name cleanup project.
3:00
- And right off the bat, the first person is a woman needing to pay to print has the wrong name on her SAM record, which I notice because I know the guy whose name is on the card [I call Circ Supervisor and she says to just go ahead and change it to match her library card]
- Pay to print
- Reboot internet station
- Quiz: you get a call in the library on your cell phone. Do you a) mute it? b) run to the front door or a study room to answer it? c) go into the quietest area of the library to answer it? d) I turned my cell phone off so it wouldn't ring in the library. [if you chose C, welcome to my afternoon]
- Pay to print--on the color printer [bank statements, oops]
- Pay to print
- Purchase a flash drive [hmm, is $10 a good price for a 4gb drive? no clue--anyway, he pays with no complaint]
- "Can I use my cell phone in the library?" [oh, bless you, my friend! yes, if you need to to do what you're doing online, of course]
- "I asked for last year's [reference directories] to be set aside for me when you got the new ones--and these are the new ones, so..." [CRAP! I think we just threw them out--and it's not mentioned in the disposal directions for those two books...]
- Also, he wants to use this year's edition of one of them
- Meanwhile, the dingbat choosing C above just got another call; WHY don't people TURN DOWN THEIR PHONES in here??
- Item reserves slips
- ...and the reference directory is back
