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Some Local Library:
Furious Champion Edition
Thursday, August 28, 2003 - 04:30 p.m. - Doc
I FEEL PRETTY, YOU FUCKING FUCK
As of this moment[1], I've been on the desk for one hour and twenty-six minutes, today.
I just "helped" two insufferable, bovine women who apparently have one setting: cackle. First, of course, they wanted computers. They breezed in here (no mean feat, considering their Tag Team Combined Weight of like seven hundred fucking pounds) decked out in 1992's very latest in smart business casuals; sorry, ladies, but the muted earth tones aren't fooling me or the seismograph. One of them did all the talking (e.g. "which computers are together... and in the back row?") and the other one, being all chunky and slack-jawed and silent with this sort of dead-eyed stare wobbling at / on a point just above and behind my head, really had me fooled - I was under the impression that she was fucking retarded, and the other woman was, like, her keeper, taking her out into the Big Scary World for "Let's Pretend We're Professionals" day. Fine, fine.
This is where the phone rings and when eight people fucking materialize out of thin air, all wanting computers, and the person on the phone is a co-worker from another branch who, apparently, is psychic, because she without fail interrupts every sentence I speak three words from the end, and I'm juggling all these while the Big Boss does interviews - yes, we're hiring, and no, you don't stand a chance; bad shit is in the wind and the lucky new employee will probably be a complete fucking square at best and a Damnable Spy at worst - and Cow #1 returns to switch computers because the one she chose not moments ago doesn't have the Java or some magical internet shit that makes her life worth living, etc. Nimbly I sort everyone's little dramas out and place them into delicately woven little baskets and give them a great big fucking shove down the Nile and whoop dee fucking doo, on to the next adventure -
Yesterday, D-Fens and I dealt with a bloated, hairy tick of a human being that kept flapping his fat ass around in the children's department, asking thousands of questions we just couldn't answer; specifically, "That woman you helped before! With that book! Where'd she go?" That we didn't know was not enough; we pretty much had to get the hunting knife out of my boot and cut our thumbs and sign in blood that no, we have no idea where this woman and her child went, and yes, we completely understand why someone would want to, say, ditch your cuntbreathed loudmouth at the fucking public library without so much as a toodle-oo. He stomped around all huffing and puffing and red-faced and generally making a spectacle of himself; today he's back, and he asked me - no shit - for a book entitled "Body for Life". We didn't have it ("we don't have it, would you like to have it sent over?") so I put in a request for him. Apres transaction, he seemed to snap to his senses like a stunned adversary in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and then angrily barked "you mean you don't have it?" Well, no, dipshit, that's why I just mentioned "we don't have it" and this "putting in a request" thing and took your library card from you and did all this mystery voodoo shit with the keyboard and said, in conclusion, "we'll call you when it comes in", which would sort of semantically seal the deal on the whole "the book isn't here" case.
Some time later - not too long, I don't think; I sort of lost track of time somewhere in there and I flung myself hither and yon trying to help the helpless co-worker (remember? the interrupting lady? on the phone, earlier? who calls at least once a day at only the busiest moments wanting a fucking shelf check?) with the apparently impossibly complex task of having a book sent over, to her. Because, see, she couldn't do it herself. For some reason. She'd tried, though, and had apparently fuck-zored the catalog and request system sufficiently such that I had to check the damn book in and out three times before the computer said, hey, you know, let's send this to another branch. So I'm flitting around and then the Cows come out of the computer lab and are all lowing and burbling about some book they wanted and it said it was checked in and it wasn't there and where is it and why can't we find it??!??! Well, spelling the author's last name correctly would be a bang-up start, you idiots. Anyway, I went and found the fucking book (I was actually quite surprised; it was on the shelf, right where it should have been - given our new policy of allowing functionally illiterate teenagers to work off their court-ordered community service hours by shelving books, anything in its right place is a fun surprise) and gave it to them.
Instead of a "thank you" or even a "whoops, guess we missed it", these two fat fucking slags begin a dialogue, as though I am not even there:
"I told you we should have had him go get it from the start."
"Well that's why he makes the big bucks!"
"Big bucks?" Commence a screeching cackle. "What, six-fifty an hour?" Cackle, shriek with delight, wander away, etc.
That's right. They thanked me by making fun of my salary. I've still got hours to go, here, and you people can seriously just go and fuck yourselves.
[1] I'm posting this about an hour later, on my so-called "lunch break".
Thursday, August 28, 2003 - 01:11 p.m. - Defenestrator
"There's something wrong with my computer!"
Just want to share with ye faithful readers about a couple of incidents from these past few weeks. Thankfully, the kids are back in school, which means that for the most part, it's actually quiet around here.
However, the days haven't been without the usual occurrences of idiocy that seem to be more and more the norm around these parts. Here's some of the latest:
Exhibit A: The other day, this elderly grandmother and her grandson come over to the children's department with the desire to use our computers (you can guess where this is heading already, I'm sure). Anyhow, it was one of those cases where the child had dragged the unwilling adult caretaker with him to the library because he just needed to use the internet. To make matters worse, the child managed to restart the computer TWICE, each time coming over to inform me that there was something "wrong" with the computer. The second time I go over, I also saw that the computer next to his had been shut down - by the grandmother. I asked if she was the guilty party, and her reply was that the computer had "asked" if it wanted to be shut down (yes, we live in an age where machines are capable of independent, rational thought). According to her account, she felt obligated to shut down the computer. Was she signed up to use the computer? NO. Was she even using the damned machine? Again, NO. Oh, did I also mention that the boy had a knack of TALKING IN A REALLY LOUD VOICE?!!
Anyways, moving on...
Exhibit B: There's this boy who comes in pretty much weekly with his mother or grandmother. The adult caretakers could be described as negligent, which is putting it rather mildly. Their ingenious solution for ridding themselves of the ankle-biter is to have him play on one of our computers, although, yes, as you've guessed it, he has no fucking clue as to how to use the damned thing. His vocabulary consists of the phrase, "It's not working...it's not working...it's not working..." ad nauseam. You'd think that after about being on the computers about a thousand times within the last 3 years, he'd at least have some inkling as to operating the machine. I can't put all the blame on the child though. The mother herself is barely more mature than the child, and this is one of those cases where closing the legs or tying the tubes would have saved us here a LOT of headache. It just fucking amazes me how so many of these kids don't know how to say "Please" or "Thank you" but they have no problem saying "My computer's not working" or "There's something wrong with my computer" or "You have to fix my computer". Once, when one of my co-workers reprimanded the grandmother for abandoning the child, the old hag felt the need to take a parting shot at us as they were leaving. Her final rebuttal was "This used to be a fun library". Yes, lady, it was. BEFORE your candyasses started showing up here.
Exhibit C: My last vignette for today involves these three brothers who have been here EVERYDAY (no exagerration) for the last 2 months. For the most part, they are well-behaved, but this is a case where the children are cooped up in one place for far too long. When they're here for longer than my shift, well...Anyways, it turns out that the mother is in school working on some degree, so she drops them off here in the children's department after school while she goes off to one of our study rooms to hit the books. So what do they do while they're here? Yep, you guessed it. It's 5+ hours of nonstop Teen Titans action on cartoonfuckingnetworkdotcomeonwhydontyoutakeyourbratshomeandfeedthem?! So yes, from time to time, these three musketeers get the mycomputerisntworkingitis syndrome, and when you think about them being here EVERYDAY, for hours on end, that's a lot of guano to handle.
For the most part, the school year's been a lot calmer than summer, but as you can see, we still get our share of inanity around here.
"Now get me a soda, bitch!"
Friday, August 22, 2003 - 08:57 a.m. - Doc
REDDY KILOWATT LIED TO ME? B-BUT
Another crazy-ass hellday here at Some Local Library, the observed epicenter for the ongoing wake being held in memory of what you humans call... ettie-kett? (Cue trembling hand, single teardrop, spaceship lands in close background.) There are days that are only notable for the irritating presence of one or two regular characters, and then there are days - like yesterday - that are just notable for being fucking insane. There's not really a logical starting point for this recap, so I'm just going to dive in with the weird and perilous and hope that my web of sequitur ends up hitting all the bases-
We had a pissed-off ex-employee of the cleaning crew come in yesterday, demanding that he be let into the back workroom and storage closets to retrieve his "tools". This is bad on a number of levels, not least of which being that we actually contract out our cleaning service and, as far as anyone knows, they don't keep their shit here. "Let me march in and start taking stuff," he seemed to say. Fortunately, the Big Boss (policy: "never say no to anyone, no matter how crazy, unless they're an employee") wasn't here to "handle" the situation; we just quickly and quietly locked all the right doors and referred the guy on up the ladder. Will he come back today with a carbine? Workplace shootings are, according to Entertainment Weekly's Jessica Shaw, "five minutes ago", but you know those persistent Mexicans! The best part of it, in my books, is that while all this terrible peril was going on, I was just sitting there, oblivious, durp dee doo, surfin' the web, killin' time until lunch. Communication! Teamwork (optionally, into 2000)!
I exaggerate things to make them Not-Boring; the end result is that I'm going to re-read all this shit twenty years down the track, after booze and nanomachines have reduced my common sense and long term memory into the synaptic equivalent of a fizzling brick of corporate-sponsored firecrackers, and believe it. One important thing to keep in mind is that I always jump to the wrong conclusion. I do this consistently and I feel terrible about it; I ought to tattoo something like "your first impression is wrong" on my forearm, but that would (a) kill off the last vestiges of my already questionable employability and (b) not look nearly as cool as some salvaged, completely misinterpreted bit of ancient culture I picked up in the late 200's. Maybe with a snake wrapped around it or something. Seriously, though - I'll see someone walking up to the reference desk and front-load some snarky internal comment; perhaps something like "that guy looks like an air-puffed, butter-slicked version of Michael Chiklis". Invariably said person will turn out to be the nicest person I have ever met, leaving me feeling like a fucking heel for, well, weeks, really. It's got to be hard enough being some of these bozos who really and truly have a need for the public library and / or free internet access on a regular basis without the fucking child with the glorified monkey's job at the reference desk looking down his nose at you.
One such example is the truly crazy yet wholly good-intentioned Chinese lady who's been coming in for years to, and I'm pretty sure I've got it covered here, check her stock portfolio and e-mail Bible verses to people. She's a pitiful, withered little thing; she reminds me of nothing so much as a bird's skeleton wrapped in construction paper. Her forearms are all decked out in bracelets and doodads that, no doubt, she fervently believes have curative and restorative powers. Her best and most defining feature, though, is that she almost always has a tissue over her nose and mouth. Meaning, yes, a fucking old Kleenex, almost velvety with use and age, pressed to her face at all times. I helped her, once, with some basic computer function and apparently made a friend for life - I'm the only one she wants to talk to, now. She also has the coolest e-mail address in the world. For privacy's sake, of course, I'm not going to repeat it, but it has the words "rest" and "relax" in it. Seriously! She was in last night, wanting to convert all these weird-ass, spuriously legal documents she was no doubt conned into buying (she may or may not have said something about them costing "hundreds of dollars"; audibility-wise, you're pretty much taking your chances) into something she could actually use and view on her home computer. "Are you sure you don't have Microsoft Word software for me to take home?" Yes, I'm sure.
"Okay," I say, "go to File, then Open, then you wanna change this to your floppy disk -"
"Relax, Joshua! you've got to relax! You are frowning! Always I see you frowning!" she says, smoothing out a wrinkle between my eyebrows.
"I'm all right," I say.
"I am sorry I touched you," she adds, sincerely. "Smile!"
Conversely, it's always the people who appear normal that are in fact the biggest dicks of all, and there's nothing like last night's meeting of the local chapter of the African-American Republicans to bear that out. Another blow for equality is struck as we hold hands and walk down the rainbow road and discover that no one race has a monopoly on acting condescending, abrupt, and perpetually inconvenienced. Protip: repeating what you just said, but slowly, is considered by other native speakers of your language to be really fucking rude and makes them want to take a giant steaming shit on the hood of your car, not give you free use of the photocopier. The very idea of there being enough black Republicans to merit the use of our large meeting room fucking boggles the mind; I really just want to grab one of them by the lapels, shake them like a British au pair, and say but don't you see, these people hate you. Alas, that may have flown in the fifties, but not today! BUT WHAT ABOUT TAXES AND BIG GOVERNMENT AND 9/11 AND BLAH BLAH BLAH, forget it, see how much income you've got left for that fabulous lifestyle after they fucking privatize the water supply.
Then there's the whey-faced Oriental girl (actual out-of-context quote from a co-worker: "Really? I always thought she was a little retarded.") who wanted my help scanning a picture of herself and her poodle; she then wanted to send it to someone, I swear to fucking God, with the screen name ASIANSTUD4U2NITE.
"Okay, here?"
"Uh huh."
"So we're sending this to ASIANSTUD4U2NITE?" I ask, raising my voice a little. Because I am a prick.
"Uh huh."
"Are you sure that's wise?" You know, I was sort of ambivalent before, but when I saw you with that poodle - what I'm trying to say is, will you be my wife?
Then there's those two fucking children that always sound all breathless and plaintive that come in every Thursday to play fucking Neopets until their retinas resemble burnt Raisinets, but you know, whatever.
Monday, August 18, 2003 - 10:26 p.m. - The Detective
We Now Return You to Your Regularly Scheduled Program
It seems I wasn't very lucky. After all, I do still seem to be alive and still working at some local library. Oh well.
I hope everyone can smell that. It's the best smell of all. You know what it is? It's the smell of school cafeteria food. No matter how noxious it is, it bring a smile to my face. Why? Because the summer's over. And school has begun.
It's been known by some of my co-workers that I'm a bit hard on students, especially the ones that come up begging me to check out this one book to them, please, they need it for class tomorrow, they'll return the overdue book later and they'll pay off the twenty dollar fine, if only they can get this book today. Nope, no way am I going to do it. If they needed the book that badly, they should have come to the library before we closed. It's not like I gave this girl the faintest hope that I would let her get the book, she just wouldn't take no for an answer. Truthfully, I could have overlooked her fine or overdue book or whatever it was, but I just didn't feel like it. I'm just a big fucking asshole to students like this.
Speaking of students, we get a lot of the high schoolers to come and volunteer at our library. And it seems taht once they turn in their volunteer application forms, they think they've earned some free pass into library nirvana. They roam about in the staff workroom, just take a seat at any of the desks, like MINE, and just get on the computer and surf the interweb. And, luckily for the staff, we seem to have had 20 plus volunteers this summer, some of them court-ordered. This guy came up to me to get some books, and when I told him that he couldn't get them because he had fines over five dollars and he had books that were at least a week overdue, he said "But I volunteer here." And I told him what I basically felt abiout the volunteers. "So?"
And that ends my return to this site. I spent my Monday night being in charge of the circulation department while Jackpot got to work with our English-challenged superior. Oh joy. At least I got to scream at a little girl that was being a nuisance.
Friday, August 15, 2003 - 11:06 p.m. - Doc
HI, I'M DOC.
I WISH I'D PLAYED BASS FOR THE TRASHMEN.
CUE THEME FROM "HOGAN'S HEROES"
[IRISH PUB IN KYOTO MIX]
You know, today should have been A-OK, fine as a fucking slice of apple pie a la mode, you don't start none, there won't be none sort of orange clockwork working. No fucking dice.
Let me be honest right here and say that I wanted to think that everything would go smoothly and wonderful and hassle-free and let's not humor the dipshits because the Big Boss has gone on vacation for a few days. Wonderful, we said. That's long overdue, we said, silently imagining the library in the hands of someone without an avoidant, passive-aggressive streak eight miles wide. And, to a large extent, Utopia materialized, right there in the workroom of Some Local Library; The Detective, bless his black, failing heart, had brought in a box of steaming, delicious donuts. I'd brewed up a pot of coffee, Doc style ("Did you make the coffee?" they ask with a smile. Of course I did.) and finished the first library mix CD - i.e. everyone I could be fucked asking contributed some tracks to a disc we played over the P.A. before we opened. Super subversive and rebellious and rockin' - I seemed to somehow forget that I worked / am working with a slightly different demographic / generation and that they consider double and triple doses of the fuckin' Eagles not only de rigueur but straight-up fucking canon. Still, it was a charming, unifying little experience; there's nothing quite like the cognitive dissonance. That, and I have impeccable taste in music, so.
Before we opened, though, this impromptu pow-wow sort of developed. Let me clarify something real quick; I'm pretty much the library's court jester - the Big Boss seems to not only tolerate my existence, but actively applaud it and / or confide bits of her Big Library Business in me, despite the fact that I am a sarcastic, flighty little cunt with nothing more than a bad haircut and a good and catholic (definition One, please) head for minutiae and trivia (which, let me tell you right now, is worth more in a reference position than any fucking degree on Earth). This pretty much means that I can say anything - even things that are outright critical (which, as we've established earlier - oh, you are keeping up with the archives, right? - are equal in her eyes to a declaration of Now and Forever Permanent War) and have it slip by with nothing more than a dismissive laugh or one of those fucking maddening hmmmmmmmm's. This sounds like a useless bit of bullshit, and it is, but the fact is that I can actually express my discontent that, for example, we have a frightening number of people working off "community service hours" at the library" / wandering around in the workroom / making themselves right at home / etc etc.
"So, we're just farming out all our help from the local penal system?" I say, hoping that the weeks and weeks' worth of contempt and mistrust somehow carries.
"Ha ha ha ha ha," she laughs. "Hmmmmmm."
And still, we're fucking overrun with illiterate dipshits who have flat-out requested this branch as their penance; we are a fucking permissive little cakewalk with a dizzy, laissez-faire manager who - hell, sure! - doesn't mind their wandering around freely where we keep our unsecured wallets and car keys and, oh you know, whatever in the world could there be to worry about?
Right, then we opened. I was alone on the desk for the first hour we were open; an hour I was to refer to, over margaritas (the waiter actually asked me, without a trace of irony, uno mas - fuck, yes) as the crazy hour. The first bit of crazy was sadly typical for our branch: some barely-literate individual - and I mean that in the most compassionate way - wanted quote unquote all the books on making money fast through real estate. Uhhhhh. I started looking, and apparently, I was not fast enough.
Terrific - she says (?) that she's going to go find books herself just as the fucking phone begins to ring. On the other end of that connection is a Total Bitch who has had a total courtesy bypass; she wants a book called "War of Words" or "Words of War" or some fucking cliched shit like that. She wants it right away and why don't we have it? Why is getting an inter-library loan suddenly such a hassle? You know, I remember fifth grade. I remember a girl named Tiffany; she began menstruation on a field trip day. She was wearing goddamned white jeans. That, you selfish motherfuckers, is an inconvenience. Never mind your poor whiny demanding asses wanting a book right now or else. I happily directed her call to someone's voice mail just as the other phone began to ring -
But I couldn't take that call, because some crazy-assed Chinaman started waving frantically at me. He was also shouting who is in charge of the computers here; never an auspicious beginning to a conversation at Some Local Library. Like a dumbass, I looked up, and apparently simply making eye contact is shorthand for "tell me all your troubles" in his crazy country. Long story short - and I mean "long story", oh yes I do; getting this info took a much longer, more circular route than I am about to present - he'd gotten the big bad scary BRAND NEW INTERNET WORM and I was there, today, to tell him how to fix it.
Uhhhhh get and apply the patch.
Many semantic backflips later, we discover that his computer restarts before he can do so.
Uhhhhh try a boot disk? You did make a boot disk-
At this point, some weirdo with a South African (?) accent took over, blaring out all sorts of wisdom as re: the BRAND NEW INTERNET WORM AND HOW TO SWING IT, and before long, he was holding court; all sorts of people were wandering up, yammering in their broken little tongues "ah so me computer bwoken too!! no rikey". Good for him; I had enough fun on my hands, deflecting all manner of insane fuckhead that wants to sign up for our (full? you bet your ass full) computer classes this month and people that are shocked-horrified at their own inability to save to the a: drive.
Quote: HOW CAN THIS DISK BE BLANK???
Oh, yes.
Also, I taught my fucking gay-ass "Computers 101" course again, a couple of weeks ago (two weeks into x boxes of wine equals...?) and guess who the fuck showed up - Squinty Bloodshot Loverboy Nigerian himself. That's right, Mister Stay-Until-Eight-Fifty-Nine, for some fucking reason, needed a goddamned motherfucking entry level course on computers and use of the mouse. Jackpot got stuck "teaching" him in an Office class, as well; Squinty Nigerian fell asleep. No hot babes? Awwww. Let's hear it for a nation of thieves! 419 forever!
Edit: Hell. Forgot to mention that Dwight can eat a dick. "I don't understand," said a female co-worker. "He's so polite to [female co-worker] and [female co-worker]. He's only rude to you and [Jackpot]." This is because he's got fucking little man syndrome; he thinks he's some kind of hot shit, and just can't fucking reconcile how people he is so clearly superior to have jobs in which they are happy and fulfilled while his sad ass slogs to the fucking public library every damn day, making enemies and looking for a job he thinks he deserves. Did I mention cognitive dissonance earlier? Did I mention that it occasionally takes the form of edible dick? Heads up, Dwight.
Wednesday, August 13, 2003 - 11:56 p.m. - Doc
BLAH BLAH BLAH PISSED OFF BY IDIOTS ETC
But "Map Ref 41N 93W" may be the best rock song ever written. And this, remember, from Wire - the musical equivalent of Sherman in Atlanta.
I don't mean ever performed, per se - My Bloody Valentine covered that song literally years after the famous post-Loveless meltdown and the result is pure sonic bliss. I am god damned serious; the first thirteen seconds could be experienced over and over, forever, and you wouldn't feel cheated. It's cliff diving for hydrophobes.
What, you want to know about the library? It's pretty much business as usual; the summer crush, thank fuck, is winding down, although the idiots keep coming right on thick and shameless. M. Blue continues to show up - despite the fact that, whenever he does appear, he makes much hay of "his work" (this "work" that he does is, needless to say, different every time he talks about it; today, he was a Loss Prevention Expert! Can you imagine?) that would, in anything other than Bizarro World, preclude hanging out at the fucking public library all the damn time and begging for handouts. He's a nuisance, but I'm frankly bored of him; he's that stage in Super Mario Bros. I've finished six thousand times. He's going to have to really impress me, by like killing a policeman or swilling menstrual blood or admitting that he's a big fat unappealing pathetic white guy with terrible teeth, before I find him in the least bit noteworthy at this point.
Granted, one of my co-workers was annoyed enough by him to actually vandalize his car last Friday, a childish and impulsive act to which your favorite character may well have been an accessory. But why dwell on the past?
My crisis of confidence continues: I still like - well, more accurately, feel sympathy and compassion for - the Big Boss as a human being and, more or less, a co-worker. I honestly don't think that the Big Boss is aware of its drastically negative effect on morale; insanely stupid and unpopular decisions are being made by the Big Boss with what seems to be a sort of matter-of-fact dismissiveness, and that's certainly not winning anyone over. It all seems to be getting worse - this is not a blip in the radar or bell curve or pizza you eat the crust first - this is a serious and troubling downward trajectory, as in some bad shit is going on. I don't trust the Big Boss to do the right thing by anyone; there's a weird sense of day-by-day, laissez-faire-gone-horribly-wrong floundering to this whole affair that makes me more than a little nervous. I'd be insanely curious to see how this all played out - especially if it were in the worst possible way - if I weren't actually, you know, involved. As it is, I have every suspicion that it will.
Also: Dwight can eat a dick.
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