-Excellent
Labels: chair, computer, Copier, Mommy, printer
Labels: little girl, pipsqueak
Labels: balloon, children, computers, internet, mouse, mousepad, tax forms, taxesApr 28, 2008
I’ve had some doozies today. And if anyone makes another comment to me about my inability to “deal with Mondays” I’ll prove them right.
And no. I haven’t had nearly enough coffee. So I admit that the cause of my frustration probably originates in my own head. It’s not a case of the Monday’s; it’s a case of being unable to deal with the teeming masses cheerfully without a significant dose of caffeine.
So when the woman asked me for tax forms from 1906 I just said “O.K.”, despite the fact that Income Tax Filing as we know it didn’t exist until 1918, and the IRS didn’t exist until the 1950s. Sure. Let’s find you a tax form for 1906. An EZ. From 1906.
But when you take the mouse off the mousepad, of course it’s not going to work. “You have to leave the mouse on the pad for the little roller ball to make contact. No. Don’t pick it up. Leave the mouse on the pad. Here, why don’t I do it for you?”
And www dot gov IS NOT a web address. Didn’t they give you anything else to type in? Something in between the www and the gov? No? “Sure. We can try to search for it with Google. But you have to leave the mouse on the mousepad.”
And I think there is a mathematical ratio that determines the amount of help a person is going to need to use the computer and the amount of time that they actually sign up for. So, the person who doesn’t know how to use a mouse is automatically drawn to the Express computer, where they will wait until they have four minutes of time left to call me over (“Miss! This thing aint working!”).
And kindly keep your child off of me while I help you. It’s not that I don’t like children; I help children all day as a normal part of my job. It’s usually fun. But having a sticky four year old climbing all over my lap and fondling my breast while holding a limp, torn, and wet balloon in her mouth just might push me beyond my tipping point.
“Oh. I mean 2006. Why would I want 1906?”
Apr 26, 2008
I realize from comments made to my post of a few days ago that I could have been clearer, but I was posting quickly and in anger. My complaint was not about a patron. My complaint concerns a coworker who, after nearly two decades of working in libraries, should be able to at least look up the names of a few British authors without too much trouble, and without running to get me before even trying to help the poor high school student in need of a book by any British author, living or dead. I know Wikipedia is all too high on the list in many Google searches, but hell, while I don't expect this coworker to know how to use fancy library databases, I KNOW she knows how to use the Google.
My main source of frustration when I was posting the other day was the fact that this coworker runs to her fellow employees with nearly every question, problem, or task that she might have to think about dealing with.
That's enough.
Labels: application, employment
I'd like to suggest something to all of those who wish to apply for a library job, or hell, any job for that matter. Read the instructions on the application. Don't fill in the areas that say something to the effect of DO NOT FILL OUT. Yes, we know you think you're great, fabulous, wonderful and even nifty, but rating yourself excellent 8 out of 10 (2 were just marked "good") for a employment reference, and all 7 excellents under personal reference (with no personal reference named) is a bit egotistical, don't you think?
Marking that you worked at MCDONAlDS (caps and lower case intentional) twice for 3 months a piece (and not saying which ones) is probably less desirable than saying you've never had a job.
If you've worked in one of our institutions, even for 6 months, and mark that on your app, you might put down more than Personal Reasons under reasons for leaving. We network. We will find out why you really left.
Ultimately, yes we're "just a library". However, we have library skills, and usually a tendency to pay attention to detail. We're desperate, not stupid. There's a difference.
Labels: inanimate objects, printers, tonerApr 21, 2008
Apr 19, 2008
Okay, maybe I am being a bit of a snob. I mean, just because I can think of at least five British authors within seconds of being asked, right off the top of my head without even trying, I mean, you know, that doesn't mean everybody should be able to do the same. I suppose it's too much to ask that, working in a library for so many years, you pick up the names of a couple of the big ones; Charles Dickens, George Orwell, William Shakespeare (although I suppose he was a playwright and might not qualify for this project.) Fear not! Even if you know not a single British author's name, you don't need some fancy library database to find one, all you need to do is do a FUCKING GOOGLE SEARCH!
Labels: Coffee, common sense, customer service, Excellent HelpApr 18, 2008
Just a stupid thing. When a place charges as much for a single cup of coffee as I would spend to buy a pound of fresh coffee beans, I expect them to know a little bit about the procedure of serving coffee.
Such as: when I order a small black coffee, they shouldn't have to ask me twice if I want room for cream. That's what the adjective "black" was inserted for. See: service, subheading: industry. See also: Common Sense. But then, I am repeating myself. Again.
Labels: computer, Excellent Help, fan, MySpace, tech supportApr 17, 2008
“Excuse me. Miss! Can I get some help over here?”
Ignoring the fact that I am being screamed at from across a space of twenty feet, I walk over to where the friendly patron is seated at an Internet computer. “Sure How can I help you?”
“Why isn’t this working? It sounds like a dang helicopter taking off.”
“The sound is the computer’s fan, it’s completely normal. What isn’t working?”
“Every time I do this it gets louder. It’s not working.”
She clicks on the login for her MySpace page. I notice that she has about 6 windows open trying to simultaneously log in to her MySpace account……
“The fan turns on to cool the computer off when it’s thinking really hard. It’s normal. But if you have more than one window open it might be overloading the computer.”
“What?”
“It’s thinking too hard.”
“Well why isn’t working when I click here?”
She clicks on login for a seventh time and opens another window.
“You know, I’m not really trained to provide tech support for MySpace.”
“Fine. You’ve helped enough.” She clicks open an eighth window. The computer whines in protest.
I need more coffee.
Apr 16, 2008
1.Eat a bowl of oatmeal
2.Clip her nails for at least five to ten minutes.
3.Talk to her daughter on her cell phone.
4.(Not today, but previously) Read.
Labels: city, holy crap, Tax Day, taxes, yes I'm bitching againApr 15, 2008
It’s tax day! And the day started with our friendly library patrons lining up outside the doors before we opened, pulling on the door handles, banging on the windows, and clamoring to get in.
As I opened the door a few inches to let a coworker squeeze through:
“Miss, I just need a form. Can’t you just hand me a 1040?
“We open in five minutes. You can get one then.”
“But I just need a form…”
“Yep. In five minutes.”
And then there was the guy who descended on the Circulation Desk as soon as the doors were unlocked, who needed city tax forms.
My friendly library coworker at the desk told him that the city doesn’t provide us with the form, but we have reference copies that he could copy for all of the surrounding cities. Which city’s form did he want?
“The city. I don’t know.”
She listed three of the closest city’s as examples.
“I don’t know. What would you do?
“Where do you work and/or live?”
“In the city.”
“Ok….”
And then having decided on a city that he might reside in, he went over to the copier with the friendly employee where I watched her make the copies for him, because:
“I’m not paying to make my own tax forms. When the hell did the government start charging for tax forms?”
“Sir, the government isn’t charging you for these tax forms. They don’t GIVE us these forms. These are forms that we printed ourselves from the Internet for people to make copies of. The fifteen cents is the copier fee.”
“Well I’m not paying the government for tax forms.”
And we have only been open for ten minutes thus far….
Apr 10, 2008
Today is shaping up to be one of those "dead days" in the library. With a total of less than 10 non-employees in the building, all of them deeply involved in their computers, I have a feeling I'll be getting a significant amount of paperwork, computer work and just work in general done today. It's a good thing, yesterday was a whirlwind of activity in this very same library.
See, not all of our posts are us bitching about people.
Labels: college, distance learning, personal information, tech supportApr 9, 2008
College is back in session. That means that all of the local Community College students who are taking distance learning courses are flooding our library to access their course content through our computers. Which leads to conversations like these:
“I can’t login to my class through your computer. What’s wrong with your computers?”
”Nothing’s wrong with our computers.” I point to the six other patrons who are logged into the same college website as we speak.
“Well it says there’s a problem with my login name. Every time I come in here I have this problem. Your computers don’t work right.”
“All that I can suggest is that you contact the college tech support directly.”
“Well how am I supposed to do my homework? I need to do my homework.”
“I don’t know. But I can’t provide tech support for the college; I’m not trained. You need to contact their tech support directly.”
“Your computers don’t work.”
Now..... I have taken the same distance courses at said college. I know that the library computers DO work with their course content. But having said this, why don’t these people just go use the fucking computer labs AT the college if they know they are going to need extra help? And why do they expect the PUBLIC library lady to be able to give them a login for a COLLEGE website? I should NOT have access to your college login information, any more than I should have access to your Social Security number, Medicare information, Tax return ID, Bank account routing number, credit card number, or any other PERSONAL information. You’re in college: use your fucking college education and quit hassling the library lady.
And yes, I know, the library is truly not good for anything anymore.
Labels: abandoned, cigar, lost and found, nasty shit, rotting meatApr 8, 2008
Taking a walk down memory lane…. of all the nasty things that have been found on our library’s shelves. I’m not talking about dirty books, although I’m sure we have plenty of those, too. I’m talking about the nasty things that people abandon among our stacks for the lowly, totally unprepared, library worker to discover.
I got started on this tangent because while I was shifting some books this morning I found an old, half-smoked cigar behind a shelf. How do these things find themselves on library shelves? While disgusting, a used cigar is not the worst that I have been forced to dispose of during my tenure.
I am reminded of the open package of bloody, rotting meat that was once found oozing down the shelves in the children’s room, the numerous instances of feces on the floor (again, how is this possible to happen unnoticed in the shelves of a library?), the condoms in the bookdrop, the FULL condom that contained what we can only hope was water, the dirty diapers abandoned on library tables (Doesn’t anyone notice a baby being changed in the middle of a library? Or did you change the baby elsewhere and decide that a reading table is as good a place as any to dispose of the soiled ball of shit?), the abandoned half-eaten fast food, the soiled underwear that is even now sitting in our lost and found (and why didn’t my efficient coworkers just throw it away?), and much worse things that I have apparently blocked out of my memory.
Anybody feel like adding to this list?
Labels: age gap, coworkers, customer service, naivety, sickApr 6, 2008
I try not to bitch about coworkers. We're all stuck working with the same shit, and it's better to just ignore whatever crap they throw at you for the sake of customer service and "getting the job done." (I'm still one of those naive workers that believes it is my job to provide excellent customer service at all costs. I'm so incredibly naive.)
But, sometimes I just get so confused. I've been working in the library for something like eight years now, and policy hasn't changed so very much that I shouldn't know what is expected of me and my coworkers while at work.
Probably the confusion is partly due to the fact that I am a good twenty years younger than most of my coworkers, and they therefor view me as little more than an idiot. Even when I have to act like a supervisor; Even when they are below me in the chain of command. (Yes. I would really rather ignore the stupid shit you do than try to put on the supervisor hat. You're not going to listen to me, anyway.)
This rant comes to you courtesy of a specific coworker who fails to come to work at LEAST one day out of every week. She doesn't always call US, but instead calls another branch and tells someone unrelated to our doings in management that she won't be in to work. So we are all sitting around OUR branch wondering where the said coworker is...... She has been told repeatedly to call our actual library and talk to the person in charge so that we know she won't be there.
One day last week she actually did call OUR LIBRARY. I answered the phone. She asked to speak to anybody but me. I told her I was the only In-Charge person working. She told me she wouldn't be in to work. She was also going to call the manager and have an excuse when she came back. Ok. I told her I would mark her off the schedule.
Problem is, when she did come back to work later in the week she confronted me and accused me of falsifying the schedule. "You wrote 'called off' on the schedule. I didn't call off. I whited it out and changed it to 'sick'."
If you "Call" into work and say that you are going to be "Off" for the day, is that not a "Call-Off?" She never once said that she was sick. (She wasn't) AND it doesn't really fucking matter to anybody what I wrote on the schedule, as long as you fill out your time sheet correctly and give whatever excuse was required of you to the manager when you got back to work. There isn't a "call-off" field on the time sheet. There IS a "sick" field. If you know what you are doing, DO IT. Don't accuse me of falsifying your schedule.
I'm out of clean laundry. Maybe I should CALL IN SICK tomorrow.
Apr 5, 2008
Is this a personal contest to see how loudly you can grunt while in the Men's room? I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do, but I'm pretty sure everybody in the building can easily hear you. Furthermore, I'm a bit uneasy about the loud growling/grunting noises you're making as you circle the interior of the building. Are you angry because you just lost your lower intestine in the public toilet? Pardon me if that's just gross, but I'm having a hard time getting over a coworker's story about her daughter having a bowel movement while she was giving birth to her.
In any case, the mystery was solved when, on his way out, our prowling growler muttered "He's a lucky man, he's not here." Oh come on, now, that would've been exciting. Even more so than the broken computer table. Honestly, what kind of bizarre position do you have to be sitting in?...
Let's just forget for the moment that yelling across the room at your son is more disruptive than are his antics with the drinking fountain. Let's ignore the fact that he has been wandering freely around the library with minimal, if any, supervision. In a padded Spiderman outfit. Let's concentrate on the current problem facing us: the child, your child, wandering down the fiction aisle, punching the rows of books with all his Spiderman might and crying out in his best toddler-superhero voice with each blow. Not as pressing an issue as, say, pulling entire rows of books off of the shelves and dumping them on the floor, but still, a major pain in the ass. You have my compliments. You're obviously doing a very good job of ignoring the boy, even seated at the computer as you are, almost directly facing him. I wouldn't be able to concentrate. I'd be constantly distracted by the noise, at least. Kudos. Then again, perhaps you've developed an immunity to these distractions. Perhaps at home he runs through the house, opening cupboards and excercising his superhuman strength on the mugs, showering the floor with broken plates and bowls. Maybe at the supermarket he leads the way for you, leaving a trail of unshelved cereal boxes, broken eggs... am I going too far? Sorry, it's just that everybody else is at lunch, and it shouldn't take my coming over and saying something when I have a spare moment to you to get you to acknowledge your child's presence and fucking do something! If only for his own safety... rant rant rant.
Labels: bitch printer printing tantrumApr 3, 2008
Yes. I am such a mean bitch, because I won’t print out your 50 page document for you for free. I’m sorry that you had to pay five dollars to print a document that turned out to be half blank pages, but it is not the printer’s fault that you included an extra blank page in your word document. The computer is stupider than you are and can only print what is on the screen; It doesn’t care what, if anything, is on the pages. It only knows that you told it to print them. Stop throwing a big screaming temper tantrum in front of my desk. You are a grown girl. Stop whining to your daddy about what a bitch the library lady is. I don’t care.
Next time ask me for help before you hit print, and I can fix your problem. Screaming at me after the fact is only going to ruin the rest of my evening and it won’t help you accomplish a single damn thing.
Apr 2, 2008
Okay, he's a toddler, not a fucking dog! Go over and get him, you asshole! I know your legs work because I just saw you use them.
That's all.
Labels: porn poem book cold
“Do you have any good porn books?”
“Pardon?”
“Porn books. Where are the porn books?””
“uh…"
“With poems in them “
"OH! Po-em books. Right this way….”
I have a cold. That ‘s my excuse for being especially stupid this week,.
Apr 1, 2008
If you wanted my help, to the extent that you were yelling across the twenty foot space between yourself and my desk “Miss can you help me with this thing?”
…..Then why do you repeatedly bang every button on the copy machine when I come over, despite my pleas of “You don’t need to hit the button more than once!” If you really wanted me to show you how to work the machine, wouldn’t it make more sense to stop hitting every button on the console and LISTEN to what I am telling you to do? Or do you just want the company while you destroy our equipment?
Why is there a neatly folded pair of blue jeans and a pair of sneakers on one of the tables in the children’s room? Do they belong to someone, and if so, are they running around the library without any shoes or pants on?
And today I have also had to sit and chat with the lonely divorced guy, pervey thigh guy, and the stoner who thinks that he has found a pot buddy in me because I have liberal bumper stickers. (Nope. Not me. I’m no library pot buddy.)
Rhetorical questions, all.
