The ugly part of my job

I know some of you may think that there's no risk in librarianship.

I was chilling at my desk this morning, surfing the internet and what not. The floor manager calls(my telephone almost never rings,) he asked me to meet him at the reference desk. I panicked, thinking that the desk schedule had been changed and I was supposed to be out there working.................WRONG!

The floor manager and one of the full-time pages asked me to follow them into the stacks. We w walked toward the books that are in my ordering section. I'm thinking that a patron must have destroyed some of the books and just left them lying on the floor.

They both pointed to a stain on the ceiling. The manager pulled a book from the shelf and showed it to me. The pages were BLACK. There were a total of ten books with BLACK MOLD. Obviously, the leak was there long before I arrived at this job. Because that is my section, I had to notate the book information so that I could attempt to re-order the titles.

After a 3 day break

My first hour on the desk this morning. One of the public terminals had an 'Out of Order' sign posted. A patron looked at the sign, and proceeded to move it and examine the monitor. I walked over to the terminal and told the patron, " The sign is posted for a reason." I returned the sign to the original position. The patron's response, "You don't even know what I did!"

I said, "I saw you move the sign and look at the screen." I returned to the reference desk.

2 minutes passed. I received a call from the computer room. They informed me that the problem had been corrected on the 'Out of Order' terminal. I went over to the terminal and removed the sign.....................................The same offending patron said to me, "I THOUGHT THE SIGN WAS POSTED FOR A REASON!!!!"

I turned slightly and said, "It was posted for a reason, but I received a telephone call, tellling me that the problem had been fixed. IF YOU MUST KNOW THE REASON!!!!"

As soon as I returned to the desk, my co-worker said, "I knew he was going to get it the minute he said something smart to you."

What's that smell?????

Let me start by saying that I have a serious sinus headache today. I probably should have stayed at home, but I just couldn't do it.

Everything was fine the first hour. Halfway into the second hour, it began to smell like the office had turned into a sewage plant. The engineers had the nerve to proclaim that it's not bad. My boss sent out an e-mail and it has been discovered that the smell is in the work area on three out of six floors.

So the smell in the back was messing with my sinuses. I get on the floor and two teenage girls sit near the reference desk and proceed to talk and giggle loudly during my first hour on the desk. For the first half hour, I tried to suck it up. I was thinking that the noise level seemed louder to me because of the headache. Finally, I had to say something to them. To my surprise, all of the adults looked at me with relief on their faces.

I'm amazed at least once per week. And that is an understatement!

Yesterday evening, while trying to exit the employee exit/entrance, I couldn't get the door open. I pushed once, I pushed even harder the second time. The person behind me said, "What's the problem? Is there someone standing there?" By the second question, I had proceeded to open the other side of the door. My answer was, "Yes!"

There was a man hovering near the security scan. He was urinating! There were three of us who exited the building. A couple was walking past and the woman said to me, "You should have pushed REAL HARD, knocking that fool over."

They say that I will get used to this behavior, but I think NOT!!

A patron calls, they want to know if a particular book can be located. I place the patron on hold. I look on all of the shelves and all of the book trucks because there are tons. It can take anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes, it depends on the call number............The book is finally found, I return to the desk.............the patron has hung up.

Sometimes they call back while you are on the desk, sometimes they don't. Today, the woman called back with some excuse about her cell phone died (she spoke with my co-worker.) She then called back ten minutes later to request another book.

This time, I told her that I was helping a patron. I took her telephone number and told her that I would call her back once I found the book.

One of the regulars got mad at me and left!

I wasn't offended, it didn't make me mad, I just laughed.

One of the regulars who never wants to leave the floor until everyone else has, kept talking loudly. At first, I thought he was talking to someone, that is until I walked toward him. He looked my way as I got closer to him and I (in typical librarian fashion,) placed my index fingers over my lips.

The patron lowered his voice, but he kept talking. I was fine with that.........until, five minutes had passed and he was back to talking loudly. I got up once again to go over to him, he saw me and got quiet. Five more minutes passed, once again, he begain to get louder and louder. My boss said, "Just call security." I told my boss not to call security, because I thought the guy would lower his voice. He turned, saw us talking, and quieted once again. Five more minutes passed and he got loud. I got up, he looked at me and I placed my fingers over my lips. This time, dude mean mugged me, turned around, picked up his belongings and left.