Seen today at 4:20 p.m.

An elderly man with earplugs in both ears, yelling questions to me. As he walked away, my co-worker asked, "Why does he have plugs in his ears, if he wants to speak with others and ask questions?" I told her that I had no clue.

The man returned again, because he obviously didn't hear me clearly. He wanted to add money to his copy card. Instead of inserting his card and then adding the money, he simply put money in the machine. He kept asking me what the problem was. As first, I thought the card wasn't working because he didn't have enough money. He assured me that he added the correct amount of money to his card. I walked over to the copy machine and saw that he had in fact put the correct amount of money in the machine, but since he never put his copy card in, the money was still in the machine.

I removed the money, then inserted the copy card and added the money to the card.

When I returned to the desk, my coworker was shaking her head and laughing.

Typical telephone reference calls

"Hello, I graduated from college, can you tell me how many units I have?". My co-worker was stunned into silence for a few seconds.

"Yeah, I have a press release and I want to know if someone can tell me whether or not I should use one of the sentences."

"Is noseless a word?" I gave the answer. 2nd question..
" How do you spell Florence Night.engale's last name because it's not spelled like the bird.--This patron always calls with these crossword like questions.

"Why do I have to go into the library to read a reference book? Why can't you just look up what I need and read me the answers over the telephone.

There is always a telephone reference that annoys us.

What does it look like to you?

To ward off harrassment or having to say,"I'm not interested at ALL;" I usually wear this ring on my left ring finger. Last week, a man I had been helped for a minute (who stared me up and down the whole time,) asked me, "So, are you married."

It is so bad, that I keep the set in my wallet at all times.


This is the one I wear whenever I have on white gold accessories. Fortunately/Unfortunately, my ex-boyfriend pops in on my job enough for this to be believeable. We can usually be seen arguing.

Don't Let them get to you!

That is what a patron said to me this past Sunday. I had been on the desk a little over an hour. I was scheduled to be at the reference desk for two hours straight. We are usually scheduled for desk duty every other hour. It was kind of brutal that day.

The patron who said those words to me comes into the library almost everyday. Whenever I see him, he always has a huge smile on his face. He is able to walk with the aid of crutches.

When I saw him, I smiled as usual, but immediately afterward, I continued relaying to my co-worker what had just happened. I guess he heard the frustration in my voice.

Monday afternoon, while at the reference desk, the same man approached me at the reference desk and I began laughing. He said, "I just wanted to see how you're feeling today." I told him that I was laughing because I was remembering what he told me the day before.

Are you saying that you watch me?

As I pulled into a parking space Sunday morning, I noticed a man standing in a nearby doorway. I proceeded to park my car and gather my belongings. Once I exited the car, the man said, "WHY DO YOU AlWAYS LOOK SO MAD?". I was thinking, "Because I don't appreciate someone watching my every action". My actual response was, "It's because I don't feel like doing what I have to do!". I didn't wait for a response, I kept it moving.

Caught

I heard something that sounded like paper being torn. I looked to my right and out of the corner of my eye, I spotted one of our regulars tearing a page from a reference book. He immediately rushed to the opposite side of the table so that his next actions were not in full view of the reference desk.

I walked over to the patron and said, "Tearing pages out of our books is not allowed."

The patron gave me a very odd look, because the page he had torn was blank.

I then said, "Even if the page is blank, you are not to remove it from a book!"

The patron said, "Oh, you're not."

I said, "NO" and walked back to the reference desk. Lucky for me and not so lucky for the patron. Two floor supervisors just so happened to be at the desk. I told them of the incident. They decided that the rules would be followed and both supervisors would speak to the patron with a security guard present.

Homey stuck to his story and said, "The page is blank, what's the problem?"

They explained to the patron that he had actually destroyed library property.

The security guard took the patron away. A formal incident report was filed and the patron has been banned from all branch libraries in our system for 90 days.

I've only been at the reference desk for 40 minutes

I am done for the day. A Russ*an chick just came to the desk looking for Confessions of A Video Vi*en and or The Vi*en Diaries.