My eReader Story

In December, my Mom received an eReader from a friend as a gift. It was the basic reader, my Mom decided that she didn't want that one. She wanted to return it and purchase one with all of the bells and whistles. There was one big problem. My Mom hates using the internet for any type of business transaction. Here's where I come in, I had to go online to obtain the online store's 1-800 number. She wanted to call them to handle this return. I thought that was the end of my part in this process. Nope, I was wrong. They emailed her the postage paid return label. Guess who, had to go online and print the label? Yep, that would be me. We're not done yet. The company received the returned eReader. They issued her an e-credit. Why did they do that? I arrived home one evening to find that I had to purchase the eReader with the bells and whistles for her with her e-credit and pay the rest with her card for her. I completed that and explained to her when to expect the new eReader. The new eReader arrived a week later. At the time, I asked, "Do you want me to show you how to use it, or load everything for you? She said that she wanted me to show her, so that she could learn how to use it. Weeks passed. I finally asked her about the new eReader. She said, "I don't like it!" I asked what she had done on the reader. Guess what, absolutely nothing. She didn't want to charge any books with her credit card, she didn't want to check out any books from our local online library, she didn't want to check out any books from open library. Why do you ask? She said that she didn't want any of the eBooks to disappear after 3 weeks. She only wanted to download free eBooks. When I showed her where the free eBooks were, she didn't like the selection. My solution, I told her that I was going to give her a giftcard for Mother's Day. I have been downloading books for her since then. Using the internet on her eReader has been another adventure with ups and downs(for me.)

Public service is just WOW

My library system allows patrons to check out 50 items total at one time. EVERYTHING is checked out for 3 weeks. The late fee for DVDs is $1.00 per day. The late fee for everything else is $ .10 per day. If you haven't watched all of the movies that you checked out in 3 weeks, that's your problem. Last week, a man complained that his fines were $50. He had more than 9 late DVDs, that were more than 1 week late. This system is so generous, if you return the item, your late fee is knocked down to $5.00 per item. That's no matter how long the item has been checked out. He wanted me to forgive the WHOLE thing. I told him that I couldn't see doing that. I checked with my manager and because he said that he had been hospitilized, all was forgiven. Later I found out that he had done this last year. This week, a woman returned 5 DVDs that were months late. The library barcodes had been peeled off. She complained about the late fees and the $1 per label fee that she would be charged. I found out about the incident afterward. I wanted to know why she decided to bring the DVDs back. It looked as if they planned to keep them. We had a teen try to steal a Wrestling DVD last Friday. How did I know it was him. He was the only one of his group who checked out anything, and all he checked out were wrestling dvds. Today, the same teen came into the library eating suflower seeds. I informed him that he couldn't eat in the library. 20 minutes later, what do I see? THe had opened a (closed) window, raised the blinds and proceeded to spit the shells out the window. I kicked him out for the rest of today.