So you say

There is a young man who was a regular at my branch until January of this year.  All he ever talked about was Ya*e and how he would be a transfer student the Spring 2015 semester.  Well, in February of this year, his story began to fall apart in my eyes.

I attended a program at one of the neighborhood extension campuses of the local community college.  Who do I see working at the information desk, the patron who was supposed to be on the east coast.  His explaination(which I did not request,) " The dean asked me to fly back for this special program."

We I returned to work the next day, I mentioned that I saw the patron at the event the night before.

I also mentioned that I believed the patron had not gone to Ya*e, he simply stopped coming to our branch.  Two days later, as the Tech was processing the materials requests from other branches, the patron had requested one of our DVDs be sent to another branch.  A closer look at all of his request from our branch and it was discovered that he was having them sent to the same branch one neighborhood over.

Two weeks later, one of our pages saw the patron on the bus.  The patron stopped in the branch a month later saying, "Oh, I am just home for my brother's baby shower."  Once again, no one had asked for this explaination of his presence.

Fast forward to this past Friday. The patron walks into the library and gives me a hug.  I was helping a patron, so I didn't have time to entertain his foolishness.  To my surprise, the patron came into the library again on Saturday.  To avoid hearing any lies, I went into my office.  Not only was he still in the branch when I returned to the reference desk, he had made himself at home at the table in front of the desk.

I continued to do my work while avoiding conversation with the patron.  I told the Tech that I will call the patron out on his lies if I see him outside of the branch.  Knowing my tolerance level I will probably end up doing it while at work.

The Tech kept saying, "Don't do that."  I told her that what irks me is that he thinks we don't know that he is lying.

They need to just stop!

A few weeks ago, an elderly gentleman approached me at the reference desk.  He proceeded to show me a prescription and say, "I have a prescription for blue pills."  I looked at the prescription and then the patron, and said, " OKAAAAY!"

The patron showed me a brochure and said, "I went to C*S pharmacy and they told me that I have to get my prescription filled online.  I don't know anything about computers.  They told me to go to the public library."

I advised the elderly gentleman to apply for a library card.  Once he obtained the library card, I helped him log onto the computer and the online pharmacy.  The patron told me that he did not know what else to do.  I continued to help the patron order blue pills online.

The entire time that I helped the patron, I thought " Is this really what this profession has become?  I can't believe that I went to graduate school for this!"