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Some time before covid hit, a woman came in asking where to look for a new phone, her old phone was bad and dying so she desperately needed a new one, but not new new. Fortunately I had just gotten a new phone myself and was like oh yeah, sure, here are all the places I looked when I was shopping around. Nearly two years later and now I'm the guy who told her she absolutely had to get a pixel phone, who now has to help her forward funny viral videos her brother sent her, after being forced to watch them and told why it's hilarious. No matter the fact we can't give more than very brief tech help at my branch due to staffing coverage, "but it's super slow right now so you can help me, right?" This is completely separate from the woman who intentionally purchased two phones and was nearly in tears because she couldn't figure out how to get to voice mail, after I spent two hours trying to explain that the manual had step by step directions. These aren't even particularly egregious situations but I think my job has killed my patience, and slowly my spirit. Next time, the creepy guy who thinks he's Mr. Rogers sorry about using your good thread to vent Wudz fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Dec 10, 2021 |
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Dec 10, 2021 15:25
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Wudz posted:Next time, the creepy guy who thinks he's Mr. Rogers I have library experience 100% as a patron only, yet for some reason this thread fascinates me! Library workers have to deal with the public, yet don’t get a lot of the protections as a private business! Please, vent away, and don’t forget any creep stories!
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Dec 11, 2021 03:59
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Wudz posted:sorry about using your good thread to vent uh my dude taps thread title 
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Dec 12, 2021 15:03
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Wudz posted:sorry about using your good thread to vent As an academic librarian who doesn't have to deal with any of this, feel free to vent away.
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Dec 13, 2021 03:34
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Well, in no particular order: - Creepy Mr. Rogers is a patron I first met like five years ago. He was nice enough, if kind of weirdly friendly, and talked about being part of some Mr. Rogers advocacy group (????????). Later I realized he was wearing a very Fred Rogers knit sweater and had his hair styled in a very Mr. Rogers way. A few years later some of our Youth Services staff told me he at least once tried to walk around the kids area and either present himself as or say he represented Mr. Rogers. Not sure what happened with him, but I'm pretty sure he got super pissed when he was told not to do that and never came back. - A lot of our regular patrons are homeless, since we're one of the only public places they can hang out in all day with air conditioning, heating, restrooms, and security. Generally there are no issues besides asking people to take their food to the designated eating area, or waking people up if they fall asleep. A guy recently started yelling at me when I asked him if he was ok because he was face down on the table, when he was apparently watching a video on his phone under the table. Apparently all we do is wake people up, and enforce our stupid rules, and sit on our computers not helping anybody. Ignoring the fact that we can't help people that don't ask for help, and the reason we ask people to not sleep is that we have had more than 1 person pass away due to overdose/undiagnosed medical issues. - One night when clearing the floor just before closing, walked in to check the men's restroom and immediately saw an elderly man's entire rear end and balls as he was trying to wash himself in the sink. - Once witnessed a patron have a conversation through our sound-proof front widow with someone she knew outside. - There's a guy that comes in nearly every day to use our internet computers. He used to browse amazon for old records, but I've been told he was banned for buying poo poo, then trying to get his money back and say they never arrived. He has since moved on to doing the same thing with commemorative coins on ebay. His favorite pastime is opening as many tabs as he possibly can ten minutes before his time runs out so that it crashes our lovely computers, slam on the mouse and keyboard, and ask for an extension because the computer stopped working. There's also the harassment the women on our staff get from patrons, and one of them approached our boss about being uncomfortable being at the desk because of it. She told me the advice she was given by our female boss was effectively "well this is a public library, unfortunately, toughen up or maybe it's not for you". Staff issues are a whole sperate nightmare right now. Wudz fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Dec 13, 2021 |
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Dec 13, 2021 05:53
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Sometimes the weirdos work IN the library. The director's office gave all of us underlings a mug and a hot chocolate bomb for a holiday gift. One of my coworkers did not know what it was, so he cracked open the hot chocolate bomb in the break room and ate it like a kinder egg. He described it as "a ball of chocolate full of stale marshmallows. Pretty tasty."
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Dec 18, 2021 21:13
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Had a pair of interesting encounters this year. Back around august a patron comes into the library asking for help, and explains that he needs to replace a part in his freezer. “Well sir our computers are right over here and-“ “Nah nah nah I don’t use computers, I’ve got the serial number here you can just order it for me right?” I figured what the hell, it was a slow Saturday in a ruralish library. Might as well go above and beyond for a senior citizen (I’d later find out he was 89) Well, turns out he’d gotten the number for the fridge as a whole and not the exact component, so as far as I could figure out from the info provided I was looking at replacing the entire ice making unit, since the patron wasn’t very helpful with details. I asked if he could bring in the broken part. 45 minutes pass and he walks back in with a warped and buckled ice bucket. “Ya see my grandson left his coke in the freezer and it spilled so I washed it and put it in the oven to dry… but I fell asleep and this is what I pulled out” At the very least I was able to save him some money by getting just the new ice bucket, but this is when he started showing his age to me by repeating his explanation of what happened maybe seven or eight times. I found a website that sold individual parts and asked him to put in his credit card info. “No, no no, could you handle that?” he asked as he produced his card. I sighed, but went ahead since it was a Saturday and we were understaffed anyway, it’s going to be quicker to help him out than figure out proper procedure. That should have been the end of it, until he came in two weeks ago to repeat the process with a water heater component he managed to mis-thread. His catchphrase this time around was “yeah I bought this back in New York City but it’s not popular around here, not popular”. After some digging I find out he brought in a part of the burner, not the boiler and I have to enter his credit card info again  I went over this with the head librarian and I’ve been instructed not to mess with his card again for obvious liability reasons
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Dec 20, 2021 17:24
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Any time people ask us to fill out their credit card or login information there's a real "I can't be assed, do this for me" energy. Semi-related, but it reminds me of a patron who absolutely refuses to use our very simple and efficient check out stations, arguing that he is very generously keeping us employed and busy by making us scan every single book individually. He was recently banned for racism towards one of our staff. Also I remembered the other day that people keep coming to the library to set up their phones because apparently, every single phone store in the city tells their customers "If you need help setting up your phone, take it to the library and they can help you out" instead of helping them there, at the place dedicated to phones. To be fair we used to do "Speak to a Geek" sessions if you needed general help navigating or understanding computers, but that was pre-covid, required an appointment, and I'm pretty sure we never did phone setup General question, do any of y'all's libraries have on-location security guards? We've gone through like ten guards for various reasons in the last two years, including pre-covid, and I'm wondering if that's normal.
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Dec 20, 2021 18:08
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Wudz posted:Any time people ask us to fill out their credit card or login information there's a real "I can't be assed, do this for me" energy. I once had to practically beg a patron not to give me his social security number over the phone so I could, according to him, plug it in to Google to get his credit score because that’s what the rent-to-own places do. We have guards. They’re contracted and don’t work directly for the library and, yeah, they cycle quite a bit. The pay is not great (several left to play mask police at grocery stores) and some chafe at library policy not letting them harass patrons. The really good ones tend to get promoted and aren’t around long.
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Dec 21, 2021 02:10
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Wudz posted:Semi-related, but it reminds me of a patron who absolutely refuses to use our very simple and efficient check out stations, arguing that he is very generously keeping us employed and busy by making us scan every single book individually. He was recently banned for racism towards one of our staff. There's a whole generation of people who think it's somehow a point of pride to not know how anything more complicated than an on/off switch works.
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Dec 21, 2021 11:53
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Oh for sure, and we get a lot of that from our elderly patrons, and even then as long as we help then do it they begrudgingly go along with it. This dude is like 40, though, and doesn't even pretend he doesn't know to use them. Staff were at one point told to not check out to him unless there was nobody waiting on line, at which point he storms off in a huff to do it himself.
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Dec 21, 2021 16:10
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Sweevo posted:There's a whole generation of people who think it's somehow a point of pride to not know how anything more complicated than an on/off switch works. These are the same people who when they were teenagers thought that touching a calculator or a book would make your dick fall off and turn you into a Revenge of the Nerds style of nerd. They're just old now.
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Dec 21, 2021 16:10
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Wudz posted:Staff issues are a whole sperate nightmare right now. Also my boss quit. She's a great person but wasn't very good at managing our department so ultimately nothing has really changed yet, but now nobody internally really wants to fill that position, even only temporarily. They were hoping to have somebody in place last week, which then became the end of this week, which is now  It's very cool.Now i'm trapped in a computer lab that smells like old, lovely weed with a dude on hold on speakerphone who won't turn it down and people that need help getting into their gmail account without their password or phone. e- happy new year thread Wudz fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Feb 24, 2022 |
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Feb 24, 2022 20:06
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Congrats on your impending job doing what your boss used to do!
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Feb 24, 2022 20:43
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Leperflesh posted:Congrats on your impending job doing what your boss used to do! At your same pay rate and with no title shift!
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Feb 24, 2022 21:09
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I would say I'm not qualified but who knows, stupider things have happened! e- in fact it will probably be taken by the guy who was hired as customer service and quit after less than a month because he decided he wanted to be a parks and rec guy instead, only to be hired again a year later for a full time position and quit before finishing training Wudz fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Feb 24, 2022 |
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Feb 24, 2022 23:38
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As in be a parks and rec guy take on the bureaucracy involved in making the city nicer, or be a "parks and rec guy" have wacky office adventures with your comedically caricatured bosses and coworkers?
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Feb 25, 2022 07:09
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If I remember correctly somebody told me he went on to do Tree Planting And Maintenance, so I guess a little bit of both? Actually come to think of it I think he was telling me this himself while I was training him at our front desk for the second time, wow Wudz fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Feb 25, 2022 |
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Feb 25, 2022 07:22
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askamanger posted:3. Men  I'm a cataloger and I laughed pretty drat hard.
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Apr 1, 2022 02:32
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6IhNcnLwiw twerking on the railroad fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Apr 8, 2022 |
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Apr 8, 2022 00:15
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Jun 20, 2022 02:53
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I get that for some people, books are mostly decoration, but what's the bloody point if you can't at least look at the spine and cover art?
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Jun 20, 2022 05:17
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...like a sociopath.
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Jun 20, 2022 05:18
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https://twitter.com/etienneshrdlu/status/1135855628755329024
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Jun 20, 2022 05:28
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im not a graphic artists, but theres still some color there, like that gray looks blueish and that wood has some yellow. Also the kids flesh still has color.
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Jun 21, 2022 06:04
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PhazonLink posted:im not a graphic artists, but theres still some color there, like that gray looks blueish and that wood has some yellow. Also the kids flesh still has color. Well, it's neutral toned, not monochrome. Also, do you know how hard it is to paint babies with white greasepaint and keep it from getting all over everything?
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Jun 21, 2022 07:01
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Full body tattoos are the answer! And just think of the savings compared to doing it once they have grown.
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Jun 21, 2022 09:20
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tinytort posted:Well, it's neutral toned, not monochrome. Also, do you know how hard it is to paint babies with white greasepaint and keep it from getting all over everything? Painting them black gets you in even more trouble.
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Jun 21, 2022 09:52
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Jun 22, 2022 20:25
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I guess you could stamp the call numbers across the edges
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Jun 22, 2022 20:56
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Jun 22, 2022 21:30
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Right on, John.
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Jun 22, 2022 22:13
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Midjack posted:Right on, John.
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Jun 22, 2022 22:26
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I've been working at a tiny library in a two-stoplight town since last February. Our regulars include: A young guy who wanders in just to say hi, peek his head around at all the corners of the room, and then leaves. He's not bad, just friendly and weird. I don't think he even has a card. Conspiracy Dude was here all last summer, and just started showing up again. He pounds out on the keyboard some manifesto about the Newark riots, how the symbols on the $1 bill are racist, and that someone keeps stealing his packages. He pays for a huge number of printouts and photocopies, so... thanks for the money I guess. If he'd just save his files he wouldn't have to keep mashing the keys every time he comes in. The last page he gets copies of is a handwritten screed all around both sides of a dollar bill, with some Stars of David for good measure. DJ comes in every Saturday to spend all day on "her" computer, and blasts everything from Enya to Def Leppard in her headphones. She gets phonecalls from telemarketers and tries to have a conversation with them, until I tell her to stop. Then she tells them to call her back later. I told her once that they're just trying to scam her and she got an attitude with me about it. So screw it, none of my business anyway. That's all I can think of right now.
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Jun 25, 2022 00:50
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Waffle! posted:If he'd just save his files he wouldn't have to keep mashing the keys every time he comes in. But that's how they get you!
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Jun 25, 2022 01:53
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I'm just using this thread as a dumping ground for random cool book stuff I find now. https://twitter.com/Dr_TheHistories/status/1541215794029158400
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Jun 27, 2022 08:19
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That would be pretty awesome for synthesizers too. Slight issues with cable management notwithstanding
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Jun 27, 2022 08:22
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ah, my posting station
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Jun 27, 2022 08:37
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My Lovely Horse posted:That would be pretty awesome for synthesizers too. Wireless taps head
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Jun 27, 2022 15:40
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I work for a huge university with a huge library system. Employees get to check out books and you can get anything from any school library, usually delivered on the same day or the next, its pretty great. There's a rule though that any book you get has to be "work related" I was nervous at first but after a while just ordered whatever, nobody seemed to be checking. Once I was in a meeting and the head librarian of our department's was there. One of my coworkers asked "that work related rule for checking out books, is that uh, you know, enforced?" The librarian told us he once saw the stats for patronage and the heaviest user systemwide checked out an average of 50 books a day. If no ones questioned what the hell that guy is doing we will be fine. (He thought it might be some digital preservation project and not actually a guy hauling off 50 books daily)
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Jul 1, 2022 21:54
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