darchildre: text:  library rules 1) silence 2) books must be returned by due date 3) do not interfere with the nature of causality (library rules)
We have a library patron who has been putting the same 5 cds on hold for about a month and a half now. She has yet to come pick them up.

She puts them on hold, and we put them on our hold shelf where they sit for a week till the hold expires. Then we put them back on the shelf. After a couple days, she realizes that her hold has expired, re-places the hold, and we do the whole thing again. She clearly very much wants these cds but I assume she's been very busy and hasn't been able to get into the library to pick them up. Since it's not causing a problem - other people can still put them on hold, or take them off the shelf on the days between her holds - it's mostly just a little funny and I honestly admire her persistence a little.

They were on hold for her again this morning. I hope she comes in to get them this time - I'm rooting for her.
darchildre: the master reading war of the worlds (reading)
I got a phonecall from a patron this morning who wanted to talk to someone about the sexually explicit ebook her 13 year old son had checked out and how she could prevent him from doing so in the future. I forwarded that call to my manager because that sort of conversation is above my paygrade, but then I went to look up the ebook she mentioned.

Friends. The sexually explicit ebook this kid checked out is The Romance of Lust, a public domain work of erotica from the 1870s. That is amazing and I have several thoughts:

a) I desperately want to know what search terms the kid used to find this book.

b) Now, I am an Extremely Asexual person who did not have the common teen experience of seeking out illicit sex scenes to peruse out of the sight of adults (because I wasn't interested in the same way other kids were), but surely there are easier ways to get your rocks off without having to seek out Victorian smut? You're reading ebooks so you must have access to the internet - the ao3 is right there. It's free, the prose is usually easier for a modern reader to parse, and it doesn't send emails to your mom.

c) Maybe, if you are going to check out porn from the library, you might want to return the book early, before your mom (whose email is on your account) gets the Almost Overdue notice.

d) Turns out, the library has significantly more public domain vintage erotica in our ebook collection than I was previously aware of.
darchildre: rebis in a purple trenchcoat, looking enigmatic (rebis says:)
Every once in a while, I get an older female patron who comes up to the desk and says something like, "You look like you've lost weight!" I never have any idea what to do with that.

a) I don't own a scale and haven't weighed myself in at least 5 years. I am entirely uninterested in my weight.

b) However, all my clothes still fit the same way they always did and and the amount of food I eat (average, probably) and the amount of exercise I do (none) has remained constant. So probably not?

c) Is it a compliment? An expression of concern? What am I supposed to take away from you saying this?

d) While I'm not personally offended, in my view it is extremely rude to comment on another person's body like that - especially someone you don't actually know well - so my first instinct is to ignore their terrible faux pas and let them save face. This is probably not what they're looking for.

I usually end up saying something like "Not that I'm aware of" after a momentary pause for confusion, and then move on to asking how they are, but it always feels like I'm wrongfooting them.

Which they did to me first, though, so I don't feel particularly bad about it.
darchildre: orion of the new gods in space in front of a starburst (red orion)
Things:

- So, turns out my manager was serious about me running Honey Heist at our All Staff Day this year, so now I get to get paid for planning an rpg oneshot. Plus, a couple of my coworkers have already told me they're excited about it. Yay!

- The rest of our branch-specific Staff Day time is listed on our agenda as "Maker Lab - skill sharing while test new branch equipment" but is actually "bring whatever crafts you want to work on, maybe Sara will give us a quick knitting lesson, and we'll all learn how to use the Cricut machine". Considering that the whole-system part of the day will be entirely over Zoom and no one will be able to see us, I am planning to basically knit all day. My manager and I are considering it mild revenge for the thing where the Powers That Be banned hand crafts from All Staff Day 10 years ago.

- Yes, we are still bitter about it. (Especially for the past two in-person years, when all the table had complimentary fidget toys. But only approved non-productive fidgets are acceptable, apparently!)

- I now have a new tablet. Yay! My hold on She Who Became the Sun did indeed come in before it arrived, but I suspended the hold, so I'll get it again in a couple weeks. Which will give me time to finish the book I'm currently reading and have been waiting to continue on my tablet.

- After zooming through Children of Time and half of Children of Ruin on audiobook, my brain suddenly decided this week that I am no longer allowed to consume narrative via audio media. Podcasts aren't working either. It is very frustrating and I hope it clears up soon.
darchildre: kay caldwell looking predatory and vampiric (kay caldwell:  vampire queen)
The library reinstituted a mask requirement this week, after a county-wide directive went out last Friday.

And today, I just had a patron call me "a control freak" and "a good German" for walking up to him as he entered and asking him to put a mask on.

So that's cool.
darchildre: rebis in a purple trenchcoat, looking enigmatic (rebis says:)
A phenomenon I do not understand:

The library does not require masks for vaccinated people. We have a sign saying that recommend them for vaccinated people, but they are not required. We do still require them for unvaccinated people but we aren't checking, except for kids, because we know they aren't vaccinated.

A large proportion of people still come in wearing masks, of course. That's great - I've gone back to wearing one when I'm in the patron areas as well. But about a quarter of the patrons wearing masks - choosing to wear masks - are still wearing them wrong. Mostly, wearing them so that their noses aren't covered.

I get that some people don't find masks comfortable and don't want to wear them. What I don't get is the idea that you would make a deliberate choice to do something that isn't required of you and then deliberately do it wrong.

Plus, now that we're not requiring masks, I no longer have any standing to go up to strangers and tell them to cover their noses, so I just have to quietly seethe to myself instead.
darchildre: the outline of a 20-sided die over a faded rainbow on a black background (d&d time!)
Normally, my library system has a yearly All Staff Day, where the whole staff gets together for a day of...well, a lot of nonsense, really, but there's the awards ceremony and some "professional development" stuff that never turns out to be actually relevant, and there's speakers and things. It's not great, but we get lunch, at least.

This year, obviously, that is a Bad Idea. So instead, the plan is to do the first four hours with the whole staff via Zoom and then break up into branches for the other four hours in the afternoon. Those four hours can be used either for "professional development" or "team building". My manager was jokingly despairing about planning stuff to fill those four hours.

I may have suggested that I could eat up at least two of them by giving the rest of the staff a crash course in rpgs and then running a Honey Heist game. Tabletop roleplaying games teach collaborative problem solving, right? That's a legit teambuilding exercise, probably. (Plus, much easier than trying to run a D&D game for newbies and lets them know that there's more to ttrpgs than D&D.)

It almost certainly won't actually happen, but my manager liked the idea a lot, so who knows?
darchildre: cooper and truman looking interested and somewhat skeptical (cooper and truman)
Our eccentric photocopy patron is back today.

I'm currently watching him attempt to photocopy a round bottle.

It doesn't appear to be going well.
darchildre: text:  library rules 1) silence 2) books must be returned by due date 3) do not interfere with the nature of causality (library rules)
We have an eccentric regular who mostly comes into use our photocopier. He always wants to do something that either our copiers/printers won't do - photocopying money, printing legal size on printers that can't accommodate that size paper - or mess with the photocopier settings for half an hour before copying a single page.

That's fine - he doesn't get angry if we can't do something he wants and he'll move out of the way if anyone else needs to use the machine - but he has a bad habit of continuing to do certain things after we've told him they're against the rules/policies, arguing with us about them every time he comes in. It used to be printing from a flash drive plugged directly into a printer - the printers in the library have USB ports but that functionality has been shut down. He would come in every day for weeks and try to turn it back on somehow, despite us telling him not to and showing him how to print from the computer instead.

Recently, he has developed a habit of "cleaning" the glass surface of the photocopier with his hands before and after every copy he makes. We've asked him not to do that. We've explained why we're asking - it leaves fingerprints and the oils from his hands get on the glass surface, which then produces artifacts on subsequent copies. We've offered to let him use one of the microfiber cloths that we've officially been given to use just for cleaning that glass. But he keeps doing it every time, and we keep having to talk to him.

He did it again just now and I gave him the same explanation I've personally given him twice before. He told me once again that it's the best method he's found for cleaning "paper lint" off the copier. (There is no paper debris on the copier.) I told him that I understood but he still can't do that. We'll see how long that lasts.

Now he is photocopying leaves.
darchildre: cooper and truman looking interested and somewhat skeptical (cooper and truman)
We have two new staff members at my library - they started a couple weeks ago. They're both lovely, but they have both done the same inexplicable thing and I just don't understand it.

So, we have a bunch of bookcarts. We keep a few by the check in desk in the backroom, and the rest of them, full or empty, go out on the main library floor in designated spots. When you fill up one of the carts by the check in desk, you find an empty cart in the relevant area of the library, replace it with your full cart, and then take the empty cart back to the check in desk. The full cart stays on the floor to be shelved, whereupon it is an empty cart. Simple and logical, right?

Both of our new employees have had this explained to them. They've had it demonstrated to them while they were shadowing me doing check in - I've walked them out with a full cart, shown them where the empty carts are, done the swap, and walked them back to the check in desk with a new cart. And yet, both of them have taken full carts out to the floor, grabbed an empty cart to take back, and left the full cart in a random place that is not at all the spot they got the empty cart from! This is a thing I have had to explain and demonstrate to both of them multiple times!

I don't understand where this confusion is coming from and it is just boggling to me.
darchildre: text:  library rules 1) silence 2) books must be returned by due date 3) do not interfere with the nature of causality (library rules)
We were closed for, basically, a year and I don't have anyone in my personal life who's under 30, so I have completely lost track of Stuff Kids Like. This is distressing, as I used to be pretty good at decoding the weird stuff kids ask for at the library desk.

In the past 5 minutes, I have been asked for "who would win books" (which are apparently books about hypothetical fights between animals) and "dog meme books". Which took me about 5 tries to figure out, since the person asking for dog memes was about 5 and wearing a mask, so difficult to understand.

We have "who would win" books, apparently, but no dog memes.
darchildre: kay caldwell looking predatory and vampiric (kay caldwell:  vampire queen)
Well, today broke my 15-month streak of "not being called mildly demeaning and condescending pet names by people who don't know me."

Look, I'm glad that things are opening up and the patrons are coming back to the library but it does mean that the people (essentially strangers or, at best, acquaintances) who feel like they can call me 'honey' or 'sweetheart', or refer to me and my coworkers collectively as 'you girls' (the youngest of us is 30) with complete impunity are also back. And I haven't missed them at all.
darchildre: text:  library rules 1) silence 2) books must be returned by due date 3) do not interfere with the nature of causality (library rules)
So, it's June, which means it's Summer Reading time at the library. The way this works in my library system is: you read for 10 hours and get a prize! (Kids get to pick from a selection of books, adults get a prize that varies year to year - this year, it's a picnic blanket.) And then, if you read a total of 100 hours, you get a tshirt that says "100 Hour Reader" on it!

10 hours isn't actually a huge amount of reading, so a lot of folks get that done fairly quickly and then come in for their prizes. In past years, we've done a lot of business in mid-June with 10-hour readers, then something of a lull in July, then an explosion of both 10-hour and 100-hour readers in August.

Except! This year, it was decided that we would be giving out no prizes until August. We don't even have the books yet. (We do have the tshirts and some of the picnic blankets, though apparently we are going to be getting more.) We haven't been given a really satisfying explanation for why we're doing things that way this year. Also, though the fact that there are no prizes till August is written both on the reading tracker and our website, it's not at all prominent and I would be shocked if anyone had noticed it.

So, basically, this is the summer of library employees making kids cry. Because that's definitely what we need this year.



(Probably your local library system has a cool Summer Reading program that probably involves prizes for adults - you should check it out. Maybe you will get your prize before August, even.)
darchildre: text:  library rules 1) silence 2) books must be returned by due date 3) do not interfere with the nature of causality (library rules)
The weirdest phenomenon I've noticed since the library reopened for in-building services is the number of people who call us and feel they need to preface whatever question they have with "I live in [town where the library is] and I'm a member of the library."

They all seem to use that phrase - "member of the library" - which sounds super weird to me. We're a public library, not a Costco - either we don't have members or everyone is a member. You don't need to prove your bona fides when you call and I don't care where you live. I mean, you can't apply for a card online if you live outside the county (though if you come into the building, we might be able to work something out) and if you want me to send an item in our collection to, like, Virginia, you need to talk to your home library's ILL department but beyond stuff like that, if you call, I'm going to try to help you out no matter where you called from.

I'd assume that all the people calling and using that phrase are people who got library cards during the height of the pandemic and weren't familiar with the library before, but a lady just called and used that phrase who said she'd had her card for decades. (She also said that her card had been lapsed for decades though, so...)

It's weird.
darchildre: kay caldwell looking predatory and vampiric (kay caldwell:  vampire queen)
Back in February, we got told that we no longer needed to wear gloves at work unless we were emptying the bookdrops and thus touching items that hadn't yet been through quarantine. A little while after that, we reduced our quarantine period for materials from 4 days to 24 hours. Last week, it was announced that, as of June 1st, we would no longer be quarantining materials at all. Cool, great. Quarantining is a hassle and, as far as I'm aware, it's pretty unnecessary - let's definitely stop doing that.

I had foolishly assumed that doing away with quarantine - and thus acknowledging that the items coming in are not a hazard worth worrying about - would mean that we would stop being required to wear gloves while taking items out of the bookdrops. Today I learned that, evidently, that's not the case. We're still supposed to wear gloves while emptying the bookdrops. But if we're not quarantining stuff, that means the person doing backroom circulation tasks - mostly me - takes things out of the bookdrop and checks them in pretty immediately upon their arrival, all day long. In practice, that would mean going back to wearing gloves all day.

Which is complete bullshit, since we're not required to wear gloves while shelving those same materials, as if scanning the barcode on the back magically removes any sort of contamination they might be carrying. It is rank cargo cult hygiene theater nonsense and I hate it.

I'm not wearing the fucking gloves until someone gives me a non-magic reason that I should.



ETA - Apparently, enough staff all over the system complained to their managers about this being stupid today that the glove requirement got changed by the time I went home. Thank the gods.
darchildre: rebis in a purple trenchcoat, looking enigmatic (rebis says:)
So, yesterday, the CDC announced that you don't need to wear a mask indoors if you're vaccinated. Okay, that's a thing.

The library can't change our policy until leadership and the board have a vote on it - a process that will take a couple days. Until that happens, our policy is still to require mask wearing from everyone. But! My library is inside another building - a community center - that's an independent entity with its own rules and policies. And they just put a big sign in their lobby saying that, as long as you tell them you're vaccinated, you don't have to wear a mask in the community center.

I am not looking forward to spending several days telling people that yes, I know what the CDC said, I know what the governor said, I know what the community center said, but you still have to wear a mask in the library.
darchildre: text:  library rules 1) silence 2) books must be returned by due date 3) do not interfere with the nature of causality (library rules)
Had a lady just now have a long conversation with my coworker (who is a librarian and excellent at doing, y'know, the actually librarian stuff that she was helping this patron with) and ask me "Are you the librarian?"

Which, like, I know that the vast majority of people don't know that "librarian" is a technical term - I don't expect that. I'm just saying that when you have a long interaction with someone wherein they use their greater education and technical know-how to assist you and then assume for no reason that someone else outranks them, it's a little hinky. Especially since I am white and my librarian coworker is not.

(Might not be that! It might be that I'm older than my coworker. Might be that I'm the one standing behind the desk right now. But you do have to wonder.)

I just smiled and said, "Oh gosh no. [Coworker]'s a librarian - I just work here. But I'm happy to check your books out for you."
darchildre: text:  library rules 1) silence 2) books must be returned by due date 3) do not interfere with the nature of causality (library rules)
Just watched my supervisor remind a patron that she needs to wear her mask so it covers her nose, only to have the patron grouse about how "it steams up my glasses".

a) Yeah, it's annoying to get your mask properly situated but guess what - all of the people who work here regularly wear glasses and yet we manage to wear our masks properly for 8 hours every day and have done so for over a year now. You can manage it for the 45 minutes you're in the library.

b) Ma'am, I don't know if you're aware of this but you are not currently wearing any glasses.
darchildre: text:  library rules 1) silence 2) books must be returned by due date 3) do not interfere with the nature of causality (library rules)
Sometimes, library patrons will do this thing where they feel like they have to explain the thing that they want to put on hold as well as telling us the title or author - like "it's this French movie from the 50's" or something similar. Usually, this explanation means that the thing they want is a new sort of thing for them. They've never watched French movies from the 50's (or whatever); they aren't familiar with them and assume that the library staff aren't either. That's totally fine, obviously. We don't know everything. Please learn about new things and share them with us! That's super cool.

However. Sometimes, it is difficult knowing how to react when the patron wants something they are clearly unfamiliar with but which is extremely familiar to me. I definitely do not want to stifle their enthusiasm or make them feel bad for being new to something! But, like, I had a dude call me today and do this sort of explanation and sir, I really need to stop you now because I was in fact an American child in the 90's and I promise you that I know what Animaniacs is.
darchildre: a crow being held in one hand.  text:  "bird in hand" (bird in the hand)
It was recently decided that we only need to wear gloves at work if we're dealing with unquarantined returns, which means that this week I've gone from wearing gloves for 8 hours a day to maybe 20 minutes, spread out over those eight hours.

You guys, I am perfectly content wearing a mask to work - it's fine, I'm not uncomfortable and I like people not being able to see my face - but the gloves were fucking torture and I'm so happy not to have to wear them anymore. I'm so excited to be able to properly grip things again without having to worry about the inevitable clammy sweat inside the gloves, or to have hands that don't smell like plastic all the time, or to have fingernails that aren't constantly splitting.

Today, I have actual knitted fingerless gloves on (because it's always freezing in here) which I haven't been able to wear all winter. And I got to wear my spinner ring! I haven't had any of my usual fidgets at work since we reopened because none of them were satisfying at all with gloves on but now I can use them again!

It's a small thing, but I'm very happy about it.
darchildre: children reading books in a field. (books are for adventure!)
I have been working at the library for 15 years and reading for significantly longer and still, every time I see one of those children's books that has a title like Everything You Need to Know About Bugs, my first reaction is always to think, "I feel certain that your book does not contain everything that I need to know about bugs."
darchildre: a crow being held in one hand.  text:  "bird in hand" (bird in the hand)
Things:

- I am currently experimenting with putting less sugar in my tea. Tea is approximately 95% of what I drink all day every day and though I drink it hot (mostly) I was raised in a southern sweet tea tradition and therefore consume a probably unnecessary amount of sugar that way. Right now, I am adjusting to putting about 3/4 of my normal amount of sugar in my tea. It's not too bad so far.

- I recently started a new Ironsworn campaign and you guys, every time I pick up Ironsworn again, I am amazed at how good a game it is. Plus, I have a nice new notebook to record my game in that has fountain pen friendly paper, so every time I play I get to pull out a different pen from my collection with different ink and it's just such an enjoyable writing experience.

- In other solo rpg news, I recently realized that my tiny rpg is an excellent tool for both generating and continuing Stories*. I made up a couple of characters and a basic setting about a month ago and used The Adventure Crafter to give me a preliminary starting plot. I tell myself my Story the way I normally would throughout the day, but I occasionally pull out the dice roller on my phone (which has an option to make dice with a custom number of sides, so I can also use it for the oracle) to figure out what happens next. And when I had used up the plot points from the starting plot, I used the Adventure Crafter again to generate the next bit of the story. It's great - I still get to run through the emotionally pleasing bits as many times as I like until I have wrung them entirely dry of good brain chemicals (as is my way) but I don't get stuck trying to figure out how to get to the next good emotional scene because I have dice. Triumph, Galatea!

- The way the library works right now is obviously completely not ideal but I will admit to experience a certain smug pleasure whenever I get to tell someone that no, we are not accepting donations at this time and we will not take the 5 boxes of books you brought with you in your truck.







*I really need a better term for "my ever-growing collection of stories that are sometimes fanfic but sometimes about original characters; that I think about basically whenever I'm not focusing on something specific; that occupy my thoughts for anywhere from a month to upwards of 2 years depending on how long I can get those particular characters/scenarios to continue to produce enjoyable emotional content; and that, when I don't have one, I experience a sort of pervasive low-level depression," but I don't have one so we'll just go with capital-S "Stories".
darchildre: text:  library rules 1) silence 2) books must be returned by due date 3) do not interfere with the nature of causality (library rules)
Today, I had to write my self-appraisal for work.

I have complained about having to do this in the past - I hate doing it, it makes me incredibly anxious, it mostly feels like nonsense busywork - but this year, my god. I should not have to write a damn thing other than "This past year was 2020 and I did my goddamned best." No one should have to write anything else on any kind of work appraisal for this past year. Did I accomplish any of my professional goals for 2020? OF COURSE I FUCKING DIDN'T. But also I didn't die and I kept coming to work at a job that is a germ factory when there isn't a global pandemic and that should by god be enough.
darchildre: text:  library rules 1) silence 2) books must be returned by due date 3) do not interfere with the nature of causality (library rules)
One of the larger branches in our system has been struggling in the last couple of months - a couple of their staff are out long-term for various reasons - so my branch has been cycling one person there a week for the past few weeks. This week is my week.

It is, in fact, the branch I used to work at before moving to Kingston full time, so I know some of the people there and am somewhat familiar with their layout (though they've extensively remodeled since I left), so that part's not too bad. But it's still extremely stressful, being in a branch where you don't really know where things are or how they do things. Plus, they are very much busier than my branch is, in a very physically demanding way, so I have been exhausted all week. And, on top of that, they keep their branch extremely warm all day long, so I end up doing a lot of physical work in the heat every day and ending the day by feeling ill.

And today, a group of people from Collection Services are coming to do inventory all day.

I am extremely tempted to call in sick. Except that I don't know the procedure for doing that at this branch anymore.
darchildre: text:  library rules 1) silence 2) books must be returned by due date 3) do not interfere with the nature of causality (library rules)
Fingers crossed, everybody, but my least favorite patron may have ragequit the library again.

The last time, it was over the system instituting a limit on the number of holds a person could have at one time, as well as some contentious interactions with our library director at public meetings. He had us delete his account and cut up his card in front of him, and then we didn't see him for a few years. But he eventually came back.

This time, I'm not sure exactly what has set him off, but my supervisor just got forwarded an email my manager received from him on vacation. In it, he mentions that he got a notification that a hold had arrived for him yesterday and he called to make an appointment to pick it up (curbside service, natch), but due to the fact that we were closed last week for smoke, we have a larger than normal number of people making pickup appointments and he couldn't get one till Friday. (I, in fact, had made the appointment for him and I would prefer never to have to speak to him on the phone again.) He then went on to say that he had no idea we were working so hard or so far out and that the only thing he could do to alleviate the situation would be to cancel all his holds and return everything he had checked out. The email ended with him saying something about maybe things in Phase 3 will be better for everyone.

And he has indeed cancelled all of his many holds! Over a two-day wait! So instead he's going to wait for the library to actually reopen the building to the public!

I mean, I'm not going to miss dealing with him for however long that takes but I'm just boggled by how absurdly petty this is.

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darchildre: a candle in the dark.  text:  "a light in dark places". (Default)
Renfield

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