Wednesday, February 16, 2005
 

Another Day, Another (Very Few) Dollars

I reencountered a girl who has, along with her mother, become the bane of my existence. A few days ago, she was barred from using the internet because of outstanding fines ($2.25) on her library card. We now require patrons to at least put some money toward these outstanding overdues, because, frankly, the budget situation is extremely ugly, and unpaid fines add up.

Anyway, so this girl was told (not by me) that she couldn't get on the internet because of the fines. Later that afternoon, I have the misfortune to take a call from her mother: she demanded that I double-check and make sure that there were indeed fines on the daughter's card. I checked; there were. She asked me if I was sure I had the right person. I entered the daughter's record and confirmed birthdate (not that her name was particularly common, anyway).

The mother insists there are no fines. I say there are (nicely). She asks for what? I read aloud the four movies that were overdue (leaving aside the 25 cents that the daughter owed for a printout she didn't pay for, figuring that would only confuse the situation more). She said "WHAT???" I had no idea what she meant by that, so I just read them aloud again. Then she says, oh yeah, they did check those out. I say yes, and they were returned late, hence the fine. Surprised, she asks if a fine is the same thing as an overdue fee. I say yes. She tells me we ought to stop calling them fines and call them "overdue money," because the word fines is confusing. I mumble something incoherent about how the computer shows the fines as *OVERDUE FINES*, so all we're doing is reading aloud what the computer says. She continues to argue with me about what we should call late fees, and I finally say something to the effect of we'll try to be more clear (lying-- hardly a common problem here). She says that we'll get our money as soon as the check comes in. I say fine: pay the $2.25 or something toward it, and your daughter can use the internet again.

The mother calls either 2 or 3 more times before closing; I'm lucky this time not to be the one to take the call.

Wednesday: The daughter shows up during my shift, bearing $2.25. I say great, you're in the clear (I know I used that exact phrase), all you fines (okay, forgot to say "overdue money") are paid off, you can get on the internet this very minute if you want to. She says no, she has to go somewhere, so she can't get on right now. Sensing that mother and daughter were cut from the same cloth, I stressed again that she owed no more money. THEN I swivled the monitor around so that she could see where it said *RESOLVED* in nice bright green capital letters next to the overdue items.

Once again, I miss the phone call, but it's this girl again, a few hours later. She wants to know if her fines are paid off and if she can use the internet.

This incident has made its way into circulation desk legend. I still maintain that I had the worst encounter, having to explain the situation to the mother. A coworker claims that he had it worse because he took more of the phone calls.

You get to a point where words fail you. This happened after an 80ish year old woman threw money at me; she had made some photocopies, and she didn't like the way they came out. She was so abusive that I knocked the 15 cents charge down to a dime per page, just to get her to pay and leave. She hurled the money at me, with a few more choice comments. Getting blessed out by a tiny little grandmother woman is an unsettling experience.

A surly teenager threw a pencil at me, but I don't think she meant it very personally. She was just mad because she had to write a paper-- five whole paragraphs. Hey, I tried to be nice. The main issue was that the library's two Al Capone biographies (her research subject) were checked out, and apparently that's my fault. I showed her a book by Elliot Ness about his pursuit of Capone, plus one other book that had loads of page numbers for Capone in the index (she was 15ish, but I don't think I ever got the index idea across). Then I tried to show her the reference sources for this kind of stuff; we have a lot in the way of biographical dictionaries and major US events volumes. She refused even to look at those. She threw the pencil after she'd signed her new library card (didn't have one); it was apparently in protest of the library's policy for issuing new cards. Looking back, I'm not sure where the pencil came from. Why didn't she throw the pen? Ah, the mysteries of life.

Another good one concerns a boy who was between 7 and 9 and old enough to know better. He and his mother were checking out books, and he was making a tremendous racket. We have a jar of coins out for the Humane Society, for example, and he kept banging it up and down on the countertop. Needless to say, that was pretty noisy. Then he shook a plastic case that was holding CDs that were for sale. During all of this, the mother made no move to quiet him. I know that there are times that parents simply can't do anything, and you can't really blame the kid or the parent, but this was not one of those times. My coworker, who's got a short fuse with loud kids, told the kid to stop trying to crawl onto the counter, which is what he was doing. He did so fairly nicely. The mother did nothing. He asked again. I was standing beside the coworker, bagging the books (trying to get them out of there faster). I then tried my standard library line for kids who try to climb on the counter; 90% of the time, the kids just think it's funny: I tell them that, if they crawl on the counter, we have to check them in, put a barcode on their head, and put them on a shelf. And they can't talk to anyone, because it's the library (I only add the last part if the kid is also being loud). As I said, normally this gets at least a smile (and normally, the kids are younger than this one).

This kid just looked me straight-on and said "I hate you." (the mother did nothing)

I know I shouldn't take it personally, but getting treated like dirt all day long does tend to make you a bit sensitive. I was more taken aback than anything else, especially because the mother made not the least effort to reprimand him. I later asked my mother what she would have done to me in the library, and her answer involved not sitting down for awhile and banishment from the library.

She could have at least asked the kid to apologize. Or at least apologized for the fact that he was making enough noise to be heard across the library. Or heck, even try to stop him.

That's my story-load for the day; I have plenty of others where those came from. When teaching, I felt like the hired help; now I feel like a particularly hated slave. People practicing random acts of nastiness and all.

Reading: Bazaar
Listening: water rushing through our very loud plastic pipes
Current Obsession: I have to drink friggin' Citrucel, and it's seriously nasty.
Alice: was playing in the sink with her Uncle Toaster, who is a very bad influence on her.

Elvisette philosophized at 11:19 PM