Monday, February 15, 2010

Why I'm the mean one?

We have a really obnoxious patron who thinks that we are constantly spying on his computer doings. Or that we're controlling the computer from a remote location. Or that basically we just want him to fail. Anyways, one day he came back into the library in a tizzy because he had had a letter that he had typed up "stolen". He had only gone from the library to the Kinkos across the street and he was pretty sure that another patron had "stolen" his letter. But since he had already used his logon to the computer he was not able to get back on.


The policy is that people one get one logon to the computer for up to an hour a day. So I told him this (he knows the policy, but because he always has a "problem" he always needs to get back on, so he was expecting me to let him back on.) and when he realized that I wasn't going to put him back on (mostly because I felt like ticking him off because if I wanted to I could put him back on) he became very upset and asked for the manager. Now the manager wasn't there that day and the person in charge was another LA who has been here longer than I have and she was at lunch. When I told him such he said he would wait. For 45 minutes. In front of my desk. Glaring at me the entire time.

So off I went to go "ask" the person in charge what to do, in reality I went to the break room to have a cookie. And told me coworkers how my plan was backfiring because while I do enjoy upsetting the guy, I did not want him sitting here for 45 minutes. He won. :(

I came back and sweet as pie told him that I was now authorized to put him back on the computer, so I put him back on and then I set about discussing what to do about his "stolen" material. I told him that we would be more than happy to help him file a report for this "theft". His eyes lit up! (I'm assuming that he was very excited that someone was playing in to his paranoia) So I told him, "Great! I'll call the sheriff's station and have someone come down and meet you". You know in movies when they have music playing and then something happens and it's suddenly cut and there is the sound of the record being stopped and the needle scratching sound? It was like that. "Oh no.. I don't think that we should get the sheriff involved I just want to file a report with you at the library" annnnnnnnd the backtracking begins! :) "Well," I said "we don't file theft reports so if you'd like to file a report I'm going to have to call the sheriff..." "Oh.. well.. um I don't want to accuse someone wrongly..." Now in my head I'm thinking "YOU ALREADY DID! Why? Because you're nuts!!!" "Okay! Just let me know if I can help you any more"

And of course he messed up what he was doing, he didn't follow all the prompts for printing and thought he sent his material to the print station and he didn't but he had already logged off so I had to log him back on again. And of course he thinks that this is us deleting his material because we spy on him. Oh did I mention he wrote a book? It's pretty horrible and he bullied us into adding it to the system. I don't think it's been checked out once, except for when he checks it out himself or meets someone at the branch and tells them about it and basically forces them to check it out. I've seen it happen! Usually about halfway through the conversation with him the unsuspecting patron realizes that he may be a little nuts but they don't really have a good escape from him. So they check out the book and then return it either the next day or as soon as he leaves.

Did I also mention that he has to come in and sharper 20 billion pencils on our pencil sharpener every single day? And that he then has the audacity to tell us that our pencil sharpener is not sharpening as sharp as it used to. HMMMM I wonder why? Perhaps because you sharpen a billion pencils at once, and do it every single day??! We usually respond to his complaints with "Oh.. well that's unfortunate. We would have to have a new one donated to us.." HAH!

2 comments:

shawna said...

Dealing with the public has it's PERKS! Woo-hoo...Are you going to write a kook book???? I'm walking in your shoes...but on a differ floor!
hang in there...

shawna said...

Oops that's supposed to be different floor! ;-)