Dressed to Impress

The library had quite the assortment of fashionistas today. I mean, was a third Sex and the City being filmed? Was SJP/Carrie Bradshaw being stowed away in the meeting room piled up on pillows, Botox, and martinis?

Our first contestant down the catwalk, was--well, MEEEEEEEE-OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW-- because girlfriend was looking HOT!

Ooooo, a hot mess!

Eat your heart out, Mr. Blackwell.

Is he dead? I kinda hope so, since, really, I don't feel like being sued. But, if you aren't dead, I'm a librarian, so after the student loan payment goes through, I'll give you my last five dollars, old man. If you really want blood from a turnip, I'll cut you a deal, I'll knit you a scarf for your old man neck so it doesn't get cold. Even? Good. MOVING ON.

So, hot mess girlfriend thought she had IT going ON. She strolled in the library wearing a hot pink halter top with it ALL hanging out. She even had hot pants on. She moved too fast for me to get to check out her footwear. Then again, given what was going on the chest region, who had time to check out the footwear.

Like Usher says:
Honey got them boobies like WOW WOW WOW.

Well, when you're 50 and you don't wear a bra, the WOW WOW WOW noise comes from your knees hitting the boobies. No amount of halter/support/whateveryouwanttocall it was going to help her. She wasn't in long. She must have sensed that we weren't on to her boobie/knee music jamboree.

The second individual strolled in looking like he wandered off the set of the Hangover 2. He had on a tux, with a cobalt blue vest, complete with bow tie. As he greeted everyone in the branch (I'm still not sure what this was about because at first I thought he was a politician, then I realized he was probably just nuts), I noticed a few teef up front missing. See, Hangover Part 2. He wasn't in the library for very long either, he needed to get his "papers" and then left. Whatever that meant. I'm not sure who walks into a library wearing a tux, says hi to everyone, then announces loudly that he needs "papers" and then leaves, but I don't care because it's funny.

The third dominatrix to stroll down our catwalk was the loveliest of them all. She insisted: "Sista, you give me two crisp dollar bills" through her mouth of no teeth while she jangled her change.

Now, let me add the disclaimer in here before the American Dental Association and every other hippie dippy nonsensical lovechild comes after me to tell me that I hate people with no teeth. Or that I hate poor people. Or that I hate: (FILL IN THE BLANK).

Here's what I hate: I hate people that are persistent jerks and rude. I have perfectly sweet and lovely patrons with the worst teeth on this planet, or, in some cases, no teeth. But, perfectly sweet and lovely patrons don't make good blog stories. So, before you get your panties in a camel toe or ruin those fancy WalMart tighty whities, think about that or just stop reading, ok?

Now that I have stepped off my soapbox and back on to the runway, Miss Crackhead America 2010 DEMANDED that this SISTA (I'm white, can I be a SISTA?) give her two crisp bills. To humor her, I looked in the change bin and till to see what we had. We didn't have the bills and the till was low on change.

Do you know what Miss Crackhead America 2010 had the nerve to do?

Roll her eyes at me and tell me I'm a fucking bitch.

Yes, I got a master's degree for this.

I'm actually telling myself that it's just the full moon. Because, I already drank a fifth of vodka this week. I'd like to not pickle my liver by the time I'm 50.

A Day in the LIFE OF HELL: or, the Pope gets less phone calls than me

8:33 Roll on out the door. God, it's humid. Like, so humid the slugs are still out from last night. There is one STICKING ON the door. Little bastard.
9:20 Stuck in traffic. Why? Apparently, today is a good day to unleash three vanloads of society's dregs in the form of community service monkeys. This is enough to completely stop traffic while these jackasses pick up pieces of paper from the highway. Thanks for stopping this productive member of society from getting to work on time.
9:33 Roll on in to work. Try to get into the building. Have 30 seconds to put in security code. Keypad isn't allowing my numbers to be put in. No beeping noises.
9:33.30 Aaaaaaaaaaaand, the alarm goes off. Lights are flashings. Alarm is blaring. Sirens are whirring. Hrm, now I know what those community service paper pickers feel like, except, you know, without the life of crime part.
9:40 Scramble with multiple phone calls to mulitple people. Hold hope that I might get to talk to a hot cop and get a free donut.
9:46 Alarm is off. No hot cops. No free donuts. Goddammit.
10:07 Miss America strolls in late. She comes up with some insane story that her husband's ex was stalking her and tried to run her over with her car. Ummmmmm. I don't care. You're late. You're in write-up territory. Great. One more fucking thing I need to do.
10:22 Woman approaches the desk, all huffy because computers are down for an upgrade. Yes, because I personally picked this time for an upgrade to make your life difficult. She wants to know why HUD doesn't have specific regulations for sexual harrassment of senior citizens. I DON'T KNOW! I didn't write the regulations. So, I went on to HUD's website like a good reference librarian monkey for her and got her HUD guidelines and printed them for her and she made THE FACE. I'm assuming the face was because this didn't have the exact piece of information she wanted in the 8 page brochure. I'm also assuming that the face was a result of my not being able to find seniors and sexual harrassment all rolled into one and because I just didn't look like I was sympathizing with her plight because I had two phone calls and another person waiting to ask me a question. I'm busy. I'm not mean. I'm busy. I worked 12 hours yesterday and almost had a nervous breakdown. I'm tired and bitchy and don't fucking CARE and if if was up to me, I'd be drinking vodka for breakfast, so take your fucking PAMPHLET and get the fuck out of my face.
10:49 My nice, great staff person approaches me to tell me I have a phone call. When don't I have a phone call? I think the Pope gets less phone calls. I need a publicist. Nonetheless, another call comes in, so I run to another desk to grab this call and find that this is a lady who needs to do community service for godonlyknowswhatshedid and wants to do it here. The really funny thing is that she goes into this long story about how she's been trying to get in touch with me and that she needs to do 20 hours by the end of the month. Luckily, I have been trained in dealing with epic loads of bullshit for the past 5 years so I didn't laugh in her face. Sure, I'll take someone that needs to do community service and let you into a library and have free reign with kids and money and materials and everything. Suuuuuuuure. I nicely turned her down, telling her I had too many things going on. She asked about July. I wasn't about to tell her I have a two week vacation coming up and that I'd rather burn in hell than let her loose in a library without my supervision, so I told her to just try another system. She said she did and they also said no. Lady, get the hint.

Stay tuned for more adventures. I've been here 1.5 hours and I already want a drink.

Library Management 101

Here are reasons to call your manager on a day off:
-the building caught on fire
-someone died
-the mayor showed up for a visit and things went well
-the director showed up for a visit and praised the staff
-a drug bust went down in the men's bathroom
-an employee stood up in the middle of story time and decide that 10 pages into Lola goes to the library, it was time to quit the library.

Here are reasons NOT to call your manager on a day off:
-to report what was served for lunch during feed a kid day
-to report how many kids showed up for a program
-to ask why we are out of tape
-to wonder what happened to that one guy that used to work here 10 years ago
-to ask where we keep the calculators. YOU ARE IN THE LIBRARY. I'M RUNNING AROUND DOING ERRANDS. I'M DRIVING. ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR EVER LOVIN' MIND?!?!?!??!?!

And now, now, now, my phone rings because some dumbfuck forgets to show up for work. You were supposed to be at work at 1 and now it's 4 and you wonder why I drink, Barb. How do you forget to show up for work? Are you kidding me?

Who's Barb?

Barb, Barb Lahey. If you haven't watched the Trailer Park Boys, I highly recommend it. I'm a little bit Jim Lahey, a little bit Julian, a little bit Bubbles.

I'd give you more information, but I have to go scream at someone now. But, someone not showing up for work, well, yeah, that's a reason to call.

Now, if I could predict lottery numbers like I predict this bullshit, I'd be sleeping on a pile of money and Louis Vuitton. Well, not him, because he's dead, but his bags.

Cookies, cookies, cookies, & some lieberry news sprinkled in

Every time there is a library program, the de rigueur is to serve shitty cookies; well, at least in my library it is.

"Free cookies and punch."

"Cookies will be served."

"Punch and cookies will be provided after the program." (So, you have to stay to get the cookies. Tricky, tricky.)

Then, there is the ever elusive, "Light refreshments will be served." Oh, bullshit. That's just code for "We'd really like to be creative, but we don't have money, so you're going to get those stupid shitty cookies that they sell at WalMart in giant sleeves for $2.50 in either chocolate or vanilla and you're going to eat it and like it because everyone else is and you'll just cave to peer pressure, you fucking loser."

Wouldn't it behoove libraries to have less programming shoved down our patrons throats and instead, more QUALITY programming? And on that note, instead of serving 10 shitty cookies to each patron, what about a nice turkey sandwich?



"You wanna sandwich buddy? Mmmmm, we'll even give you mustard." Maybe we can work to get the Condiment Library Lady a lesser sentence if she can provide the library with 10,000 hours of community service. She'd be happy: she can spend those hours flinging mayo and mustard and ketchup. Oooooo, you know, she could even do library security. She looks rough. If patrons get out of hand, we could keep those giant jars of food service grade mayo around and goop 'em. If patrons are good, then patrons would have stuff to put on their sandwiches. And if the kids get out of line and piss on the building because there are no more shitty cookies, you ain't gonna mess with this bitch.

Piss: the Final Frontier

In the past two weeks, there have been four separate incidents of piss.

Should I consider this an upgrade?

Before, I had to deal with a chair shitter that robbed 17 year olds of money that they earned from their part-time mall job money.

The first piss incident was on my first day at my new branch. I walked in, noticed a wet floor sign, asked what was wrong, and had an employee casually tell me: "OH, a little girl peed there on Saturday."

Great. So, piss was baking into the floor all weekend. Mmmmm, mmmm, remind me to buy stock in Febreeze now.

The second incident was a day later when Mom of the Year was too busy on MySpace (really, people still use MySpace? Face Book is on the downward spiral and you're still on MySpace? Why don't you go buy some acid washed jeans, get some aqua colored plastic frames and watch the Karate Kid. Oh, wait...) to notice that little toddler (gender undetermined) needed to take a piss. So, the kid pissed on the nice, fabric-covered, padded chair. Absorbent.

The third incident is foggy, but involved piss and possibly some shit, because, whooooohoooooo, what's a story without feces!?!? Mom was young and busy with four other kids and failed to really pay attention to the ticking time bomb that was in the little boy's diaper. Apparently, it had been some time since the diaper had been changed, since, when they came into the library, the smell was pretty ripe. I scrunched my nose in yuckiness and sprayed air freshener.

About two hours later, I noticed the group still in the library. They looked like they were about to leave. Of course, how could they leave without a gift for their favorite librarian? There was a little droplet or 20 in the (thankfully plastic) chair and something brown.

The finale is that today, when a kid was just acting up and being bad and stupid and irritating and GOD SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE LIBRARY YOU LITTLE CROTCH DROPPING, he got mad because we told him his behavior was unacceptable and he had to leave. We did not call him a crotch dropping. Administration frowns upon that. The kid was so mad that he had to leave that he decided to piss all over the sidewalk and windows.

I hope you got some relief from taking that piss, kid, because it's going to be a long, hot, summer out there without air and computers. Your ass isn't coming back in until fall. Why? Because I hate you and I can do that to you. Do it again and it's going to be a really long fall without any computers. Your entertainment is going to be counting your piss droplets in the community pool. Good luck with that, you little asshole.