The Regulars: Wig Lady and Albert
It may not come as much of a surprise but the library attracts a lot of seniors. My library also happens to be located only a few blocks from several seniors homes. Most of them are quiet, polite and don’t make much of a mess. Generally speaking, they’re the best behaved so the least noticeable. Hey, if you want to stand out at the library, you need to be a special brand of weird. Wig Lady and Albert are a good example of this. Don’t ask me how we know they’re brother and sister. I’m not sure. I’m not even sure if it’s true but it’s something that everyone at the library just “knows”. Same goes for how

Helpful: The opposite of what you’re being
There is a lot of information that is incredibly helpful in my job. Unfortunately, it seems like that is the information I am lease likely to receive. So here is a handy list of things that aren’t going to help me at all. “I’m looking for a book.” Followed immediately with “called ***” or “with this call number” this is exactly right. On its own, followed by a blank stare this is the least helpful thing you could say. “My teacher said there was some reserve stuff here.”* Not only is this a poorly constructed sentence, it also fails to provide me with any useful information. &

The seat on the chair goes up and down, up and down, up and down…
This morning one of my co-workers was telling me about another woman who works here. Apparently she was sitting kind of funny and so she asked her about it. She was sitting on two phone books because her chair was too low. Her chair was too low because she didn’t know that you have to get off the chair for the “up/down” lever to make the chair go up. Some days it’s not just the students… -Late Fines.

You don’t want me to answer that
“There are no stupid questions.” Not true. I believe that saying should be “there is no end to stupid questions”. Believe me, I know. I work in a library. When you work in a library and the #1 most asked question is “where are all the books?” you know that there are stupid questions. Lots of them. From lots of stupid people. (One professor actually asked how to get out of the library. You use the same doors as you used to come it, the ones ten feet from where he was asking.) There are two terminals at the front desk. For parts of the day it’s not odd for there to be only one person on the desk, leaving one terminal

Yes, I mean THOSE books
We have security gates at the library, like most libraries these days. Mostly because people like to steal things and we like to have our things not stolen. There is a bit of a flaw in this system however – the sensors that are supposed to be set off when someone is stealing our books are also set off by lots of other things. Mostly, and least surprising of all, by books from other place. So when someone is coming in to or going out of the library and they set the gate off we try to stop them and ask if they have any books. Apparently “book” is too ambiguous a word because 9 times out of 10, unless they’ve just left the borrowing desk, t