Saturday, April 21, 2007

Observations from my perch in the library...

You know what I find insulting? Idiots. I don't care if you come up to my face and insult me 'til the cows come home (ok, well yeah I'd MIND - but at least we'd both be aware that some verbal sparring was about to occur). What really bothers me is the idiotic people who think they are so much smarter and cleverer (is this a word? If not it should be - just like "funner") than you are, that they can pull the wool over your eyes.

Take today for example. Today was uneventful until I interacted with an idiot in the library who is currently standing in the periodical section staring at me with a blank expression as to why I'm telling him to stop yelling into his cell phone in the library...is he a new patron? Oh no, we've been treated to his familiar stench before.

So anywho, he approaches me at the desk and tells me he was working on a resume on a disk, but since he lost the disk, he wondered if the computers at the library each saved a copy of his resume? Resisting a SERIOUS urge for sarcasm, I commented that "No, if you saved your file on your disk, then that's where it is". His response: "But I don't know where it is".

What do you even say to that? "Oh sorry that we at the library didn't tape it to your forehead with industrial strength duct-tape?" (Duct-tape, which by the way, would probably have dissolved upon contact with his skin, since the acidic, alcoholic stench permeating from his body is probably enough to eat through a concrete slab). I mean come on people - get at least 1/8th of a clue.

So he proceeds to further enlighten me with the details about how a friend "outlined" the resume for him, and that friend isn't here (which I NEVER would have guessed considering he was ALL ALONE at the desk!). Then he walks to a computer, sits down and turns around: "Oh, could you help me outline it?"

"Sure, of course I can!", was my gracious, librarianish (another word that needs to be added to Webster's btw) response - brownie points for me! So I get the necessary resume guides that the library has compiled and walk over to him, ready to get to work.

He's looking at ebay, at a list of like 20-odd unpaid items related to God-knows-what! So I ask him, "Are you ready to get started?", and he looks at me with a completely blank expression. Then, slowly, rustily, creakily, snail-like-ily (more adjectives that deserve a shot at official English language inclusion), he says "Oh, oh. I don't have a disk. How much are they? I don't have any money". (He says this to me with a wad of cash and broken cigarettes sprawled next to him on the table). I tell him the price, he says,"Oh...oh. Well I'll probably have to come in Monday to do that. Are you guys closed Monday for Memorial Day?".

Me: "No...not on Monday. We are closed for Memorial Day though in May...when it actually happens". Doesn't even register with him that I'm getting annoyed and he's wearing pretty damn thin on my nerves. At this point, he's half lying on the keyboard and I SWEAR TO GOD, I was watching his mouth in horror just waiting for the drool to start seeping out and infecting our technology with his grossness.

Then he gets a brilliant idea: "Oh...well could you start the outline for me on that computer over there...thanks". Andddd he goes back to investigating his delinquency on E-bay.

Thus here I am, writing this while I seriously resist the urge to throw anything that's not nailed down, at his oafy head.

What's the point of this? Idiots insult and (surprise, surprise) annoy me, and I feel the public library needs to be authorized to assign straight-jackets to anyone we deem necessary.

That's all - ta ta.

1 comment:

Jess said...

i think you just convinced me to apply for that herndon job... interacting with socially inept people is apparently what being a librarian is all about... if they were ept (continuing on with your additions to the english language) they most likely wouldn't need a librarian.