Monday, September 8, 2008

slathered in hand sanitizer

a man approaches the desk and tosses a CD down in front of me. "i found this in the machine," he says, "it belongs to you guys."
"what machine?" i ask. i ask this politely and without any hint of accusation. i'm merely trying to get an understanding of what is going on. i am not a technologically saavy gal, per se, but i'm going to make a stab in the dark here and say that there are many many machines out there in the big scary high tech world.
"it was in the machine," he says again, growing impatient with me.
"well," i ask, "was this item checked out to you? what machine are we talking about?"
"what difference does it make?!" he begins shouting as he backs away from the desk. "you want it or not?! it belongs to your library!"
"sir," i say calmly (i love calling crazy people 'sir'), "i am merely attempting to understand where the CD came from."
and then he walks off muttering to himself. i also like it when crazy people walk off muttering to themselves.
at this point i look at the CD and i notice it is very dirty, specifically in that i-don't-know-where-this-thing-has-been kind of dirty. so i pick it up by the edges and bring it to my assistant manager, since he is in charge of CDs. i retell the story and when he takes the CD from me he notices how dirty it is. as i'm walking back to me desk i hear him shout to a nearby coworker "eww, it's covered in that roach .... "
now, i did not hear the end of the sentence, nor do i want to. was it covered in roach droppings? roach hairs? roach saliva? i don't care. i have pretty much poured an entire bottle of hand sanitizer on myself, so i think i'm okay. i hope.
but if anyone was planning on surprising me with a thoughtful gift ... hand sanitizer. i've now run out.

3 comments:

ryan said...

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

Miss Dewey Decimal said...

ryan manning, let me tell you a little bit about librarians. typically, we believe in free speech. we guard first amendment rights and fight censorship. i do not want to have to approve all comments. nor do i want to have to delete someone's comments. so instead of infringing on your rights to free speech, i will merely ask you politely to stop clogging up my blog with your idiotic comments. thank you.

ryan said...

i apologize for being untoward