Remember when I promised to stop rambling?
I lied.
New topic, though - well, sort of. Politics, this time, sparked by a conversation at kippurbird's LJ.
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1120-10.htm has one of the best rebuttals of the idea of the "Christian nation" that I've seen yet. It's even got an explanation for where they got the notion that English common law (upon which our laws are somewhat loosely based) is based on Biblical law. (Big surprise, somebody mistranslated and the religious types jumped all over it and spread it all over, despite it being disproven repeatedly. And are still doing so. Sounds like the stories about pagans being involved in ritual child abuse - even thirty years after the freaking FBI investigated the allegations and found nothing they're still telling those stories about us.)
In work news - a note to the lady who was at Branch right before (and after dammit) closing:
Dear Mrs Waaaah,
I appreciate the fact that when you discovered that your account was blocked you did not rant, curse, yell or threaten. I appreciate even more that you brought the overdue books back they were in perfect condition. However, the fact remains that your child kept half a dozen of our books out for literally months past their due date. The fact that you claim that you never got an overdue notice does not change that fact, something that you yourself admitted.
However, when you signed yourself and your children up for library cards, you signed a legal contract. Nowhere in that legal contract does it state that we are obligated to send you overdue notices. It does, however, state that you are responsible for returning your books - and your child's books - two weeks after checkout. Overdue notices are a courtesy which we extend to you because we do understand that sometimes people forget or get distracted. IF they did not in fact get to you - and I can tell you from personal experience that they don't send out said notices only once, and you yourself confirmed that we had the correct mailing address - that does not change the fact that you did in fact keep the books far longer than you were allowed, nor does it obligate us to reduce or eliminate your overdue fines.
When you tried to convince C to do so, you were trying to get her to break our stated legal contract with you, to make an exception with no evidence besides your bare word that you had not received the courtesy notifications that are, by the way, sent out from Atlanta, not from our library. She did you the kindness of calling me in, as her superior, to see if there was any way to resolve the conflict, rather than telling you flat-out that no amount of whining was going to change the fact that you had not met your obligation and you were now required to pay.
Books are the currency of the library, and you now owed interest on the loan. Those books were from one of the most popular children's series we have, and there have undoubtedly been a number of little girls who came to the library hoping to borrow them and returned home disappointed because of your irresponsibility. Bet you never considered that, did you? Or maybe you just don't care.
Either way, I did you the courtesy - because you were being polite - of calling XO, who is the assistant director of the library system. She confirmed that the fact that you didn't bother to keep track of the due date you were given when you checked out the books - and the fact that you didn't bother to notice that the books in question were sitting around for months - is no excuse for not returning your books. You could have called the library and renewed them (although not for this long) or returned them to the library, or had someone else return them for you in the unlikely event that you were unable to come to the library in your spiffy SUV.
If you want to go to Boss over this, feel free. But you're not getting a damn cent taken off your fine just because you don't want to take responsibility for your carelessness.
You say that "there were two people at fault here". No. There was one - YOU.
No love,
The librarian who had to stay fifteen minutes after closing to deal with your whining
Also, I have rarely been so glad that my sense of smell has never been particularly good as I was when a certain gentleman came in asking for us to get him a form to request his birth certificate. Apparently, the welfare office told him that we could print one out for him, which we were quite happy to do. However, I have rarely seen anyone as filthy as he was.
I'm not talking "been out in the fields grubbing in the dirt all day" dirt - this area is agricultural, I'm used to that. I'm not talking "been in an accident and wound up in a ditch, and haven't had a chance to clean up" dirt - I've seen that too. I'm talking caked on, ground in, makes-me-scared-of-what-I-might-catch-if-I-touch-him dirt, dirt so bad that even his black leather jacket was visibly dirty... and it takes a lot to make black leather biker jackets look dirty.
Okay, he was obviously not rich. We could tell that before he even mentioned welfare, just as we could tell that the biker jacket wasn't just for show. But we are in the rural southeast here - drought or not, I know a half-dozen places where someone could park his bike, follow the stream down around a bend, and take an admittedly-cold bath in perfect safety. It's not like the city where pretty much all the water sources are contained or contaminated. It's even been nice weather for the last few days - 70+ Fahrenheit is plenty warm enough for an outdoor bath.
Basic hygiene. If you want a job, you might want to look into it. If you want a handout... well, first you have to have an address, and even the shelters have sanitation standards.
Oh, and I wound up having to read to the kiddies at storytime today because J, who normally does it, is recovering from a cold and C ate something she was allergic to at lunch and her throat was sore. I was the only one there who could talk normally.
This whole week has had all the crazies, oddballs and troublemakers deciding that they just had to come to the library. I know it's not the full moon - wonder if it's something in the water?
New topic, though - well, sort of. Politics, this time, sparked by a conversation at kippurbird's LJ.
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1120-10.htm has one of the best rebuttals of the idea of the "Christian nation" that I've seen yet. It's even got an explanation for where they got the notion that English common law (upon which our laws are somewhat loosely based) is based on Biblical law. (Big surprise, somebody mistranslated and the religious types jumped all over it and spread it all over, despite it being disproven repeatedly. And are still doing so. Sounds like the stories about pagans being involved in ritual child abuse - even thirty years after the freaking FBI investigated the allegations and found nothing they're still telling those stories about us.)
In work news - a note to the lady who was at Branch right before (and after dammit) closing:
Dear Mrs Waaaah,
I appreciate the fact that when you discovered that your account was blocked you did not rant, curse, yell or threaten. I appreciate even more that you brought the overdue books back they were in perfect condition. However, the fact remains that your child kept half a dozen of our books out for literally months past their due date. The fact that you claim that you never got an overdue notice does not change that fact, something that you yourself admitted.
However, when you signed yourself and your children up for library cards, you signed a legal contract. Nowhere in that legal contract does it state that we are obligated to send you overdue notices. It does, however, state that you are responsible for returning your books - and your child's books - two weeks after checkout. Overdue notices are a courtesy which we extend to you because we do understand that sometimes people forget or get distracted. IF they did not in fact get to you - and I can tell you from personal experience that they don't send out said notices only once, and you yourself confirmed that we had the correct mailing address - that does not change the fact that you did in fact keep the books far longer than you were allowed, nor does it obligate us to reduce or eliminate your overdue fines.
When you tried to convince C to do so, you were trying to get her to break our stated legal contract with you, to make an exception with no evidence besides your bare word that you had not received the courtesy notifications that are, by the way, sent out from Atlanta, not from our library. She did you the kindness of calling me in, as her superior, to see if there was any way to resolve the conflict, rather than telling you flat-out that no amount of whining was going to change the fact that you had not met your obligation and you were now required to pay.
Books are the currency of the library, and you now owed interest on the loan. Those books were from one of the most popular children's series we have, and there have undoubtedly been a number of little girls who came to the library hoping to borrow them and returned home disappointed because of your irresponsibility. Bet you never considered that, did you? Or maybe you just don't care.
Either way, I did you the courtesy - because you were being polite - of calling XO, who is the assistant director of the library system. She confirmed that the fact that you didn't bother to keep track of the due date you were given when you checked out the books - and the fact that you didn't bother to notice that the books in question were sitting around for months - is no excuse for not returning your books. You could have called the library and renewed them (although not for this long) or returned them to the library, or had someone else return them for you in the unlikely event that you were unable to come to the library in your spiffy SUV.
If you want to go to Boss over this, feel free. But you're not getting a damn cent taken off your fine just because you don't want to take responsibility for your carelessness.
You say that "there were two people at fault here". No. There was one - YOU.
No love,
The librarian who had to stay fifteen minutes after closing to deal with your whining
Also, I have rarely been so glad that my sense of smell has never been particularly good as I was when a certain gentleman came in asking for us to get him a form to request his birth certificate. Apparently, the welfare office told him that we could print one out for him, which we were quite happy to do. However, I have rarely seen anyone as filthy as he was.
I'm not talking "been out in the fields grubbing in the dirt all day" dirt - this area is agricultural, I'm used to that. I'm not talking "been in an accident and wound up in a ditch, and haven't had a chance to clean up" dirt - I've seen that too. I'm talking caked on, ground in, makes-me-scared-of-what-I-might-catch-if-I-touch-him dirt, dirt so bad that even his black leather jacket was visibly dirty... and it takes a lot to make black leather biker jackets look dirty.
Okay, he was obviously not rich. We could tell that before he even mentioned welfare, just as we could tell that the biker jacket wasn't just for show. But we are in the rural southeast here - drought or not, I know a half-dozen places where someone could park his bike, follow the stream down around a bend, and take an admittedly-cold bath in perfect safety. It's not like the city where pretty much all the water sources are contained or contaminated. It's even been nice weather for the last few days - 70+ Fahrenheit is plenty warm enough for an outdoor bath.
Basic hygiene. If you want a job, you might want to look into it. If you want a handout... well, first you have to have an address, and even the shelters have sanitation standards.
Oh, and I wound up having to read to the kiddies at storytime today because J, who normally does it, is recovering from a cold and C ate something she was allergic to at lunch and her throat was sore. I was the only one there who could talk normally.
This whole week has had all the crazies, oddballs and troublemakers deciding that they just had to come to the library. I know it's not the full moon - wonder if it's something in the water?