One of my colleagues had a similar problem: she'd sit at the reference desk poring over a text book written for wannabe security officers. I remember it was full of facial outlines: heart-shaped, triangular, square....only even more detailed than that, with varieties of facial hair, eye shapes, ears, etc. I've looked at face-types to figure out haircuts and necklines, but law enforcement ID's are a whole nother ball of wax. I glanced through the rest of the book, but it clearly called for a level of observation that will forever elude me. Sherlock Holmes I ain't.
I am, however, excellent at laying down the law consistently and telling people, "I'm sorry you've chosen to leave." Sadly, I forgot that phraseology the other day, reverting to the rhetoric I once used for the Kids From Hell. They were a group of tweens who lived across the street from the library. It was a blended family; the father was a long-distance truck driver, the mother worked in a store, and the kids were left in charge of the 10-year-old. This was apparently legal, per CSD, but it certainly wasn't effective. They would descend upon us at intervals throughout the day. Books were not on their agenda. I remember once they snitched post-its from the desk and papered the branch with them, creating a scavenger hunt. Sam, the oldest boy, was mouthy and a bully, but I had a soft spot for him: he was so bored and so lonely. And he had some good points. For instance, he used to help our elderly volunteer R with her yard. And, I remember seeing him once with his father: he was beaming and clearly looking for attention and approval. He was a different kid.
However, I did not have the time or expertise to be the de facto babysitter, and other patrons were under attack from the noise and chaos. I placed numerous calls with CSD and with the mother, trying to get someone to take responsibility for them. But in the final analysis it was up to me: "Okay, you're outta here! I don't care who did it, you're all outta here. We'll see you tomorrow."
And that's what I said the other day. A group of 6 tweens and teens had been roaming the library for 2 hours and were finally bunched up around two computers, laughing and talking so I could hear them at the desk. I went up to them, pointed out the computer sign that said "1 person per computer" and asked the standees to separate and leave the area, as they were being disruptive to other customers. They plopped in the comfy chairs nearby, and as I walked away one of them said, "Bitch."
I don't take that from anyone. Or, this case, 6 anyones.
But that's such small potatoes, compared to the Problem Patrons in my past. There was The Crawler, who used to literally crawl around the perimeter of the building, looking at the books on the bottom shelves, grunting and mumbling. He took a swing at me once when I asked him to keep his voice down. This was in the days when "exclusions" were rare and we didn't have the triplicate form with numbered rules. Usually staff were expected to suck it up, and often they were not-so-subtly suspected of inciting the incident. Or at least, not de-escalating properly. I can't recall if he was excluded. I know he shouted "leave me alone!" and staggered out of the building.
In those innocent days, the Dictionary Man used to stand at the huge Webster's dictionary on the table by the circulation desk, leering over the book at the desk staff. He was short, with oily grizzled hair curled at the neck and swept across the brow, and dark thick arched eyebrows, perfect for peering under. He must have been in his fifties. He was considered creepy but harmless until he approached some young girls and asked them "how they'd like to be buried." I told him he'd need to leave for the day and he launched into a mumbling tirade, only part of which I could understand, "Why don't you move to Boise, Idaho?" My current massage therapist is moving there, and before I wrote this I was trying to figure out why I was so horror-struck at the thought: reportedly it's a nice town in a beautiful mountain-ringed area. But if the Dictionary Man thinks it's a bad place, it must be.
He was excluded, but his mother got him dispensation.
Not all the troubled souls got excluded. Chris, an autistic young man about my 10 years my junior, used to come striding it 5 minutes to closing to pull out the Encyclopedia Britannica (for some reason Compton's and Americana left him cold.) I'd approach to let him know we were closing and he would jump and stammer, pointing at the clock. Later, however, he stopped being scared of me and came in earlier in the day to call plangent greetings from the door. Hi, K! Hi Chris. How are you? Fine Chris. It's a nice day! Yes it is. Several years later I transferred to another branch, only to discover that he'd become a regular there. He was delighted to see me.
And there was the male cross-dresser who claimed to be a federal agent and handed us a purple construction paper ID cards demanding that we issue his library card in that (female) name. Eventually we caved, because she got so agitated, and because she was clearly not going to try to get multiple cards under various pseudonyms. She used to photocopy documents and then write on them with ball-point pens, hard enough to gouge the tables beneath. We had to talk to her about that. The local police kept an eye on her because she was so strong and once when she was agitated she pulled the doors off a local church. But, I felt that she was actually using the library in a meaningful way, and I didn't want her to lose that resource.
Len (AKA Gary) and Sven were another matter. They were brothers (we think) who lived under the bushes in Laurelhurst Park, This put them on the main crosstown bus line to 3 busy libraries, one of them mine. They had numerous aliases, and they logged into computers at each library, jumping on abandoned logins, stealing login IDs, borrowing other people's cards. And when they were on the computer, they were looking at porn. If you confronted them about the identity theft, they got belligerent, both physically and verbally. One of my colleagues dreamed of going to the Park some fine night with a baseball bat. Each of the branches maintained a dossier on these gents: this was before the days of the intranet wall of shame, where you could scan pix and security logs for excluded individuals and get them for trespassing.
Angry Carpenter Guy limited his visits to the library that had quiet rooms. He would hop into empty rooms without signing in, in order to extend his quiet room time. And he would hover over the signup sheet, waiting for the 10-minute grace period to expire so he could sneak in. His moniker came from the fact that his face was in a perpetual scowl, and he wore carpenter jeans and plaid shirts and tough boots. His hair was long and lank and mousy brown, sometimes straggling down his shoulders, sometimes tied back. His blue eyes were deep set and intense. You really didn't want to mess with him.
Several years later, I was subbing at a library in another county and looked up to see him glaring at the study room sign-up sheet. I called my ex-colleagues and asked if they had driven him out. No, he was patronizing both establishments.
Of course, we were not supposed to use these nicknames, but they were irresistible. I figured, as long as the incident logs used formal names, we were fine.
Chloe did not have a nickname. Her idiosyncrasies were too diverse to limit to one name. She was known at many branches. She was reportedly an ex-Rockette (or maybe that was a staff joke?), and knew Clark Gable. I can't remember whom she was related to. Queen Elizabeth II? The Rothschilds? She was tiny, with bunned white hair, thin orange-white old skin, Tammy Fay Baker eyeliner, and excellently cut suits with frilly blouses. Her genealogical research was heavily skewed to pictures, which she printed out and cut and filed away. (I shudder to recall her reaction when we stopped offering color printouts.) Normally she approached with a smile and a little-girl voice. With the male staff she was positively flirtatious, but when she was unhappy her darkly lined eyelids would slant downward, her mouth would pout, and her gaze would go steely. The voice remained little-girl, with an incongruous angry rasp.
These were regulars, but they were not the reason I became the Queen of Incident Reports. It was the almost daily run-ins with less colorful characters that gave me the expertise. The branch I worked at from 2003-2009 was near the Max line and on the outskirts of a very busy business strip. The homeless folks lived in the bushes by the line and hopped the Max around the city. Regular security incidents followed the line.
My branch had the usual porn watchers. Other than child porn, it was considered protected speech unless the watcher engaged in other behavior: like the teen who brought in his own lotion and proceeded to masturbate at the computer station. (When he was excluded for 6 months, he said, "I'll go to the Clackamas County library.)
So, porn was not the issue, although we spent a lot of time replacing privacy screens and relocating shocked patrons. It was the other behavior: shooting up in the bathroom and stealing DVDs to support the meth habit. Leaving the dog tied up at the bike rack by the door, ignoring his barking and lunging at people who approached. Cutting toenails while waiting for the computer. Shouting on the cell phone and then shouting at staff who intervened. Having "an odor associated with you." The nearby high school was the breeding ground for several reports, because they'd bring their school fights down the street to the library. We had the vice principal on speed dial. Once a fight spilled into the staff workroom. L, a tall scarecrow figure, channeled a cop and barked "Take it outside!" while the rest of the staff were frozen deer in the headlights.
I don't miss those days one little bit, although it's nice to know I haven't lost my skills.
You were always good with problem patrons. I was in awe. I won't say 'boo' to a goose.
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