Librarians' Corner
By wrackingmybrains (our newest contributer)
I like to think of the library where I work as a friendly place where the patrons, or ‘Readers’ as we call them in the trade, (rather hopefully, considering most of them only come in to use Internet!) can feel at home. But some of them take making themselves at home a bit far!
Take Amelia-Anne,* a six-foot-something hermaphrodite call-girl who has apparently always thought of herself as female despite her enormous size, muscley legs and slightly thinning hair. She visits the library at least once a day, often waiting on the step in the morning for us to open the doors at eleven. She then proceeds to spend the day flitting between computers (I’m not quite sure how as each Reader is only supposed to get an hour a day of computer-time) conducting various complicated and bizarre business via email, while regaling the staff and other Readers with frequent reports on her progress.
A few examples of her recent activities:
1/ Changing her surname from Shaw to Chang
2/ Doing an online Chinese course (this caused some difficulties as we don’t have the Chinese character-pack installed on the computers)
3/ Buying a giant futon with mock-ivory legs in the shape of elephants
4/ Returning the giant futon because it didn’t fit in her flat
5/ Selling her life-story to various trashy magazines (she then showed me the story and pictures in Closer; Headline: ‘I’m a call-girl but I’m half-boy’)
6/ Writing to her lawyer about suing the trashy magazines because they ‘misrepresented’ her.
Amelia-Anne’s personal sagas are entertaining enough for a bored library assistant (although I think the other Readers get pretty sick of her hogging the computers) but her attitude is rather annoying. She really does treat the library as a second home, or, more accurately, a hotel:
“Eve,” she whines in her affected sweet-little-girl voice, “my throat is dry. Can you bring me some water up from the staff room?”
And I do. We’re soft touches, us library staff; our fierce reputation is completely undeserved.
*Names, apart from my own, will be changed.
I like to think of the library where I work as a friendly place where the patrons, or ‘Readers’ as we call them in the trade, (rather hopefully, considering most of them only come in to use Internet!) can feel at home. But some of them take making themselves at home a bit far!
Take Amelia-Anne,* a six-foot-something hermaphrodite call-girl who has apparently always thought of herself as female despite her enormous size, muscley legs and slightly thinning hair. She visits the library at least once a day, often waiting on the step in the morning for us to open the doors at eleven. She then proceeds to spend the day flitting between computers (I’m not quite sure how as each Reader is only supposed to get an hour a day of computer-time) conducting various complicated and bizarre business via email, while regaling the staff and other Readers with frequent reports on her progress.
A few examples of her recent activities:
1/ Changing her surname from Shaw to Chang
2/ Doing an online Chinese course (this caused some difficulties as we don’t have the Chinese character-pack installed on the computers)
3/ Buying a giant futon with mock-ivory legs in the shape of elephants
4/ Returning the giant futon because it didn’t fit in her flat
5/ Selling her life-story to various trashy magazines (she then showed me the story and pictures in Closer; Headline: ‘I’m a call-girl but I’m half-boy’)
6/ Writing to her lawyer about suing the trashy magazines because they ‘misrepresented’ her.
Amelia-Anne’s personal sagas are entertaining enough for a bored library assistant (although I think the other Readers get pretty sick of her hogging the computers) but her attitude is rather annoying. She really does treat the library as a second home, or, more accurately, a hotel:
“Eve,” she whines in her affected sweet-little-girl voice, “my throat is dry. Can you bring me some water up from the staff room?”
And I do. We’re soft touches, us library staff; our fierce reputation is completely undeserved.
*Names, apart from my own, will be changed.
posted by bitingmylip at 4:41 AM
1 Comments:
I am so intrigued by this Amelia-Anne I am tempted to go through all old issues of Closer to see what (s)he looks like. Also, why the surname change? I always knew librarians must meet all sorts of nutters.
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