My coworkers are awesome.

Last weekend we had a patron come in wanting to check out a very expensive medical textbook. Coworker #1 looked up his account and found that his account had expired and he had two unreturned items from almost a year ago (one of them was another copy of the very same expensive textbook). She then explained to him that due to the status of his account, he could not check out the book (this was a reserve item kept behind our circulation desk). He then proceeded to reach over the counter (one of my biggest pet peeves) and grab the book anyways! Saying "oh, I'm just going to look at it anyways" and backing away all while #1 is explaining that he needs to clear up the issues with his account before he can use reserve materials.

Shortly after this, Coworker #2 came back from lunch and found out what the situation was. Keep in mind this girl is tiny - maybe 5 feet tall - always very fashionable, and wearing a classic pair of kitten heels, and she wasn't having any of it! She walked up to the patron sitting at the computer and said "sir, I'm going to have to take that book back from you" and explained once again that due to the status of his account he was not able to take the book from the reserves section. He acted innocent and gave the book back. After getting back to the desk, she realized that he hadn't complained because he was still using the CD-ROM from the book! So she marched back over to him and took the CD-ROM back too.

All of the sudden he was thanking them and being polite, meanwhile when it had been just one girl earlier in the day, he was incredibly rude and pushy. Funny how that works.

Don't mess with the little people!

PIRATES!!

I especially loved this submission because we had a very similar incident occur at my own library not too long ago. At first I wondered if the patron described below was dressing up for dress like a pirate day (talk like a pirate day?), but then realized that it probably did not exist 20 years ago when this story happened.

Last year we had an employee at my library come in to work dressed up as a pirate for what he claimed was dress like a pirate day. Staff and patrons were equally freaked out and amused! Our dress code was (and is) so slack and undefined that the supervisors couldn't even find grounds to send him home to change! So for the whole day we had a pirate sitting at our circulation desk! He had even requested to talk like a pirate as well, but that was decidedly "too much" and the supervisors wouldn't give him permission to do it.

Now, on to the story from Kerry From Everywhere:

This happened in NYC almost 20 years ago and stands out as one of the definite highlights:

I'm originally from the Midwest and this was in my first year as a librarian and in NYC. A customer walks in with a pretty standard reference question. However, he is dressed as a total pirate. And I don't mean a Long John Silver generic pirate - an actual crusty, salty pirate. And he has a similarly-attired monkey on his shoulder. Still green in the profession and not sure what to do, I shook the monkey's hand and fully answered their reference question. It was only as they walked away that I noticed that he was also sporting a full sword and scabbard attached to his hip. He had broken two rules of the library - no pets and no weapons...but he and the monkey were both such gentlemen, I'm glad that I handled it the way that I did. My parents still remember the phone call I made to them that night.