**Warning: This Blog Has Been Hijacked!**

Hi.

I am a frequent patron of the liberry, and I have hijacked this blog to get a message to all you liberrians out there who make it so hard for patrons to use the liberry. Your service is so poor that you can’t possibly be aware that you suck so much. I’m here to tell you what you need to do to make the liberry better.

First, the liberry needs software that will tell me what movie I’m thinking of when I don’t know the title, don’t know what it’s about, don’t know any of the actors in it, don’t know when it was made, and don’t know where I heard about it. You should be able to search for stuff with nothing to go on. Someone needs to make computers to help me when I’m looking for something like this. You’re all computer-y people. Why can’t you do this?

If I call the reference desk during a moment of sobriety between my lengthy fugue states (as Dr. Lang likes to call them) and ask you to hold that movie I finally remembered, holding it for only three days for me is not long enough. There’s no telling how long it will be before I’ll remember to come to the liberry, and then I won’t remember why, so until I can remember how to get to the library, what I need from it, and if I have some kind of I.D. with me when I get there, you should have that movie waiting for me. Even if it’s been three years. It’s not like you have other patrons who might want it, and even if you do, I’m more important.

There should be some kind of list you can print out of all the items I’ve checked out. This should be available so that I can consult my records and figure out if I’m checking out an item I have already checked out before. Do you have any idea how irritating it is to drive all the way to the library, search the shelves without any clue as to what I’m looking for, guess, check it out for free, drive all the way home, and then realize this is a book I’ve read before? It pisses me off! I am willing to admit that there isn’t a good way for the library to know if I actually read the book that I checked out, but for now, just handing me a list of all my checkouts each time I enter would be great.

Without having a printout of all the items I’ve ever checked out (throughout my life, I should add), you should at least provide some kind of list for me to check off the items I’ve already had. A list of books and a list of movies would be great. I realize you have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of movies, and that list would be really long, but if you could separate it by types of movies I like, that is what I really want. Basically, if you could make a list of what each of your patrons likes so that they know what to look for when they come in, that would make me happy.

These are things you need to work on.

But I know change is difficult. I bet some of your staff might not want to provide all of this service. But you need to look long and hard at these liberrians, like the one who looked at me like I’d lost my mother-fucking-mind when I suggested these things. Her attitude was not open as it should be. Telling me it’s my responsibility to keep track of items I checked out, if that’s important to me, is mean. She did not need to laugh at my ideas, tell me that I was wrong for expecting you to read minds, and walk away when I told her that my demands weren’t that hard if she was interested in providing good customer service. She should attend some kind of seminar that teaches the American value system of the Customer is Always Right.

Another of your librarians treated me with a little more manners when she asked me not to shout my demands across the building while I was sitting in one of your comfortable chairs and didn’t want to get up to ask her to find things for me. I realize that barking at people 50 feet away is not polite, but if you’re going to make the furniture comfortable, it should have wheels so that I can slide over to her and talk quieter. That’s another good idea you should work on.

And while I’m at it, why can’t you just deliver all of this to my house so that I don’t have to carry it all to my car? Do you know how heavy books can be? Do you know how much gas costs? You shouldn’t make me drive five whole blocks to the building so that I can get reading material for my children. I see you all sitting at your desks, typing at your computers, and I know you’re not doing anything important. You should be delivering my books. Or you should be putting wheels on the chairs and couches. Or you should be making computers to do all of the things I want it to do.

Please get to work on this. I pay a ton of money in taxes and I’d really like to see my tax dollars going to a better cause than a building full of stuff that I don’t know if I’ve checked out before or not.

Thank you.

I return this blog to its usual writer, who I did not deal with on my recent visit, but I’m sure she’s just as lame as her coworkers.