Funny Requests from Patrons, vol. 2

A few people mentioned that the old Funny Requests from Patrons thread was getting a bit long, so I took the liberty of creating this one. Carry on!

This wasn't a request, but I think it still fits the spirit of the original thread. My boss told me this story -- said it happened before I came to work here.

In order to keep track of how many people come to the library each day, we have a motion-detector activated counter (one of those little clicker things) on each of our doors. One time a young woman came in the door & heard the click... stopped, walked out again, then came back in. She did this a couple more times and then demanded to know why that machine was taking pictures of her butt.

the latest in Butt Recognition Software.

I work in the Children's Room, and in addition to the usual materials, we have a few quiet toys, including a few soft cars. The other day, a preschool boy came up to my colleague and asked, "Where's the other race car?" There's only one race car-shaped car, the others are shaped like a truck and a school bus, so she told him that we didn't have another race car.
"Well, that's not right," he declared. "In a race, the race car will beat the school bus every time."

@2

We have a young patron who enjoys dancing in front of the people counter and seeing how quickly she can make the number go up.

I got a visual there and it made me laugh out loud. Probably not funny to you, but I appreciate the humor there. :)

#2 -- I worked at a small college library (300 students) where I was the only one on staff at a time and the president of the college came in with one of those clickers that bouncers at bars use. He said I could use that to count who comes in and out of the library.

I gather the public library statistics for my state and submit the numbers to the Bureau of the Census. I heard this story from another state data coordinator: he noticed that a public library had a huge surge in their gate count one year so he called the library director to ask what was going on. She checked with staff and verified that the gate count had indeed gone up that much. A few weeks later, she called to say that there had been a staff change and the person who had been doing the gate count did not realize what her predecessor knew: you have to divide the number recorded on the gate by two because that particular model counts both legs of each patron. They has given him a leg count, not a body count.

A museum in Antwerp suddenly had a million visitors a month, many of them coming in at night. Turned out that an overgrown plant had been waving in front of the counter...

>9 Steven_VI:

It was probably looking for The Day of the Triffids!

This isn't really a funny request, just a really annoying everyday occurance. I work at a small public library and I am in charge of the public computers (oh lucky me) and in order to use the computers you have to have a library card or I can issue you a guest pass. If you have fines of $5 or more your card number doesn't work and you can't use the computer (yes, this means that there are dozens of people out there who are going without accessing their my space accounts until they pay of the $23.50 in library fines that they owe, I am so cruel)

So what happens everyday is that I have people come up to me, ask for a computer, say "no" they don't have a library card and stare at me blankly when I ask for ID. Why do I ask for ID, you ask, because more than half of them already have cards and then more than half of those owe fines on the library cards they "didn't know that they had". So then I get to tell them, yes you have a card and until you have paid the fines on your card no you can't use the computer. You can image how well that goes over.

But then there are the people who tell me no they have a card and no they don't have ID, to which I want to scream at the top of my lungs "Then how the H@$^ did you get here? Please tell me you didn't drive!" Or they tell me they left their ID in the car....why would you leave your purse, wallet, etc in the car? When it becomes clear to them that I am not going to let them on the computer until they provide me with ID (it takes a while them to realise that, for some reason) then they will sigh heavily and drag themselves out to the car....

This happens all day, every day...

My favorite library comic, Shelf Check:



I get this exact question once in awhile when I work the children's desk.

We got a call a while back, a man asked: "If you want to inflict the most damage, where is the best place to stab a woman?" The librarian who answered just hung up the phone. What if the guy was a mystery writer with a legitimate request for his plot?

I think I know why they leave their wallets/purses in the car: so they can say they have no money with them to pay their fine. They will pay next time they are in. :-)

We actually got a phone call from a customer saying that he was really smart. He said that his family told him that he should join the group called "Memphra". He would not believe us when we told him that he meant Mensa! Ha!

Yes, I deal with almost the same thing. Sorry!

I mean the computers-amberamber!

I also had a gentleman come in with food one day. I explained to him that our policy stated that there was no eating in the library. He then explained to me for 10 minutes that he had a medical condition where he had to eat every 30 minutes or so or he would get dehydrated. I just repeated library policy. How could I argue with this guy?

@15

Intelligence and possession of common knowledge are not synonymous. Any other evidence as to whether he was smart or S-M-R-T?

I had a patron come to the reference desk at a small, rural public library wanting to know if he was listed in the Guiness Book of World Records.
Apparently he underwent a medical procedure and had to be put on life support and was wanting to know what medical "things" ie. operations etc. were recorded in the book and if doctors could list Guiness records without patient consent and if his doctor then (when he was younger) had done this with his case.

Another interesting day in the library...

We have a patron who calls every now and then with the most bizarre request. On top of this she is very rude when we tell her we do not have the information she seeks. Most often she calls and ask for the Queen of England's or Duke of somewheres phone number and is outraged that we do not have that number on hand.

I understand! We have frequent callers that we have given nicknames that ask these same type questions. We have one man that calls and asks for all information on country singers. He also wants to know their home addresses, phone numbers etc. We call him Bubba! Ha!

They don't accept that the numbers are unlisted? Surely they've heard of such a thing.

Nicely, our library policy is that since callers can get telephone and address info from 411, we are supposed to direct them there.

I once had a really snotty woman ask me for the number for some acronym organization (UFT, actually), and say she was appalled that a librarian didn't know what it was - well, with no context (not like she said what profession she was), how was I supposed to immediately leap to United Federation of Teachers? Man, she annoyed me.

@23

Librarians: Human Trivia Machines

My patrons expect that I've read every book in the library and with but a wish and blink I can call up a complete summary of the book, the exact location at that exact moment, and five other books that have the same theme, author, title, color, etc! I head to Fantastic Fiction. Works every time!

I work in a library at a power company. My colleague got the best request the other day, we provide standards they usually know the name/number of. This engineer didn't, to show which one he needed he emailed through a photograph of a 1960's rusty plaque screwed to a post about 20m in the air. In fairness to her, she found it.

This wasn't a request, but it amused (and slightly confused) me. At my library we have to have ID to look up a patron's account number. Since we get a lot of students in the afternoons this sometimes causes problems. I had this conversation with a patron a few days ago:

Her: I don't have my library card. Can you look up my account?
Me: I need to see ID.
Her: I'm too young to have ID!
Me: Not even a school ID?
Her: Oh yeah, let me go get it.

She walks off and comes back a minute later with her... driver's license! I looked up her account since she had ID, but I'm wondering why she said she was too young for ID before...

Sounds like a classic case of a crush on you ...

29: Take it to Name that book
http://librarything.com/groups/namethatbook

I have been asked for "that red book I checked out last year," I have been asked about "renting a book," but my favorite story after 20 yrs. as a high school media specialist is this...a young man comes in to check on the title of an overdue book. Me: Bad Boy. Student: (almost in attack mode) What did you call me?
Me: The. title. of. your. book. is. Bad Boy (Walter Dean Myers)

good thing he didn't want the the book thief!

While in library school about 1990 I was working alone at the reference desk one weekend at UCLA's main library (called "URL" or "University Research Library" at the time). Suddenly, a group of eight people all dressed in bright blue, neatly pressed coveralls, and carrying walkie talkies, came to the desk and started asking "which databases can we access?" (we had several new CD-ROM workstations). "Where are your indexes?" "How can we find articles in magazines and newspapers?" I directed them to the various major resources and watched them divide up and start looking in the databases and indexes quite diligently for several hours. The "leader" was constantly on his walkie talkie communicating with, apparently, other teams on campus in the other specialized libraries (medical, psychology, geology, business, etc.) who were doing the same thing.

United Nations information strike force? Maybe Jeapordy had a deadline for compiling questions for the TV show? Well, after much prying (I'm a pretty good talker) I was able to get from them that they were Scientologists, but they never told me what, or why, they were doing what they were doing.

It wasn't until a few months later I put the pieces together. Apparently, Time Magazine had put out some unflattering front page article on the Church of Scientology and this was the Los Angeles based crew sent to dig up anything and everything negative about Time, Inc. and anyone affiliated with them. Since UCLA had the best, and largest research resources in the area, I was at ground zero of this very odd incident.

Funny requests indeed!

Fugitive -- now THAT's a bizarre story!

hmm, it's gotten quiet on this list. no funny patrons in the summertime? Librarians too burned out to notice the humour in that request for "off-campus access to that dating service where you can get articles for free"? I just wanted you all to know that I'm preparing a lunchtime presentation for new faculty and I'm going to borrow some of your stories.

In a very small library, a little boy came in with a request:
Boy-We just had a magician at our school and I want some books on magic.
Me-Yes, we have some, right here.
Boy checks out his books and leaves.
Next day, Boy returns the books, very disgusted.
Boy-These are fake. I want the real stuff.
Me-Do you mean like changing your brother (he has an older brother) into a frog?
Boy- Yeah!
Me-I'm sorry, we don't have any of those.

A couple of years ago, I was checking out books to a kindergarten class. The kids are supposed to tell me their name so I can find their name on my list of barcodes. One students didn't tell me his name so I prompted him and asked, "Are you Juan?" He looked at me in confusion and replied, "No, I'm five!"

Another time I led a class of prek's into the library. Most preK are ESL students. We had one "angel" named Leo, who was from Puerto Rico, who was cute as a bug, but made me glad he didn't go home with me. Our Puerto Rican teaching assistants translated for him, and taught me a couple of key phrases: "Cierta la boca en la biblioteca" (Close your mouth in the library), and "En la silla" (In the chair). These were usually prefaced with, "Leo, cierta la boca in the biblioteca! Leo, en la silla!). So anyway, this day I led them into the library, and they were terrible in the hall. So I told them we would be practicing walking in the hall again. I lined them up to go back and practice walking in the hall. And Leo looks up at me and says IN PERFECT ENGLISH "That was a short class." Our teaching assistants couldn't believe that this kid already knew English and had fooled them for months

@37

"Cierra la boca" means close your mouth.
"Cierta la boca" means "certainly of course the mouth" or "you are sure the mouth"

Just in case you have another student you need to tell to be quiet!

typo! My typing is only marginally better than my Spanish!

So I gave the librarians something to laugh about.

Me: "Why does the computer say this book is in, but it's not on the shelf? A whole list of books by this author are listed 'in' but are not."

Librarian: I'll check the shelving cart...Not there. Please ask for help at the information desk.

Me: (to self) I'll check again...oh! Here it is.

There was one (ONE!) book on the shelf out of order so I thought there were no more by that author.

**I put the book in it's correct place.
***I'm always rushing in the library because we have to pay parking meters to park outside and I never estimate the right amount of time.

# 8

The same kind of thing happened where I work. Our people count jumped up high during the night when we're closed. We found out it was because of the cleaning people sweeping around the counter.

# 32

Funny story. The other day my coworker, Jo, answered the phone at the reference desk. The patron was asking if we had an available copy of The Book Thief. But Jo heard it as, "I'm looking for the book, Thief. She told the patron we didn't have a book called Thief. It took a few minutes for her to realize what the patron was really looking for.

#37

Leo may NOT have fooled them for months. Maybe for a few weeks! I worked with some slightly older (K) kids who knew NO English in September and spoke unaccented English by the Christmas break. Halting vocabulary, but still, English. They are like little language sponges, the very young.

I work in a music branch of Helsinki City Library, called Kirjasto 10 ("Library 10"). A patron (aged 50 or so) phoned us the other day and said he'd bought some sort of an australian "pipe" from a fleamarket for 5€ or so and was wondering how it should be played. After a while it got evident that he had a didgeridoo. After searching the catalog a bit{0} and explaining the principle of continuous breathing, i ended up dictating YouTube URLs over the phone :) He had some experience of brass horns and from the sound of it, got a hang of the instrument in a matter of minutes.

{0} http://helmet.fi/search~S9*fin/?searchtype=X&searcharg=s%3Adidgerido+and+s%3...

{edit: sorry for the broken url, i'm not sure how to fix it}

#42 -- Did she check? Because The Thief won a Newbery honor, and the next book in its series is coming out this winter. (I know it's not what your patron was looking for . . . I'm just saying.) It seems like there are a lot of popular children's and YA books with "thief" in the title right now . . . The Book Thief, The Lightning Thief, The Thief Lord, The Thief, The Sword Thief. . . .

37- theexiledlibrarian,
I have a little kindergartner who doesn't know his last name. He told me his first name, but when I asked what his last name was, he gave me his complete home address and bus number!

And the little boy who said his father's name was "Darling"

When I worked in the public library, a very young child got left behind from the daycare that brought a class to storytime. Daycares were supposed to schedule their own storytime, but this school brought this class to the public storytime. And they didn't count noses when they left, so this little 4 year was left behind. Asked her name, she didn't know her last name. Mom & Dad's names were "mommy" & "daddy", and her teacher's name was "Miss Mary". She didn't know the name of the school, phone number, etc.

I finally tracked down the school by calling every daycare center in town. They still hadn't noticed the missing child (30 minutes later!) My supervisor had me do that...if it had been up to me, I would have called the police and it would have been on the 6 o'clock news. Needless to say, we never saw that daycare center in the library again. Scary. This was about 15 years ago.

Not a request, just a funny story…

During story time near mother’s day the library assistant was reading a story about mom’s making cookies for their children. She then asked the group if their moms made cookies for them. The usual comments were made (yes, I like chocolate chip, etc). Then when it had quieted down one little girl pipes up that her mom made strawberry daiquiris. Easy to tell who her mom was she was the woman turning bright red. On the other hand, the other parents probably befriended her afterward.

Oh, I can relate to that story . . . I used to have a joke I loved to tell about Emma Thompson and vodka, and my daughter made me a mother's day card at school that said she wanted to buy me vodka. Embarrassing, and I don't even drink vodka! The poor daiquiris mom probably made them once and happened to make a fuss about it, and there you go . . . it's amazing how kids will pick things up and then twist them out of context.

The construction workers working on our addition just came in and asked for books on construction technology, specifically on dealing with mud.

#51 - oh, that's not good. Funny though.

#51 Hmmm . . . not exactly a confidence builder . . .

>51 goydaeh: I don't know, I'd actually be pleased that they were seeking further information about how best to deal with a problem rather than just shrugging and going forward with blind confidence.

#54 You've got a point there . . .

I had one at the reference desk the other day. The patron asked for a book by Mark Baden (He spelled out the last name for me). I couldn't find a record of the author in our catalog, so I asked if he was looking for a particular title. He told me that it was called "Catching Carlos," or possibly "Capturing Carlos." I was still unable to find such a book, so then he told me that it was by the same guy that wrote "Blackhawk Down." It turns out he was looking for Mark Bowden's "Killing Pablo."

Patron: Do you have any romance novels?
Me: *Start listing off romance writers* Do you like Nora Roberts?

Patron: Oral Roberts? The Preacher, no I don't care for him.

@ 42 Thief--book by Megan Whelan Turner. My absolute favorite!

#50: So what's the joke about Emma Thompson and vodka? Pretty please??

Maybe he was from Memphis!

No 15. Maybe he was from Memphis!

>51 goydaeh:

Using construction workers to work on an addition? It must be a very long column of figures to need scaffolding! LoL.

Request from small child for "Beginners Book of Records". Sounds like he had been sampling the Guinness...!

>64 Veronajoy:

Was the child walking straight?

Oh, not that kind of sampling...

Here is a librarian comic for you from XKCD.
http://xkcd.com/280/

>36 LakeJan:
There are many good reasons why I'm not a librarian (I am a fan of librarians, though), not the least of which is never finishing enough schooling.

My snarky response to your story, strictly as a lay person, is: I would have probably handed the kid a copy of The Goetia or Candle Magic For Beginners or something.

Eddie Puss Wrecks

Pretty easy to figure out, but hard to explain to the patron why the book we are handing her is in fact the one she wants, despite the so obviously wrong title. :)

LOL!

As a librarian I know I'm a Facts Checker but didn't know I was a Fax Checker I'm sorry sir but no matter how many blank pages you send me I can't help you figure out what your doing wrong!
Yes I told him you probably have it upside down he said well let me try sending it again and again and again so I was running to the fax machine and the telephone for about a half an hour finally I'm like I'm sorry but I don't know what your doing wrong and I have other things I need to do!

Not to mention that it's costing money for blank sheets!!!

Eddie Puss Wrecks - *snort*

posted this in the old, dead thread-so posting here too.

I once had a patron come up to me after using a computer and say, all excited, "I just won the Coca-Cola Lottery!!!"
I confirmed that she had opened an email from someone she didn't know, and that the "lottery" required her to send them her personal information. I explained to her that this was spam, discussed internet scams with her, and reminded her that Coca-Cola is a private company, and does not have a lottery. And even if they did, she never bought a ticket to said lottery. To which she replied "yeah, but I really need the money, so will you help me send them an email?"

My assistant once confused me by telling me one of the teaching staff had asked for a book of poetry by Harry Stotle...took me about 10 minutes before the penny dropped!

I just ran across this thread, which dates from before I joined the group, and I can't resist adding this:

Our academic library has just one reference librarian on duty on Saturdays, and especially near the of the semester, it can get hectic. One Saturday, the librarian on duty--a young, single male--was assisting several patrons when the phone rang. The caller asked, "What do labor pains feel like?" He said he would take her name and number and call her back with the information. She replied, "No, you don't understand. I need to know right now. I think I'm having them."

I think that if I were in her place, I'd call my doctor or hospital, not a library! :)

I had one student who requested a book by "Kate Winslet" and "Ewan McGregor".

What he meant was a book by "Kate Basinett" and "George McGregor"

Too much TV probably :P

>74 Fjumonvi:, >75 tymfos:, um.... or 911.... depending on how fast the 'pain' was coming....

These aren't really funny requests, but just funny in general: as a tween librarian I run an aftershchool program where kids can come in and play video games on "early dismissal" days. The group is mostly 10 and 11 year old boys who keep me in constant stitches. Some of my favorite quatable quotes:

Boy 1 (while playing Mario Kart) - Dude, you can't pick Princess Peach! She's a girl!
Boy 2 - I don't care. She's super fast! Besides, I'm a man, and I'm secure, so I can be a girl if I want!

~
Boy 1 - (to his friend who walked in with a drink from the cafe) did you buy hot chocolate?
Boy 2 - No man, it's herbal tea.
Boy 1 - HERBAL TEA??? What are you a grandma? Only old people drink tea!
Boy 2 - Well, I'm a young adult, and I like herbal tea! It makes my insides feel cozy.

#78 - those are sweet! And they sound like young men who might not even be called sweet.

> 78 Heh... we need more guys like boy 2 in the world for sure. Cute tweens.

#80 - yeah, my boys are very good about equality and feminism - they unabashedly dance to "girl music" when we play Just Dance 3 (Britney Spears and Katy Perry). They're actually much more evolved than the girls in my afterschool group that way.

I work at a combined school and public library, and while we don't get that many amusingly mangled titles, the question: "Do you have a book I can read?" is pretty common. Yes, we do have about 20 000 books in our collection. Also, a lot of kids ask if they can borrow the thick, red book of laws. Eventually, I had to put a sticker on it, saying it could not be borrowed. (Reference only.)