The librarian

Today is Thursday. On Thursdays Lily and I like to go to story time at the library. Last week, we ended up staying too long at the playground and missed story time. I took Lily to the library anyways to get a new book and I read to her myself in the story area. When we went up to the counter to check out her book, the librarian said we had an overdue book and we would have to return that book before we could check out a new one. So I left without the book.

I got home and by then Lily was asleep. The overdue book was one of Mandy's so I asked her to locate this book. She told me that she had given me that book to return two weeks ago, in a bag with about 20 other books. She asked if I had returned all the books in that bag, and I said yes. She check the car, her room and said that she is certain that the book had been returned. Mandy usually checks out and reads a bag full of books every week. She has never lost a book, never. Mandy has never lied to me, I have known her for 15 years and she has never misled me, so I believe her when she tells me she returned the book.

Mandy, Lily and I returned to the library. On the drive there Mandy was very upset, she doesn't like confrontations and fears this is not going to go well. I told her I would speak to the librarian if it made her feel so uncomfortable. I told the librarian that we had returned the book two weeks ago. Mandy had checked the shelf and the book wasn't there. I told him we were sure that we returned the book, but since it wasn't on the shelf, I was willing to pay for the book, just to clear up our library account. Our family, we utilize the library so much I cannot imagine going without, I would be willing to pay a whole lot to make this all go away. The librarian first told me that he had to check the shelf himself, he was beginning to get a little hot under the collar. I don't know why he was mad, I assume this is due to the fact that I have impugned him in some way saying I returned the book, which I had. I was being very polite, I didn't throw a fit or make demands, I just wanted to pay for the book.

I had a very unhappy three year old with me and I knew that we would not be able to be nice library patrons for more than a minute or two longer. He went to check the shelf, he was gone for about twenty minutes. This is a very small library, I am pretty sure I could have checked the entire library in those twenty minutes, maybe he is a slow reader. He returned and said the book was not on the shelf. Dude, I told you that twenty minutes ago. By this time I am holding a very loud and very obnoxious Lily. I opened my wallet and adked, how much?

He said: Did you lose the book?

I said: No, I returned the book two weeks ago,but I am willing to pay for it because I don't want to lose my library privileges.

He repeated: Did you lose the book?

I repeated: No
.
He said: If you lose or damaged a book we do not accept cash. If you lose or damage a book, we do not accept credit.

Lily is really squirming to get down and being very loud and I am trying not to reach across the counter to grab this little Japanese man by his purple spikey hair and scream, How much?

He says: If you lose or damage a book we do not accept checks.

Long pause.

If you lost or damaged a book you have to buy the book online and replace the book. Once you give us a receipt showing you have purchased the book, we will clear your account.

I started to leave.

He said: Tell you daughter to look for the book again.

And I walked away.

In the exchang above, I was being very generous in regards to his ability to communicate in the English language, very generous.

On the drive home, Mandy was livid. She was so mad she wanted to kill that man. I tried to explain to her that I believed her, but there is nothing we can do, we have to replace the book. I said that we can scream and yell and make a huge scene but in the end we will have to replace the book. This is the military after all. I said that he made a mistake, however, we should be the bigger person. There is no way we can win in this situation and there is no use in pursuing a course of action which will do nothing more than frustrate and anger us ever more. Someday, when one of us makes a mistake, that the person we inconvenience with our mistake will be as kind to us as we are being to that jerk at the library. Mandy said, she just wanted to pull his purple spikey hair right out of his head. I told her, me too.

On Sunday Mandy and I went through her room, we cleaned every inch, and I did make sure to look at every one of her five million books, just to be sure. This made Mandy a bit upset, like I don't trust her. When Jeff asked if we looked for the book, she really got upset, saying we don't trust her. I looked at every piece of everything she owned. In fact we actually took everything out of the room and cleaned it and put everything back in, so I guarantee you that we do not have that book.

The next day, I went online and ordered the book. I gave Jeff the receipt and asked him to go to the library and show it to the smarmy librarian so we can clear up our account. I told Jeff I was too mad. I asked him to be sure to make smarmy remarks to that purple spikey haired jerk. Like: We replaced the book, because you gave us no choice, but you need to figure out what happened to this book, so you don't inconvenience more people with your shoddy work ethic. I am not good at smarmy even in hindsight. Jeff asked me to write it down for him, because he isn't used to making smarmy remarks, so I punched him. Just kidding, but I really did want to punch him. Jeff took the receipt to the library and a different nicer librarian told him that book had been returned on Sunday. Sunday is the day we cleaned Mandy's room all day and never left the house. So according to the library we returned the book on Sunday. They will not acknowledge that they checked the book out to another person and that person returned the book on Sunday. So we have a book coming in the mail that the library doesn't want.

I am off to the library for story time today with Lily. I will be checking out the book Lily wanted last week. I hope I have the grace not to punch the purple spikey haired smarmy ass librarian, if not I hope they let me blog from the Japanese jail.

Just to be clear, this library is on-base filled with American books written in English, I don't speak or read Japanese. However, much to the chigrin of the American spouses on the base, most of the jobs go to Japanese nationals. So the librarians are all Japanese people who live in our local community working at the American library.