Have You Heard the One

My library shift today felt like a joke. A really bad one.

It began with, "A farmer, a midget, and a Japanese woman walked into a library..."

And ended with me not being able to help any of them, because the farmer couldn't understand (in a southern monotone which I had never heard before and is absolutely excruciating in the long-term, which this conversation was) why I had banned him from Yahoo Backgammon.

The midget couldn't understand (in a perfectly normal voice, but one that continued long, long past the need for me to hear him restate his problem again. and again.) why I couldn't take his money for the printers (rather than the Copy Center downstairs, which I told him about three times).

And the Japanese woman, I finally figured out, couldn't understand (loudly; her's was a pretty short discussion, just at a high volume; now I understand how people in other countries feel when Americans travel and insist on speaking loudly and slowly in English as though that helps; mental note to self: never, never do this - it is monstrously annoying) why I couldn't give her a bus sticker.

I know I sit under a sign that says 'Information,' but I thought it would be generally understood that meant 'Library Information.' I don't run Yahoo, the printers, or the bus service - now leave me alone!

And yes, they did all come at me at the same time. I feel like I should have been mixing a martini while I talked. And then drinking it. Quickly.