White Birch on a clear day

The librarian was not in a good mood when I arrived for my volunteer stint.  She was almost taken in earlier in the week by a scam from someone claiming to be from the main library system and now this lady was here wanting to connect via ethernet into our computer system.  The techs had rules that precluded such connections by the staff or public so the librarian had said "No".  The lady argued there was no good reason to not allow it since ethernet was safer and faster than wi-fi.  Unfortunately, there were also discrepancies w/ the lady's patron record in the computer which seemed to convince the librarian that she was a scammer.  The lady said she would simply go to the County Seat's library and left in a huff.  (They didn't allow her to do it either.)  A mother came in w/ her two precocious kids.  She wasn't registered as a patron so while I put in her information her 4-year old told me about teddy bears.  I said sometimes I talked to my teddy bear and it answered me.  She asked if I had to squeeze it's toe so it could talk but I said that I just pretended he did.  She gave that a moment's thought before becoming distracted by the wooden frog we keep at the front desk and proceeded to tell me about frogs.  After they left another woman came in and gave me 'the look'.  'The Look' is easily recognizable.  It means she has stuff to explain to me and she's hoping I don't give her a hard time.  First the DVD she'd checked out had the wrong disk in it.  Volunteers always check that there is a disk in the holder when they are checked out but not necessarily that it's the correct disk.  I put that aside.  Then she showed me a book she was returning where a number of front pages had separated from the spine.  The book was from 2008 - 16 years of circulation.  I don't think this problem was from misuse but from age.  I changed the book's status from 'available' to 'mending'.  The librarian can decide if it's salvagable.  Finally she asked that I check in all of the books she brought back and then give her a list of the books she still had checked out.  I did that and also checked her children's records that were linked to hers.  She was happy w/ the list of books she still had checked out but I pointed out her children had some books that were way overdue.  She said she'd look into that.  After she left a couple came in to use the copier.  Fortunately the only issue they had was being able to straighten out the paper they wanted to copy enough so it would go through the machine.  After they left I searched for the person who had previously checked out the DVD w/ the wrong disk.  Tried to call them but got their messaging system which was full.  Instead I left a message for the librarian about what was going on w/ that DVD.   I finished up January statistics, put out notification of the new books coming in for February,  pulled books requested by other libraries.  Had one more thing to do by closing time.  Left it for the morning volunteer - hope he doesn't mind.