It's Hard Out Here for a Circ. Clerk
This is about the point where I imagined I would hit the blogging wall, where I would run out of anything to say about this library or anything else, where I would lose what D-Jay the philosophical pimp in the totally great movie "Hustle and Flow" refers to as his "mode." I mean it's been like three straight days of blog-gasmic posting already! How much more weird stuff can happen in a small public library?
And then there's this. One of our fairly regular patrons came up to check out some books, and he seemed to be having a little trouble finding his library card in his over-stuffed wallet. This dude is your standard, friendly-enough, middle-aged redneck who checks out a few western novels at a time and cordially goes on his way. He was really rooting around in that beat-up wallet when I glanced down at its contents. On the very top of his clear plastic inner sleeve of pictures was another well-worn card with an unmistakeable three-letter logo I could even easily read upside down. While he was still prospecting a deeper layer of the wallet for his library card, I sort of turned my head so I could more easily read the rest of the message on the card I saw.
It said the following, in prominent red letters:
"JOIN THE KKK AND FIGHT THE RACE WAR FOR YOUR NATION"
Seriously? In 2006? At first I really thought he might have picked it up as an incredibly idiotic joke at Spencer's Gifts or something, but I had enough time to take a nice long look at it. I just read the fascinating alternative economics book Freakonomics a couple of weeks ago, and probably my favorite part was about the truly heroic muckraker Stetson Kennedy who infiltrated the KKK in the 1940s and publicized their moronic secret codes and rituals through the early "Superman" radio and TV series. I imagine these probably aired right around this time my troglodyte redneck friend here was a little kid, but he must have somehow missed those episodes, or the second half of the 20th century in its entirety. Or, hell, the 19th century.
I just want to let it be known that I did provide this gentleman, and the friendly fellow with the message "Proud to be White" stitched over a Confederate flag patch on the back of his denim jacket who brings his several kids into the library a few times a week, the utterly absolute minimum corporately acceptable level of "customer service."
And then there's this. One of our fairly regular patrons came up to check out some books, and he seemed to be having a little trouble finding his library card in his over-stuffed wallet. This dude is your standard, friendly-enough, middle-aged redneck who checks out a few western novels at a time and cordially goes on his way. He was really rooting around in that beat-up wallet when I glanced down at its contents. On the very top of his clear plastic inner sleeve of pictures was another well-worn card with an unmistakeable three-letter logo I could even easily read upside down. While he was still prospecting a deeper layer of the wallet for his library card, I sort of turned my head so I could more easily read the rest of the message on the card I saw.
It said the following, in prominent red letters:
"JOIN THE KKK AND FIGHT THE RACE WAR FOR YOUR NATION"
Seriously? In 2006? At first I really thought he might have picked it up as an incredibly idiotic joke at Spencer's Gifts or something, but I had enough time to take a nice long look at it. I just read the fascinating alternative economics book Freakonomics a couple of weeks ago, and probably my favorite part was about the truly heroic muckraker Stetson Kennedy who infiltrated the KKK in the 1940s and publicized their moronic secret codes and rituals through the early "Superman" radio and TV series. I imagine these probably aired right around this time my troglodyte redneck friend here was a little kid, but he must have somehow missed those episodes, or the second half of the 20th century in its entirety. Or, hell, the 19th century.
I just want to let it be known that I did provide this gentleman, and the friendly fellow with the message "Proud to be White" stitched over a Confederate flag patch on the back of his denim jacket who brings his several kids into the library a few times a week, the utterly absolute minimum corporately acceptable level of "customer service."
posted by DaysOfOurLibrary at 8:33 AM
1 Comments:
Just remember that even a card carrying member of the KKK (just like us card carrying members of the ACLU) deserves good customer service from his local library staff.
Give'em a pickle, Shank!
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