What a night

I worked the desk of the Indiana Room tonight and, although it was pretty slow, I was on the phone a lot. And by a lot, I mean for 35 minutes to the same patron. She has called before, and I think I actually blogged about her - she had called for the phone number of Bed Bad and Beyond and was very impatient, but once I got her the number became very chatty and oversharing. This time she was in a fine mood, and wanted to know where property taxes went to. Her mother's property taxes were doubled this year, and she wanted to know where that money was going. I gave her the answer, and then we somehow got launched into a girl living across the street from the patron's niece who apparently sells meth and prescription drugs out of her house. This then went into a discussion about a local cop in that town who the patron has been talking to about this woman (who is apparently a very unpleasant woman all around), the cop gives the patron too much information about other goings on around the town - and although he is married, he seems to be interested in the patron on a personal level. The patron is not interested back and is not a believer in adultery. We got back to the original question - property taxes - and segued into her taxes and that she needs to get them done. This turned into a discussion (I say discussion, but the woman would barely let me speak) about what household improvements she is going to use her refund money on. I was almost freed from her about 5 times, but whenever the conversation was slowing down, she would go into another subject.

It is hard because there was no real way for me to get her off the phone without being rude. This woman obviously needed someone impartial to talk to and vent about a variety of things, and I was not busy otherwise. However, it was just a weird position to be in when the woman was going into some personal details (such as her taxes and money), and generally the Indiana Room is a quite place for people to research and study in.

Eventually the other phone rang, and I told the patron I had to answer the other phone. About 8 rings later (I was in a panic, and felt bad that it was taking so long to answer the phone), I finally hung up with her. Thankfully, it was not a patron on the other phone but my boss, Christine, calling to save me! I'm sure there will be times like this when patrons call and just keep talking - but I am definitely going to need to find a good way to get off the phone with them, especially at a busy reference desk (although that is probably why she calls the Indiana Room instead of the main desk - she knows the person isn't very busy). So that was my adventure today!