Get Off My Lawn!

An Open Letter to the Chicago Public Library

/ Shane / 11 Comments

Hello everybody. Today we’re breaking history here at the blog: I don’t believe we’ve ever had a guest blogger! So today’s post is brought to you by my lovely wife. Don’t be fooled, she has an ax to grind…

Dear Chicago Public Library,

You stink.  Not literally (maybe sometimes, or at some locations, or some patrons) but your employees certainly have trouble doing simple tasks.  Well, one particular task—checking in books left in the book deposit.  You would think I would have learned from the first, second, third, or fourth times you messed up.  Apparently, I am a bit dense. I have no idea if this is a system-wide problem, but I suspect as much, since it has happened multiple times to me and others at my two local branches (Blackstone and Coleman FWIW).  I have paid all the previous fines until now.  I think they were all $.20 or $.10 (prior to the fine increase), except one that was $2.40.

I can understand a book may slip out of the collecting bucket and you find it the next day so it is one day late (although, you would think any books this happens to would be checked in with no fine, since it was your fault it was missed and you don’t know how long it was lying in a dark corner of the deposit box…There was also the time when the person on the register managed to check out a book to me instead of checking it in but I digress…).

The $2.40 was the last straw.  I promised myself that I would always return books at the register.  This wasn’t a problem when you opened at 9am every day or when I was home every day on maternity leave.  It was less of a problem when I had a car.

So after a year or so of waiting every time at the register for my checked-in receipt, I even foolishly began to trust that when books were returned inside (just left in a stack beside the register because you don’t see fit to provide an internal book deposit), they would actually be checked in, so I stopped wasting paper and my time and just left them there.

Although my memory for this is understandably less detailed, I have had the occasional late book or DVD and certainly respect the system enough to pay my fine.  And if my daughter rips a book to pieces during her “relaxing time,” I have no problem paying for a replacement either.

However, this last mistake has driven me over the edge. 

One day, I get an email that I have a book overdue.  I had recently returned >20 books (to the dropbox, since the library doesn’t open before noon anymore on Mondays).  I checked my account and found that I had one book listed as returned overdue by 3 weeks with a $4.80 fine (Hat Heads) and two books (Babar and Charlotte in Paris) listed as 3 weeks overdue and not checked in.  (Sidenote–Why would you set up a system where it emails someone about the books three weeks after they are due instead of the first day they overdue?  Why bother with the email at that point?)  I did some research online and deduced that Hat Heads was checked out to another patron the day it was marked as checked in for me. Obviously the book had been reshelved and not entered into the system until someone tried to check it out (which somehow doesn’t trigger an automatic erasure of the fine). So, I called you, and spoke to the librarian…who absolutely refused to believe me!

I can understand some initial skepticism.  People lie.  No one likes to pay money.  Library users are probably especially against spending money—they’re either poor or frugal, that’s why they’re at the library in the first place.  However, two times I have checked out books only to find the system shows that the book was never checked in from the previous patron, so, I am obviously not the only person this has happened to.  If you are a public librarian, you are in the business of customer service, whether you like it or not.

Okay, so she didn’t believe me about Hat Heads.  I still had two other books on the list to tackle.  When I looked at my account again, the status of Charlotte in Paris had suddenly changed to being checked in late with a fine of $4.80 and CHECKED BACK OUT TO ME!

In the meantime, however, the librarian went to check for Babar on the shelf. Of course, she swore to me that it wouldn’t be there since it was from another branch and EVEN IF it had been brought back, it would have been shipped to the other branch and put back on the shelf there.  Well, yes if it had been checked in, I am sure that would be the case.  Since it was never checked back in, she of course found it on the shelf. 

Now, she was very apologetic about it, but only for that specific book.  She refused to believe that if one book was missed, it was also likely that the two others were missed as well.  Forget that this has happened multiple times to me before, and also at least twice to books that I have checked out.

Finally, she said that the library powers-that-be required documentation for her to do anything about it.  She asked if I had the paper slip from when they were checked out showing the due date as that could be used for documentation.  I don’t keep those things.  I don’t need any more clutter in my house!  And why would a slip showing when it was due support that I had actually returned it?  I explained that I always renew things online since I don’t make it to the library as often as I would like.  When she asked if I had taken a SCREENSHOT showing the due dates, I actually managed to laugh through my tears of frustration.

I’m sorry but I do not take screenshots of the library web page every time I renew a book and save it to a file on the computer. I don’t think someone with that much OCD has time to read books anyway.   And even if I did, I can’t figure out what it would do to support my claim that I returned the books.

Around this point, she noticed that Charlotte in Paris had magically been checked in and checked back out while I was on the phone with her. She broke down and agreed to fix everything.  I’m not sure why she had a change of heart.  Maybe after 35 minutes of listening to an increasingly frustrated person while she is pumping at work with people banging on her closed door because there are two add-on patients for her to see, she realized that no person would put herself through that if she were lying.

Anyway, the fines were removed.  Babar was marked as returned on time.  However, the magical self-checking-in-checking-back-out book couldn’t be checked back in since it was from another library and must be on the truck to that library right now (because, you know, nothing could go wrong with the system).  The other library would have to check it in when it was received.  I was told to call back in a week if it was still not checked in. 

Today, after waiting 15 days without it being checked in, I finally called.  After being forced to call back once and then refusing to call back the second time, I was finally transferred to the same librarian who helped me before. 

At least I didn’t have to explain too much of the story before she remembered me.  She reluctantly went to look for Charlotte in Paris on the shelf, and lo-and-behold it had MAGICALLY APPEARED! All three books, all showing up where I said they’d be, completely unrelated to each other, each one a surprise.

The librarian was very apologetic.  I appreciate this, but you can’t really apologize enough for me to feel better about the whole debacle.  It certainly caused a difficult day at work and gave me a lot of angst over the past couple weeks.

Other than making sure I return books and get a receipt, I am not sure what I can do about the problem.  If it ever happens again that I check out a book that hasn’t been checked in, I will be sure to talk to the librarian about it immediately because I would sure love to save someone the trouble I have gone through. I still don’t know why this doesn’t trigger an automatic removal of the fine.

Chicago Public Library, please figure out how to improve your system.  I know that you are a huge library, but between myself and my husband, we have never had a book not checked-in correctly at Kent District Library, Allen County Public Library, Tippecanoe County Public Library, Greensboro Public Library, Montgomery County – Norristown Library, or Radnor Memorial Library.

Your continuing patron (yes, I have been back during this ordeal),

Sara

Weekend Wrap-up

/ Shane / 2 Comments

We had a weekend at home, and it felt like we got so much done! We’ve been away from home so much for the past few months, that it feels like we are always doing catchup whenever we are home. So it was nice to get some time just to sort of kick around the house for once.

Evie and I had a little baking project. We made “candy chestnuts” (a.k.a. buckeyes to everyone else). I had a stroke of brilliance combining her love of the peanut butter cups she got when trick-or-treating with the chestnuts she collected all over Paris. This ended up being the perfect recipe since A) you have to mix all the dough by hand, B) you then have to make little balls out of the dough, Play-Doh style, and C) she had fun dipping them in chocolate as well. Oh, and eating them of course. The only problem is, she figured the entire batch was for her, since she made it.

On Saturday we went to a Family Jam at music class, which is always fun because the entire family can go (usually they go when I’m at work, unless I take them for a make-up). We had a good time, as usual, but this time they were doing something different – encouraging people to bring their instruments. They started a beginner guitar class, so I figured all of those folks would go, and the Family Jam would be a pretty easy thing to do. They would probably select easy songs for the beginners, and they’d probably sound terrible, two things that would work in my favor! 🙂

However,  none of them showed up. So somehow I ended up being the main guitar person (besides the teacher of course). I’ve been playing for about 8 years or so, but I very rarely play for anyone except Sara, Evie and Oliver. Also, I usually like to play songs a time or two to get everything down, especially if anybody else is going to hear me play. Of course at home I usually play the same songs all the time, so those ones I’ve got down. So anyway, I winged it and it worked out okay. I sounded good when it counted and only messed up when it was too loud for anybody to notice anyway! It was fun. Eventually though it was a little too crazy with all the kids and stuff, so I was needed to kid-wrangle instead of play guitar.

Finally, on Sunday we went to pick up the meat order from the farm. We’re in a little buying group that buys organic meat and eggs from a farm downstate. You put in your order once a month and pick it up at someone’s house. As part of being in the group, you agree to go pick up the shipment, maybe once a year or so. This happened to be our turn.

We planned it so that we could pick it up at the farm, so that Evie could see the animals. During farmer’s market season, they’ll drop it off at the market in Chicago, although not the one by our house. Still, it’s a little closer than going to the actual farm. But someone has to take the trips during the winter, and that someone might as well be us. They had chickens, turkeys, sheep and lambs, calves, and pigs and piglets. I have to say, it was amazing the amount of room the chickens had to run around in. In chicken-selling standards, it was ridiculous! Made me feel a lot better about getting food there.

Evie liked to see the animals, but she was disappointed because she was under the impression that they would be killing the animals for our order right then and there. (Maybe she was hoping to see a guillotine in action?) She was really grilling the people who worked there on how they killed the animals, and they were obviously very reluctant to tell her. I got the impression they didn’t feel like they should tell her, either because we wouldn’t want them to, or because they just didn’t think a little girl aught to know.

This got me thinking. Obviously back in the day, when everybody was in charge of their own food, (as opposed to getting it from the grocery store) kids were around animals that they later ate, and it wasn’t weird. (Yes, my friends that live in the country, maybe you’re STILL around animals that you later eat for food (Lisa), but Evie’s not, and neither are the majority of kids). Kids are sort of a blank slate about it, until we TEACH them it’s weird to kill the animals and eat them. We’ve discussed with Evie how the sausage patties we got used to be pigs on that farm, and she couldn’t have cared less. If anything, she was MORE excited to eat the sausage.

So I guess I’ll try to do my best not to instill this disgust in her. I myself throw my hands up and shriek like a little girl when presented with any evidence that my chicken was ever anything other than a tasteless, boneless, marinated 7 pound monster-breast. So wouldn’t it be great if Evie never learned that from me? Yeah, yeah, things were better in the old days. My curmudgeony is starting to be a major theme around here.

Normalized

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Every generation has it a little bit better than the previous generation, or at least that’s the dream. At the very least, they have it different. Now that I have kids, I’m really starting to notice a lot of these things. Certainly, growing up in Chicago is worlds different than growing up in Anytown, Midwest, U.S.A. like Sara and I did.

But the funny thing about kids is, they don’t have any life experience. At all. Anything that happens has, for all intents and purposes, always happened that way. They don’t know enough to be amazed at things, or happy for opportunities that they have that are actually quite extraordinary. They don’t appreciate that everybody doesn’t go through the same things they do.

The President of the United States lives across the street from where Evie goes to school. You and I know that this is a somewhat unusual, if not unique, circumstance. However, all Evie knows is that, every day of her life that she has gone to school, we have to pass through a sort of (not really) security checkpoint. There are always men in dark suits lurking around, with strange cords running to their ears. Sometimes they use the bathroom in her school. Normal.

I never flew in a plane until I was a senior in college. Evie has flown more than once a year since she was born. Not little flights either; Seattle, Phoenix, Philadelphia. So why shouldn’t she go to Paris? Doesn’t every 3 year old have the opportunity to go to Pairs? That’s normal, right?

There’s little things too about growing up in Chicago. Everybody lives next to a huge museum they can drop by at any time, right? And parks and activities all the time that you can walk to? Farmer’s markets and community gardens down the street, and art fairs and book fairs, and people all around all the time? Riding trains downtown just for the fun of it? Normal.

And that’s to say nothing of computers and smart phones. Evie will routinely say things like, “Can you look that up on the computer?” or “Put that on your e-blog, daddy!” She thinks nothing of looking through thousands of pictures and videos of herself or other people she knows, who, by the way, don’t even live in the state with us (thanks Facebook!). She loves typing letters on the keyboard, to the point where we had to ban it to get her to stop obsessing about it. After all, everybody has a computer, right? Always have and always will?

I should specify, that none of these things bother me. And I’m certainly proud that I can give my daughter opportunities that are extraordinary (even if they don’t seem that way to her). It just makes me laugh at how blasé she is about all of this stuff. After all, she’s never known any different. And hey, maybe everybody SHOULD be able to fly to Paris and walk two blocks and see the President.

(Okay, 30 is not that old, right? Because, between this post and the one on materialism, I’m really starting to sound like an old fogie, waxing nostalgic about the good old days. Get off my lawn!)

Materialism

/ Shane / 10 Comments

The American culture of disposable materialism seems worse every single day. It’s probably been getting worse every day more or less since the country was founded. So it’s not surprising that the older generation (of which, for the sake of this post, I apparently am a member of) would always see this going on and be disgusted by it. So I think it is safe to say that I am not the first parent to see this going on and object to it. Especially since people, as a rule, probably object to materialism in themselves very rarely. So it’s more when you see it happening to your kids that you notice it. After all, I want nice, shiny, new stuff as much as the next guy.

So all that being said, ho-ly crap! (and I mean crap in the “tons-of-stuff-we-don’t-really-need” sense of the word) If Evie continues to accumulate stuff at the same rate that she has thus far in her life, she will need a separate house to contain it all. And lets not kid ourselves, she’s not going to continue at this rate, she’s going to double it. Triple it. After all, she’s not even old enough to really want anything yet.

Evie just started preschool. I remember when I started kindergarten. There were two things that were particularly awesome to play with at my kindergarten: a parachute, and a set of giant cardboard blocks that looked like bricks. These toys were so great that you could get a fist fight or two, just by mentioning them. I wanted to play with those bricks so bad, I was willing to bleed.

Evie has both of these for her own personal use, a parachute and a set of blocks like that. Evie has her own slide.

That was part of what made school cool to me at that age. They had the toys that no individual person could possibly own. Now there is no such toy. In fact, kids today are probably like, “Why does school have all these lame, really old toys? They don’t even talk.”

In all of the time we’ve been reading the Little House on the Prairie books, I am always struck with how little personal possessions they had, and how happy they were. I understand this is a fictional account, but I can’t help but feel that it was a better time. Laura Ingalls had more love and appreciation and happiness out of a little rag doll than most kids do out of an entire mountain of toys.

How can I inspire that kind of appreciation in my kids? How can I fight an entire culture?

Sara and I try to do what we can. And of course by that I mean that we bought her said slide, parachute and set of blocks. Because the problem is, we want her to be happy, and buying her things is such an easy way to accomplish that. In the short term. And don’t think I’m letting myself off easy for my role in all of this either.

The real question is, what the heck are we going to buy Oliver? Before he was even born, he was set to inherit all the toys, clothes, books, etc. that he could ever need. Not to mention all of his own random stuff he’s going to accumulate through life. We can’t not buy him presents for Christmas or something. But I honestly don’t want to. He doesn’t need any more stuff. Neither of them do.

I hate not having a choice about this.

Things that annoy me, part II

/ Shane / 6 Comments

It turns out that there are more than 5 things that annoy me. Would you believe, there are as many as TEN things that annoy me!

  1. When you get gas and the pump automatically prints out your receipt without asking you. I NEVER want the receipt. You’re just wasting paper! Why wouldn’t you just ask first before printing it? I don’t know anybody who wants their receipt printed out, so printing it should not be the default.
  2. People who call you back without listening to your message. What if I said don’t call me back? What if I said I’m being held hostage and if you call me back, they’ll kill me? Best case scenario I’m just going to have to repeat everything I already said in the message.
  3. The way big companies just couldn’t care less about providing good service. Everybody knows Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc. all just try to take as much as they can from you while providing as little as possible. They all have the worst customer service ever. It’s almost like they are intentionally trying to give the worst customer service they possibly can. And everybody knows it and everybody still has their service, because there’s no other choice. Every one of those companies is essentially identical. If you want phone or television, or whatever it is, you have to go with one of them. Grin and bear it. The only people worse than those guys are the airlines. I hope guys who try and come up with ways to sell cigarettes to children sleep better at night than the guys who run airlines. Just try to tell me that there’s no collusion with these big companies. They have a silent agreement that, as long as everybody else is just as awful so there’s no other good choice, they can punch us in the face and have us thank them for the privilege.
  4. Waste. I hate wasting food, and I hate throwing away landfills of packaging. I hate the awful and yet totally true stereotype of mindless consuming, not thinking about anything or anyone other than immediate gratification. I hate spending money on things we don’t need. I hate it in other people and I hate it in myself.
  5. I was at the post office and it was taking FOREVER. But that’s not what annoyed me. It ALWAYS takes forever at the post office. If you don’t expect that, then I can only assume you have never been to the post office before. What annoyed me was the lady behind me in line who was acting like she was so put out by everything. You know the attitude: big, over-dramatic sighs, muttering to herself loud enough so everyone can hear, slowly increasing in annoyance and loudness when she doesn’t get immediate attention. One of the attendants was on lunch break and, in fact, was nice enough to help someone while she was on her lunch break. When the other attendant went in the back to look for something, the lady yelled, “Are you all gone??” into the back. She was complaining saying the lady shouldn’t have taken her lunch with such a long line and finally when she left she loudly proclaimed she was going to report the place and then paused, like she was waiting for a slow clap / standing ovation for her efforts on all of our parts. That is what annoyed me, the whole  “this is rediculous, am I right people?” attitude, as if we were all on her side and she was just saying what we were all thinking. I’m sorry lady, but workers have rights too. If it is time for someone to take their lunch break, then they get to take their lunch break. I’m sorry if that causes you to have to wait a little longer. And furthermore, it’s the US postal service that is at fault for not having more attendants, not these individual attendants who are doing the best they can. If you want to be mad at anybody, be mad at the government. Don’t expect special treatment and don’t yell at the wrong people when you don’t get it, and especially don’t expect that I will be on your side if you do.