The library has a light therapy lamp for winter blues. On this day, I’d been specifically planning to use the lamp, and I’d been having a bit of a bad day, so it was pretty important to me. Usually, no one is using it, but when I got there, there were people sitting in both of the seats. I waited ten or fifteen minutes and then asked them how long they planned to use the lamp; there’s a sign on the lamp asking patrons to limit their use if there are people waiting to use it.

They said they were going to be there a while. I told them I was hoping to use the light therapy lamp for a little bit; they muttered a few things, and while I didn’t catch the exact words, the general gist was that they weren’t moving.

I wasn’t assertive enough to press the issue or show my displeasure, but I was pretty upset, since they’d clearly been there for a while before I even got there, and I suspected they weren’t even using the lamp for light therapy. I was also angry at myself, for not being assertive both in that situation and in general.

I wanted to ask a librarian for help, but I was too nervous to, both because I didn’t want to be “that person” and because I was afraid the two patrons would overhear and get mad at me. But a few minutes later, one of the librarians, who had apparently noticed the situation, came up to me and offered to move the lamp to where I was. Presumably, those two patrons didn’t actually need it; I suppose they were only attached to the seats.

I was really surprised and really grateful to her for doing that. She helped make my bad day a lot better, especially since using the lamp was the last thing I planned to do before I went home. She also would have had to approach those two patrons to ask if they were all right with her taking the lamp, which came with a risk of them getting mad at her. And she did that on her own initiative, without being asked at all.

I’ve always liked the librarians here, but this is really going to stand out for me.

(In our province it is illegal to sell alcohol after 6:00 pm in any store.)

Customer: “Can you make this quick? I’m in a hurry.”

Me: “I will go as quickly as I can, sir.”

(As I’m going through the items I notice some alcohol; it is 6:30.)

Me: “Unfortunately, sir, due to the law, we are unable to sell beer through our system past 6:00 pm.”

Customer: “Well, this is just flipping amazing. Just bypass this law and let me have my beer.”

Me: “I am sincerely sorry, sir, but unfortunately the computer system will not allow me to bypass this law.”

Customer: “Fine!”

(He then proceeded to throw the case of beer on the floor, which exploded all over the place. He bolted out. All this over beer.)

(There is another concert theater near the one where I work, and we get calls about their performances a lot. Most people just accept their mistake and end the call when we tell them they’ve got the wrong box office, but not this guy.)

Me: “[Theater] box office; how can I help you?”

Customer: “Hi there. I just saw an ad for [Concert] at [Other Theater]. How do I get tickets for that?”

Me: “You’ve reached the [Theater] box office, not the [Other Theater] box office, so you would have to contact them. I believe they also sell tickets on [Popular Ticketing Site] but I’m not certain.”

Customer: “I know you’re not the same theater. Anyway, how much are those tickets?”

Me: “Well, sir, you would have to contact [Other Theater] for that information.”

Customer: “Oh! Well, I just thought that you would know that since you’re in the same area.”

Me: “We’re not affiliated with [Other Theater].”

Customer: “Okay, then. Bye.”

(I wonder if he goes to restaurants and asks about their competitors’ menus?)

(In the 1970s, my dad gets a new piece of stereo equipment. It costs him a good chunk of his “starving student” budget — in all honesty, a larger chunk than is wise — so he’s very careful in bringing it home and setting it up. Despite the TLC, however, the equipment doesn’t work. Just flat-out knackered. Pining for the fjords. A very expensive paperweight. So, he puts it back in its box and takes it and his receipt back to the store.)

Dad: “Hi. I’d like to return some defective equipment.”

Clerk: “Do you have the receipt?”

Dad: “Yup.”

Clerk: “Sure, we can do that. Just give it here and… Wait. Sorry, the box has been opened. We can’t accept a return, only exchange it.”

Dad: “What? How was I supposed to know it was defective without taking it out?”

(Apart from the issue of money in his youth, which he freely admits these days he was daft with, my dad is a logical, intelligent person. The idea that he should psychically determine whether an item is defective before opening the box offends his scientific sensibilities. As to why he requests a return instead of an exchange in the first place, I suspect the penny dropped on the drive back that he needs the money more. But in any event, this happens:)

Clerk: “Sorry, sir. That’s the rule; I can’t change it.”

Dad: “Okay, can I talk to someone higher up?”

Clerk: “Sure.”

(The clerk gets the manager, who asks my dad what the problem is. My dad explains. The manager reiterates that, indeed, they can only exchange opened boxes, not accept returns on them.)

Dad: “Okay, I’ll exchange it, then.”

(The stereo equipment is exchanged for an unopened but otherwise identical item.)

Dad: “And now I’d like to return this one.”

(Up until now, I think everyone has behaved fairly reasonably, but at that, you’d think my dad had chucked a dead cat in the manager’s face.)

Manager: “YOU CAN’T DO THAT!”

Dad: “Why not? It’s unopened. You said I can return unopened items.”

Manager: “You can’t do that! It’s fraud! I’M CALLING THE POLICE!”

(And, no kidding, the manager calls 911 because a customer found a loophole.)

Cop: *when he shows up* “What’s going on?!”

(The manager relates the whole story honestly, just in a ranty way; he seems to genuinely believe that what my dad wants to do is fraud. My dad and the clerk both calmly agree on the facts of the situation.)

Cop: *laughs, addresses the manager* “He’s got you there. Give him his money back. I’m not leaving ’til you do.”

(The manager fumed, but my dad got his money back and left. The cop left, still chortling. Alas, history does not record if the poor clerk found a non-insane boss to work for.)

(I work in a small hotel in a small town in Canada. It is winter and we are dead. We do have a hockey tournament in town this weekend and three teams are staying with us, but they are all arriving tomorrow except for a small handful of rooms. Usually, when we are dead like this I read a book, or play on the computer, but I’ve been doing a lot of crochet projects for Christmas lately and I have one last project to finish in the next two days. Knowing we will be slow, I bring the project to work to try and finish before the weekend. I’ve done this before, though not often, and the owner and several staff members have seen me doing it before with no issue. For some reason, today is different.)

Owner: “You can’t be doing that at the desk.”

Me: *surprised but rolling with it* “Oh, okay.”

Owner: “When we are slow like this you should be on the computer, checking reservations to make sure we have all the information. If you’ve checked today’s, then check tomorrow and other upcoming days. Or go online and look up restaurant locations and local events so you can tell guests about them if they ask. Find out where the train station is so you can give directions to guests.”

Me: “Okay.”

(All the while, I was thinking to myself: “I’ve lived here for three years, and have been visiting my wife and her family here since we started dating almost eight years ago. I always took the train up, so I know where the train station is. We are a small town of about 25,000, and we are a river tourism town; there is NOTHING going on in town right now except for the hockey tournament that is all coming in tomorrow. If I check future reservations, I’ll be all the way into June or July — that’s how slow it gets here in the winter. I know and have been to almost all the restaurants in town with my wife or her family. Not sure what else you really want me to do here.” To appease the owner, I went and checked the guest information for that day and compared it to the other places we keep records; it was all accurate. That took two minutes. I went and looked at all the arrivals for that weekend. Three hockey teams were to arrive the next day, and some of them were missing info, but I couldn’t put it in until they arrived, anyway, so I was not sure what the point of that was. Ten more minutes. I checked out the local tourism website and found the events calendar. It was blank, just like I’d thought, but I did add the link to our desktop for future use. Five more minutes. I checked Google for all the local restaurants; they were all still open and none of them had moved. Three more minutes. Half an hour later, I’ve done everything the owner asked, so now I’m on NAR submitting this story before going to read some myself.)