Nonfiction Book Reviews

This morning at work, I had a patron walk up to the front counter and ask, “Can I use a computer?”

Which happens a million and one times a day, and wouldn’t be at all memorable, except he kept swaying on his feet as if he was onboard a boat, and his words were slurred together.  Then it hit me - the smell, that is.  He smelled as if he took a bath in a vat of alcohol.

He was completely and utterly drunk.  At 9:40 in the morning.  His blood-shot eyes had a hard time focusing on my face and the smell was overpowering.

I don’t know if we just live in too small of a town or what, but I have to say that this is not a common experience at our library.  I can only remember helping a couple of drunk patrons in my year and a half at the library, and they weren’t as bad off as this.  The stench of alcohol made it difficult to breathe.

Years of customer service experience kicked into gear, and I was able to pretend as if the guy wasn’t completed soused.  “Do you have a card, sir?” I asked him.

Still swaying on his feet, he mumbled, “No, but I’d like to get one right now!”

As I pulled the application out of the drawer and handed it to him, I thought, “What are the chances he’ll remember he did this tomorrow?”  The image flashed through my mind of him pulling his library card out of his wallet later and saying, “Where the &@#$) did this come from?” lol.  At least library cards are free, right?

He took the application and laid it on the counter.  He studied it for a second, decided that couldn’t be right, and flipped it upside down.  Studied that for a couple of moments, decided nah, that wasn’t right either, and flipped it right side up again.

While he was trying to decipher the English language, I was searching the database to see if he already had a card with us.  That is standard procedure when someone is signing up for a new card, because many times people will forget that they had a card before (or try to sneak it by us) and sign up for a new card when an old card has large fines on it.

Before he could finally decide how to spell his name, I had found his name in the database.

“Sir, have you ever lived on Main Ave?”

“Well, yeah.”  He pauses and looks at me with bleary eyes.  “I think so.  A long time ago.  Maybe…” his voice trails off.

“Bad news, sir,” and I handed his drivers license back to him.  “You’ve already got a card with us, and it has $35 in fines on it.  From 2000.  You don’t have to pay for that, but you also can’t use the internet or check out books.”

“Oh.”  His face fell as he stuffed his drivers license back in his wallet.  “Can I look around?”

“Not a problem,” I assured him.  “You don’t need a card to look around, you only need a card to take books out the front door.”  Which was all true, normally.  He shambled off into the nonfiction section.

I stepped away from the counter and took my first clean breath of air of the last five minutes.  Ahh…much better.

Right then, my boss Brenda happened to come up to the front desk.

“Brenda!” I grabbed her and explained what just happened, and then said, “I’m kinda worried about him - what if he goes off and pees on the books?  Or throws up?  Or passes out?  Do we do something when they’re that drunk?”

Side note: I worked at a plush resort for a year and a half as a front desk clerk.  There was a bar in the lobby directly across from the front desk, and I smelled guests (as we called them on the resort) that stunk like alcohol quite often.  But as far as I knew, I had never smelled alcohol like this before.  It was emanating off him in waves.  That, combined with the swaying, the red eyes, the slurred speech, and the complete inability to tell which way was up on a form, told me that this guy had to be coming off one heck of a bender.

On one hand, I really wanted to keep him at the library as long as possible, in order to let him sober up before he went back out into the world (and possibly got behind the wheel of a car, God forbid.)  It was also a cold and windy day outside - not the kind of weather you’d want to hang out in.  So I felt bad thinking that we needed to get this patron back out the door.

But on the other hand, if he went walking up the stairs, lost his balance because he was plastered, fell backwards, took out the innocent patron walking up the stairs behind him, and they land in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs, both of them dead from broken necks, I would feel pretty darn guilty about that too.  Our library is good at putting up with a lot of things, but possibly endangering other people’s lives is obviously a big problem.

Plus, he was docile at the front counter, but you never know what a drunk will do.  What if he got angry about something and started hitting other people, or ripping books to shreds?

This was one of those “Neither choice is a good choice” situations.

Luckily for me, I didn’t have to make the decision.  Brenda went to Sally, the director of the library, who called me in and asked me what happened once again.  I told her the story as they peered up to the second floor, where the patron was sitting at a desk, apparently reading a book.  I kinda doubted he had the ability to actually read anything, but I guess he wanted to act like he was, in order to appear “normal” or at least prolong the chance of him not getting kicked out.

It didn’t work.

Sally grabbed Christie, our maintenance supervisor, and they went upstairs and talked to the guy.  Sally told me about it afterwards - apparently, he didn’t give any sort of fuss at all when Sally said, “Sir, I need to ask you to leave.”  He just stood up and walked down the stairs and out the front door.

As he was leaving, Christie told him, “Sir, we’d love to have you come back when you haven’t been drinking.”

He said sadly, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” and then left, walking down the street.  We watched him until he went out of sight.

The whole thing bothered me.  I always want to save everyone - I am one of those people who actually tear up when I see a homeless person on the street; I’m pathetic that way, I know - and it really bothered me that we kicked him back out into the cold.  After all, isn’t a library supposed to welcome everyone?

On the other hand, there were definite risks if he stayed.  If he peed all over the floor, I wouldn’t want to clean it up.  Same if he threw up or defacated on himself.  Not to mention the risk of him hurting himself or others, knowingly or unknowingly.

I guess it just made me sad.  How did he end up like this?  What would cause a man to be blindingly drunk at 9:40 in the morning?  Did he have any family who cared about him?

I just hope he went somewhere warm and dry to sober up.  And I really do hope he comes back.

Your thoughts?  Do you think we should have let him stay?  Do you think we did the right thing by sending him back out into the streets?  Do you think we should have called the police (which is what my husband thought we should have done when I told him the story)?  Leave your thoughts below.

Hava
Who wants to save the world but can’t and it makes her sad…