Things I do at work so as to not go insane- Part One

So I should preface this with explaining where I wok. Or work, if your "R" key is working properly. I am employed by a library. A really, truly, fantastic library. I love working for this library. I'm not making money for some evil, shit bag corporation and that alone is reason enough to enjoy my job. I help people. Everyday. Whether I want to or not. However a great deal of my time there is spent in the computer lab where, believe it or not, an incredible number of people come in with little or no knowledge of how to use a computer or for that matter what exactly a mouse is and what the fuck clicking said mouse may actually do. This is enough to drive a person insane if they do not take the necessary precautions.

I will share with you now a few of the things that I do at work so as to not go insane.
(In a bullet point list format for easier reading. Also because I am a lazy writer.)

- Super nice and helpful girl
I have a great dislike for much of the public that frequents the library. However, being that I do like having a place to live and money to buy (in order of importance) alcohol, cigarettes and food, I must interact with them on a daily basis. Occasionally I like to pull up my acting skills and play a game called "Super nice and helpful girl" in which I put on a big fake smile and cater to their every whim. Most people who work in the public sector are not very nice and definitely not very helpful. People needing to go to a public place and receive help are not expecting much. When they do encounter a person who appears to be genuinely happy to assist them it throws them off and they're not quite sure about how to react. The response can be terribly amusing. They usually fall into one of two categories. They either- A. Forget about the bad mood that they entered the building with and become cheerful because someone is being nice to them and giving them what they want (this reaction is the more rare one), or B. They feel like assholes because they came into the situation treating the public worker like shit when the worker has been nothing but super nice and helpful. The best part is at the end when they are walking away and I flip them the bird.

-Imagining what my cat is doing
I like to think that she is sneaking out of the house to solve crimes with her merry band of neighborhood animals or practicing some amazing new trick for me like walking on her hind legs and fetching me a drink but knowing her, she is in reality just regurgitating something evil onto the carpet for me to step in later, guarding her food from some unknown cat food snatcher, attempting to chew through her bag of cat nip, chasing an invisible speck of dust and/or resting on my nice plushy bed, because she is exhausted from doing all of the above. In either case she is probably having a better time than I.

-Chatting with friends on the internet.
The internet is a beautiful thing. Especially when your job requires that you log into a chat service so as to better facilitate communication between co workers. While there is the odd message that pops up from a co worker regarding such emergencies as "How do I send an attachment with an email?" most of the messages are from friends who are logged into the same chat service at their own places of work. Often those messages come with links to video and/or photo websites of people falling down, cats doing amusing things, and the world's stupidest criminals.

-Spying on what other people are doing on the internet.
A great part of my job involves sitting in a room with the general public while they surf the web. From the position of my desk I can clearly see everything that they are are viewing. For the most part it is quite boring as most people are themselves quite boring. Many people are just checking their email, reading the news or playing solitaire (and the fact that people do come to the library only to play computer solitaire deserves its very own story so I won't get into that one now.) The voyeuristic aspect of all this an absolutely wonderful thing nonetheless. Have you ever wondered what a middle aged orthodox jewish man does on the internet? I can tell you. He watches videos on youtube of Ricky Martin. Seriously. It's all fun and games of course until someone pulls out the bestiality porn. No one wants to see that.

-Screwing with teenagers.
At the library that I work at we have laptop computers available for patrons to check out and use while on library grounds. Why no one has figured out a way to steal one of these laptops is beyond me. I have come up with quite a few myself. In any case, the majority of people utilizing this service are high school kids working on school projects. The battery life of these laptops is about two hours. Once the battery dies or the computer is turned off, any work saved to the computer is deleted. Despite the fact that there are notices all over the computer explaining this, the kids continuously come to me frantic, saying that the battery has run down and they were working on a paper that they need to retrieve and if it has been lost then they just might die. I can stretch this one out for a while knowing that the computer is really just sleeping to conserve power and as soon as I plug in an ac adapter whatever stupid paper about cell myosis or mitosis or whatever is indeed still there. What I do in this situation is put the laptop aside and tell the kid that most likely their hard work is gone and they will have to start from the beginning. Then I watch them cry. Then I give them a slight bit of hope and say that I might be able to work some magic and retrieve their precious paper but it's a long shot. Then I send them away and surf the internet for a while. After ten minutes or so I plug the computer in and change the battery. When the computer wakes up the paper magically appears back on the screen. I call the child into the computer lab and tell them that I have saved their paper and they do not have to go slit their wrists or anything. I am now their god.