I voted!!

Happy Early Voting everyone!!! I am excited to say that today, I exercised my right to vote!! HOOOORAY!!!!

My library is an Early Voting site for the presidential election. Which means we have TONS of extra people coming in to the library to vote (On Wednesday, we had 1,400+ people come in to the library JUST to vote! That's AWESOME!!! They are expecting at LEAST 20,000 people to vote at our Early Voting location ALONE!!!) Though, being an early voting site does come with some interesting adventures and stories.

First, early voting starts at 8:00 AM. The library itself doesn't open until 9:30. Which means that sometimes, the building is open, but the Library is closed. I blogged about this once before - very fun times!!

I am lucky enough, once again, to be the one who comes in extra early to police the building before the library opens. I have to tell you - I kinda like it. Here are a couple stories from the first two mornings:

**This happened about 30 minutes before early voting started. The EV staff tends to think they can do whatever, so they will come in and out of the building by pulling the doors open and shut. Keep in mind there is already a line of people waiting to get in. They see the EV staff opening the doors to come in and out... I bet you know what's coming.

Lady who is Determined to Vote: **pulls doors open and struts in**
Real Librarian: Um, excuse me, can I help you?
LDV: **with ATTITUDE** I'm goin' to VOTE.
RL: I'm sorry, actually, the voting doesn't open until 8:00, you'll have to wait outside.
LDV: I don't have TIME to wait. Plus, the radio said I could vote at 7.
Well, it took a while, but I finally got her to realize that no matter what she heard on the radio, the voting was NOT open. Oh, and I did manage to sneak in "that's why the doors were closed." heh heh heh

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Man in Green Shirt: Can you tell me the hours of the early voting?
Real Librarian: Sure - here they are (shows him schedule).
MGS: Great - my wife will have to come in on Saturday, it's the only time she can come!
RL: Well, great - we'll see her here on Saturday!
**MGS leaves and comes back in about 5-7 minutes later.
MGS: My wife doesn't have to come in on Saturday!! She's here right now!!!
RL: BWAHAHAHAHA (yes, I really did laugh - he was a good sport!)

Building open, library closed

I know this is a hard thing to comprehend...why is the building open, but the library closed?

Well, we are one of the lucky sites who gets to host Early Voting for an election that is going on right now. Early Voting is actually a super cool thing, and brings in hundreds of people who might not frequent the library (in fact, the other day alone we had 500 extra people here in the building just to vote early).

Early Voting opens to the public at 8:00 am. The library, however, doesn't open until 9:30 am. And on Fridays, the library isn't open at all! Hence the confusion.

We do our best to deter patrons from wandering around the building. We put up barriers and block pathways into the actual library part of the building. And, it's not like there is this big maze to get from the front door to the meeting room where the voting is held - it's a straight shot. It just seems that it would be obvious (especially considering there are signs EVERYWHERE that the library is closed until 9:30 Mondays through Thursdays and closed all day on Fridays - not to mention the barriers) that one is not supposed to be meandering through the stacks, browsing the DVD collection or picking up their holds.

Yesterday, I had a man shimmy past the barriers to the holdshelf where he wanted to check to see what he had on hold. When I told him (very nicely, I might add) that the library was closed, he got all up in my face (seriously) and told me that this is why he never comes here because we are SO rude.

Um, we're closed. CLOSED. That means NOT OPEN FOR BUSINESS. If the building were not open for early voting, you would not be able to check the holdshelf and see what came in for you. And even if I did let you check the holdshelf, you wouldn't be able to check these items out.

Once again, I am not here to piss you off, mess with your head or make your life a living hell. Though the way we get treated sometimes, that sounds like it might be a fun game...

haha... *wink*