Working in a town known for having a number of residents (or visitors that never left) with a, shall we say, tenuous grip on reality, I've had my share of run-in's with some mentally incapacitated folk.
One woman scared most people on the street with her constant loud ranting and screaming of filth. Maybe I'm just ultra-sensitive, but it seemed that she saved her most vulgar invective for me. Whenever I would pass by she would look right at me and loudly call me a dirty bitch, or the n-word, or the four letter c-word, or all three, causing me to cringe and whomever happened to be close by to thank God that she wasn't singling them out today. Finally, she caught me on the wrong day. I was having just a bad enough morning that I didn't care about physical harm and when she started her shit and started to follow me with it, I turned around and yelled that I wasn't talking to her or bothering her. It shocked me and her enough that she turned around and walked away. Funny enough, the same thing once happened to me when a dog tried to attack my mom and I. I stepped in front of my mother and yelled at it to stop and go away, and it went away, seemingly stunned that I wasn't afraid. There's something about me, I guess, that makes people think that I won't fight back, and I guess usually that's the case. But not always.
Anyway, to make a long story even longer, I was at work minding my business when I woman came up to the children's reference desk and started to tell me about how the air quality in the library was so poor. I don't think she was wrong, necessarily, and I tried to tell her that our maintenance staff was aware that we had a problem with our HVAC and that might possibly account for the physical reaction that she assured me she was having to the air circulation in the building. That in and of itself wasn't the problem. it's that even after I told her that I would relay her concerns to maintenance, she continued, and went on, and on, and on, and on.
She talked about how people thought that those who were sensitive to off-gassing of various chemicals were crazy, but that now it's been proven that it affects even those of us who are not as super sensitive as she is. She talked about how she moved to be closer to the library so she could spend more time in the library and how now, after 20 minutes in the Children's Department, she feels so ill that she has to leave (of course she's spent about 10 minutes talking to me and an undisclosed amount of time in the rest of the library), and then when I told her she could fill out a suggestion form she seemed to imply that I needed to turn her complaint into my personal crusade. I needed to talk to the architects (!) and make sure they didn't do this in any other of their buildings. This even though the building was renovated over 6 years ago and I've only been working there 4 years, so even if I knew who the architects were, they've been long gone. I love (read my sarcasm) it when people want to tell you how that THEIR problem should become your life's work. Don't get me wrong, I'm not insensitive. But I had already promised her that I was going to do that which I was actually able to do. My idea to tell maintenance would probably be more effective at solving this lady's immediate problem than tracking down some architects who've long since ceased to care, if they ever did. Big sigh.
She whispered in such a soft voice I wasn't sure if the headache I was starting to get was from straining so hard to hear her or if her suggestion that the air quality was poor was starting to affect me. For the last two minutes of her complaint, another person was standing behind her waiting with a question. I repeatedly made eye contact with this other person and said, "I'll be right with you" but this woman was so into her own agenda that she never noticed and I had the hardest time cutting in to get her to STOP TALKING! After trying unsuccessfully to cut in, I finally just interrupted and said, "This young man is waiting to ask a question." To which she said, "Oh! You should have told me." (Watch me slam my head against the wall.)
Now, I'm not saying what she had to say was crazy, but her insistence that I talk to the architects (!) to fix it and prevent this from ever happening again, and her self-important self-absorption in going on and on when I told her I'd tell someone was at the very least, extremely annoying. Maybe I should have yelled STOP! GO AWAY!
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