Dan's Not Here, Man

Dan has been gone two months, and yet his nose-blowin', dick-pissin' ghost haunts us still.....

Frederick Rothschild is a customer at the library who is in his late 120's, and likes to complain about stuff. Toothless, saggy-lipped, he came to my desk and wanted to speak to a manager.

"The little blonde girl..." He karate-chopped at the air. "About yay high."

"Karen?"

"Yes. Get her for me, will you."

I went back to the office. Karen didn't want to go at first, but I explained that he'd called her a "girl" and that she was "yay" high. This was somehow persuasive.

Karen marched out, putting on her phoniest smile. "Hello, sir! How can I help you?"

"I don't like that new girl over there. She didn't help me when--"

"Wait. Let me interrupt you. Did you like Dan? Are you used to Dan helping you because HE'S NOT HERE. He's gone. We have someone new. Her name is R. Okay? And she's WONDERFUL. I want you to forget about Dan! Will you do that? FORGET ABOUT DAN!!"

Mr Rothschild stared, dumbfounded.

"Have a good day!"

Karen smiled sweetly, pivoted on her cowboy boots, and marched back to her office. Mr Rothschild looked at me. I rolled my eyes as if to say girls amirite?

But we weren't done with the day's Dan-ness. An hour later Karen shot out of her office and came to get me and Todd.

"Oh, come look! Come look!"

Todd hopped up and down, clapping his gloved hands in glee. "Oooh! I love this!"

We crowded around Karen's computer. She had up an email from a manager about Dan. Apparently, he had done some on-call work at another library and had provided less-than-exemplary service. The manager said that Dan had refused to break up a fight in the children's section between two young boys (why do something when you can sit at the reference desk staring angrily into the middle distance?), had made an "inappropriate" joke to one of the clerks about "selling" his granddaughter to the clerk (rule of comedy writing: child slavery is ALWAYS hilarious), and then, worst of all, took a gassy nap on their break room couch. Also, there was the delicate matter of Dan's "ex-family" coming into that particular branch on occasion. Apparently Dan's estranged daughter, who writes for Westword, gives her uncle a Father's Day card every year and tells her uncle to tell Dan that she gave a card to him but not Dan. She hates Dan plenty, almost more than Todd. So, no, it wouldn't be good if someone related to Dan actually came into their library and saw him digging for nasal gold behind the reference desk...

"So now he's banned! Isn't this great??"

Todd shook his head. "I'm confused about how this email was sent. Is it forwarded to you, or...?"

"And they misspelled Dan's last name," I said.

"You guys! That's not important!"

"I'm just saying, that's not--"

Karen slapped my shoulder super hard.

"Owww!"

"You really hit him!" Todd said, laughing.

"Oh, Greg! I'm so so sorry! I'm sorry!" Karen hugged me. "I won't do it again!"

"That's okay..."

"I just get so upset about that fucker that I lose control--"

"So are you saying the ghost of Dan was actually responsible for hitting me?"

"Yes!"

I rubbed my shoulder. "Well, HR is going to hear about this. Dan's in trouble once again!"