TV Guide Guy

When I first started working at the Cozyland Regional Library, I noticed that our message board for the office had one corner that was dedicated to a daily tally. It read: "TV Guide Guy." Under it was today's date, then hash marks. I asked what this tally was for, and this is when I first learned of the TV Guide Guy.

For years and years, a patron has called the Cozy County Answer Line to have the staff read to him from the TV Guide. He would ask the staff member to read the schedule, and then to read summaries of the shows he was interested in (generally seedy talk shows with summaries like, "I Slept with my Brother and had His Two-Headed Lovechild"). The Answer Line has a time limit of about 5 minutes per call, so they would cut off TV Guide Guy and he would call back. This would go on all day everyday. So, a rule was made that each patron had a limit of 3 calls per day. Keep in mind that he is the only patron (with some minor and temporary exceptions) for whom the library has had to enforce this rule.

At some point, TV Guide Guy began asking that news headlines (mostly Canadian) be read to him over the phone, while he repeated them into a tape recorder. I am told that TV Guide Guy is visually impaired, and that he records the headlines, then has someone (I can't even imagine the suckiness of having to do this job) read the articles he is interested in aloud to him at a later time.

Also at some point, TV Guide Guy realized that if he called the Answer Line three times, he could then get three more calls out of the Cozyland Regional Library staff (these being two separate services, you see). Hence the tallying of his calls for each day.

For almost a year, I never once got TV Guide Guy on the phone. All I knew about him, besides the tally, was that I would occasionally overhear a coworker on the phone with him. You could tell, because the call went something like this:

"Father kills daughter with machete. (pause)
Government sends secret forces to Yemen. (pause)
Tornado kills 18 and one cow. (pause)
12 year-old boy rapes 3."

And so on.

The first time I answered the phone and it was him, I didn't even know. All he said was, "611 News dot com this is my second call." I also neglected to check my clock when the call started, so I ended up staying on with him for eight minutes instead of five. I felt so used.

But I did get to add a hash mark with a pretty aqua marker.