Give a man food poisoning with a fish, and maybe he'll stop coming to your restaurant. Or die.

This actually fucking happened last week, and I had to write about it because it's still not legal to punch a stranger in the face, no matter how much of a fucking cockbite douchecanoe he is writing is good therapy.

So, this 50-something in an Army hat comes up to me looking like a reject from the Clive Cussler collection. Seriously, he had the floral shirt, the shorts, and the tall white socks. If he'd just had a lei, he could have been in Hawai'i (you can fill in your own joke here if you want). Immediately, my blood pressure rockets up to a million over fuck-you because I've dealt with this fucktard on several previous occasions. Let's review:

Sometime in January When I Wasn't Writing Much Because of Reasons:
Captain Asshat comes up to me and demands that I find something for him because the catalog is stupid. [Spoiler Alert: It's not the catalog.] Dipshit me decides I'll show him how to use it! Teach a man to fish and all that empowerment shit. When I get over to the catalog with him, I discover that he's stretched the mouse all the way across the keyboard to the left side, and stands at about a 60° angle to the screen while typing with one finger of his right hand. I immediately begin to regret my decision.

Still, I've apparently got some kind of obligation to try, so I start explaining how you have to use the little letter buttons to make words that tell the machine what you're looking for. Except I use my superhuman capacity for restraint to do it without being condescending. At first. I type in the author he's looking for and click 'Search.' Miracle of miracles, it brings back all the books by that author!

Corporal Cockbite: But I want audiobooks.
Me: OK, just click at the left where it says 'Audiobooks.'
CC: I have to do this every time? Every time I want something I have to do this?
Me: Well, if you want to search by a specific format, you can just click 'Advanced Search' and—
CC: No, you can do that. I can't do that.
My internal monologue: Then you, sir, are an idiot.
Me: pokerface.jpg

Eventually, I find him a couple things he's interested in (side note: they're not audiobooks) that don't happen to be checked out at the moment, and I begin seriously hoping he's capable of finding them on his own because even superpowers have limits, and I think I've just found mine. [Another spoiler: he's so not.]

Lieutenant Douchetard: How the hell am I supposed to know where this is?
Me: Well, you have to read. Right there, where it says 'first floor.' That means it's on the first floor.
LD: This is so stupid.

Then he proceeds to bitch at me for a while about how there's got to be an easier way, and probably some other stuff, but I've stopped listening because I'm wishing we still had an actual card catalog that I could make him dig through because, y'know, computers are hard.

No, seriously. Shut the fuck up.

Late April, Maybe:
Major Asshole shows up again. He's found a book he wants, and he knows it's on the fourth floor, which makes me feel sorry for whoever was working on the first floor about ten minutes earlier. He walks over to where he wants the book to be and doesn't see it after five whole seconds of looking, so he demands that I show him where we've hidden it. I look it up in the catalog and discover that it's a made-up story involving real people who actually lived in the past, and I tell him it's in Historical Fiction.

Private Wanker: Why the hell do you do that?
Me: Quoi?
PW: Why do you put the books all over the place like that?
Me: You mean in different genres?
PW: I mean you should put all the books by one author together. This is stupid.
Me: Most of our patrons like to read in a specific genre, and this makes it easier to find them.
PW: No, it's stupid. You've got one book in Mystery, and another in Historical Fiction. If he wrote a romance, would I have to go all the way over there?
Me: No, because you're standing right next to Romance. But yes, if he wrote a romance, we'd put it in the Romance section. Assuming it hadn't caused the universe to collapse.
PW: That's stupid.

Then he decided he didn't want the book because he didn't want to have to walk all the way over to the Historical Fiction section to get it. Instead, he walked DIRECTLY FUCKING PAST IT ANYWAY JUST TO GET TO THE ELEVATOR SO HE COULD LEAVE WITHOUT THE BOOK.

Last Friday:
This is where you came in. General Fuckhead literally throws a scrap of paper with a title written on it down on the desk and says "I'm looking for this book and I can't find it." It's in Historical Fiction again. He just came from Mystery. I don't even wait for him to follow me or start bitching, I just go to the shelf and grab it. When he finally decides to walk over, he sees that it's a mass-market paperback size, so he goes "I don't want that crap, I want a book." It shouldn't surprise me that he doesn't recognize one.

Ce n'est pas un livre.

Then we have the exact same...er...conversation we had a couple weeks ago, plus this:

Sergeant—You know what? Fuck it: None of you people understand this. You know what I think it is? It's a make-work project for librarians so you can have a job.
My inner Sith: I find your lack of faith disturbing. forcechoke.exe
Me: Oh, I'd love to let you talk to our director about that.
SYKWFI: No, I don't want [grumble grumble]. It's like talking to a deaf wall.

This is a deaf wall. Or, as most people call it, a wall.

This is not a deaf wall. If the walls in your house look like this,
FUCKING MOVE before you start getting messages written in blood.

Of course, he walks off still bitching to the air about how stupid everything is. The complete inability to do anything for himself kind of makes me wonder how he ever survived in the military. At least without getting fragged.

See Also: The woman who bitched about how we're sure putting her tax dollars to good use because we were closed on A FUCKING FEDERAL HOLIDAY.