The Library Thief.

Last week I got a text from a coworker-friend that another coworker caught one of our teen volunteers stealing a Yu-Gi-Oh card from my cubicle.  I was sitting in the middle of my Classification & Cataloging class so I received all the real time updates VIA G-chat.

Apparently it was this kid's second day to volunteer.  My cubicle is on Main Street too, it is right off the main walkway from the library to the backroom so it's in the open, it's not one of the off in the corner cubes.  The coworker that saw him asked him what he was doing and he just replied, "Just admiring."  She asked him if he took anything and he just poker-faced it and lied to her.  She went to the youth manager who is in charge of teen volunteers and told her.  Of course being passive aggressive librarians, neither youth staff asked him directly.  My C.F. told me that they both acted like they didn't want to deal with it at all.  The youth manager asked her, "Does he (referring to me) even care about the card?"  Really???  Is that how we are going to handle thefts now?  We only do anything if the item was of any value to the owner.  We had one witness and if you looked in my cube, you would see a whole section hanging loose because it was the cornerstone to which I started taping my collection up with, he was also caught a second time in my cube.

My C.F. said that I probably don't care about the card which is true since everything I have posted in my cube is stuff people have left unclaimed from their returns.  But still, she tried to reason with the manager that if he's willing to brazenly/stupidly take a gaming card what isn't there he wouldn't take?  We all know that stealing Yu-Gi-Oh cards is a gateway theft, next thing you know he will be "stealing" moldy book donations from the Friends, and then he'll be boosting cars from the staff parking lot!

The Circ P.I.C. got wind of this after the second time he was caught in my cube, and he went to the Info P.I.C. and she asked my coworkers for the details and then promptly fired the guy.  The two youth info people got upset that they weren't consulted at all, not sure what other outcomes could have come from it.  "Okay, so you got caught stealing once, don't let us catch you again---now go shelve these books."

When the kid's mom came in to pick him up she didn't act at all surprised when she found out he was fired for stealing.  If you know your kid is becoming a kleptomaniac, wouldn't you let the volunteer host know????  We could have made arrangements and he still could be volunteering.  Hell, if he really wanted the card he could have asked me for it and I would have given it to him.