'they trod on the chicken!'

This afternoon, as I was processing Offsite books for pick-up, a woman came up to me at the circulation desk and said, "Excuse me. There seems to be pasta and... and chicken... on the floor over here."

I looked at her uncomprehendingly.  "Chicken?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, and then added quickly, "It isn't mine."

I walked around to the front of the desk and yes, lo and behold, there was pasta and marinara sauce and chicken strewn across the floor. With footprints smeared through it, here and there.

Infuriated, I found a roll of paper towels and a bottle of no-name cleaning fluid and got down on my hands and knees and proceeded to clean up the mess, grumbling under my breath about this being why, in a nutshell, we have a No Food policy and this is a library for God's sake and didn't their mothers teach them anything?!?

Karen came over to see what was going on, looking slightly alarmed at my quiet tirade. I told her what had happened, caught in one of those moments of teetering between laughing and crying, finishing with a plaintively shrill, "And they trod on the chicken!!!"

Karen just looked at me wide-eyed for a second and then burst out with a loud guffaw, at which point of course it hit me how ridiculous I must sound, and so I started laughing too.

It is better to chuckle over such things, I suppose, than to rage over being surrounded by idiots and barnyard animals.