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Ashleigh, the librarian responsible for our adult patrons and programming, slips out from the back office, her gigantic quilted purse slung over one shoulder and her raven topknot jutting slightly to the right.
Despite being a five-foot-tall hourglass of a woman with Disney Princess eyes, Ashleigh is the embodiment of the scary-library stereotype. Her voice has the force of a blunt object, and she once told me she "doesn't mind confrontation" in a tone that made me wonder if maybe we were already in one. She's the person that our septuagenarian branch manager, Harvey, deploys whenever a difficult patron needs a firm hand.
My first shift working alongside her, a middle-aged guy with a wad of dip in his cheek walked up, stared at her boobs, and said, "I've always had a thing for exotic girls."
Without even looking up from her computer, Ashleigh replied, "That's inappropriate, and if you speak to me like that again, we'll have to ban you. Would it be helpful if I printed you some literature about sexual harassment?
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