It's only my first hour on the desk, but I already helped the ultimate library patron today. He was a man who needed help getting an online legal form (legal help) because he'd never even touched a keyboard before (computer illiteracy). He was so excited that I helped him get it and released his print job for him because he didn't have fifteen cents to pay for it (no money) that he started telling me about his prostate surgery (TMI medical talk AND genital talk) and asking me to pray for him for it to go well (religion).
In case that wasn't enough for the entire day, it's been a morning of phone abuse as well. So fare I've had to shush a man with his phone on speaker and to tell a man threatening to "shove my foot down her f***ing throat" that he was welcome to talk quietly on his phone, but to please keep it clean in the library. I also almost had to intervene in a young woman telling another patron that surely he was supposed to be in school and the truancy officer had better not catch him, but fortunately the security guard got there first.
Where are the cameras?
...please tell me there are cameras.
whoa, where can the day go from here? hopefully not to more TMI medical talk/genital talk
ReplyDeleteMaybe you're the subject of some library school PhD experiment. Do you remember signing any consent forms?
ReplyDeleteNo, but library school 'research' isn't exactly known as the Institutional Review Board Gold Standard, so it's still possible...
Deletesweet mother of God! (religion) If only there was a librarian version of Candid Camera...you'd be on it for sure.
ReplyDeleteit was a sad day for libraries when someone invented cellphones.
ReplyDeleteAt my library, patrons have been known to hassle the home-school kids for "playing hooky."
ReplyDeleteGrr!
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