The Book-Check Girl speaks again, aka Library Rant: The Sequel.

The BBQ Pit
1

A while back I posted this thread about the idiots using the library at my school, where I’ve been a Circulation Desk Assistant for six semesters, my entire time at college. Well, believe it or not, I’ve found even more insanely stupid and annoying things to rant about. You wouldn’t think college students could much dumber, ruder, or more disrespectful… but you’d be wrong. So here we go.

First, on the subject of returning books:

[ul]
[li]The little slot at the end of the desk that’s labeled “book return” is not a magic portal. You stick your books in it, and they do not go miraculously flying back to their proper places on the shelves. You know where they do go? They go into a bin. A bin under the desk. And then at some point (usually 15 minutes before my shift is over), I get to squat next to the bin, pull out all the books and set them on the counter, and go through the whole scanning/stamping/sensitizing book-check-in process. Then they go on a cart. When the cart’s full, it goes back in a room with a bunch of other carts. And then finally at some point the shelving assistants come and take the carts and put the books back on the shelves. So if you come in three hours after you returned a book and go looking for it on the shelves, guess what. It won’t freaking be there! I do not have a magical book transportation wand. I have a little laser barcode-scanner wand, but that ain’t going to do jack shit for ya. So once again, the “book return” slot is not a magical library portal that instantly sends books to their proper places on the shelves. Dammit. [/li]
[li]In the same vein, the book carts that sit near the doors to every wing of the library are not a substitute for returning your books to the Circulation Desk. They are there so that if you take a book off the shelves and use it just in the library, you can put it on those carts and an assistant will come along and put it back, rather than having you try to put it back yourself and fucking it up royally because you could never even remember how the Dewey Decimal system worked, let alone Library of Congress call numbers. If you’ve checked a book out and are in the library and figure you’ll just stick it on one of those carts instead of returning it to the desk because you’re a lazy fuckwad (you have to walk right by the desk to get out of the library), then I will not be sympathetic when you come in a month later and say “Why do I have these fines? I put the book back in the library!” You will pay your damn fines and maybe next time you will do things the right way. [/li]
[li]As a general rule, if you checked it out from the media desk, return it to the bloody media desk. You give it to me, I’ll just stick it on the media cart and it’ll wait for the next person who wanders up from the media desk to come and get it. I hate that, the media desk person hates that. Save us all some time and truck your stupid CD down there yourself![/li]
[li] And the one that pisses me off the most: When the library is open, please, please do not return stuff in the overnight book drop!!! There is no reason to! The book return slot inside is literally 4 feet from the door. In the amount of time it takes you to walk around the side of the building, around the little railing, and dump your books in the book drop, you could have been inside, dropped off your books, and been on your merry way, without breaking the eardrums of the Circ desk worker and disrupting the serene library peacefulness of everyone in that wing! Do you have any idea the noise the book drop makes when you put even one book through it, let alone the 12 you just dropped! It sounds like a herd of rabid wildebeests stampeding down a ten-story metal and cinderblock stairwell, only with more echoing clanginess!! It’s loud, it’s annoying, and it’s not meant for when the library is open, asshole!![/li][/ul]

And a few other notes:

[ul]
[li]Cellphones: It’s a fucking library, and you walk in here blabbing away on your goddamn cellphone like you’re in the middle of a crowded football stadium. “YEAH! YEAH, I’M IN THE LIBRARY RIGHT NOW! SERIOUSLY? SHE DID THAT? OH, YEAH, I HAVE TO GET SOME STUPID BOOK. YEAH, YEAH. HUH? OH, YEAH…” Can you not see that everyone is glaring at you, wishing they could rip your phone from your hand, hopefully taking a few fingers with it, and cram it directly down your loudmouthed gabby little throat? Same goes for having your cellphone ringing loudly while you’re in the library. Even worse if it’s a fucking musical ringtone that goes on and on and on. Especially if you’ve wandered off to look for a book and left your fucking phone sitting with your stuff on a chair!! The library is not the place for your cellphone conversations!!![/li]
[li]Book vandalizers: What the FUCK is your problem? What on earth possesses you to do this to good, sweet, gentle, never-harmed-a-soul, NOT YOURS books?!!! This is library property, fuckbubble, do you actually think you have a right to do this shit? Do you think it’s amusing if you scribble “Lumpy Sucks Cock” on the inside cover of a book? Do you get a big chuckle out of crossing out the authors name and writing “By Scrotie van Penis” in its place? And on a book about the fucking Holocaust no less?!?! And to the person who actually ironed an OKGo patch onto the front cover (!!?!) I hope you rot in a fiery hell where you are beaten with beautiful leather first-editions and smacked repeatedly upside the head with an ironing board every day for the rest of your life. While listening to Lawrence Welk. Fucktard. The books are not yours. You are borrowing them from the library. Treat the books with a little goddamn respect, you morons!![/li]
[li]And finally, there appears to be a new trend prank among the more idiotic of our fair students. The prank goes like this: Friends A, B, C, and D come to the library in a group, and while you’re studying or doing whatever, while friend A is distracted, Friend B, C, or D hides one or more library books in A’s backpack. When you go to leave the library, Friend A, of course, sets off the alarm. Friends B, C, and D run ahead and laugh their asses off just outside the doors while Friend A has to come back to the desk and figure out why the alarm went off. Ha ha. Really fucking funny. You stupid immature little assholes. You are what, 20, 21, 22 fucking years old, and you’re pulling shit like this? Grow the fuck UP! You are abusing library property, and more importantly you are wasting my fucking time and annoying the bloody hell out of me!! The security gate is there and the books are sensitized to keep people from taking them without checking them out, they are NOT there so you can play stupid games and inconvenience the entire staff!! You think it’s funny to stick Exploring the Male Sexuality in your friend’s bag and have them “discover” it and be embarrassed? Well then you are a total fucking moron and I have no idea how the holy hell you got into college in the first place! All you’re doing is being a complete and utter pain in the ass and acting like second-graders. I’ve had this happen four times in the past four weeks, and so far I’ve just gritted my teeth and borne it, but next time, I swear to fucking God, I’m going to abandon my post behind the desk, march out the door and tell you fuckwits exactly what I think of your bullshit. In very polite librarian terms, of course, but I’m pretty capable of getting my point across. Don’t fuck with the library girl, shit-stain.[/li][/ul]

::sigh:: I hate people sometimes. Mostly just the stupid ones in my own age group. AAAAGGGH!!!

I feel better now.

2

I’ve often theorized that morons take their resentment at being forced to read a book for class out on the books themselves. To a mind weaned on sitcoms and nerd jokes, a book is a much-deserved insult to their intelligence. Recognizing this in the reptilian recesses of the brain, the subject tries to “punish” its inanimate tormentor.

It is also a subconcious attempt to remotely insult the next reader, who may, in fact, be perusing the volume for pleasure alone. This is angering to the subject, who, in his inferiority complex, may feel that anyone who reads for pleasure holds themselves superior to him. By defacing the book, he is attempting to insult the “nerd” who makes him feel so dumb.

Defacing the book also makes the subject feel relieved that he has conciously rejected the intellectualism represented by reading. He is not “rejected” by a book he does not understand, he is rejecting *it. * He may show his handiwork to a crony, who will snicker with him at what they percieve as cleverness. He has now made his disdain for reading public, thus keeping status with his hairy-knuckled “pack.”

Just a theory, anyway.

3

As a university library patron (never been an employee) I just have to say AMEN.

And if I may tack on an additional statement:

If I am sitting in the library at 1 AM the weekend before finals trying to cram 10 weeks of art history/econometrics/physics/statistics/whatever into my rather recalcitrant brain, I DO NOT, I REPEAT,

I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR YOU AND YOUR BOY/GIRLFRIEND MAKING OUT BEHIND ME! YOU’RE IN THE GODDAMN LIBRARY, PEOPLE! GET! A! GODDAMNED! ROOM! ELSEWHERE!

I can’t even begin to IMAGINE why it would seem like a good idea to plop down in your SO’s lap and just start going at it IN THE MIDDLE OF A FRICKIN’ LIBRARY! I DO NOT NEED TO HEAR SMACKY SLURPY YUCKY SOUNDS OVER WHAT’S COMING THROUGH MY HEADPHONES when I’m trying to study! And the other fifty people in the near vicinity don’t appreciate it either!

That is all.

(I hate my fellow students. Yes, I do.)

4

It’s an interesting theory… but people do the same things in bathroom stalls, and you’d like to think they’re not frustrated that other people have more pleasurable bowel movements. What Joe Schmoe is consciously rejecting when he writes “Fuck You!” on the bathroom wall I don’t know, but I won’t ask the question in this thread unless someone feels they can tackle the book/bathroom disrespection connection adequately.

5

Lumpy Sucks Cock.

[sub]Hee hee hee…[/sub]

6

Ahh… life in the Reg. How I miss it so.

masafer
A.B. '01

7

They’re just feeling frustration with life in general. Perhaps they feel that the bathroom being a place to dispose of waste, it is also a place to vent all of their angst with their fellow man. Like the book defacer, the bathroom scrawler feels misanthropic, but is unable to articulate, even to himself, why he feels this way, nor to pick an appropriate target for his general feeling of anger and anxiety. He scrawls “Fuck You!” in a misguided attempt to insult or apprise next person in the stall of his feelings.

Unlike books, however, the bathroom is already a dirty place, and the scrawler may feel more at ease writing his eloquent sentiments in there than, say, his dentist’s waiting room.

The Potty Poet is a different creature altogether. This is the wit who starts his grandiose works with something akin to “Here I sit, all broken-hearted . . .” This is a person who feels his cleverness unappreciated by those around him, so attempts to impress strangers with his talent. He may leave, feeling pleasure at the thought of a stranger reading these words and chuckling, or thinking them clever. Some book defilers fit this profile, leaving inappropriate materials in the book, or exclamations written in the margins.

8

God, yes okay. First of all, word to your entire post. Second of all, I would actually extend this “shut off your fucking cellphone” policy to most public buildings, but it’s especially annoying in the library.

And can we go back to the basics for a bit? Like, I don’t know, shutting the fuck up while in the library? I realize I’m apperantly one of the few that doesn’t need a pack of 30 with which to do my studying, so maybe I don’t understand the incredible need to fill the air with talk of boyfriends, girlfriends, and football games, but when you thunder down the stairs clammering like you just got out of high school english or something, it tends to disturb my studying! Amazing! I shouldn’t have to use my headphones to drown out other people’s stupid conversations in a library.

9

** AntaresJB ** Oh how I have felt your pain. I worked at my Uni (U of Alaska, Anchorage if anyone cares) library all four years I was a student there. I didn’t work circ though, I was one of the computer support guys, we had our own special variety of asshats to deal with. For reasons that were never adequately explained to me during my tenure there the libary was partially open to the general public. They could come in and play with the computers and read books, but IIRC couldn’t check out books, or had to pay a hefty deposite to get a card. They mostly came in to fuck up my computers, though it would be unfair to the student body at UAA to give them their fair of credit for abusing library computing resources. Our trouble makers generally fell into one of three categories:

Porn Freaks. There are four computers on the second floor that are in a somewhat isolated area, there’s a lot foot traffic from other students but no library staff were ever nearby, except for circ students stuck on cart duty in the stacks. Patrons were emboldened by the lack of adult supervision to the point that we had nickednamed these machines the “porno computers.” Because almost every day we either caught somone surfing porn from one of them or found evidence (no not THAT, I’m happy to say!) that someone had been cruising for nekkid pics. Grr, I have nothing at all against porn, or the viewing thereof but there is a time and a place for everything and the library is never the fucking place to whack off to 'net porn! You sick fuckers!

Chat Room Whores and MUDers. There are a number of sites out there that offer Java clients for IRC/AIM and various MUDs, or other types of chat programs. Since we needed to keep Java enabled for a few of our databases we didn’t have a good way of preventing people from using their browsers to log into to chat programs. Chatting via the web is only really a problem because most of the chatters would login and stay there for several hours, this was bad enough during normal circumstances but during midterms/finals week it was really an issue. These selfish, inconsiderate, goat felching asshat fucktards would still sign in and chat away for four or five hours while other students with actual work to do waited in line! I hate(d) them worse than the porn freaks, at least they had the decency to make themselves scarce during crunch times.

Wanna be hax0rs. At least once a week some asshole who just watched “Hackers” on TNT would come in and try to hax0r our systems. They didn’t have a chance of actually doing anything to the public workstations, we had those fuckers locked down Nazi style. WinNT4.0, with all of the Nazi settings in the user profile set, a set list of only four applications that could be launched, no disk write privlages except to the floppy drive and C:/tmp plus we replaced explorer as the shell with Novell Application Launcher and a BIOS startup password. But about once a week we’d get a call from a librarian letting us know that some patron was “acting strangely” with the computers and would ask us to come out and “see if we can help them” A quick visit from one of us always scared them off to someone elses lab and like I said they couldn’t harm anything but it was still annoying as fuck.

Ahh well, we were able to get our revenge on both the porn freaks and the chatters with the use of VNC software, which let us remotely view their screens and control their keyboard/mouse. Whenever we were bored, which was often, it was open season misbehaving users. I think you can imagine the types of problems we were able to engineer. Really odd is that from time to time we’d get tech calls because a chatter we were fucking with complained about comptuer problems to the librian on duty. Ahh memories :slight_smile:

Despite all of the shit I had to put up with sometimes, it was still a great place to work. I honestly don’t think I’ll ever find a better group of people to work with again, people who work in college libraries are just plain cooler than most other people, IMO :slight_smile: I’ve been out for two years now and I still miss working there, I don’t think I’ll find that kind of work environment anywhere in the private sector.

10

AntaresJB, I kept waiting for you to tell your library patrons that none of the library material receptacles are also intended for whatever trash they might have had in their pockets/mouths/feet/bookbag/navels. Was this in your previous rantthread, or has it not driven you apeshit to the level seen here?

Yet…

On a more serious note, does the university charge a fee to users, when possible, to replace defaced books? Or is it simple not feasible to go through every page of a book looking for pen marks and the like? It might curtail the practice slightly if one were to find a fine of, say, $30 for replacing The Unabridged Autobiography of Shelby Foote. For example. As amusing as “Shelby Foote-Long-Dick” is as a lastname, $30 kinda puts a damper on those Big Laffs[sup]TM[/sup].

11

:: giggle snort ::

12

Seriously. At the very least, they could confine themselves and their body-fluid-swapping-activities to the bookstacks where I rarely set foot.
But then you have to feel sorry for the poor reshelvers who have to find the condom wrappers/forgotten clothing.

13

Oh, yeah, and I understand that people, like myself, are freaks who can and have spent up to 18 consecutive hours in the library during crunch time.
But please, please, please, do not use your cellphone IN THE MIDDLE OF THE READING ROOM to order in dinner at the top of your lungs. There’s a dining hall that’s open until 9 for dinner and a minimart that’s open until 2 AM for snack-type-stuff a scant 30 yards away from the library. Use it, please. Or, I dunno, GO OUTSIDE TO TALK TO THE FRIGGIN’ DELIVERY PERSON.

That is all. For now.

14

Are you kidding? The library is 'dah coolest place to fool around! It’s nice and quiet, there’s the danger of getting caught, and if it’s somebody else going at it among the stacks you get the show!

:smiley:

15

sob

16

Why don’t you guys just lock the overnight bins when the library is open? That’s what they do around here.

17

Hey, now, AntaresJB. Leave Lawrence Welk out of this. He never did anything to you.

Invoke him again, and I’ll drench you in Rose Milk and pelt you repeatedly with Geritol tablets.

That is all.

18

Good revenge for that: get some of the other studying patrons together, gather 'round the cubicle/study carrel/aisle/what have you where the Kissy McSlurpslurps are living up to their names and have at them. Offer advice, critique their technique, make rude and lewd comments until they get up and leave. If they try to make a rukus, you have two options: pelt them with the heaviest, thickest books you can find or call security. Or both!

I hear ya. So glad I got out of college and its associated headaches.

SpazCat, '02

19

In my public library days (about 3 years ago), we dealt with this using the proven “Steve Method.” Whenever I or one of the other clerks noticed someone surfing inappropriately (ahem), we’d ask Steve to deal with them. Steve was a part-time archaeology student who worked for us as a security guard - about 6’4", muscular, bald, goatee. Steve would quietly walk up to the porn-surfer and then ask them in a loud voice “hey, what’re you looking at there? Is that research for a paper?” Embarrassment and slinking away inevitably followed.

20

Antares, out of curiosity, is it legal for people to play the sneak-a-book-onto-the-pack prank? It sounds to me like you could interpret it as attempted theft of library property on the part of the pranksters. Next time it happens, would a call to campus security be effective?

Here’s what I’m thinking:

  1. Find out the name of the prankee and ask them to stay at the desk for a minute or two. Assure them that they’re not in trouble.
  2. Call campus security and ask them to come down.
  3. Campus security finds out from the prankee the names of the pranksters (who have obviously fled the scene by now).
  4. Campus security goes to their dorm rooms and scares the shit out of them, maybe writing them a citation for their behavior.

Would something like that work? I imagine that it would be immensely satisfying.

Daniel