Clip them at your own damned house. I do not want to hear that little *snick snick* of your nailclippers echoing in my eardrums from halfway across the library. I also, and most especially, do not want to see your clippings scattered across a table, an upholstered chair, and on the carpet around said table and chair. Use a garbage can, FFS.

That is all.

The trash at the reference desk gets emptied once a week. Would you think reference librarians might be smart enough not to put smelly food garbage (e.g., the most oniony sandwiches ever created on earth) in that trash all week long? A larger trash container that gets emptied daily is about 12 steps away (okay, through a door, but it's not locked).

And I was going to empty the ref trash into the regular trash, but there aren't any more trashbags with which to line the container.

my blue haired coworker had an official complaint lodged against her by a patron. the patron claimed that she was, "practicing witchcraft and mind magic to harm me and my incarcerated brother."
yes. that just happened.

I had a rather bizarre experience at work the other day. A young woman came up to the circ desk and said she had a problem. I asked her what was wrong, and she started off with, "you know how sometimes you get the feeling someone is looking at you but you can't see anyone?"
So right away my crazy-dar started going off, but I kept listening to her. Then, she told me that when she was in the computer lab, there was a guy lying on the floor looking at people. Which, while weird and creepy, is certainly not impossible, every so often we do get guys doing creepy/inappropriate things in the building. So I told her I'd call security and asked what the guy looked like.
She didn't say what he looked like, but went on to say that she went to leave the building, and the same guy was standing by the door, so she pulled out her knife and walked past him. So at that point my co-worker called the police and security.
The woman was behaving very erratically, so I'm not really sure if there was a guy at all. And if there was some guy creeping in the computer lab and she left while he was still there, how could he have gotten to the exit before her? Unless it was a teleporting creeper.
Anyway, the police and security talked to her, but I never found out how the whole thing was resolved.

yep that's right, our wonderful administration is considering getting some treadmills and letting patrons use them.

I give up!

Anyone have any idea why my library's internet filter blocks me from the wikipedia entry for the book "Naked Came the Stranger" but lets me on youporn just fine?

The public library somehow misplaced my brother's returns AGAIN. Seriously, this is the fourth or fifth time that this has happened. However, the twist today is that two of the three books were considered overdue and I had to talk to a supervisor when I insisted that this was not the case.

I actually wasn't that angry. Frustrated, yes, but not angry. That all changed when I was trying to explain to the supervisor what had happened and she cut me off by saying that she would waive the fines and when I tried, again, to explain why I was up there, she just cut me off again with a, "I don't want to fight with you."

!!!!!!!

I wasn't angry before, but now I'm pissed. I told her she was being incredibly rude and condescending for refusing to listen to me without hearing what I had to say. I even told her I was a solo school librarian and I was understanding the first couple of times (because anyone can make a mistake), but really? FOUR TIMES?! While I'm grateful that she had waived the fines, it's ridiculous that I have to even talk to her about erasing them because something in their system keeps glitching and not properly checking in my brother's items. I don't know if she thought she was being nice by waiving the fines automatically or if she just wanted to avoid confrontation, but interrupting and cutting me off in mid-sentence was neither nice nor non-confrontational.

Before anyone says that my brother really could have returned the items late, it's actually not possible. My brother has a cognitive disorder that makes him adhere to routines, one of which is that he always has his library items in the same pile, in the same corner of his room. When he is done with them, they always go in his library bag. Taking his items out of his room probably will cause him some sort of physical pain.
While he does not have eidetic memory, he does display OCD-type behaviors. If he can tell which of his Yu-Gi-Oh cards (he has over a hundred) were shuffled around and misplaced, then he can tell which of his library items are missing.

The best solution is that we will bring all of his items up to the circulation desk and have the librarians check in each item while we wait. This is probably more of an inconvenience to them than it is to us, considering that he may have up to 20 items out at a time, but if that's what it'll take to keep this from happening, then that's what we'll do.

Just the weirdest question ever...

A woman called my tiny branch library yesterday and asked, quite seriously, if anyone on staff at the library could perform marriages...

I answered "No"

She said thank you and hung up...

WTF???

Does stupidity run rampant in all libraries? I'm not talking patrons, I'm talking employee's and administration!!! For goodness sake, the people who run ours, are running it right into the ground. I can't stand it, I have to come home a drink some wine just to calm down from the fuckery going on.

Best argument for not paying late fees ever?

"They're just for research. It's not like anyone wants them."

Possible runner up:

"You were closed because of the snow day! I couldn't return the books!"
"Sir, the snow day was four months ago...we have drop boxes and we've been open since then."
"No, but the day I tried to return them, you were closed because of the snow!"