A Library Encounter

This is the sort of thing Library School didn't prepare me for, and probably could not. I had to rely on my own 'instinct'.

Around noon one of the old guys who frequents the Library came in for his usual newspapers. He is not one of the group of regulars schmoozers who are here daily. This one always comes in alone, reads two papers, and goes.

"Nooseday," he said, referring to Long Island's tabloid, Newsday, handing me his card, a look of having bit into a lemon gracing his mug. After perhaps fifteen minutes, he was back, done reading that rag.

"Gimme da Post," he barked, his mug still bitter, unhappy, unwilling to accept that there could be a reason to be friendly, or affable, or merely happy. He took it, and left.

I don't know where he goes. But in several minutes I heard a cellphone ring, loud, with one of those annoying ringtones. I got up, found where someone was talking on the cellphone, and walked back to the front of the first (ground) floor of the building. There was Mister Nooseday talking on his mobile.

"Sir," I said politely, "please take that conversation into the lobby."

The Library's policy on cellphones isn't clear. There are a few, and I mean maybe four, signs that are about 3x7, in the entire two public floors. They are difficult to see, and easy to overlook. They say "Please turn off cellphones," and have a cellphone pictured inside circle with a slash through it. So officially the policy is no cellphone conversations inside the library. It is ignored. Some people ignore it blatantly because they don't fathom there are places they should not have a cellphone conversation. Other people ignore it deliberately; they know they're not supposed to have a conversation inside the library, having been told so before (read teenagers, of course, and adults, now no surprise), but don't care. Some ignore it out of ignorance, then apologize. (Notice the similarity between ignore and ignorance. Interesting, as in curious: to ignore I understand to be to disregard while knowing; and ignorance is lack of knowledge.)

These days, of course, cellphones are ubiquitous, as well as widely used matter-of-factly. People just use cellphones (and iPods and other electronic hand-held devices) as a matter of everyday routine. For young people, the devices are part of their lives; they don't know what it is not to have them.

He ignored me. I repeated myself. He still ignored me, and I could now tell he had heard me (I'm a terrible poker player, but I would've bluffed him). I bent down so he could not avoid seeing me, and repeated my request. He ignored me, then said, "keep your shirt on. I'm going."

He made no move to go. So I whispered a sweet nothing in his ear, and left. As I walked away I heard him grumble into the phone. "Some guy...screw them."

Just another work day at the public library. No, library school could not have prepared me to deal with this bozo. A Psychology class would have (been there, done that). But library school could have, and, in my strong opinion, should have prepared me for encountering such a patron. It simply isn't enough to have students take classes on the theories and research of library science, and then send them off to work in a real-world setting. This is a contentious point in the library world, an ever-going debate. I have my opinion, of course, and strongly held, also of course.