February Posting Meme, part 1

[darchildre]

frenchroast asked about my weirdest library interaction.

So, the thing about working in a library - particularly a small-town library - is that people will, openly and at the drop of a hat, talk to you about anything. Sometimes, this is because they are regular patrons who see us at least once a week (if not once a day) and therefore assume that we are friends. Sometimes, it's just because the library tries to be a welcoming place and the staff make an effort to be hospitable and nonjudgmental.

This is generally a good thing, because we want our patrons to feel able to ask us when they need help with difficult questions. We want people to be able to trust us when they need to ask for resources on leaving a bad marriage, on dealing with their sick and elderly parents, on finding help with their own illnesses. We want teens to be able to ask us for books about sex or religion or anything else, if they need that information and can't get it from other sources. And we want you to feel able to come up to the desk with that one weird question that you've always wondered about and know that we won't laugh at you and that we'll do our best to find you an answer. But that does mean that people will tell you shit that you never wanted to know and you just have to stand there with a neutral, sympathetic expression and let them get on with it.

The worst of these was a woman several years ago who came into my library for the first time to use our computers for something and in the process started talking to me about how her dog - a standard poodle, if I recall correctly - had recently died. (I want to point out that this was in no way related to what she was doing in the library. It was just clearly on her mind.)

I made appropriately sympathetic remarks - it sucks when your dog dies, for sure. And then she said, "But he died mid-coitus, so I guess he was happy when he went."

...

Friends, you can ask a library employee for help with anything you want, but maybe don't out of the blue inform them that your dog keeled over while fucking, because I promise you, they are not going to know what to do with that.






If you have a subject you would like me to post about during the month of February, there are still slots open.