(no subject)

[darchildre]

Practically my first library interaction of the day:

I walked away from the front desk for maybe a minute and turn around to find a patron* behind the desk at our staff boookshelf**, leaning over the staff schedule, so close that his nose is practically touching it.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING AND WHY DO YOU THINK IT IS APPROPRIATE???





*One of the ones who has several weird and annoying habits and who always puts me on edge anyway.

**Our desk is floating away from a wall and is kidney bean shaped, so patrons often just come right up behind my shoulder anyway. We have no storage in the desk (plus it's too small for necessary circulation tasks), so there's a wee shelf behind us with reference items, ILLs, discs for video games, various other confidential things that we nonetheless need on the floor, and the staff schedule. It is an extremely stupid arrangement but we were forced into it when we got our new building and can't get either a new desk or a cabinet with doors that indicate that the BOOKSHELF IS NOT FOR PATRONS. So instead, I constantly have people walking behind me trying to look at things that they shouldn't look at and steal my stapler.

Comments

[silveradept]

Uggggh. Why do people who build these spaces not think for a minute about how they're going to be used?

[darchildre]

The worst part is, the current arrangement is actually an improvement. In the original plan, there was to be no staff storage outside the backroom at all.

I'm glad I no longer work in a library building that constantly catches fire and this one is better in most ways but the idea that people were going to exist in and use this space was in no way considered by the designers. Everything echoes. You can barely fit books on the check out desk. We had to complain for 6 months to get coat hooks in the staff area - there was no provision for the fact that staff might have wet coats they wanted to store somewhere. In western Washington.

It's generally a good building but the same designers are doing a remodel of one of our other branches in a few years and the staff here keep warning the staff there about things that they absolutely have to stop before they begin.

[silveradept]

Try your hardest, it might not work still. The staff kept rejecting plans for the building I'm currently in because the architects had no clue they were building a library, and so we got a building that echoes fiercely, has narrow doors, isn't nearly as mobile or modular as we wanted it to be, has climate issues, lighting issues, and otherwise stands as a testament to the incompetence of the architects and the unwillingness of the brass to push back on them until they got it right.

[james]

Baby gates?

[darchildre]

Alas, the layout of the library does not make this a possible solution, as much as I would personally enjoy it.

[james]

Set some metal rings into the wall behind you and string up an electric fence.