(no subject)

[darchildre]

We have an eccentric regular who mostly comes into use our photocopier. He always wants to do something that either our copiers/printers won't do - photocopying money, printing legal size on printers that can't accommodate that size paper - or mess with the photocopier settings for half an hour before copying a single page.

That's fine - he doesn't get angry if we can't do something he wants and he'll move out of the way if anyone else needs to use the machine - but he has a bad habit of continuing to do certain things after we've told him they're against the rules/policies, arguing with us about them every time he comes in. It used to be printing from a flash drive plugged directly into a printer - the printers in the library have USB ports but that functionality has been shut down. He would come in every day for weeks and try to turn it back on somehow, despite us telling him not to and showing him how to print from the computer instead.

Recently, he has developed a habit of "cleaning" the glass surface of the photocopier with his hands before and after every copy he makes. We've asked him not to do that. We've explained why we're asking - it leaves fingerprints and the oils from his hands get on the glass surface, which then produces artifacts on subsequent copies. We've offered to let him use one of the microfiber cloths that we've officially been given to use just for cleaning that glass. But he keeps doing it every time, and we keep having to talk to him.

He did it again just now and I gave him the same explanation I've personally given him twice before. He told me once again that it's the best method he's found for cleaning "paper lint" off the copier. (There is no paper debris on the copier.) I told him that I understood but he still can't do that. We'll see how long that lasts.

Now he is photocopying leaves.

Comments

[silveradept]

This both sounds like someone who is the harmless eccentric that has to be dealt with and the person who needs to be shown a yellow card for persistent infringement. Is there a good way to resolve this?

[darchildre]

Not as yet. Some people, you just have to resolve yourself to the fact that you're going to have to have the same conversation with them every time they come in and hope that the behavior will improve. He doesn't argue about the flash drives anymore, after all - I'm sure that the screen cleaning will cease to be a problem eventually.

[silveradept]

Yeah. Annoying, but not actually harmful, from the sounds of it, and so probably not actually warranting something other than the repeated conversations, aggravating as they are to have to do all the time.