Wednesday, June 13, 2007

I Made You a Sign


Last week, I had my very first library wanker - always a special time in a girl's life. Now, after reading some blog posts on this very topic, it seems customary to either call the police, or call security (if you have it). But what do you do when the offending patron is a kid?

As for me, I ran to the back room to poke out my mind's eye. After I stopped chanting, "Ewwww! Ewww! Ewww!," I went out to say something to him (something like, "You're going to go blind!" I guess), and, thankfully, he was gone.

I warned my co-workers, and now we just make it VERY obvious that we are keeping tabs on him - that seems to be doing the trick.

Do you have a wanker? Please feel free to post this sign.

8 comments:

Ryan Deschamps said...

I may be taking this over the way serious, but having had my own examples of "the library is not a hotel room," I want to express my sympathies. We joke about this stuff, but it really is not funny.

I couldn't eat for probably 36 hours after I entered a bathroom to find two guys having sex in a stall. I can't quite describe it, but the impact of this sort of thing shouldn't be underestimated. I mean, yes, we're adults and we'll live. But people doing this stuff at our workplace is an extreme violation.

Anonymous said...

Ryan, I don't think you taking it too seriously. I think we joke about these things because we have to in order to deal. It is an extreme violation to have this stuff happen in the workplace.

I'm fortunate that I haven't had to deal with the physical manifestation of this stuff. We generally only get people coming into where I work loooking at graphic pornography - which staff people see and get offended by. I get to be the lucky one who documents it all. Recently, I learned a whole lot more than I wanted to know about people with extreme foot fetishes - and I can't look at people's feet the same way.

So I want to express my sympathies too. I hope it never happen again!

jess said...

Oh, jeeez, I hope people don't think I do not take such things seriously. I take just about everything seriously - and I joke about everything as well or else my head would 'splode.

I probably would have been more "upset" about this had the patron been an old skeezy perv looking at porn with his junk on display. But it was a 13 yr-old looking at a clip on You Tube while playing a rousing game of "pocket pool." Ahhh, the joy that is puberty.

Believe me, had it been a grown man who was obviously getting his jollies on the "publicness" of it all, I'd have hucked one of the giant bath bombs I keep on my desk to ward off the BO of the masses (Thanks, Josh!) right at his privates.

Ryan Deschamps said...

Ooops! I have to say also that the "sex in the stall" incident did not happen in a library, but in a complex within which a library resided.

That didn't make it any less nauseating though.

Tim said...

Unfortunately, this seems to go hand-in-hand with working in a library (sorry about the pun). I'm working in a very specialized library at a museum now, but in my public and academic days I had a whole assortment of such incidents.

The most explicit was two college kids having sex in a study carrel, but the worst by far was a man (40s) who lurked in the stacks at the public library, attempting to get a look at any nearby teenage girl. Not only did we watch this guy whenever he came in, we even had to get the police involved eventually.

Anonymous said...

See, this is why I'm glad I don't work in a public library anymore. For the record, I never caught anyone wanking at our internet terminals, but there was one guy who liked to look at porn sites in full view of passerby.

Actually, I found the patron with the uncontrollable flatulence far more personally annoying than the pervert...

Joshua M. Neff said...

I had to deal with this, too, at MFPOW. The sad thing was, the person I caught was somewhat mentally/emotionally retarded and apparently had something of an internet addiction (we found out from his mother that they had locked up their home computer to keep him from using it). Also sadly, we had to call the cops on him, and he had just turned 18, which meant that even though he wasn't mentally/emotionally that age, he could be arrested as an adult.

Boy, was it uncomfortable having to confront him about it!

Anonymous said...

I'm lucky that this has not happened yet in the library where I work. However, I did find that someone had ejaculated in one of the books. It was a big picture book of WWE wrestlers, and it was on one of the female wrestlers, who was (needless to say) dressed quite sexily.