Are George and Lennie Mice?

The best thing about working in a library is that you can tell people to be quiet anytime you want and it's completely legitimate. Even if you just want them to shut up because you can't hear your Pandora, no one questions you. People have preconceptions about libraries that lend themselves perfectly to my desire not to listen to them talk about their lives.

Unfortunately, people also have other notions about libraries that are guaranteed to make me ponder hari-kari. Chief among these annoyances is the belief that libraries are places where one person talks to another person in a fearful whisper. I absolutely loathe whisperers, mainly because I can't hear what they're saying, but also because their timidity seems to imply that they must tiptoe around and be careful not to disturb me, lest I go berserk and poke their eyes out with a bone folder. Which I've only done like once, and that was on a day when I was even crabbier than I am right now.

Every profession has its annoyances, and my theory is that they stem not from the actual acts committed by the annoyers, but by the sheer repetition of those acts. How many times do kids have to walk through the alarm system and simulate its "beep beep beep" noise before I've legally earned a paid mental health leave of up to one year? And when I tell someone they have an overdue book and they say, "I've never even heard of that book," shouldn't it be permissable--in fact, required--that I throw something at or near their head? My job, as delightful and rewarding as it is, requires me to answer and/or respond to a wide array of asinine questions. I've detailed them here.

Turns out that my job, as a high school librarian, is, in part anyway, to train the people who will leave this institution and go into the Real World to torment the underpaid and overworked employees of the nation's public libraries. At least that's what I've discerned from reading Scott Douglas's memoir, Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian. You do not have to be a librarian to appreciate his story, just an appreciator of workplace humors. Seriously, if you like The Office, you'll appreciate the interactions Douglas has with the quirky cast of personalities who work with him at the small Anaheim library where most of his story takes place.

Weird patrons, finicky co-workers, and bizarre requests and problems are all a part of being a public librarian, and Scott Douglas makes hilarious work of his daily duties, which include not just answering stupid questions and chasing away misbehaving teenagers, but also fetching people who've fallen asleep in the bathroom, confiscating contraband, and requesting that masturbators take their um, handiwork, elsewhere. These are all things I've had to do in my own job (in addition to asking students to please not ninja-kick each other) so I'm obviously training the students well for their future library lives. Either way, this is a highly recommended read--one of the funniest books I've read this year.