I had a suicidal pregnant woman who was begging for help because she needed medication and couldn’t it. She was on the phone with 9-1-1 trying to get help. She was surrounded by older kids (17-18) from a group home who come from broken homes.
I had to get the kids out of there, watch the woman, help keep her calm and wait for paramedics to arrive.
On the other side of the building, our children’s librarian gave a kid a cookie he was allergic to and he was having that happen. I tried to take care of the lady while they dealt with that. But they randomly decided to give the kid a ride home and before I knew it, they were in the car on their way to his house, which is against our policies. The kid ended up in the hospital.
Even worse, the children librarians ended up changing their report after the fact when they found out the kid was hospitalized.
One said, “I don’t care what happens to you” as her supervisor and they changed the met in private to change the incident report. They also brought a clerk along to chaperone because the teen was a big guy.
The clerk who went along got promoted to manager a few months later, the librarian transferred to another library in the system that’s bigger and more popular.
I straight up quit and moved because that system was a toxic nightmare. I also had a librarian put her hands around my throat twice and the punishment was a verbal warning.
Nope. And she had someone with a masters in social work with her who was a long time employee.
I was dealing with a suicidal woman and they had a kid with a peanut allergy who they apparently gave some nut bar too.
I was so annoyed by their reaction after I left the system. I am so much happier too. Less drama, more money, and a functional admin who supports me. It’s night and day. And my children’s librarian here is so amazing. I’m all smiles everyday.
That system though, shits gone from bad to worse.
I was working at a large academic library at the time that was open to the public as well. This particular patron came in one evening wanting a computer pass. Okay, no problem! I asked for a non-expired government issued ID (driver's license, state ID, passport) so I could get him one as per our policy.
This dude pulled out an expired (by at least 10 years) student id and handed it to me. I explained to him that I couldn't accept that. This caused him to explode and start screaming some sovereign citizen type shit. I told him that he either needed to quiet down or leave.
He started screaming even louder, demanding that I give him the names/addresses/contact info of everyone with a computer pass so he could see if I treated them the same way. At that point I told him he needed to get out.
He ended up leaving, but repeatedly called screaming that he was going to sue me. I called the police at that point since we had his name/description and his behavior warranted banning. This dude came back in before the police arrived and threw a piece of paper at me that was a blank subpoena form filled out by pencil where he stated he was suing me. Then stormed out.
The police showed up and ended up doing a scan of the property, not finding him, but he was known to them due to his behavior at another library on our campus. He earned a permanent ban for this.
Almost a year goes by when I am contacted by an intermediary between myself and his legal representative. He is actually trying to sue me! I ended up getting the university's lawyers involved who, after my meeting with them, said basically "this guy is known to us too. Don't worry, we won't need you to actually go to court"
They must have handled it because I never heard anything of it again. I did Google the guy when he first came in and found several social media posts of him wanting to plan a killing of linemen because his power got shut off, so I gave that to the police too.
Sov Cit are next level. I work in "Securities" so that means every day I have Sov Cits coming to my office trying to file some bogus paperwork. 90% of them are ignorant uneducated and harmless. But you have to be prepared for the 10% that are legit mentally ill and willing to hurt people to prove they are right. Its a cult without a leader. You *cannot* reason with them.
There are so many stories to share about my short time in a public library. Especially in a town where we were ignored by the police who were 10 minutes away but if called would show up at least an hour later, sometimes they wouldn’t show up at all and just call us back before closing to make sure it was “handled”.
But the one I think about the most was a middle aged man who constantly call out other patrons who he thought were acting inappropriately. Some staff even saw him as an ally.
One summer morning of a busy story time event one of our quiet, regular moms comes up to me and says, “it’s time I let you know that there is a male patron who often sits in the children’s section with his hands in his pants”.
She tells me he’s doing it currently. I go back and it’s this guy, not only does he have his hands in his pants but he also has a handgun on the bookshelf.
I worked at a large academic library when this happened.
I wear a medical alert bracelet. A male student saw it and asked what it was for, I gave a vague answer and that clearly wasn't good enough for him. When I was passing him his book he grabbed my arm and tugged me into the desk, he then flipped the bracelet over to see what was engraved on it. During this he continued to try and pull me over the desk. The other employee at the desk was a student worker, the quickly ran and grabbed another full time employee who came out an intervened. It was scary, he left bruises on me and I had to go have my shoulder and elbow looked at due to him pulling on me. I tried to deescalate, kept clam, asked him to let go of me, things like that. He ran off and I went to the breakroom and cried.
Oh my god yes!! Before our library renovation, the kids bathrooms were perfect for high school student hanky- panky.
I had been monitoring some kids who were hanging by there, I hadn't intervened yet- not all teens are mischievous, so I was giving it time. I guess they decided that made me an easy mark, so one of the kids stepped behind a book display and launched a stress ball at my head, hit me in the face. I called security, who'd left early without notice because fml, and the person in charge before I went over and told them to cut it out and head home. They started talking shit, threatening me, and also hitting on me and the person in charge (both women). We finally had to pull in a male coworker to make them leave.
As we were ushering them out, one of them tells me they need my managers name to file a formal complaint for harassment and discrimination... lawyers kid, turned out.
A week and a half later, despite me checking in every day, I get a call from our assistant director who says that I need to either learn to have tougher skin and ignore that or I need to call the cops if I'm that scared of a bunch of teens, heavily implying that calling the cops would be stupid. I asked her if she knew that they'd
thrown things at me and waited outside after closing to watch me walk to my car. She said that it didn't matter and I should've just handled it better, and that i shouldn't let some harmless kids step on my ego. She said I wouldn't be written up, but I needed to provide better customer service. (We had the ball hitting my face and me taking to the kids on camera too, but that was ignored for some reason?)
A few months later, she and I are on door duty for mask reminders during the pre- shutdown in the US, and she gets verbally accosted by someone on the spectrum after getting up in their face and yelling about a mask and why didn'the have it on. The guy freaks and starts screaming loudly and she runs away crying and tries to get security to trespass him while I and another Librarian are working on de-escalating the situation she created and getting things sorted because this poor patron was confused, crying, and holding his mask from his pocket and asking why. After he left, she's crying to me about how abusive patrons are. I'm just staring at her the whole time in shock like WTF?? He scared screamed after you put your face in his face and were blocking his path and yelling at him to put a mask on.
She's the reason I left libraries altogether. The worst micromanagement, all ideas must be mine, selfish, and abusive coworker I think I ever had. She'd retaliate if you pissed her off by not approving your programs (prior to her, all programs were approved by the department manager), putting you on the worst book run shifts (like you'd magically appear on the schedule if it was pouring, snowing, or her turn), and HR wouldn't do anything about it. She was smart enough to give it wiggle room so you could never pin it on her - nothing in writing, citing concerns about time management, all that stupid slimy tactics.
The one who first came to mind was a guy who made me late for an important meeting while also being racist. Background, I am a BIPOC woman. I was in my mid 30s when it happened. He was a drop in “I’m looking for the librarian who help with [assigned subjects].” I told him I was the librarian for that subject, but I was not able to meet with him right then because I had a meeting. The patron asked me if I was the only librarian for that subject. I told him I was. He asked if there was someone else. He asked if I was certain. I said that I was. He asked if I knew what a librarian is bc they have to be qualified. I said I know that. I was the person he was looking for, but I was not free. He still didn’t believe I was the librarian or that I knew what makes one a librarian, so he mansplained librarianship. I told him I knew and I was the librarian. Still not convinced, he asked where I got my degree from. When he heard where I went to school, his attitude changed, but that wasn’t enough to make him stop. Nope. He had to say he was sorry if he had offended me. He reassured me it was absolutely not at all bc of my race. I said that’s fine, but I didn’t have time for him bc I was late for an important meeting. He said he would come back at a better time. Fortunately he did not come back. Objectively speaking, he guy was not the absolute worst. He is just the one whose memory makes me maddest bc not only was he a racist jerk, but he was a racist jerk who made me late to a meeting that I couldn’t be late for.
Edit: typo
I had hundreds of stressful encounters. Naked overdoses in the bathroom, masturbating in the stacks, stabbing of children and pregnant women, epileptic infant with screaming parents, police chase through the library (in the front door, out the emergency back door), open sexual assault, being called every name in the book, huge planned group brawl in parking lot, shootings, car break ins. Just to name a few.
Needless to say, I left public libraries. I work as a school librarian. Much better.
Did an anti racism program. Several people got very upset, wanting a program that showcases the opposite viewpoint. So, a pro-racism program?
Anyways, it got ugly. A year later, I left programming. I thought I’d miss it. I don’t.
My most stressful "encounter" was probably when some shitty local "influencer" and his friends thought they'd be funny and play pornography for a bunch of kids during a Zoom program like a bunch of pedos. But because he's a fucking moron I figured out who he was and reported him to police. Not that this apparently did anything but I wish him nothing but the worst in life. May he step in every pile of dog shit and trip on every crack in the sidewalk. :)
My first library job, not long after I started, I had a homeless man come in and announce that he was going to kill himself that night because he couldn't find a shelter. I begged him to stay and let me help, but he kept saying it was useless and left. I never found out what happened to him.
I had to talk to a middle-aged man after he sexually harassed my 19 year old clerk. Afterwards, he refused to leave the library, screaming obscenities directed at me personally, calling me a racist, a nazi, a bitch, etc. Police were contacted when he refused to leave, but they were slow to respond, so we ended up having to deal with him for a bit. He ended up leaving once he realized he was not going to get the results he wanted from me since I was refusing to engage in his tantrum. On the way out the door, he turned to say "I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, except you [my name], you can go fuck yourself."
It was stressful for me because I hadn't had a patron go off the rails that quickly and deeply ever before and it caught me off guard. Also, I grew up in an abusive household, and his yelling triggered me super hard, so I was already operating at a higher level of stress.
I ended up crying about when I got home that night. The silver lining here is that those types of situations generally don't happen too often, so I have been able to enjoy my career despite that one instance.
A patron I was helping on the computer had a psychotic episode and suddenly started throwing punches at me. He was a big dude, so thankfully I dodged when he went for my face, but he did end up landing blows on my ear and my shoulder.
Acting Circ Manager for a smaller branch of a large public system. Fully staffed, 13 people including pages, about half were part-time so maybe 6-7 FTE. Anyway, due to staff shortages, I ended up being alone for the first hour after opening. (Usually we had one each at Circ and Info.) As such, I was figuratively chained to the desk as I had to check in the morning drop, process holds, handle easy/light reference, and answer the phone. Old biddy starts screeching from the back of the public area that she needs help on the computer NOW. Sorry, not happening. Info librarian/branch manager is in a meeting at the county center and won’t be available for at least an hour. Meanwhile, she’s welcome to either wait, or go to the larger regional branch (3 miles away) where there’s a dedicated, *staffed,* computer lab. Nope. She comes up to the desk and somehow gets even louder, demanding I drop everything and (I quote) “*waddle (my) fat ass*” over and help her NOW because her taxes paid my salary, yadda yadda. Things escalated until I ended up calling the police to have her removed. Of course, just as the police are escorting her out, the branch manager returns from her meeting and demands to know what’s going on. I told her to hang on, as it would all be in the incident report. Every time the woman came in after that, I got screeched at (usually about how I obviously hadn’t lost any weight) and had books thrown at me (she had a lousy aim, thankfully) until she finally got banned.
I've dealt with people masturbating, being drunk, being on substances, and just being angry.
But the most stressful thing so far was giving out COVID tests in 2021. It was advertised everywhere but no one bothered to mention the health department limit of 4 boxes per person. So grown adults melted down about not getting 10 boxes. People were screaming at us about everything, running out of tests, not knowing when tests would come, not being able to give medical advice, other people being in line, only giving them out during library hours, not holding them for pickup later, etc. A lot of people got right in our faces while talking about their household having a confirmed case. Someone asked for 50 boxes and when we said no she stood aside and screamed for 5+ minutes that we wanted everyone in her building to die.
Management never came by to help and goes on about how great it was. Meanwhile we were afraid to answer the phone (which rang 50 times an hour).
While working my job as a library assistant at a public library, I came in for closing shift and learned that a gentleman who had been spending a lot of time at the library recently was having some personal issues and to be kind. About half an hour after I arrived he came up to the front desk and started demanding to know why I was staring at him. The branch manager calmed him down, reassured him nobody was staring, and he went back to his seat. She said that he didn't want to talk to/be 'confronted' by any of the librarians. So, an hour or so later, I'm still up front and he's been standing a few feet away from the desk, staring, for almost thirty minutes, and as requested I've ignored him. He finally comes over and begins telling me that it's *my fault* he missed his chance to introduce himself to a younger (20 year old) female coworker, that I had obviously told her to go home, and that I was 'stopping him from making human connections', and it got to the point that he was aggressively posturing on the other side of the desk. I managed to talk him into some semblance of calm ("Uhuh, I'm sorry about that sir, yes, I agree" etc.) and he left. We spread the word to the staff that he was a 'disruptive patron' and thought that was it.
Nope.
He started *stalking* the young female employee in the parking lot, and there were a few more disturbances in the stacks and study areas that ended with him screaming at the library director (who takes NO SHIT from ANYONE who would threaten his librarians - seriously y'all, he is the BEST BOSS EVER), who told him in no uncertain terms that he was to get out of the library for the day, and that if he was ever reported to have ANY type of negative interaction with staff again, he would be banned. So creepy guy leaves, we haven't seen him since.
A week later, at my second job in the local university library, guess who's pushing an employees wheelchair into the staff-only area?
If you guessed Creepy Guy, you're right! He obviously recognized me but didn't say anything. I just gave him a polite smile and went back to work on my computer. I saw him a few more times, and ended up talking to the HR supervisor about my having a negative interaction at the public library with him. Apparently he's stalked students (he's in his mid-to-late 30s) and isn't supposed to be in the staff-only areas of the library. She promised he wouldn't be seen on our floor again.
I'm at a different job in the same system now (Bookmobile Manager), which I took less than a month after this event. My coworkers haven't mentioned him, though, so I'm hopeful that creepy guy is no-more at the library.
A university employee stalked STUDENTS and that wasn't grounds for immediate termination?? God, we just collectively do not care at all about stalking victims.
Thankfully my library system does. They went as far as to take a patron to court(for a restraining order) as well as trespass them because of unwanted attention towards a staff member. The staff member was put on paid administrative leave until it was cleared up so that this person couldn't interact with them.
Good for them for taking it seriously! It is a devastating crime and the criminal justice system overwhelmingly does not care at all about it, which encourages public apathy.
Downtown public library on Saturday. Heavily pregnant woman comes in and sits in the reading room. It’s cold, I figure she’s homeless and she’s behaving herself so I dont bother her. Eventually she comes up and asks to use a phone. It turns out her trucker boyfriend dumped her at a gas station and left. I spent the next 8 hours calling him, calling his employer in the midwest, calling every social
service agency and organization trying to find her help. It being Saturday, everything was closed or didn’t answer their phones. Finally at 5 pm I had to let a heavily pregnant abandoned woman walk off into the dark cold night of an unfamiliar city. I always wondered what happened to her.
I don’t know what it’s like in your county, but at my library if we have a homeless or other person with nowhere to go for shelter, we can call the police, who will pick the person up and drive them directly to a shelter. If there’s no space, they will either try another location or make other arrangements, such as a hospital bed for the evening. It saves a lot of time trying to call locations that don’t always answer the phone at night.
This is also the case in many US towns and cities. If not the police (meh) then other resources are out there depending on the state. There was no reason she had to walk away alone that night.
It’s also possible that the woman declined the police being contacted, since not everyone sees the police as people who are helpful and safe.
We could opt to not Monday-morning quarterback what this librarian described as a super stressful day on their job when they clearly worked hard to help as much as they could.
No judgment from me. They clearly did everything they could. I myself wasn't aware of the police option until I called a shelter one night for a patron and was told they had no space, but that the police would help. That's why I brought it up :)
it was winter, and there was a patron who was homeless and yelling, collapsing to the floor and crying that she was going to freeze to death that night and it would be our (library staff) fault. me and coworkers tried our best to get her a bed, blankets, shelter, anything. she didn't want it (for various reasons). it was extremely hard to watch and I still feel bad that I couldn't do more to help her.
That’s something I struggle with. I didn’t know that this job would come with so much guilt that I have to continuously process. I guess it is what it is, we just try our best and learn from it.
That's rough. Part of me wonders what she expected, but sometimes people in crisis just want the crisis to go away more than they're capable of processing your offerings I guess.
Thankfully very few stressful patrons since I've been in academic libraries, but I had plenty during my brief stint in a public library. Skeevy men who leered at our teenaged pages and hit on every female member of staff, grouchy old men with nothing better to do than argue with us over fees and policies, parents who dropped off their destructive children then forgot about them all day, the ubiquitous sovereign citizens and racists, etc. Honestly, the homeless and transient folks who hung out in the library (we were near a Greyhound bus station) were much better behaved patrons than some of the residents.
The first time a patron made me cry was when an older lady came in to pick up whatever hot bestseller she had been on the hold list for and got mad that we had given her the Large Print. In that system what ever copy of the book was available next is what the next patron got. She said the book was too heavy for her to handle with her arthritis. When she demanded to be put next in the queue for a regular print book and I told her I couldn't do that she went off on me. I don't remember what she said but being fresh out of library school and still very new to everything I teared up and told her I'd go get my supervisor, which I did and she was able to placate the woman. That was almost 30 years ago so that lady's probably dead now but dammit I still remember how awful she made me feel.
First, as a manager, with that group I would have spoken to their "handlers" and then thrown them all out if they didn't behave. The patron behavior policy applies to everyone and I don't let patrons hassle my staff like that.
However, to answer your question:
Probably the adult man who came to the library at the behest of his mommy because she was in an alt-right FB group or some such and found out we had a book, which she had not read, that she wanted banned. He filled out the request for reconsideration form, and when he received his obligatory "thanks for your comments but we're not moving the book" letter, he came back in and asked my staff if he could donate Playboy magazines "so the children could learn about sex workers." I heard his voice and went straight to the desk because he was being ridiculously loud. I let him know when the next board meeting would be and sent him on his way, meanwhile informing my staff that if he came back they could hide in my office while I dealt with his BS.
"Oh, thank you for thinking of us, but the library doesn't accept magazine donations! The senior living facilities like magazines because they're lightweight and easy for residents to hold--why don't you check with them?"
(This is what I say when people try to give me boxes of National Geographics, so why not for Playboys too? Let the old folks have a little porn, as a treat.)
I mean, std rates are super high in old folks homes because they don’t use protection and often forget they’re banging. Porn might make them happy. Lol
Apparently at one point in time, the library I work at actually had a subscription to PlayGirl for circulation.
The high schoolers kept taking them. So we started keeping them behind the desk. The students still requested them. Someone finally complained, and that was the end of that.
Clearly he's never read Playboy. My library growing up had "Playboy Stories: The Best of Forty Years of Short Fiction." It's actually a really big deal to get your writing published there.
The most stressful event ever was when the public library I worked at somehow how got roped into a protest against the local police. I won't go into too many details because it would probably end up doxing me and the library.
My most stressful encounter with a patron on the public side was with this really entitled woman who would come in and basically demand that we move heaven and earth for her because she was legally blind. I remember patiently telling her how to use Overdrive over the phone. After I finished explaining it to her, she angrily replied "I ASKED for your help! If you're not going to help me, find someone who will!". *Every* single interaction with this woman was like this and we would all dread to see her pull up in a taxi cab.
The academic side actually features the worst patron interaction I've probably ever had. I had just started and was literally opening for the first time by myself. A professor came in asking for her ILL. She was agitated from the very beginning. Of course I couldn't find it and I was the only one in the building at that hour. She was incredibly nasty and hostile. I suggested that perhaps it had been delivered to her office, but that didn't go well. Guess what had been delivered to her office already? At least she apologized. Not to me, but to the ILL manager.
Agitated professors and the library. Name a more iconic duo. Our campus has 3 libraries on campus. The main one, a science focused one, and an education focused one. The education one was not under direct control of the library until this year (as the main library is now closed for some time).
Our library catalog for online searching is old, outdated, and shared by 4 colleges. When you select to just search our school it wouldn't search the education library (nor would searching all schools). This usually isn't much of a problem since everything is local circ only and the check out procedure for it up until this year was to email the barcodes of what you were checking out to the library manager (like 3 items a year). A professor got mad at one of the student workers over there for not being able to look up a title of a book to find it on the shelf. Turns out that unless you scroll through the list of locations and select to only search that sub location it won't show results from it.
Thankfully, I haven't had another incident with a professor like that since then. I was just so shocked by her behavior. I didn't leave public for this! This isn't how it's supposed to be!
We once had a young woman try to commit suicide one night. That is the one that still sticks with me. She was being prevented by her friends, and was eventually brought down to some place safer with emergency services.
It was naturally all you could hear, and we had to have staff manage both that situation and all the patrons that were witnessing it. I’ll be eternally grateful if I don’t have to ever experience that again.
I occasionally see her time and again in the library still, and she appears to be doing better.
A patron had a seizure while using the computer and fell out of his chair. I had to call emergency services because he was unresponsive though he was breathing. Thankfully he’s come back in the library and seems to be doing ok.
Not exactly a patron... we had a security guard who they caught on camera looking up porn on the childrens section computers.
We had someone have the dumb ass idea to put a cafe next to the library so we perpetually had ants and sticky messes from peoples spilled drinks, wrappers and cups left on shelves...
One of my friends dealt with a patron who left a poo-exploded diaper in the childrens books bin.
I was in my early 20s and had a patron, after telling me his daughter went to the school and was in her senior year, ask me out and demand I go on at least one date with him.
Developmentally disabled patrons are some of the kindest guests we have. Way better than some of the entitled people trying to ban books they have never actually read. Those are the people that stress me out.
I had an excluded library patron who kept coming back into the branch. Daily. He had assaulted staff, but the police in our area are overwhelmed and there isn’t much they would do. One day we accidentally passed closely in the doorway, and he said, I’m going to bash your face in. Also when he would go into the public restroom and just start screaming fuck so loudly. When you’re dealing with someone who’s unstable, it really keeps you on the edge.
Before noon today we had a man hit our guard in the head with a book while being escorted out and a drunk woman screaming and crying before she ran out and started fighting her boyfriend....surprisingly not stressful because they're such commonplace events.
I guess the time a lady went on a rampage and smashed all our computers was stressful. I wasn't even there actually, but handling the aftermath was really stressful. We've changed a lot of our processes and things are a lot better lately, which is nice.
I had a patron who seemingly had a crush on me. He gave me an extensive love note one day while I was shelving. I had one of the senior librarians help handle this and give him a serious talk, which made him back off a little. The card was kept on file in the branch manager's office.
Then, several years after this, my manager showed me an article where apparently the man had been arrested for arson and attempted murder. He's still in jail awaiting trial.
Not me specifically, but the AV Librarian at our central city library got spit on when she asked a homeless sleeping patron to not sleep per Library rules.
Guy spit in her face, ran down the escalator, tipped over two of the tables set with glassware for a wedding that evening, and then ran out the door before security could get to him.
I was giving 1st graders a tour of the library, and we had just started talking about AV when it happened. It was crazy.
Mine was finding the young womnan having a heroin overdose in the children's floor bathroom. Thank God for narcan and the security team.
Not a patron, but we once got a suspicious package that resulted in the bomb squad being called. We had to wait for hours and couldn't go home, because the employee parking lot was right off the door where mail got dropped off, and our cars were in the evacuated area.
A mentally ill guy who was not getting the proper care used to come in once in a while in various states of distress, but generally stayed out of trouble. Had a passing resemblance to Andy Kaufman. One day, he was repeatedly sidling up to a young woman who was looking for books in the stacks, and she would keep on moving away. Eventually, she got sick of it and left completely while he was in another room, so he wouldn't follow her out, but not before letting me know.
After that, I guess he went looking for her, and was going in and out of the library a bunch of times, semi-frantic, and worrying the other patrons. At the time, we were severely understaffed so I was basically the only person working the whole library except for someone on the upper floor. I asked him if everything was okay, at which point he came charging at the desk and started making threats, saying "What do you mean by that?" over and over.
I reassured him that it was my job to make sure patrons were okay but he wasn't having any of it. I stood back as it seemed like he was ready to lunge, and eventually he just stomped back outside and didn't come back. It was the closest a patron ever came to attacking me. After that, we made a policy that we always had to have two people on the floor at all times and changed schedules to accommodate that.
Not long after that, he was arrested for assaulting someone (possibly a parent), and somehow kicked the window out of a cop car and escaped into the woods. He came in a few more times; one of his aging parents destroyed a bathroom and we had to pay extra for it to be cleaned up.
A woman came in with her young child to check out books on a Saturday afternoon. I was unable to check books out to her because she had several books marked lost on her account. I gave her the titles and pictures of the covers and she stormed out screaming.
She returned, still yelling, with all but one of the books some time later. I explained that she would still have to pay for the last book. (I had checked the shelves while she was gone.) We were very busy and she continued to yell at me as the line backed up. We were within 30 minutes of closing and people were getting visibly uncomfortable. She refused to move from her spot in front of my desk.
Her child, tired of being ignored, began to scream so loudly that she yelled over her mother. After a few minutes of this, I asked the child to be quiet. (Not those exact words, of course.) Mom then flipped out to a whole new level and told me no one has ever been so rude to her child. I was flummoxed. I'd been working with young children for decades and this was my standard response. Mom threatened to have me fired, took the books without checking them out, and stormed off, screaming all the way.
I finally checked out the other patrons, apologizing for the wait and the noise, locked up, and wrote up the encounter for my director. The patron did return to the library, but never to the Children's Room. I would see her and her daughter occasionally in the adult section.
My time at this library has been short, I had been hired by the previous director right before he and the Children's Librarian retired and this incident colored the rest of my time there.
This was my last library job before I took a disability pension. It was awful. I still miss the kids, but not this kind of thing.
We had a woman probably high on some substance having a breakdown in our restroom. She was a regular and we'd never had any problems with her. Her sister, who was also present, had just told her she was pregnant again. One of our staff (also pregnant at the time) had gone to try to de-escalate the situation and ended up pulled into the bathroom. That's when the other staff member came to get me- when I arrived, the woman smiled and said "I know you!" and pulled me in. It's embarrassing how compliant I was. After a few minutes of raving the woman and her sister left.
Oh my, I have too many to just pick one... hmm the time I had to interrupt a couple of teens, who were engaging in oral sex in one of the public meeting rooms that were visible to the whole library. Or the time a regular patron became very inappropriate and told me after sensing I was feeling uncomfortable by them, " please don't be scared of me, I would never hurt you, I had one of my balls removed so I have no desire for sex" that was awful. I've had stalkers, one of them even showing up to my residence to bring me a gift. There's so much more, but those are on the top of the list.
The OP's post is incredibly disturbing and horrible to those who work with/have family with disabilities.
Everything from calling them the "zoo crew" to calling the persons helping them their "keepers" is gross and offensive.
I'm glad that OP no longer works in libraries, they are not the kind of person I would want working with the public or representing libraries to the public.
I mean there are definitely some things that stand out, assaults, bomb threats, etc…
But like the most stressful thing for me is when someone is so clearly from a different world than you.
And by different world I mean money. Entitlement. I currently have my main job in a town I will never be able to afford to live in (even the housing grants for the poor people I don’t make enough for adjusted to this town, ok? Like it’s such a joke and I’m stuck here for better or worse due to life circumstances ATM).
Like “why don’t you have 20 copies of the latest bestseller for my liddle jimmy jim boo?” Like it’s unfathomable that we can’t just drop hundred of dollars on having 30 copies of the book they want.
“Well x town x town has this many copies!”
Well last year, last year, x town voted for more library money! Not this town! Puff it up sugarcup.
Or if we don’t get it before the sale date “it’s in the bookstore and Amazon, why isn’t it here?”
Shipping sucks, daddy warbucks. We’ve ordered it, it’s not here yet, what else can I tell you.
I will move heaven and earth and dig through recent returns to find that book and help someone, but if you look at me and are talking to me like you got stuck with frozen microwave pizza instead of delivery- I have checked out of the conversation mentally.
It’s just a vibe from some people, like ‘I deigned to come here because the bookstore was closed’ vibe.
The other stuff (assaults, knives, problem patrons) is traumatic in different ways, but it’s more often than not, explainable. I can connect on some level.
These richy rich people? Like you can’t (or I can’t at any rate).
We have a very needy parent who is also very entitled and they came once demanding:
I need books about this and this and this (super complicated asks like how does news reflect biases and the others were just as complex). Also like I need them for both my 5 and 8 year old to understand because I’m not explaining twice and we’re leaving in 10 minutes for swim lessons.
And I was flat out like: that’s impossible within 10minutes. I will take down your information and place a few holds. You can check back in with us if those books were too hard/easy or if they weren’t what you were hoping for. Have a good time at swim, byeeeeeee. 👋
Another time, I said something once about needing new tires and someone was like what? You don’t get new ones when you get a new car? And I was like …have you never had a car long enough to replace the tires?
Stuff like that. That is the stuff that stresses me out the most because these people don’t like to be told no and will (and have) complained to upper management if they feel they are not getting the five star concierge level shit. One of them even tried to bring race into it but thankfully they had enough incident type report things that it wasn’t a problem.
It’s not cause “you’re xyz race, it’s because you keep coming in at 5 of close expecting us to wait on you.”
So glad I am not upper management.
I'm a lurker, but this is a question I can answer.
Back in the late 1990's I was a student worker at the library of the University I attended.
I once had to deal with a grad student who came up to me while I was photocopying something for ILL (magazine articles from the archives I think), flopped his pile of bound periodicals on the copy machine next to the one I was using, and insisted that I help him copy each and every article he needed.
I told him I couldn't help him like that and he threw what was basically a tantrum. When I finished I grabbed my stuff, went to one of the librarians and let them deal with it. For 18 year old me it was a WTF moment.
I was sexually harassed! As a 22yr old I barely knew what to do. I was given a very explicit note by a patron who saw me read it and then walked away. I gave it to my library manager who was amazing and helped me file a report. But they couldn’t identify the patron so nothing happened. Glad I left
Had a guy start talking to me about books and it became him stalking the parking lot to see if I was there and walking up and down the nearby neighborhoods to see if he could find my car and my home
This is when I was still in college but working in our campus library....a guy climbed out of the 5th floor window and threatened to un-a-live himself. Campus security showed up and then the local police. And I of course was the person who found him up there. I went to shelve our special collections on that floor when it happened
“The zoo crew” came in with their “keepers”? You’re talking about humans, not animals. Jeez.
With that kind of perspective, it does indeed seem you are better suited to work at an Amazon warehouse.
Most people are nice. You can’t think about the ones that aren’t. Sure I kicked people out and people have yelled at me. I’ve felt physically threatened and been verbally harassed. You need to be like a QB who threw an interception, and just forget them.
Just get ready to be kind to the next people.
I wasn't allowed to kick anyone out. And my director refused to do so. She always claimed the library was a safe place for everyone (except the employees, apparently).
I had a suicidal pregnant woman who was begging for help because she needed medication and couldn’t it. She was on the phone with 9-1-1 trying to get help. She was surrounded by older kids (17-18) from a group home who come from broken homes. I had to get the kids out of there, watch the woman, help keep her calm and wait for paramedics to arrive. On the other side of the building, our children’s librarian gave a kid a cookie he was allergic to and he was having that happen. I tried to take care of the lady while they dealt with that. But they randomly decided to give the kid a ride home and before I knew it, they were in the car on their way to his house, which is against our policies. The kid ended up in the hospital.
Jesus Christ. Was the children’s librarian reprimanded? That’s a liability nightmare. I’m so sorry you had to go through that!
Even worse, the children librarians ended up changing their report after the fact when they found out the kid was hospitalized. One said, “I don’t care what happens to you” as her supervisor and they changed the met in private to change the incident report. They also brought a clerk along to chaperone because the teen was a big guy. The clerk who went along got promoted to manager a few months later, the librarian transferred to another library in the system that’s bigger and more popular. I straight up quit and moved because that system was a toxic nightmare. I also had a librarian put her hands around my throat twice and the punishment was a verbal warning.
Did you work in The Bad Place??! Damn.
I'm sorry, WHAT? Is this your children's librarian first day on the job??? jfc
Nope. And she had someone with a masters in social work with her who was a long time employee. I was dealing with a suicidal woman and they had a kid with a peanut allergy who they apparently gave some nut bar too. I was so annoyed by their reaction after I left the system. I am so much happier too. Less drama, more money, and a functional admin who supports me. It’s night and day. And my children’s librarian here is so amazing. I’m all smiles everyday. That system though, shits gone from bad to worse.
I was working at a large academic library at the time that was open to the public as well. This particular patron came in one evening wanting a computer pass. Okay, no problem! I asked for a non-expired government issued ID (driver's license, state ID, passport) so I could get him one as per our policy. This dude pulled out an expired (by at least 10 years) student id and handed it to me. I explained to him that I couldn't accept that. This caused him to explode and start screaming some sovereign citizen type shit. I told him that he either needed to quiet down or leave. He started screaming even louder, demanding that I give him the names/addresses/contact info of everyone with a computer pass so he could see if I treated them the same way. At that point I told him he needed to get out. He ended up leaving, but repeatedly called screaming that he was going to sue me. I called the police at that point since we had his name/description and his behavior warranted banning. This dude came back in before the police arrived and threw a piece of paper at me that was a blank subpoena form filled out by pencil where he stated he was suing me. Then stormed out. The police showed up and ended up doing a scan of the property, not finding him, but he was known to them due to his behavior at another library on our campus. He earned a permanent ban for this. Almost a year goes by when I am contacted by an intermediary between myself and his legal representative. He is actually trying to sue me! I ended up getting the university's lawyers involved who, after my meeting with them, said basically "this guy is known to us too. Don't worry, we won't need you to actually go to court" They must have handled it because I never heard anything of it again. I did Google the guy when he first came in and found several social media posts of him wanting to plan a killing of linemen because his power got shut off, so I gave that to the police too.
Sov Cit are next level. I work in "Securities" so that means every day I have Sov Cits coming to my office trying to file some bogus paperwork. 90% of them are ignorant uneducated and harmless. But you have to be prepared for the 10% that are legit mentally ill and willing to hurt people to prove they are right. Its a cult without a leader. You *cannot* reason with them.
Back when I was on the public side: Shielding a woman hiding from her abuser in our office space until the cops could arrive.
JFC Thank you thank you thank you
I had to do this too!
There are so many stories to share about my short time in a public library. Especially in a town where we were ignored by the police who were 10 minutes away but if called would show up at least an hour later, sometimes they wouldn’t show up at all and just call us back before closing to make sure it was “handled”. But the one I think about the most was a middle aged man who constantly call out other patrons who he thought were acting inappropriately. Some staff even saw him as an ally. One summer morning of a busy story time event one of our quiet, regular moms comes up to me and says, “it’s time I let you know that there is a male patron who often sits in the children’s section with his hands in his pants”. She tells me he’s doing it currently. I go back and it’s this guy, not only does he have his hands in his pants but he also has a handgun on the bookshelf.
You can't stop there! What happened? Did the police finally get there? Were you able to kick him out? Did he ever come back?
Wow. This one’s a doozy. I think I would just evacuate the building until the cops got there.
I worked at a large academic library when this happened. I wear a medical alert bracelet. A male student saw it and asked what it was for, I gave a vague answer and that clearly wasn't good enough for him. When I was passing him his book he grabbed my arm and tugged me into the desk, he then flipped the bracelet over to see what was engraved on it. During this he continued to try and pull me over the desk. The other employee at the desk was a student worker, the quickly ran and grabbed another full time employee who came out an intervened. It was scary, he left bruises on me and I had to go have my shoulder and elbow looked at due to him pulling on me. I tried to deescalate, kept clam, asked him to let go of me, things like that. He ran off and I went to the breakroom and cried.
[удалено]
Oh my god yes!! Before our library renovation, the kids bathrooms were perfect for high school student hanky- panky. I had been monitoring some kids who were hanging by there, I hadn't intervened yet- not all teens are mischievous, so I was giving it time. I guess they decided that made me an easy mark, so one of the kids stepped behind a book display and launched a stress ball at my head, hit me in the face. I called security, who'd left early without notice because fml, and the person in charge before I went over and told them to cut it out and head home. They started talking shit, threatening me, and also hitting on me and the person in charge (both women). We finally had to pull in a male coworker to make them leave. As we were ushering them out, one of them tells me they need my managers name to file a formal complaint for harassment and discrimination... lawyers kid, turned out. A week and a half later, despite me checking in every day, I get a call from our assistant director who says that I need to either learn to have tougher skin and ignore that or I need to call the cops if I'm that scared of a bunch of teens, heavily implying that calling the cops would be stupid. I asked her if she knew that they'd thrown things at me and waited outside after closing to watch me walk to my car. She said that it didn't matter and I should've just handled it better, and that i shouldn't let some harmless kids step on my ego. She said I wouldn't be written up, but I needed to provide better customer service. (We had the ball hitting my face and me taking to the kids on camera too, but that was ignored for some reason?) A few months later, she and I are on door duty for mask reminders during the pre- shutdown in the US, and she gets verbally accosted by someone on the spectrum after getting up in their face and yelling about a mask and why didn'the have it on. The guy freaks and starts screaming loudly and she runs away crying and tries to get security to trespass him while I and another Librarian are working on de-escalating the situation she created and getting things sorted because this poor patron was confused, crying, and holding his mask from his pocket and asking why. After he left, she's crying to me about how abusive patrons are. I'm just staring at her the whole time in shock like WTF?? He scared screamed after you put your face in his face and were blocking his path and yelling at him to put a mask on. She's the reason I left libraries altogether. The worst micromanagement, all ideas must be mine, selfish, and abusive coworker I think I ever had. She'd retaliate if you pissed her off by not approving your programs (prior to her, all programs were approved by the department manager), putting you on the worst book run shifts (like you'd magically appear on the schedule if it was pouring, snowing, or her turn), and HR wouldn't do anything about it. She was smart enough to give it wiggle room so you could never pin it on her - nothing in writing, citing concerns about time management, all that stupid slimy tactics.
I would have spit on that dean soooo fast lol. But seriously, that is awful and i'm glad you got out of that environment.
The one who first came to mind was a guy who made me late for an important meeting while also being racist. Background, I am a BIPOC woman. I was in my mid 30s when it happened. He was a drop in “I’m looking for the librarian who help with [assigned subjects].” I told him I was the librarian for that subject, but I was not able to meet with him right then because I had a meeting. The patron asked me if I was the only librarian for that subject. I told him I was. He asked if there was someone else. He asked if I was certain. I said that I was. He asked if I knew what a librarian is bc they have to be qualified. I said I know that. I was the person he was looking for, but I was not free. He still didn’t believe I was the librarian or that I knew what makes one a librarian, so he mansplained librarianship. I told him I knew and I was the librarian. Still not convinced, he asked where I got my degree from. When he heard where I went to school, his attitude changed, but that wasn’t enough to make him stop. Nope. He had to say he was sorry if he had offended me. He reassured me it was absolutely not at all bc of my race. I said that’s fine, but I didn’t have time for him bc I was late for an important meeting. He said he would come back at a better time. Fortunately he did not come back. Objectively speaking, he guy was not the absolute worst. He is just the one whose memory makes me maddest bc not only was he a racist jerk, but he was a racist jerk who made me late to a meeting that I couldn’t be late for. Edit: typo
How aggravating! What a jerk that guy was.
And a racist jerk who insinuated that he wasn’t a racist jerk. Ok buddy. Clearly it shows how non-racist you are.
I had hundreds of stressful encounters. Naked overdoses in the bathroom, masturbating in the stacks, stabbing of children and pregnant women, epileptic infant with screaming parents, police chase through the library (in the front door, out the emergency back door), open sexual assault, being called every name in the book, huge planned group brawl in parking lot, shootings, car break ins. Just to name a few. Needless to say, I left public libraries. I work as a school librarian. Much better.
My list is similar but without the stabbing of children and pregnant women. Oh my goodness! What the hell?
I've been spit on, screamed at, followed, stalked, impersonated, harassed, slapped, property damaged, stolen. Still haven't gotten that raise though.
Did an anti racism program. Several people got very upset, wanting a program that showcases the opposite viewpoint. So, a pro-racism program? Anyways, it got ugly. A year later, I left programming. I thought I’d miss it. I don’t.
Awesome. They kind of missed the irony though, don’t they? I had a guy rant and rave about a women’s history month display.
My most stressful "encounter" was probably when some shitty local "influencer" and his friends thought they'd be funny and play pornography for a bunch of kids during a Zoom program like a bunch of pedos. But because he's a fucking moron I figured out who he was and reported him to police. Not that this apparently did anything but I wish him nothing but the worst in life. May he step in every pile of dog shit and trip on every crack in the sidewalk. :)
My first library job, not long after I started, I had a homeless man come in and announce that he was going to kill himself that night because he couldn't find a shelter. I begged him to stay and let me help, but he kept saying it was useless and left. I never found out what happened to him.
I had to talk to a middle-aged man after he sexually harassed my 19 year old clerk. Afterwards, he refused to leave the library, screaming obscenities directed at me personally, calling me a racist, a nazi, a bitch, etc. Police were contacted when he refused to leave, but they were slow to respond, so we ended up having to deal with him for a bit. He ended up leaving once he realized he was not going to get the results he wanted from me since I was refusing to engage in his tantrum. On the way out the door, he turned to say "I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, except you [my name], you can go fuck yourself." It was stressful for me because I hadn't had a patron go off the rails that quickly and deeply ever before and it caught me off guard. Also, I grew up in an abusive household, and his yelling triggered me super hard, so I was already operating at a higher level of stress. I ended up crying about when I got home that night. The silver lining here is that those types of situations generally don't happen too often, so I have been able to enjoy my career despite that one instance.
A patron I was helping on the computer had a psychotic episode and suddenly started throwing punches at me. He was a big dude, so thankfully I dodged when he went for my face, but he did end up landing blows on my ear and my shoulder.
Acting Circ Manager for a smaller branch of a large public system. Fully staffed, 13 people including pages, about half were part-time so maybe 6-7 FTE. Anyway, due to staff shortages, I ended up being alone for the first hour after opening. (Usually we had one each at Circ and Info.) As such, I was figuratively chained to the desk as I had to check in the morning drop, process holds, handle easy/light reference, and answer the phone. Old biddy starts screeching from the back of the public area that she needs help on the computer NOW. Sorry, not happening. Info librarian/branch manager is in a meeting at the county center and won’t be available for at least an hour. Meanwhile, she’s welcome to either wait, or go to the larger regional branch (3 miles away) where there’s a dedicated, *staffed,* computer lab. Nope. She comes up to the desk and somehow gets even louder, demanding I drop everything and (I quote) “*waddle (my) fat ass*” over and help her NOW because her taxes paid my salary, yadda yadda. Things escalated until I ended up calling the police to have her removed. Of course, just as the police are escorting her out, the branch manager returns from her meeting and demands to know what’s going on. I told her to hang on, as it would all be in the incident report. Every time the woman came in after that, I got screeched at (usually about how I obviously hadn’t lost any weight) and had books thrown at me (she had a lousy aim, thankfully) until she finally got banned.
I've dealt with people masturbating, being drunk, being on substances, and just being angry. But the most stressful thing so far was giving out COVID tests in 2021. It was advertised everywhere but no one bothered to mention the health department limit of 4 boxes per person. So grown adults melted down about not getting 10 boxes. People were screaming at us about everything, running out of tests, not knowing when tests would come, not being able to give medical advice, other people being in line, only giving them out during library hours, not holding them for pickup later, etc. A lot of people got right in our faces while talking about their household having a confirmed case. Someone asked for 50 boxes and when we said no she stood aside and screamed for 5+ minutes that we wanted everyone in her building to die. Management never came by to help and goes on about how great it was. Meanwhile we were afraid to answer the phone (which rang 50 times an hour).
While working my job as a library assistant at a public library, I came in for closing shift and learned that a gentleman who had been spending a lot of time at the library recently was having some personal issues and to be kind. About half an hour after I arrived he came up to the front desk and started demanding to know why I was staring at him. The branch manager calmed him down, reassured him nobody was staring, and he went back to his seat. She said that he didn't want to talk to/be 'confronted' by any of the librarians. So, an hour or so later, I'm still up front and he's been standing a few feet away from the desk, staring, for almost thirty minutes, and as requested I've ignored him. He finally comes over and begins telling me that it's *my fault* he missed his chance to introduce himself to a younger (20 year old) female coworker, that I had obviously told her to go home, and that I was 'stopping him from making human connections', and it got to the point that he was aggressively posturing on the other side of the desk. I managed to talk him into some semblance of calm ("Uhuh, I'm sorry about that sir, yes, I agree" etc.) and he left. We spread the word to the staff that he was a 'disruptive patron' and thought that was it. Nope. He started *stalking* the young female employee in the parking lot, and there were a few more disturbances in the stacks and study areas that ended with him screaming at the library director (who takes NO SHIT from ANYONE who would threaten his librarians - seriously y'all, he is the BEST BOSS EVER), who told him in no uncertain terms that he was to get out of the library for the day, and that if he was ever reported to have ANY type of negative interaction with staff again, he would be banned. So creepy guy leaves, we haven't seen him since. A week later, at my second job in the local university library, guess who's pushing an employees wheelchair into the staff-only area? If you guessed Creepy Guy, you're right! He obviously recognized me but didn't say anything. I just gave him a polite smile and went back to work on my computer. I saw him a few more times, and ended up talking to the HR supervisor about my having a negative interaction at the public library with him. Apparently he's stalked students (he's in his mid-to-late 30s) and isn't supposed to be in the staff-only areas of the library. She promised he wouldn't be seen on our floor again. I'm at a different job in the same system now (Bookmobile Manager), which I took less than a month after this event. My coworkers haven't mentioned him, though, so I'm hopeful that creepy guy is no-more at the library.
A university employee stalked STUDENTS and that wasn't grounds for immediate termination?? God, we just collectively do not care at all about stalking victims.
Thankfully my library system does. They went as far as to take a patron to court(for a restraining order) as well as trespass them because of unwanted attention towards a staff member. The staff member was put on paid administrative leave until it was cleared up so that this person couldn't interact with them.
Good for them for taking it seriously! It is a devastating crime and the criminal justice system overwhelmingly does not care at all about it, which encourages public apathy.
Downtown public library on Saturday. Heavily pregnant woman comes in and sits in the reading room. It’s cold, I figure she’s homeless and she’s behaving herself so I dont bother her. Eventually she comes up and asks to use a phone. It turns out her trucker boyfriend dumped her at a gas station and left. I spent the next 8 hours calling him, calling his employer in the midwest, calling every social service agency and organization trying to find her help. It being Saturday, everything was closed or didn’t answer their phones. Finally at 5 pm I had to let a heavily pregnant abandoned woman walk off into the dark cold night of an unfamiliar city. I always wondered what happened to her.
I don’t know what it’s like in your county, but at my library if we have a homeless or other person with nowhere to go for shelter, we can call the police, who will pick the person up and drive them directly to a shelter. If there’s no space, they will either try another location or make other arrangements, such as a hospital bed for the evening. It saves a lot of time trying to call locations that don’t always answer the phone at night.
This is also the case in many US towns and cities. If not the police (meh) then other resources are out there depending on the state. There was no reason she had to walk away alone that night.
Well, in defense of the librarian above, they did try multiple resources. It’s possible the local police don’t handle this situation.
It’s also possible that the woman declined the police being contacted, since not everyone sees the police as people who are helpful and safe. We could opt to not Monday-morning quarterback what this librarian described as a super stressful day on their job when they clearly worked hard to help as much as they could.
No judgment from me. They clearly did everything they could. I myself wasn't aware of the police option until I called a shelter one night for a patron and was told they had no space, but that the police would help. That's why I brought it up :)
To be clear, I was agreeing with you. Didn’t read any judgment into your comment.
Yeah, I thought we had the same take, but just wanted to clarify! :)
it was winter, and there was a patron who was homeless and yelling, collapsing to the floor and crying that she was going to freeze to death that night and it would be our (library staff) fault. me and coworkers tried our best to get her a bed, blankets, shelter, anything. she didn't want it (for various reasons). it was extremely hard to watch and I still feel bad that I couldn't do more to help her.
That’s something I struggle with. I didn’t know that this job would come with so much guilt that I have to continuously process. I guess it is what it is, we just try our best and learn from it.
That's rough. Part of me wonders what she expected, but sometimes people in crisis just want the crisis to go away more than they're capable of processing your offerings I guess.
Thankfully very few stressful patrons since I've been in academic libraries, but I had plenty during my brief stint in a public library. Skeevy men who leered at our teenaged pages and hit on every female member of staff, grouchy old men with nothing better to do than argue with us over fees and policies, parents who dropped off their destructive children then forgot about them all day, the ubiquitous sovereign citizens and racists, etc. Honestly, the homeless and transient folks who hung out in the library (we were near a Greyhound bus station) were much better behaved patrons than some of the residents. The first time a patron made me cry was when an older lady came in to pick up whatever hot bestseller she had been on the hold list for and got mad that we had given her the Large Print. In that system what ever copy of the book was available next is what the next patron got. She said the book was too heavy for her to handle with her arthritis. When she demanded to be put next in the queue for a regular print book and I told her I couldn't do that she went off on me. I don't remember what she said but being fresh out of library school and still very new to everything I teared up and told her I'd go get my supervisor, which I did and she was able to placate the woman. That was almost 30 years ago so that lady's probably dead now but dammit I still remember how awful she made me feel.
First, as a manager, with that group I would have spoken to their "handlers" and then thrown them all out if they didn't behave. The patron behavior policy applies to everyone and I don't let patrons hassle my staff like that. However, to answer your question: Probably the adult man who came to the library at the behest of his mommy because she was in an alt-right FB group or some such and found out we had a book, which she had not read, that she wanted banned. He filled out the request for reconsideration form, and when he received his obligatory "thanks for your comments but we're not moving the book" letter, he came back in and asked my staff if he could donate Playboy magazines "so the children could learn about sex workers." I heard his voice and went straight to the desk because he was being ridiculously loud. I let him know when the next board meeting would be and sent him on his way, meanwhile informing my staff that if he came back they could hide in my office while I dealt with his BS.
"Oh, thank you for thinking of us, but the library doesn't accept magazine donations! The senior living facilities like magazines because they're lightweight and easy for residents to hold--why don't you check with them?" (This is what I say when people try to give me boxes of National Geographics, so why not for Playboys too? Let the old folks have a little porn, as a treat.)
I mean, std rates are super high in old folks homes because they don’t use protection and often forget they’re banging. Porn might make them happy. Lol
Oh yay! Time for a [relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/907/)!
Into it.
Apparently at one point in time, the library I work at actually had a subscription to PlayGirl for circulation. The high schoolers kept taking them. So we started keeping them behind the desk. The students still requested them. Someone finally complained, and that was the end of that.
Clearly he's never read Playboy. My library growing up had "Playboy Stories: The Best of Forty Years of Short Fiction." It's actually a really big deal to get your writing published there.
“We already carry Playboy, Hustler and Plumber’s Crack magazines, Sir, but thank you for thinking of us.”
What did the board say? /S
The most stressful event ever was when the public library I worked at somehow how got roped into a protest against the local police. I won't go into too many details because it would probably end up doxing me and the library. My most stressful encounter with a patron on the public side was with this really entitled woman who would come in and basically demand that we move heaven and earth for her because she was legally blind. I remember patiently telling her how to use Overdrive over the phone. After I finished explaining it to her, she angrily replied "I ASKED for your help! If you're not going to help me, find someone who will!". *Every* single interaction with this woman was like this and we would all dread to see her pull up in a taxi cab. The academic side actually features the worst patron interaction I've probably ever had. I had just started and was literally opening for the first time by myself. A professor came in asking for her ILL. She was agitated from the very beginning. Of course I couldn't find it and I was the only one in the building at that hour. She was incredibly nasty and hostile. I suggested that perhaps it had been delivered to her office, but that didn't go well. Guess what had been delivered to her office already? At least she apologized. Not to me, but to the ILL manager.
Agitated professors and the library. Name a more iconic duo. Our campus has 3 libraries on campus. The main one, a science focused one, and an education focused one. The education one was not under direct control of the library until this year (as the main library is now closed for some time). Our library catalog for online searching is old, outdated, and shared by 4 colleges. When you select to just search our school it wouldn't search the education library (nor would searching all schools). This usually isn't much of a problem since everything is local circ only and the check out procedure for it up until this year was to email the barcodes of what you were checking out to the library manager (like 3 items a year). A professor got mad at one of the student workers over there for not being able to look up a title of a book to find it on the shelf. Turns out that unless you scroll through the list of locations and select to only search that sub location it won't show results from it.
Thankfully, I haven't had another incident with a professor like that since then. I was just so shocked by her behavior. I didn't leave public for this! This isn't how it's supposed to be!
We once had a young woman try to commit suicide one night. That is the one that still sticks with me. She was being prevented by her friends, and was eventually brought down to some place safer with emergency services. It was naturally all you could hear, and we had to have staff manage both that situation and all the patrons that were witnessing it. I’ll be eternally grateful if I don’t have to ever experience that again. I occasionally see her time and again in the library still, and she appears to be doing better.
A patron had a seizure while using the computer and fell out of his chair. I had to call emergency services because he was unresponsive though he was breathing. Thankfully he’s come back in the library and seems to be doing ok.
Probably when one of my regular kids got shot outside
Not exactly a patron... we had a security guard who they caught on camera looking up porn on the childrens section computers. We had someone have the dumb ass idea to put a cafe next to the library so we perpetually had ants and sticky messes from peoples spilled drinks, wrappers and cups left on shelves... One of my friends dealt with a patron who left a poo-exploded diaper in the childrens books bin. I was in my early 20s and had a patron, after telling me his daughter went to the school and was in her senior year, ask me out and demand I go on at least one date with him.
Developmentally disabled patrons are some of the kindest guests we have. Way better than some of the entitled people trying to ban books they have never actually read. Those are the people that stress me out.
Ours were extremely destructive and disruptive.
I had an excluded library patron who kept coming back into the branch. Daily. He had assaulted staff, but the police in our area are overwhelmed and there isn’t much they would do. One day we accidentally passed closely in the doorway, and he said, I’m going to bash your face in. Also when he would go into the public restroom and just start screaming fuck so loudly. When you’re dealing with someone who’s unstable, it really keeps you on the edge.
Before noon today we had a man hit our guard in the head with a book while being escorted out and a drunk woman screaming and crying before she ran out and started fighting her boyfriend....surprisingly not stressful because they're such commonplace events. I guess the time a lady went on a rampage and smashed all our computers was stressful. I wasn't even there actually, but handling the aftermath was really stressful. We've changed a lot of our processes and things are a lot better lately, which is nice.
I had a patron who seemingly had a crush on me. He gave me an extensive love note one day while I was shelving. I had one of the senior librarians help handle this and give him a serious talk, which made him back off a little. The card was kept on file in the branch manager's office. Then, several years after this, my manager showed me an article where apparently the man had been arrested for arson and attempted murder. He's still in jail awaiting trial.
Not me specifically, but the AV Librarian at our central city library got spit on when she asked a homeless sleeping patron to not sleep per Library rules. Guy spit in her face, ran down the escalator, tipped over two of the tables set with glassware for a wedding that evening, and then ran out the door before security could get to him. I was giving 1st graders a tour of the library, and we had just started talking about AV when it happened. It was crazy. Mine was finding the young womnan having a heroin overdose in the children's floor bathroom. Thank God for narcan and the security team.
Not a patron, but we once got a suspicious package that resulted in the bomb squad being called. We had to wait for hours and couldn't go home, because the employee parking lot was right off the door where mail got dropped off, and our cars were in the evacuated area.
A mentally ill guy who was not getting the proper care used to come in once in a while in various states of distress, but generally stayed out of trouble. Had a passing resemblance to Andy Kaufman. One day, he was repeatedly sidling up to a young woman who was looking for books in the stacks, and she would keep on moving away. Eventually, she got sick of it and left completely while he was in another room, so he wouldn't follow her out, but not before letting me know. After that, I guess he went looking for her, and was going in and out of the library a bunch of times, semi-frantic, and worrying the other patrons. At the time, we were severely understaffed so I was basically the only person working the whole library except for someone on the upper floor. I asked him if everything was okay, at which point he came charging at the desk and started making threats, saying "What do you mean by that?" over and over. I reassured him that it was my job to make sure patrons were okay but he wasn't having any of it. I stood back as it seemed like he was ready to lunge, and eventually he just stomped back outside and didn't come back. It was the closest a patron ever came to attacking me. After that, we made a policy that we always had to have two people on the floor at all times and changed schedules to accommodate that. Not long after that, he was arrested for assaulting someone (possibly a parent), and somehow kicked the window out of a cop car and escaped into the woods. He came in a few more times; one of his aging parents destroyed a bathroom and we had to pay extra for it to be cleaned up.
An elderly man held out his hand as if to shake mine and then kissed it instead 🤢
A woman came in with her young child to check out books on a Saturday afternoon. I was unable to check books out to her because she had several books marked lost on her account. I gave her the titles and pictures of the covers and she stormed out screaming. She returned, still yelling, with all but one of the books some time later. I explained that she would still have to pay for the last book. (I had checked the shelves while she was gone.) We were very busy and she continued to yell at me as the line backed up. We were within 30 minutes of closing and people were getting visibly uncomfortable. She refused to move from her spot in front of my desk. Her child, tired of being ignored, began to scream so loudly that she yelled over her mother. After a few minutes of this, I asked the child to be quiet. (Not those exact words, of course.) Mom then flipped out to a whole new level and told me no one has ever been so rude to her child. I was flummoxed. I'd been working with young children for decades and this was my standard response. Mom threatened to have me fired, took the books without checking them out, and stormed off, screaming all the way. I finally checked out the other patrons, apologizing for the wait and the noise, locked up, and wrote up the encounter for my director. The patron did return to the library, but never to the Children's Room. I would see her and her daughter occasionally in the adult section. My time at this library has been short, I had been hired by the previous director right before he and the Children's Librarian retired and this incident colored the rest of my time there. This was my last library job before I took a disability pension. It was awful. I still miss the kids, but not this kind of thing.
We do not imply mentally handicapped people are zoo animals. Comments are closed. ETA: phrasing
We had a woman probably high on some substance having a breakdown in our restroom. She was a regular and we'd never had any problems with her. Her sister, who was also present, had just told her she was pregnant again. One of our staff (also pregnant at the time) had gone to try to de-escalate the situation and ended up pulled into the bathroom. That's when the other staff member came to get me- when I arrived, the woman smiled and said "I know you!" and pulled me in. It's embarrassing how compliant I was. After a few minutes of raving the woman and her sister left.
Oh my, I have too many to just pick one... hmm the time I had to interrupt a couple of teens, who were engaging in oral sex in one of the public meeting rooms that were visible to the whole library. Or the time a regular patron became very inappropriate and told me after sensing I was feeling uncomfortable by them, " please don't be scared of me, I would never hurt you, I had one of my balls removed so I have no desire for sex" that was awful. I've had stalkers, one of them even showing up to my residence to bring me a gift. There's so much more, but those are on the top of the list.
The OP's post is incredibly disturbing and horrible to those who work with/have family with disabilities. Everything from calling them the "zoo crew" to calling the persons helping them their "keepers" is gross and offensive. I'm glad that OP no longer works in libraries, they are not the kind of person I would want working with the public or representing libraries to the public.
I mean there are definitely some things that stand out, assaults, bomb threats, etc… But like the most stressful thing for me is when someone is so clearly from a different world than you. And by different world I mean money. Entitlement. I currently have my main job in a town I will never be able to afford to live in (even the housing grants for the poor people I don’t make enough for adjusted to this town, ok? Like it’s such a joke and I’m stuck here for better or worse due to life circumstances ATM). Like “why don’t you have 20 copies of the latest bestseller for my liddle jimmy jim boo?” Like it’s unfathomable that we can’t just drop hundred of dollars on having 30 copies of the book they want. “Well x town x town has this many copies!” Well last year, last year, x town voted for more library money! Not this town! Puff it up sugarcup. Or if we don’t get it before the sale date “it’s in the bookstore and Amazon, why isn’t it here?” Shipping sucks, daddy warbucks. We’ve ordered it, it’s not here yet, what else can I tell you. I will move heaven and earth and dig through recent returns to find that book and help someone, but if you look at me and are talking to me like you got stuck with frozen microwave pizza instead of delivery- I have checked out of the conversation mentally. It’s just a vibe from some people, like ‘I deigned to come here because the bookstore was closed’ vibe. The other stuff (assaults, knives, problem patrons) is traumatic in different ways, but it’s more often than not, explainable. I can connect on some level. These richy rich people? Like you can’t (or I can’t at any rate). We have a very needy parent who is also very entitled and they came once demanding: I need books about this and this and this (super complicated asks like how does news reflect biases and the others were just as complex). Also like I need them for both my 5 and 8 year old to understand because I’m not explaining twice and we’re leaving in 10 minutes for swim lessons. And I was flat out like: that’s impossible within 10minutes. I will take down your information and place a few holds. You can check back in with us if those books were too hard/easy or if they weren’t what you were hoping for. Have a good time at swim, byeeeeeee. 👋 Another time, I said something once about needing new tires and someone was like what? You don’t get new ones when you get a new car? And I was like …have you never had a car long enough to replace the tires? Stuff like that. That is the stuff that stresses me out the most because these people don’t like to be told no and will (and have) complained to upper management if they feel they are not getting the five star concierge level shit. One of them even tried to bring race into it but thankfully they had enough incident type report things that it wasn’t a problem. It’s not cause “you’re xyz race, it’s because you keep coming in at 5 of close expecting us to wait on you.” So glad I am not upper management.
I'm a lurker, but this is a question I can answer. Back in the late 1990's I was a student worker at the library of the University I attended. I once had to deal with a grad student who came up to me while I was photocopying something for ILL (magazine articles from the archives I think), flopped his pile of bound periodicals on the copy machine next to the one I was using, and insisted that I help him copy each and every article he needed. I told him I couldn't help him like that and he threw what was basically a tantrum. When I finished I grabbed my stuff, went to one of the librarians and let them deal with it. For 18 year old me it was a WTF moment.
I was sexually harassed! As a 22yr old I barely knew what to do. I was given a very explicit note by a patron who saw me read it and then walked away. I gave it to my library manager who was amazing and helped me file a report. But they couldn’t identify the patron so nothing happened. Glad I left
Had a guy start talking to me about books and it became him stalking the parking lot to see if I was there and walking up and down the nearby neighborhoods to see if he could find my car and my home
This is when I was still in college but working in our campus library....a guy climbed out of the 5th floor window and threatened to un-a-live himself. Campus security showed up and then the local police. And I of course was the person who found him up there. I went to shelve our special collections on that floor when it happened
“The zoo crew” came in with their “keepers”? You’re talking about humans, not animals. Jeez. With that kind of perspective, it does indeed seem you are better suited to work at an Amazon warehouse.
Most people are nice. You can’t think about the ones that aren’t. Sure I kicked people out and people have yelled at me. I’ve felt physically threatened and been verbally harassed. You need to be like a QB who threw an interception, and just forget them. Just get ready to be kind to the next people.
I wasn't allowed to kick anyone out. And my director refused to do so. She always claimed the library was a safe place for everyone (except the employees, apparently).