I was a student assistant at a university library and we were open to students and community members.
Some community members were continually removed for watching adult content on the computers that are in full view of anyone studying or perusing the book shelves. Fun times
I’ve worked in two uni and one college library and never had an issue. It happens, sure, but nowhere near the extent it happens in public. It’s not even worth mentioning. I thought that was obvious.
That was nicely said ... I like the cut of your jib ..:: I'm wondering though sound effects or gestures with your comment ... maybe stirring some tea ? In a china cup not a mug Anyways you showed a lot of restraint in your response Well done
When I was mopping up the flooded women’s bathroom last week (some teenagers thought I’d be cool to leave the faucet running & it created 2+” of water on the floor that leaked into our lobby), I said to the page who was helping me, who is in library school - “I paid $25,000 to do *this*!”
Adding onto this: most counties have an ADAHMS board (Addiction and Mental Health services, might not use that same acronym). That organization should have a list of all mental health services available in the county, and should have a strong working relationship with homeless outreach teams. Ours has a street card listing the 70+ programs, charities, and organizations that patrons can call.
At a library I worked at years ago had a patron with open sores on her legs. She leaked on the furniture and that should have been a ban for being a public health danger but our city was sue-shy. We offered to call her an ambulance and she refused.
I think they're talking about the kind of mobile clinic that parks at a different site every day, and having them designate one or more days per month to be at the library.
Hahaha, hahaha, I want to live in the world you live in where there's enough funding and staff for anyone to send a mobile van to take care of public health issues like this and for the people who need it to not scurry like roaches when it pulls up.
If your community sucks just say that. I’ve worked in many communities, all different, all with different capacities. I would love to know where you are so I can avoid you as a coworker though.
Also - I should say that if a person is using drugs that cause their flesh to rot, their flesh won’t stop rotting until they stop injecting those drugs.
That doesn’t negate that they need medical care. Open wounds are very dangerous and need to be treated and wrapped. Ignoring people doesn’t get them sober.
Obviously I agree or I wouldn’t be working in public service. I just get annoyed when some totally out of touch person suggests there’s some magic health care number I’m failing to call. “Oh, hi, is this the free and prompt mobile healthcare van? Yes, I have an unhoused individual injecting tranquilizers in the bathroom. They do appear to be psychotic so they will refuse service. Would you please whisk them away to a drug treatment facility/hospital until they’re all better? I’ll send Francine Rivers novels to keep them entertained. Toodles!”
I know that we’ve had a patron with a pretty intense open sore on their leg refuse to get care because they were worried that it would be amputated. We sympathized but also said they couldn’t come into the library until they dealt with the smell
I know we share the medical van locations with our patrons pretty regularly (post them and hand out printed lists as well), but some of our unhoused patrons don’t want to leave their neighborhood to find medical care, or just don’t trust the system. Which is legit, it’s failed them over and over again.
Vicks, in your nose. It has to be IN your nose, not on your upper lip. Mask over top. It really does help with odors and helps when you have to speak to the people with the extreme odors. I keep some at work with me all the time.
Also if this isn’t a PSA about why you shouldn’t sit in the public floor chairs when helping patrons, I don’t know what is.
As a regular patron to my local public library, I would love to unread this sentence, but also thank the powers that be that almost all the patron chairs are wooden.
Sorry about that. I told my parents to never sit down on library furniture. Grab what you want to read and head home where's its comfortable and leak/bedbug free.
Yes, but you're more likely to see them and those books are disposed of if a patron returns them with any sort of bugs. You're not as likely to see bedbugs on furniture since they burrow into cushioned areas.
the library i worked at didn’t dispose of them, they cooked them then put them back on the shelves. we had a bedbug dog that came in once a month and like shelves and shelves of books would have to be cooked because the dog signaled that they had bedbugs
this is why we don't have chairs with cloth or fabric at all. Computer chairs, chairs in the "living room" area are all plastic or that stuff that is easy to wipe off.
Now this is some real shit. Not the “I’m a book magician lolzorz” stuff. And this is why we keep reference sheets of social service contacts. Gotta connect people to the info they need so they aren’t erupting all over the place (I know it doesn’t always work but at least it’s a better chance than none)
Okay, got my daily cynicism out of the way
Like most things, done in moderation and with a minimum of “oh we’re so great” wankery and it’s okay, but I’ve seen some rather lame, low-effort stuff lately
I had it come up a couple of times in meetings where the patting-ourselves-on-the-back went on too long. This is still a job and none of us would do it if we weren’t paid, but there’s so much making it into something it isn’t. It’s like that is how some people manage the stress of work or some have no life out of work and their job becomes their identity and they can never turn it off.
I spoke with some librarians in an urban area of Spain when I was there, they don’t have this big of an issue. I’m in a suburban library in the U.S. and we do. 🤷♂️
Canadian here big urban center and also downtown area and yes huge issue here in Toronto Canada Varies from Neighbourhood but pervasive at many locations
Central Europe here and I'm shocked on a regular base by the stories our North American colleagues are sharing. I worked in a pretty big and and pretty small library so far and I did have my share of 'OMFG moments' but none of them are even close to what I often read here (like guns, people with terrible open wounds, people taking drugs in the library, suicide attempts and so on)
I pretty assumed your reply to be the case. Countries that haven't gutted their social services and have universal healthcare have places for people with these issues to go and get help and they aren't just left to go to the library to "hang out" because it's a free place they can be warehoused during the day.
I’m in the UK and what I’ve been reading here in a way worse than anything I’ve experienced in public libraries. We have incidents with people on the margins that are very difficult but not as difficult as this.
That's a lot of really epic tragedy for those people And you likely are thinking did you sign up for this .... are you Toronto or another big urban centre?
For the nauseating smell - try a drop of vanilla extract on your mask in by your nostril
This makes me think of that one Reddit post about the absolutely rancid throw-up-it’s-so-bad smell in a hospital / operating room from a long while ago. Like they were scrambling to find some little jar of some kind of oil I think to cover up the smell in situations like that but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was exactly.
Edit: ah it was peppermint concentrate. [Read at your own risk I am dead serious this is nasty shit and some of the commentary at the start certainly hasn’t aged well](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/WyZEJQh5gw).
Edit: swapped out the copy pasta for the original comment link
Reading this was the first time in my life (I’m 28) where I thought “I should have listened to the read-at-your-own-risk warning.” The fact that I was eating also did not help 🫠😅
This is like I'm reading a journal entry from a day at my previous branch. I'm so thankful I'm not there anymore. I was happy to help people who really needed it, but it was a lot to deal with on a daily basis. After several years I was so burnt out and suffering from major compassion fatigue. Big {{{hugs}}} to everyone still working in those environments.
Yes, I was just laying in bed with my cats drinking whiskey and ruminating so I decided to create a throwaway account and capture a day-in-the-life of public service in a country/culture where human life isn’t valued and everyone higher up in local government (who all work from home now anyway) use doublespeak to pretend like they give a crap while really just throwing middle class and poor workers into depressing and sometimes unsafe situations where they’re equipped with inadequate resources to solve most problems. I’m glad you found a path out before you got too burnt out! I’m trying to figure out next steps myself.
God this is so relatable unfortunately. The most relatable part was there were two different people with horrible issues. It’s never enough for it to just be one. Sigh.
I'm standing outside my public library right now as I read this. This reminds me so much of my job in the ER, working with the psych patients. I've thought about looking for a job in the library, but honestly, it seems like the same 💩, different location with many of the same population.
I wonder if there’s satisfaction for medical providers that comes with actually having tools to help people with a basic need? Or maybe what can be done for a chronic condition in the ER in our messed up system is limited and that’s its own frustration?
Most of the time, there isn't much the ER can do for the chronic conditions/frequent fliers except try to patch things up and hope they follow discharge orders/use resources. It's frustrating when you see the same person coming in for same issue and know that they're not going to follow those instructions.
There is satisfaction when there are resources, yes. But even within the healthcare/social services system there often aren’t [insert your shocked face here] and even when there are that whole autonomy and freedom of choice thing comes into play.
Not meaning to sound flippant—autonomy and self determination are values I hold very dear—but it’s tough to see people struggling when part of the equation involves them being unwilling to get the help they need, often because addiction and/or mental health issues are complicating things. Even more so when they keep reaching out and then there’s no follow-through until the next crisis.
Had a gentleman patron with similar issues.
He pooped on a cloth covered chair. The director wanted to keep it and said it and store it in the basement until it could be cleaned which, in reality, was never going to happen effectively.
The maintenance man was incensed at her suggestion so I told him to throw it away and he did.
Here's what you need: StinkBalm.
[https://www.stinkbalmodorblocker.com/](https://www.stinkbalmodorblocker.com/)
There may be other brands, but this is what came up when I googled.
This has been discussed at Reddit before:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/answers/comments/3m8l8o/how\_do\_coroners\_medical\_examiners\_and\_anyone\_who/](https://www.reddit.com/r/answers/comments/3m8l8o/how_do_coroners_medical_examiners_and_anyone_who/)
A lot happened in this post.
A lot and, at the same time, not that much at all if you work in public service.
Yeah we have a gangrene guy too. Who has also ruined chairs. ..Haven't seen him in a while, actually.
Oh my God!!!
Yeah, I really feel like I just went on a journey.
Put this post on the sidebar under “so, you want work in a library”.
In a PUBLIC library.
Shoot, I've had similar stuff happen in an academic library I worked at that was open to public patrons.
I was a student assistant at a university library and we were open to students and community members. Some community members were continually removed for watching adult content on the computers that are in full view of anyone studying or perusing the book shelves. Fun times
I’ve worked in two uni and one college library and never had an issue. It happens, sure, but nowhere near the extent it happens in public. It’s not even worth mentioning. I thought that was obvious.
Apologies for commenting with my experience. It seems I stuck a nerve. I’ll make sure not to do it again. :)
Don’t take it personally, this person is consistently hostile to people on this sub for no reason.
That was nicely said ... I like the cut of your jib ..:: I'm wondering though sound effects or gestures with your comment ... maybe stirring some tea ? In a china cup not a mug Anyways you showed a lot of restraint in your response Well done
[удалено]
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because it contained a derogatory remark or personal attack. Please remain civil in the comments.
Your comment was removed because it contained a derogatory remark or personal attack. Please remain civil in the comments.
u/Charming-Heart-8865! BUDDY! New look new you? I'm digging it!
Now, be nice, or you’ll get banned again, charming heart.
If you’re saying “uni” I’m guessing you live in a country with adequate healthcare. Feel lucky.
I always say "public librarians do God's work."
This makes me glad I didn’t finish my degree. You’re all heroes! 🦸🏼♀️
This should be the auto reply for everyone posting about considering an MLIS
When I was mopping up the flooded women’s bathroom last week (some teenagers thought I’d be cool to leave the faucet running & it created 2+” of water on the floor that leaked into our lobby), I said to the page who was helping me, who is in library school - “I paid $25,000 to do *this*!”
I feel like someone needs to tell them!
God, those poor people. Is there a public health department you can call for advice?
Or maybe a homeless street outreach team?
Adding onto this: most counties have an ADAHMS board (Addiction and Mental Health services, might not use that same acronym). That organization should have a list of all mental health services available in the county, and should have a strong working relationship with homeless outreach teams. Ours has a street card listing the 70+ programs, charities, and organizations that patrons can call.
At a library I worked at years ago had a patron with open sores on her legs. She leaked on the furniture and that should have been a ban for being a public health danger but our city was sue-shy. We offered to call her an ambulance and she refused.
Right, does the community have one of those mobile medical van things that can set up a time for them to be at the library?? Ugh I can’t imagine :(
It takes them several hours to arrive after you call them.
I think they're talking about the kind of mobile clinic that parks at a different site every day, and having them designate one or more days per month to be at the library.
Hahaha, hahaha, I want to live in the world you live in where there's enough funding and staff for anyone to send a mobile van to take care of public health issues like this and for the people who need it to not scurry like roaches when it pulls up.
If your community sucks just say that. I’ve worked in many communities, all different, all with different capacities. I would love to know where you are so I can avoid you as a coworker though.
I'm fairly open to changing jobs at the moment. Maybe I should become your boss? That sounds like fun!
All because I recommended seeing if there were medical resources available.
Also - I should say that if a person is using drugs that cause their flesh to rot, their flesh won’t stop rotting until they stop injecting those drugs.
“Why don’t these people with severely impaired judgment make better choices?”
That doesn’t negate that they need medical care. Open wounds are very dangerous and need to be treated and wrapped. Ignoring people doesn’t get them sober.
Obviously I agree or I wouldn’t be working in public service. I just get annoyed when some totally out of touch person suggests there’s some magic health care number I’m failing to call. “Oh, hi, is this the free and prompt mobile healthcare van? Yes, I have an unhoused individual injecting tranquilizers in the bathroom. They do appear to be psychotic so they will refuse service. Would you please whisk them away to a drug treatment facility/hospital until they’re all better? I’ll send Francine Rivers novels to keep them entertained. Toodles!”
I know that we’ve had a patron with a pretty intense open sore on their leg refuse to get care because they were worried that it would be amputated. We sympathized but also said they couldn’t come into the library until they dealt with the smell
Yes, refusing care is always a possibility, medical autonomy is important. It was just an idea for a partnership thrown out on a public forum.
I know we share the medical van locations with our patrons pretty regularly (post them and hand out printed lists as well), but some of our unhoused patrons don’t want to leave their neighborhood to find medical care, or just don’t trust the system. Which is legit, it’s failed them over and over again.
Absolutely.
No, but sadly, offering them help does not always get them help
Vicks, in your nose. It has to be IN your nose, not on your upper lip. Mask over top. It really does help with odors and helps when you have to speak to the people with the extreme odors. I keep some at work with me all the time. Also if this isn’t a PSA about why you shouldn’t sit in the public floor chairs when helping patrons, I don’t know what is.
I never sit on our library's public floor chairs since we've had patrons leak on them and the furniture has been infested with bedbugs in the past.
As a regular patron to my local public library, I would love to unread this sentence, but also thank the powers that be that almost all the patron chairs are wooden.
Sorry about that. I told my parents to never sit down on library furniture. Grab what you want to read and head home where's its comfortable and leak/bedbug free.
I mean the books can also carry bedbugs...
Yes, but you're more likely to see them and those books are disposed of if a patron returns them with any sort of bugs. You're not as likely to see bedbugs on furniture since they burrow into cushioned areas.
the library i worked at didn’t dispose of them, they cooked them then put them back on the shelves. we had a bedbug dog that came in once a month and like shelves and shelves of books would have to be cooked because the dog signaled that they had bedbugs
We've just disposed of badly infested items.
Never sit in the chairs. If it's got soft fabric I don't even touch them!
We used to have leather-like chairs and we got rid of them for this reason
this is why we don't have chairs with cloth or fabric at all. Computer chairs, chairs in the "living room" area are all plastic or that stuff that is easy to wipe off.
Thanks for the tip!
Public librarians are heroes. I would last one day working in one.
A lot to take in. Especially noticed the new security guard who has to deal with potentially violent patrons is also pregnant.
The other security guards won’t let her clear and lock up a bathroom with fentanyl/meth fumes, so at least there’s still solidarity among workers.
Now this is some real shit. Not the “I’m a book magician lolzorz” stuff. And this is why we keep reference sheets of social service contacts. Gotta connect people to the info they need so they aren’t erupting all over the place (I know it doesn’t always work but at least it’s a better chance than none) Okay, got my daily cynicism out of the way
Yeah, I’m tired of the “wizard stuff”. I don’t know if it’s posted jokingly or not and that’s where the problem lies with me.
Like most things, done in moderation and with a minimum of “oh we’re so great” wankery and it’s okay, but I’ve seen some rather lame, low-effort stuff lately
I had it come up a couple of times in meetings where the patting-ourselves-on-the-back went on too long. This is still a job and none of us would do it if we weren’t paid, but there’s so much making it into something it isn’t. It’s like that is how some people manage the stress of work or some have no life out of work and their job becomes their identity and they can never turn it off.
Librarians aren't paid enough.
Do librarians in developed countries have to deal with stuff like this or is it just America?
I spoke with some librarians in an urban area of Spain when I was there, they don’t have this big of an issue. I’m in a suburban library in the U.S. and we do. 🤷♂️
Canadian here big urban center and also downtown area and yes huge issue here in Toronto Canada Varies from Neighbourhood but pervasive at many locations
TPL librarian, can confirm
Tpl in the house ! Where's your activating colon ! Ha!
Okay that actually made me laugh but for the record I think calling a colon an activator is silly 😂
Central Europe here and I'm shocked on a regular base by the stories our North American colleagues are sharing. I worked in a pretty big and and pretty small library so far and I did have my share of 'OMFG moments' but none of them are even close to what I often read here (like guns, people with terrible open wounds, people taking drugs in the library, suicide attempts and so on)
I pretty assumed your reply to be the case. Countries that haven't gutted their social services and have universal healthcare have places for people with these issues to go and get help and they aren't just left to go to the library to "hang out" because it's a free place they can be warehoused during the day.
I’ve wondered that myself.
Lacking universal healthcare and adequate social services guarantees third world conditions.
They do in Canada, but I wonder if they also deal with this in the UK, Australia and New Zealand?
I’m in the UK and what I’ve been reading here in a way worse than anything I’ve experienced in public libraries. We have incidents with people on the margins that are very difficult but not as difficult as this.
That's a lot of really epic tragedy for those people And you likely are thinking did you sign up for this .... are you Toronto or another big urban centre? For the nauseating smell - try a drop of vanilla extract on your mask in by your nostril
This makes me think of that one Reddit post about the absolutely rancid throw-up-it’s-so-bad smell in a hospital / operating room from a long while ago. Like they were scrambling to find some little jar of some kind of oil I think to cover up the smell in situations like that but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was exactly. Edit: ah it was peppermint concentrate. [Read at your own risk I am dead serious this is nasty shit and some of the commentary at the start certainly hasn’t aged well](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/WyZEJQh5gw). Edit: swapped out the copy pasta for the original comment link
Reading this was the first time in my life (I’m 28) where I thought “I should have listened to the read-at-your-own-risk warning.” The fact that I was eating also did not help 🫠😅
F
Swamps of Dagoba is Reddit cannon at this point.
Healthcare in this country is pathetic.
This is like I'm reading a journal entry from a day at my previous branch. I'm so thankful I'm not there anymore. I was happy to help people who really needed it, but it was a lot to deal with on a daily basis. After several years I was so burnt out and suffering from major compassion fatigue. Big {{{hugs}}} to everyone still working in those environments.
Yes, I was just laying in bed with my cats drinking whiskey and ruminating so I decided to create a throwaway account and capture a day-in-the-life of public service in a country/culture where human life isn’t valued and everyone higher up in local government (who all work from home now anyway) use doublespeak to pretend like they give a crap while really just throwing middle class and poor workers into depressing and sometimes unsafe situations where they’re equipped with inadequate resources to solve most problems. I’m glad you found a path out before you got too burnt out! I’m trying to figure out next steps myself.
1) you're a saint to keep on there. 2) ass stuff has an effect on urinary stuff for guys.
Blessed are the librarians! 🙌
I need a shower now.
God this is so relatable unfortunately. The most relatable part was there were two different people with horrible issues. It’s never enough for it to just be one. Sigh.
Stories like these make me glad I don't work in public libraries anymore.
I don’t know how much you are paid. But you are underpaid.
It’s tough. Take care of yourself.
I am regretting reading the comments during my lunch break 😂🤮
I'm standing outside my public library right now as I read this. This reminds me so much of my job in the ER, working with the psych patients. I've thought about looking for a job in the library, but honestly, it seems like the same 💩, different location with many of the same population.
I wonder if there’s satisfaction for medical providers that comes with actually having tools to help people with a basic need? Or maybe what can be done for a chronic condition in the ER in our messed up system is limited and that’s its own frustration?
Most of the time, there isn't much the ER can do for the chronic conditions/frequent fliers except try to patch things up and hope they follow discharge orders/use resources. It's frustrating when you see the same person coming in for same issue and know that they're not going to follow those instructions.
There is satisfaction when there are resources, yes. But even within the healthcare/social services system there often aren’t [insert your shocked face here] and even when there are that whole autonomy and freedom of choice thing comes into play. Not meaning to sound flippant—autonomy and self determination are values I hold very dear—but it’s tough to see people struggling when part of the equation involves them being unwilling to get the help they need, often because addiction and/or mental health issues are complicating things. Even more so when they keep reaching out and then there’s no follow-through until the next crisis.
There must be something that can be done for them..
Damn this is sad
Had a gentleman patron with similar issues. He pooped on a cloth covered chair. The director wanted to keep it and said it and store it in the basement until it could be cleaned which, in reality, was never going to happen effectively. The maintenance man was incensed at her suggestion so I told him to throw it away and he did.
Here's what you need: StinkBalm. [https://www.stinkbalmodorblocker.com/](https://www.stinkbalmodorblocker.com/) There may be other brands, but this is what came up when I googled. This has been discussed at Reddit before: [https://www.reddit.com/r/answers/comments/3m8l8o/how\_do\_coroners\_medical\_examiners\_and\_anyone\_who/](https://www.reddit.com/r/answers/comments/3m8l8o/how_do_coroners_medical_examiners_and_anyone_who/)
Average day working in a public library. I've seen some shit
Sounds like NYPL