(photo from FreeFoto.com by Ian Britton)
It’s just like closing time at a bar: You don’t have to go home, people, but you can’t stay here!
On Friday nights everyone piles into the library, hoping to snag a bunch of DVDs before we close.
And, even though there are announcements made (”…the library will be closing in 1/2 hour; closing in 15 minutes, please bring your materials to the front for checkout; the library is now closed; get the hell OUT of the library, we want to go home!”…that sort of thing) still some people always seem to linger and won’t leave.
Which might be nice to see if it was patrons so obsessed with reading, but it’s always patrons looking for DVDs. In fact, last Friday it was like a feeding frenzy around the DVD section…must find something, anything, to watch!
I know that there are several sites lamenting this issue of how the library has essentially become a type of “Blockbuster” so I’ll not go into it more here. Just…heavy sigh. (See here for amusing Clinton DVD library old, old spoof from the Onion as libraries may be headed this way).
Oh, as a side note, a few days ago we got our copy of the Sports Illustrated annual swimsuit issue. I wondered what all the snickering was about behind the circulation desk and then they showed me (painted on suits this year) and said I better look at it that day since it would quickly disappear (never to return) once it went out on the shelf. (see this from 2007 about the disappearance syndrome)
All I could think was, what clerk would even want it back after someone had, er…”borrowed” it! Reminds me of the joke where the young, eager college student goes to a fortune teller to ask about his love life. She says she sees good news and bad news for him. The good news is that he will soon make love to a beautiful Playboy centerfold model. The bad news is that he will cut himself on the staples. 
I used to do a “Last call for information!” before we closed.
well, it was that way in the private realm too … when I worked at Borders for several years, people would get MAD when we closed, even though the place was open till 10, 11 on weekends. Though one day, towards the end of my tenure there, I had control of the sound system for the store, so right at closing time, I put in Ray Charles’ “Hit the Road Jack” which ROYALLY pissed off some customers … but the manager hated ‘em just as much as I did, so he promised he’d scold me, and came into the backroom laughing his ass off.
Best of all, our sound system extended into the shopping center we were attached to, so as folks left the store and cut through the shopping center to the parking garage, they heard Ray and the Raelettes singing “Hit the Road Jack, and don’tcha come back, no more, no more, no more, no more” all through the mall!
Days like that made the job worthwhile.
When I worked at my local public library, I used to do the final walk through at closing time and there would be patrons still sitting there reading as the lights were being turned off! I was very, very tempted just to lock them in overnight. Maybe we should have and charged them a fee. After all, if they’re gonna confuse us with a hotel ….
Woeful –I love the last call idea!
Miss Method –oh, yes, I am very tempted to lock some of them in (actually, this has happened at one of our branches…I guess a patron was in the restroom, got locked in and had to call on their cell phone to get out)!
Today, we had another appearance of “this will only take a minute” lady. She ALWAYS comes in as we are locking the doors. Is it wrong to body slam a patron?