328
Posted on February 14, 2018 at 12:29 pm by Gene Ambaum
Characters: Jody
↓ Transcript
Jody: I’m afraid you can’t sleep in the library.
Patron: Sorry.
Patron: I’m just waiting for a friend.
Jody: You could read a book while you wait.
Patron: That’s what put me to sleep in the first place.
Jody: You could try reading a better book.
Patron: Sorry.
Patron: I’m just waiting for a friend.
Jody: You could read a book while you wait.
Patron: That’s what put me to sleep in the first place.
Jody: You could try reading a better book.
5 thoughts on “328”
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I never understood what’s so terrible about a sleeping patron? As long as he/she doesn’t snore too loudly or drools over the books, snoozing shouldn’t be a problem.
I think it depends on the situation. We had a guy who was rude and entitled and treated the library like it was his house. Instead of just accidentally falling asleep in a chair, he draped his legs over one end of the chair, and his head over the other. When we told him he could not sleep in the library, he was rude to the librarian. If someone just falls asleep by accident, that’s a different thing entirely. 🙂 It’s not quite “I pay taxes so I should be able to do anything I want here.”
I think the point in all of such rules is to retain a facility for the use it’s been committed to. If sleeping in the library isn’t prevented, soon the library becomes an ad-hoc shelter. If you want it to continue to be a library, you prevent this alternate use.
So, you give the bums rush to anyone who persists in napping. Wordplay very much intentional.
The same would apply to park and bus stop benches.
The library where I went to college kept couches scattered about which were pretty exclusively used for between class naps. So depends on the situation.
What looks like sleeping could also be passed out from an overdose, drunk, or heart attack. If you just let everyone sleep, people could die. I’ve literally gone over to what I thought was a sleeping patron to wake them up, only to find the guy unresponsive. I called an ambulance and he got taken away. A couple weeks later, that patron was back in the library. This is why I ALWAYS wake up sleepers. The odds that they’ll just be napping are pretty high, but if even one of them could be in trouble, it’s worth the uncomfortable interaction.