Monday, March 24, 2008

"Liberry" Glossary: The Look of Doom

The Look of Doom
-noun phrase
  1. The expression adopted by our most-frequent innanet crowd patrons when they come to realize that their hour of time is up, that all other computers are full, that they themselves are next in line to be booted off, and that someone, ANYONE, has entered the building and come within proximity of the computer sign in sheet. It's a potent mixture of frustration, anger and fear--emotions which, when combined, evidently cause patrons to become extraordinarily slow in the process of disengaging from our computers, perhaps in the belief that the longer they take "wrapping up" the more likely another computer patron will abandon their own machine allowing them to keep theirs. This expression is most frequently seen on Monday afternoons when we have the greatest concentration of hungry innanet crowders in house, all competing for machines.

  2. The expression I adopt upon seeing the patron who must not be named, a.k.a. Chester the (Potential) Molester, in the belief that it will convey to him how much hatred I have for him in my heart and how much pleasure I would derive upon hypothetically learning that he was decapitated in a car accident or that someone had gone all Rorschach on his ass. This expression has yet to have any observable effect whatsoever.

  3. The expression I adopt upon emerging from our men's restroom, having witnessed what our dear patrons have left there for me to clean up. Often this look is beamed in the direction of our male computer patrons who, being the very souls who have spent the past seven hours in the building and have therefore had more opportunity than most to relieve themselves, no doubt doing a very sloppy job of it in their haste to return to their computer station before we can give it to someone else, and are therefore the most likely candidates to be the patrons after whom I've just had to clean up. Frankly, they deserve worse than anything Rorschach might do to them.

2 comments:

the.effing.librarian said...

I'm so glad we use software to kick them off the computers. I'm tired of being the third strike when people wouldn't leave (after 2 other librarians couldn't get the guy off), and I would just walk up and press the power button and say, "Time's up." I'm not a big guy, but it helps that my knuckles are tattooed "T-I-M-E" "I-s-U-p." (Got the idea from a nun back in Catholic School.)

Anonymous said...

Our problem is that we have the software, but our roving bands of teenagers quickly learned how to hack into the system and cheat the timer.
Add that to the typical problems with teens using proxy servers to bypass the blocking software.
It's not really surprising, as these kids have been around PCs since they were infants.


An employee of a small town "liberry" chronicles his quest to remain sane while dealing with patrons who could star in a short-lived David Lynch television series.