Repeat Offender
-noun phrase
- A member of the innanet crowd who signs in for computer time, stays for while, leaves, returns to sign up for more, leaves again, returns to sign up for more again, etc., repeat cycle until closing time. Repeat Offenders are not always rogue patrons, but often are. The offense inherent in their title stems from the fact that, due to our usual bad attitudes, the staff becomes completely sick of dealing with these people since we have to go out and log them onto a computer with each successive visit and we wish they would just get what they're doing done the first time and go away. We're particularly annoyed with patrons such as Germophobe Gary, who not only leave and return repeatedly throughout the day, but demand a new Clorox Disinfecting Wipe with each visit so that our keyboards might be rendered safe for him to touch. (We can't really blame him, but it is still a very annoying extra step for us.) Very often, Repeat Offenders are also the patrons who do the most amount of printing from the computers and are constantly pestering us to look at their prints, compounding our bad attitude toward them. Usual suspects among the current Repeat Offenders crowd include: Germaphobe Gary, Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine, Mr. B-Natural, Mr. W. Perfect, The New Devil Twins Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids, Johnny Hacker, Mr. Little Stupid. Former Repeat Offenders include: Parka, Crusty the Patron, Stoner Lad.
2 comments:
My "liberry" actually installed a 1 hour per day per patron limit on public internet use. Granted, we're a private institution and can get away with limiting the public like that.
Sometimes the whole "service" aspect of librarianship isn't respected by the masses as it should. If only we could use our date stamps as weapons...
The "liberry" system where I work uses a reservation software that allows patrons to get three reservations totaling no more then 3 hrs. Since it is all automated, the problem comes when kids and others want to use a bunch of different cards. The rule is 3 reservations per person, not just per card. It is also system wide--so you can only have three reservations total at all branches, can't do three at each.
But then, of course, people claim there is a problem, someone stole their cards, their reservation was canceled, ect and they need a guest pass.
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