Efficiency, Being Blindsided by

Occasionally a routinely slow library process or operation will work efficiently and smoothly. When this happens, promptly tidy your hair and begin to look around for the hidden camera. You're likely being gagged for one of those practical joke television shows.

Sausages, Picking

It is never appropriate, under any circumstances, for a librarian to pick the toppings from the unserved pizza at your library's student appreciation party. If you have a tendency to molest other people's sausages, it is probably best to keep your hands in your pockets.

Provocative, Being

Be a library provocateur by making bold statements like:

• Library instruction doesn't work.
• Library catalogs are obsolete.
• Reference is dead.
• Librarianship is not a science.
• Google wins.

Be careful not to be too provocative, lest you run the risk of talking yourself out of your cushy job.

Alcohol, On consuming during lunch hour

When the local wine store has a free wine tasting, plan your lunch hour around it and suck down as much Jesus Juice as you can before stumbling back to your cubicle. Careful not to have too much (or to have too many Guinness Stouts at the local Irish Pub, for that matter), though, because you might start finding the patrons attractive and make an awkward, drunken pass at them. This might get you fired (or laid, which would be a much better outcome).

Stuff, On taking as much as you can home when things go bad

Once the newness of your library job wears off, and unhappiness starts to set in, quantify your dissatisfaction by taking home anything that is not nailed down to the counters. After something bad happens, like a fight with a co-worker, a freeze on wage increases, your boss is an ass, etc., go to the supply cabinet and take stuff home. Go on, take it. It will make you feel better and really, isn't that what life is all about?

Unexpected, Expecting the

Librarians should not waste time preparing for library instruction sessions. It is a law of librarianship that a teaching faculty member will always ask something random and unrelated of you in the middle of your guest lecture to the class. With little or no warning, you'll be asked to spend 30-45 minutes demonstrating how to do mail merge in Microsoft Word?

Ask the readers: What is the most random, unrelated thing you've been asked to demonstrate on the fly in the middle of a library instruction session?

Whistler, Being a

Do not whistle in your library. No one likes a joyful whistler. If you whistle before 9 a.m., know that your coworkers are plotting against you.

Exceptions include: wolf whistles, whistling to get a subordinate's attention, and chronically congested nasal whistling.