ALA store, Dressing yourself with the

Try to fight the urge to wear clothes from the American Library Association's online store. If you worry that you might go unnoticed as a librarian while outside the library, never fear! Your inability to make eye contact, offer a firm handshake, and carry on a conversation without mentioning how threatened you are by Google should clue people in.

Celebrity READ posters, Decorating with

A cheaply framed celebrity READ poster has no place in your home, so get rid of it.

References, Giving bad people good

Occasionally you will be called upon to provide a reference for a bad library employee or coworker. Giving a truthful response and illuminating the candidate's shortcomings means that you will continue working with this person indefinitely. No one will every hire them if they know the truth. Fudging a little and making the person sound better than they actually are allows you to pass the loser off to someone else. Always consider your own happiness and opt for the latter strategy.

And on a related note: never trust a reference from a current employer.

Non-Verbal techniqes for repelling bosses and annoying co-workers

If your boss is a micro-manager and you just want them to get the hell away from you at all costs, consider making yourself as unappealing as possible. Even a small amount of body stink could make the average person avoid coming within 10 feet of you. Disgusting habits like fishing for ear wax, then smelling your finger are also highly recommended and have a high success rate. Skimp on the Arid Extra Dry, while you're at it, and consider letting your nose- and ear- hair grow out. And it wouldn't hurt to develop bad oral hygiene, either. These methods could have disastrous effects if your job entails a lot of personal contact with library patrons, unless they annoy the hell out of you too.

Business cards, Practical uses for

Librarians rarely have occasion to use professional business cards. Once you've given one of your cards to each member of your family and to your friends, the initial "Hey, I just got new business cards!" excitement may begin to fade. Now you find yourself with a dusty box tucked away in the bottom drawer of your desk.

Below, you will find a list of practical uses for librarians who find themselves trying to unload some business cards:

• making short grocery lists on the back
  
• entering "free entree" drawings at your favorite fast food joint
• makeshift bookmarks
• luggage tags
  

Graffiti, Being creative with restroom

Racist and homophobic epithets are so passé when it comes to restroom stall graffiti. Declarations about the size of one's own sexual organs are also overused and, frankly, often untrue. Greek letters representing fraternities are tired. And despite the convincing note, you may determine after repeated calls that this Mandy person may NOT want "to have a good time" after all.

So what's a restroom author to do?

Spice things up a bit with a creative use of space, language, and drawings. A recent example: Near the top of the stall door, in small cursive, far above the cluster of notes written in arm's reach of the toilet, was a note that read: My arms are longer than yours.

Attire, On What to Wear When Interviewing Candidates For a Job

If you are a manager, make sure you dress yourself like a peasant when you interview prospective candidates for a job in your library. While the guy you're interviewing is dressed in a sharp suit that obviously costs more than your whole wardrobe, make sure you put out the wrong impression by dressing like a slob and send a message that this interview isn't that important to you. You only represent the entire department, you lousy dresser you. Bonus points for reeking like raw sewage.

Technologies, Co-opting new

Keep up to date with new technologies that you can co-opt for library use. So what if no one will ever listen to the pod casts of your bibliographic instruction lectures, subscribe to the RSS feeds from your library's blog, send your reference librarian instant messages, or view your library's profile on facebook.com? At least you did your part to make all these cool technologies a little bit lamer.