Grooming, Personal

The reference desk is a great place to catch up on your personal grooming.  If you need to trim your nails, style your hair, apply cosmetics, or pick the remains of lunch from your teeth, wait until you are working at the reference desk.  Please reserve more intimate forms of grooming (like shaving, waxing, plucking, and flossing) for your office or cubicle.

Sinus, Bathing your

A polite librarian will never use his or her neti pot in the library's breakroom sink, in a public restroom, or at a drinking fountain.  If your patrons or coworkers want to watch you give yourself a nasal enema, they can look you up on YouTube.

Headphones, Lending

If your library lends headphones to patrons, it is important to properly sanitize such equipment between uses. In fact, a new group (The "Equipment for Audible Recordings: Cleaning Resources of User Dander" Committee) should be formed posthaste to develop the appropriate procedures and workflows.

Staff break room, Using the

Feel free to leave expired dairy products, decomposing produce, and months-old Mexican leftovers in the library’s staff refrigerator. Leave exploded gravy from your frozen Lean Cuisine lunch to dry on the interior walls of the staff microwave. Leave empty ice trays and dirty coffee mugs in the library’s break room sink for someone else to wash.

But never allow a patron to bring food or drink into the library. Patrons are filthy, dirty people.

Hands, Washing your

Librarians who use waterless soap to repeatedly wash their hands should consider investing in disposable surgical gloves to keep germs at bay. One can never be too careful… there’s no telling who’s been rubbing their ass all over your keyboard.

Infections, Resisting

Librarians should disinfect public workstations and telephones after each use to avoid the spread of MRSA and other staph infections.

Recognize, however, that no amount of Lysol can remove your library's staff infection.

Tooth-brushing, Workplace-

While good hygiene is important for any librarian, one should not go overboard. Do not engage in workplace-tooth-brushing unless you...

• Are about to leave work to go to the dentist
• Receive anonymous emails complaining about your breath
• Spent the night alone in the library, drinking in your office
  
• Are preparing to make out with a custodian in the broom closet
• Did something really perverted with your mouth

Otherwise, eat a mint or chew some gum like everyone else.