Listservs, Participating in

Library listservs can be great for keeping up with the goings-on in the professional world or sharing problems and concerns with your colleagues. Some are very low-traffic, while some send several hundred email messages a day.

However... If you can't manage the amount of email you get, maybe you should UNSUBSCRIBE from some of those lists. If you can manage to filter listserv messages into folders, or get digests instead of individual emails from the list, GREAT! But if you are unable to read work-related emails because you "just get too many emails to read them all," then get off the lists. That excuse is insulting, and it says a lot about your skills as "an information professional."

Also, if you spend more office hours sending and responding to listserv messages than you do working at your real job, maybe you're not as necessary as you think you are.

J

Eccentric, On Being As Much As Possible

Your high school days are long gone, but remember to project as much pain, misery and depression as you did back when the jocks and stoners bullied you between classes. Being a grown-up doesn't mean you have to act grown up, at least not if you're an MLS-level librarian. Make sure you don't sell out to the man by wearing grown-up attire or by letting a professional stylist cut your hair. Do it yourself, you radical hip thing, you! Make handbags out of random bits of felt, denim and something shiny (for that 'found' look) and cut your own hair. Don't cheat by buzzing it with clippers, though, use scissors and cut the hair at medium length. If you're male, only wear the most horrific glasses frames. This will insure that you don't accidentally get laid more than once a decade.

Potluck meals, Inviting retirees to

Don't invite Retirees to library potluck parties. They will steal your shit.

I don't think they intentionally try to sneak off with a new casserole dish or crockpot lid, but they're old and senile and may not realize they've left you with a lid that doesn't match your bowl.

J

Cell phones in the public restroom, Using

If you happen upon someone who is using a cell phone in the stall of a public restroom, it is your responsibility to make that person admit (to the person on the line) that they are on the toilet.

You can do this by knocking loudly on the stall door, flushing a neighboring toilet, or interrupting to ask for some toilet tissue.

J

Backhanded, Passive-Agressive Comments, How To Make

While in the pantry or coffee room, it is accepted and, indeed, expected that the librarian should make backhanded comments regarding order and cleanliness. Example: if you see a staff member accidentally drop a coffee stirrer on the ground, make sure you behave like a martyr by picking up the offending litter, tossing it angrily in the garbage can and then softly exclaiming "some people need to learn how to clean up after themselves; I'm not their mother!" Make sure the comment is barely audible because you wouldn't want the staff member to think that you are confronting them. Just make sure you don't pull this type of thing on me, because I will answer with a very direct "I know you're not my mother, pal, because my mother has class and dignity!"

Mr. Rogers, On becoming

When you come to work, change from your snow shoes into your work shoes, change from your warm wool cardigan into your cotton work cardigan, and catch yourself humming a little song about being someone's neighbor... maybe it's time to step back and take a critical look at yourself.

Living up to stereotypes isn't necessarily a bad thing -- as long as you recognize that that's what you're doing.

J

Normal Human Being, Acting Like

Library Science has a long tradition of being the 'career' of last resort. It's the chosen track for people who are too socially retarded to do anything that requires human interaction. Fine. But for 8 hours, can you at least try to represent a little better and make some frigging eye contact?!? It's embarrasing for me whenever I go to a public library and the person behind the reference desk eyes you like you're a martian with 3 heads or that you stink like a heap of garbage. I never let on that I'm a member of the cult, though, because then we'd have to bond for, like, 30 seconds about this great field of ours and that would make me ill.