Why is it that I am the person in charge when there are bathroom problems? I find facing the red-faced patron in high dudgeon much easier than opening the bathroom door after the report of a problem. Today, a coworker informed me that one of the women's room toilets wasn't working. My heart sinking, I found out that a patron had told her of the outage and that beyond slapping an Out of Order sign on the stall door didn't know anything else. If it hadn't been the ADA stall, I would have let it go until tomorrow (Monday) when the real grownups are here. I considered calling the guy in charge of buildings for the city, but didn't want to wreck his Sunday without knowing how bad the problem was first. So I bravely entered the women's room (after determining it was unoccupied, of course!). I'm glad I checked before phoning the buildings guy since the complainer just hadn't pressed the handle very far before giving up and reporting a problem. And there wasn't even a nasty surprise in there waiting for me!
The time I was most grateful for the degree, though, was when a homeless patron had washed his socks in our restroom and put about 6 gallons of very filthy water on the floor. I wouldn't dream of having anyone else clean that up...they weren't qualified. I was the only MLS holder.
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2 comments:
So just out of curiousity, which class in library school specifically taught you about bathroom clean-up?
That would be in the section of the Public Librarianship class where we went over plumbing and networking. In the Academic Librarianship class you learn how not to laugh when a student wants 17 works on an obscure subject for a paper that's due tomorrow.
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