Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Here's Your Porn, Have a Nice Day!

It's been awhile since I've posted. Hi everyone. Nice to see you again. This story happened several weeks ago, but it is one that must be shared.

So I'm working on the Info Desk and a man my age is fiddling with the copier (which also prints stuff from the internet computers). The patron can't get his pages to print, so I go over to help. I see his print job is pending, and he simply needs to push one last button. Keep in mind...print jobs from ALL the internet computers are held in the copier, and I was just assuming that this particular, half-released print job belonged to him, since he'd already been fiddling with the machine.

Also, it's important for you to know that I have a personal policy about not looking at people's print-outs. I walk them through the process of printing their documents, and once the pages come out, I hand them to the patrons without looking at them. It's their private business (bank statements, resumes, etc.) so I don't want to see it.

Phew. Okay. So here we go.

I'm standing at the copier with the patron, I release the print job, and three printed pages come out. Each page was covered with about 12 pornographic pictures. Not knowing the content, I hand them directly to the patron and say, "Is that all you needed?"
He throws his hands up in the air, to show that he doesn't even want to touch them. "Those aren't mine!" he cries. I was so mortified I couldn't even look him in the eyes. I said, "Oh, I am so sorry." He asked, incredulously, "Are people ALLOWED to print that stuff out?" I said, "No, no no no no no NO. I mean, they're not supposed to view it or print it. Something is wrong with our filter. I'll figure out what's going on. Again, I am so sorry!"

It didn't take long for this story to spread among the library staff, and for the rest of the day, they were coming up to me at the Info Desk and asking if this was where they could pick up their free porn.

1 comment:

SafeLibraries® said...

Porn is legal, but not usually in public libraries, except to the extent people are misled into believing this. So what is the policy in your library that would apply in this situation?