My sisters, I’ve resolved this year to treat my personal academic work more like the job it is/should be, and so I’ve been leaving the comfort-trap that is my apartment for a table at the public library, where there are no cats to distract me with their adorableness, or kitchens to tempt me with “just a few more” leftover Xmas treats. I arrive early, claim an outlet, and dig in.
The room is empty for an hour or so, then more and more people arrive, and my solitude is increasingly interrupted. By dudes.
In the mere 15 mintues I’ve been typing this, I’ve heard teeth-sucking, groaning yawns, weird grunts, coffee-slurping and cup-nibbling, and incessant sniffing (just fucking blow your nose already), from the two guys at my table. Other noises are emanating from other places, but these guys are shaking the table with their freakishly violent typing and relentless foot-jiggling. I expect the occasional paper rustle or cleared throat, but book-slamming? Audible chewing and swallowing? Ear mining?
Were libraries always like this? I know they weren’t. Looking around this area, men make up a clear majority of library patrons, and they’re also making a disproportionate amount of (rude, grotesque) noise. I know from using public transportation than men have no monopoly on irritating personal behaviors, but I’m curious what others think: Are these guys freaks, or are they just being “normal” men, who feel no compunction to police their bodies or behavior in a civic space? Am I being a fussy flower? And at what point can I deploy the Glare of Doom and/or a chainsaw?
If there is a hell, it will be full of rude people cracking their gum and incessantly sniffing. HATE IT Personally, I deploy the Glare of Doom early and often, but I’m bitchy like that.
This is also 100% a dudely thing. My brothers are blue-ribbon champeens at snorting, hawking loogies, cracking gum, etc. They get an enormous amount of juvenile enjoyment out of making rude noises.
My Glare of Doom does not work with them, so I usually deploy a high-pitched “Jesus Fucking Christ, will you shut the fuck up and blow your fucking nose already?” (My brothers and I talk like this to each other all the time–I wouldn’t do it at the Brooklyn Public Library, much as I might want to.) That’s only effective about 50% of the time, though. The other 50% is them doing it to irritate me.
Personally, when I was in school (not that you’re in school but you know) I always preferred the bookstore coffee shop as a good place to study. There is noise but it’s more like white noise that becomes an indistinct hum after a while. The library, while quiet, was almost too quiet because I would find myself fixating on small noises (sniffling, coughing etc).
When I worked in a library, the patrons were largely terrible. Don’t even get me started on the condition of the bathrooms, the things I found left in carrols, or the number of times I had to ask security to ask weirdos to leave. Libraries must seem like great hangouts for the creeps of the world.
Also, Dorky, you might as well just take a pair of cheap foam earplugs with you–I used to do that at the college library or when studying in my dorm’s common room. It really helps.
@bluebears True that. I moved from the silent floor of my med school library to the “talking” floor because slight noises seemed that much louder on the silent floor. When you expect an underlying level of sound, it’s a lot easier to concentrate than when silence is interrupted.
The noises are a way of claiming space.
My theory is that college-age men are especially bad abut this because the transition from high school to college is scary & makes them feel like it’s more imperative for them to make their new academic space their own. Young women have already been trained to share social space with other people, so they’re not as susceptible to the subconscious drive to say I’M HERE I’M HERE THIS PLACE IS MINE!
When I was a kid/teen/okay even now that I’m 30, my mom would often admonish me for making general bodily noises. Gulping a drink, snorting too loudly when I was congested, burping, smacking my lips, etc. I took these things to heart, and now feel embarrassed if I even chew too loudly (last night, eating some chips at a meeting, I wast trying to chew the crunchy foods softly lest I draw attention to myself).
My brother, however, seems to have no compunction about making any number of gulping, snorting, burping, farting or smacking noises. Indeed, he seems to see it as his due – probably because somewhere along the line he learned that people make noises and just “can’t help it” (truly, I think he could help how loudly he burps).
Basically – women, taught to restrain our bodily noises. Dudes – taught that they have an absolute right to make whatever noises they deem necessary to their physical comfort.
I second Becky Sharper’s suggestion of earplugs. I’m also wondering if the library you’re using has study carrels available. In the library at the school at which I teach, locked study carrels are available for reservation for an academic quarter at a time, even for faculty (who presumably have offices they could work in). It’s not only quiet, but you don’t have to haul your coat, books, and computer to the can every time you have to pee (or skip the coffee with work, which is just as difficult).
Oooh, oooh, library school has given me an opinion on this topic.
With the collapse of the social safety net and lack of governmental focus on making new technological infrastructure (like the Internet) available to people with low incomes, libraries have become a soft landing place for the poor, sick, and mentally unstable in our society. There is nothing wrong with these populations, of course, and they have a right to the services the library provides, but they also have a right to social services which libraries cannot even begin to address, a place to live, food to eat, medical care, etc.
These changes are making it increasingly difficult for libraries to serve their primary functions, what good is a childhood literacy program if parents can’t let their children use the bathroom because homeless people are bathing there? What about patrons looking for a quiet uninterrupted place to study? I don’t know if there is a way to balance these needs, and generally prefer to err on the side of the indigent who want a place to sit that is not freezing and covered with snow over other patrons who probably have other heated options, but it’s not a choice we, as a society, are well-served by having to make.
In short, is there an academic library you can go to? Libraries at “party schools” are the best for the quiet, or you might ask if there is a private room available to check out.
Not to imply that your table mates are crazy, they are probably just out of work.
Yes, my trusty earplugs will be travelling with me from now on.
bella, your theories on the economic impact on library patronage make sense to me. I was in an area without computers for patron’s use, and many people brought their own, so I’d guess you’re right about the “out of work” thing. Maybe not the guys at my table, although there’s not really any way to tell. (In any case, I’m with you that public libraries are/should be public, even if that creates some difficulties.)
I think their behavior is a way of claiming space (and women are of course coached not to do that), but it’s not clear how conscious it is. That is, were I to say something to Snifflin’ Joe or Toe-tappin’ McGee, would it even register?
There are a zillion academic libraries I could go to, but I chose BPL because it’s barely a 5-minute bus trip away. It’s certainly worth considering.
Where’s ratinski to weigh in on this?
When I was working on my thesis, I tried to spend each day that I wrote in the library. It helped – somewhat! The distractions are not fewer in the library, just different. Whether it’s the teenagers using it as a babysitter after school or the stay-at-home moms with their loud babies, there’s some kind of noise. Good for you for venturing out, though!
You rang? XD
I work corporate – and the men are largely more assy than the women – but through my qualitative research (re: my obsessive reading of library_mofo on LJ – a community that will make you appreciate the shit librarians go through like no other), I have come to the conclusion that while there are plenty of rude female patrons to go around, men do seem to behave more uncouthly as a whole. I would hypothesize that there are a number of reasons for that, chief among them the fact that men don’t get called on rudeness and (in instances where the rudeness is directed at the staff) a general lack of respect for a traditionally pink collar profession.
In your particular situation, however, I’m with bella. Libraries have long been a haven for the unemployed and homeless, and this is particularly true for public libraries in large urban areas. During the Great Depression this was encouraged, and I remember one of my professors quoting one of his professors as saying that she would much rather an unemployed man come to the library and try to improve their life through knowledge than stay outside and wallow in despair.
It does create a difficult situation for librarians practically speaking, however, because the homeless statistically are more likely to suffer from mental illness, and thus are more likely to be disruptive or worse. But when so few other places welcome them, there is no unilateral solution.
For me to concentrate I need headphones. I wrote my dissertation in Panera with my Discman firmly fastened to my ears. Now my ipod is my best work friend at library, coffee shop, home and office. Not only does it block out a lot of the distracting noise, it also serves the symbolic function of reminding me that when I put on those headphones, it’s time to buckle down to work.
I agree, ratinski, it’s not a ball that libraries can drop unless there is someone else there ready and willing to catch it.
I’m with Becky — glare of doom early and often. After all, they won’t know that you glare often, right? For strangers, every glare is the first glare.
But then again, I can’t work without music, so, as with LaurJ, headphones it is for me. This does not mean I glare significantly less. It just increases my glare threshold slightly.
Wouldn’t the glare of doom be largely ignored in such a bodily vocal group as your fellow table sitters? Perhaps a more vocal response is needed although I have to agree that people in libraries is a damn good thing and should be encouraged, even the noisy ones.
Surely one sure-fire solution is to arrive early and using scary looking reference books, stake out the entirety of your table surface forcing them to sniffle off elsewhere.
Good lord you should be here in South Korea! Or maybe not. The spitting (by men AND women), the horking up lugies, the grunting, teeth sucking, constant cell phone chatting in public, pushing, bad breath, bad driving and just constant rudeness is overwhelming. Although I’m here to work, and I love my job, it is such a big change and so hard to get used to a whole new culture. I keep telling myself to respect this culture; it’s not mine, after all, but some days are more difficult than others. It appears that rudeness is rampant no matter what part of the world you live in.
“It does create a difficult situation for librarians practically speaking, however, because the homeless statistically are more likely to suffer from mental illness, and thus are more likely to be disruptive or worse.”
Librarians (note the capital L) very rarely deal with the more difficult patrons. In my years of experience working as a non-librarian library employee, it’s the general reference lackies like myself who get the harassment and have to ask patrons to stop masturbating at computers. good times.
That said, I witness just as many female patrons (percentage-wise) hanging out, clearing their throats, sucking teeth, hocking loogies, etc. Libraries are not religious sanctuaries. It’s a public space with free access to information funded by tax dollars. If you don’t want to be around the general public because they’re too unsavory, you should probably stay home.
In short: if they’re aren’t pulling out their penises and going to town, it’s not that big of a deal.
Call me a pervert but that’s stuck in my head now. Men pull out their penises in PUBLIC places like a library? Do they get asked to leave or do they get arrested for exposure?
turkeyjerky:
I’m sorry that your library was set-up like that, that was really unfair for you.
Have you tried to the traditional ‘shssh’ with the finger on the lips? Alot of people don’t realize they are bothering others, isn’t this kindof the same as talkers in a theater.. and are nice people who just have different standards that most of us. I’ve oft been surprised how friendly and willing people who I THOUGHT were inconsiderate monsters were when I just communicated a little with them. Worth a try, or might backfire, who knows.
@bella: We also usually only encounter the serious issues at the branch that is in the middle of the city, the ones closer the the neighborhoods rarely have problems.
The Librarians where I work are cool as hell (I think it’s a requirement). The Librarians are doing actual Librarian work, and those positions that don’t really require a degree aren’t being filled with Librarians (thus not devaluing the degree). It works much better IMO than bunch of reference desks filled with people who are earning less in a year than they paid for their degrees. We also have a lot of Non-Librarians working in the administration and managerial positions. No one here has any visions of grandeur regarding the SI degree.
I have a masters degree, work two jobs at libraries- a full and part time- and I’m making no where near what my degree costs. of course, the humanities actually attempt to fully fund their students, unlike many SI programs, so i don’t have the load of debt my coworkers have. Admittedly, it is fun to bring down an SI student with “oh that’s neat, i already have my MA and turns out i have almost no debt from it” when they get a little too entitled/uppity about their education. it makes me lol.