Locked in the Bathroom

We've been having problems with our bathroom locks the past few weeks. We have two public bathrooms and a few weeks ago we had to remove one of the doors because the bathroom lock completely broke. So we had one bathroom left and a week or so ago one unfortunate man went to use it and locked himself in.

I was alerted by a staff member: "Someone's locked themselves in the bathroom." I at first thought it was a child but it was a grown man and upon inspection of the lock we found it was completely broken. We at first tried to pry it with a screwdriver then some pliers. Nothing worked. Then I tried to call the maintenance people for the library, no one answered. I went across the street to their facility and knocked on the door but no one was there. At this point the man had been in there for about twenty minutes. So helplessly we told the man: "Would you like a magazine?" It took several more minutes but finally the maintenance people showed up with a giant saw. They sliced off the lock with an earsplitting noise that filled the library. The man ended up being a prisoner in the bathroom for 20 more minutes.

Poor guy, he just wanted to use the restroom and he gets locked in there for 40 minutes. I hope he at least enjoyed his magazines.

Anime Art Contest

firstplaceanime
Originally uploaded by kearnslibrary

We had our second annual anime art contest a few months ago. I finally got around to taking down the pictures and scanning them all in the other week. We had 44 entries, up from 33 last year. I was running out of space on the wall to put the pictures! I was so impressed with the teen's artistic talent.

I've linked all the pictures onto "our library's teen art." This picture here is our first place winner.

Buttons, Buttons, Who's got the Buttons?

For my anime club activity a few weeks ago I had a button maker and I had the kids make their own buttons. I printed out numerous anime pictures they could choose from, some kids printed out their own pictures and others drew their own button designs. Then they cut out the circles handed them to me and I pressed them into the button maker. After the end of it I had blisters on my hands from all the buttons.

I must have made a 100 buttons for all the 20-30 kids that showed up. They all wanted several buttons. I found out after an hour into it that I was running out of the button backs, when I had only about 6-7 left I told the group that I could only make buttons for those who did not have any or only had one.

There was a girl (not the girl pictured) who was pressed next to me and had five buttons but insisted on more. She pleaded with me for more buttons and I explained to her that I could not make any more for her since I was running out and some people had not gotten any buttons. She continued whining. I explained again: "It's not fair for me to make you more buttons when some people don't have any buttons and you have five already." This did not seem to make logical sense to her and she pressed right up on me in my face and got aggressively whiny begging me for more. After 4-5 times of telling her "no" she walked off in a huff and got angry, completely forgetting all the 5 buttons I had made for her before. The week afterwards she gave me cold silence.

I understand that this is typical "me", self-gratifying adolescent behavior. But it still did not ease my annoyance. This girl is going to be disappointed in life when she discovers she doesn't get everything she wants.