[Publib] Re: Sick patrons and the S word

[Joe Schallan]

Miranda Burton asks

"Have any of you addressed the discomfort of having
to wait on a patron who is obviously sick and contagious
(coughing all over the place without  covering mouth,
runny nose, etc)"

I guess this is a hazard that comes with our territory.

I get far fewer colds and flus than I used to, and my
theory is that I have now been exposed to so much
that I am immune to nearly everything.  (Except
criticism, of course.)

One thought I've had for an article to submit to LJ
involves simply taking a keyboard off one of our
public PCs and sending it to a crack biological
lab to have it cultured, and then reporting the results.

Or maybe not.  I want to drive neither 10,000
librarians screaming from the profession, nor
10,000 patrons screaming from the library.

One of our regulars always brings plastic gloves
to put on when using a public PC.  She gets
"what a wacko" sort of looks from other patrons,
but of course she isn't nearly a nutty as one may
think. Patrons always think the library is safer than
it actually is, and this extends, I suppose, to
microbes.

In any case, I once had a young lady appear
at the desk who had a vile looking rash on her
forearm.  The whole time I was helping her she
used the edge of her library card to scratch the
rash.  And then handed the card to me to place
a hold for her.

Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

To my credit, I did not rum screaming from the
desk. (Though I did, at the conclusion of the
transaction, excuse myself from my colleague and
go to the staff washroom for a presurgical sort
of scrubdown.)

- - - - -

Why do I end up posting about body parts and
diseases?  Cripes.

I would be remiss if I did not mention an
important omission from my list of the other day:
In Pig Latin the word is "otumscray."

I have also been served process by the Inuit
Antidefamation League, which is angry about the
"71 words for snow" thing.  I am indeed heartily
sorry for passing on that old bit of misinformation.

Apropos to my many posts over the years to this
forum, in German (my ethnicity, so I am allowed to
say this) we have 26 words for "manure."

In any case, the Higher Power of Lucky seems
to be the ability to illustrate the power of a word.

Best,

Joe Schallan
Phoenix