Should I enter the reading room with my backpack?

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Above us only sky
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Should I enter the reading room with my backpack?

Post by Above us only sky »

I go to the local library every Saturday. The local library has 6 floors, the lockers is on the ground floor and the reading room is on the sixth floor. And in the reading room there is a rule says people cannot enter the reading room with their backpacks and handbags, people must put their backpacks in the lockers which is on the ground floor.
But the thing is 99% of the people who visit the 6F reading room do not bother to go to the first floor to put their backpacks into the lockers.
In the 6F reading room there is a 50-year-old librarian responsible for keeping the order, occasionally she will ask the visitors entering the reading room to drop their backpacks in the first-floor lockers, and when confronted by the librarian the visitors usually will obey her and go down the stairs to drop their backpacks, but 90% of the time this lady is absent or is sitting before the computer playing some online poker game with her eyelids drooping.
This created a dilemma for me, If I follow most people’s example and go to the reading room with my backpacks, I will feel uncomfortable inside because I have violated the rule and there is a chance that the good old librarian may lift her eyelids, see me entering with my backpack and order me to go to the ground floor lockers. Yet on the other hand, if I do not follow most people ‘s example and put my backpack into the ground floor lockers, I will still feel uncomfortable because to the crowd I ‘m the exception and they are the norm, as if there is something wired about me.
What should I do? Why it seems others do not feel uncomfortable at all when they enter the reading room with their backpacks?
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Harbal
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Re: Should I enter the reading room with my backpack?

Post by Harbal »

My advice would be to get into the habit of leaving your bag in the locker just in case they decide to issue the librarian with a gun.
EchoesOfTheHorizon
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Re: Should I enter the reading room with my backpack?

Post by EchoesOfTheHorizon »

Burn the library down.

Or, get a clear backpack, don't bring your backpack along, or find a trusted storage place for your backpack.

The sixth floor reading rooms in San Francisco never had these issues, and it had rare books on that floor, some quite old. Clearly someone has been targeting them, snatching stuff up, at your location.

In the library of congress, in the rare books room, you can bring a backpack, but have to go through a security checkpoint ran by the Maryland National Guard (it literally is, but unofficial, as side jobs), and then once you get to the rare books room, 19 cameras cover the facility. I got cussed out by the librarian of congress for having a pen. But I could keep a backpack.
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Seleucus
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Re: Should I enter the reading room with my backpack?

Post by Seleucus »

Speaking for myself, I wouldn't be ashamed one way or the other, but i would find it inconvenient if I had to go back down six floors so I'd myself probably leave the bag downstairs.

One counseling way of solving this is to ask yourself what feelings you are having and what needs those feelings indicate are either being met or are not being met. Then your devise a strategy that you guess will meet the needs you suspect are behind your feelings, and then you test that strategy. If you wind up feeling good then your strategy worked out, otherwise you'll need to revise and try something different and see how that goes. So that's a method to solve your issue.
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-1-
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Re: Should I enter the reading room with my backpack?

Post by -1- »

Leave the backpack in the lockers before proceeding to get lobbed up to the sixth floor. If anyone looks to you as if with a suspicion that you are not following the peer-established custom, you inform them that you entered the library premises without a backpack.

That's in case also if the backpackers want to lynch you for not wearing a backpack.

But I am sure nobody gives a rat's ratatouille on that sixth floor whether you wear a backpack or not. Other than the droopy-eyed librarian lady. So she will never question you or confront you if you appear backpackless; and the rest of the people will never even notice.
Dalek Prime
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Re: Should I enter the reading room with my backpack?

Post by Dalek Prime »

Tell her that the backpack 'absorbs' reading materials, and is always looking for something new to devour. Which it clearly can't do in a locker.

Either that, or 'shush' her everytime she begins to speak, and remind her she is in a library.
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