Librarians of Internet, what’re some weird things that happened at your library?

Teenagers having sex.

Creepy dude hiding in the little girl’s bathroom.

Homeless people renting out the study rooms and just hanging out in them all day, leaving trash and making them smell bad. One used to piss himself while sitting on our chairs. We eventually had to ban him.

Guys trying to stealthily watch porn on the computers.

Rival gang members getting into fights. Mostly just shouting matches fortunately.

People dropping their kids off to play and not picking them up before we closed.

Just people being weird and shitty, like they do.

As a library patron I was in the fiction section and noticed two young girls sitting on the floor in the middle of the shelves of books looking at a book. There was a scruffy looking man at the end of the shelves staring intently at the girls. I glared at him until he moved away. I walked away and then came back a few minutes later to check. He was back staring at them so I went up to the girls and gently said that I would like them to bring their book and come look at it in the open main area of the library. Once I had them settled at a table I found a librarian and reported him. They called security who escorted him out.

A few years later I was working as a volunteer at the library. I went into the main area to put something away and smelled the worst smell ever. It was a combination of death and shit and permeated the large space. It emanated from a sleeping homeless person. I had to call security to escort him outside. The smell took at least an hour to dissipate and we had to dispose of the chair he was using.

Several times I noticed people at the computers sitting with their pants sagging so far down their butt cracks were completely exposed and their naked butts were on the chair. It was a unpleasant sight so we would have security politely ask them to adjust their pants.

I also had to report two young boys huffing paint cans in the stairwell to security. They were so high they were a danger to themselves.

Working as a librarian is hard. Working security at a library is even harder.

The homeless, as much empathy as I sincerely have for them, are often a serious problem. So I was really delighted when a kind of limping (and smelly…) older guy with a grayish/mustard-speckled beard I had been surreptitiously eyeing for a while, started actually browsing the shelves instead of loitering. He eventually sat down on a table with a respectable stack of books and went through them in what seemed to be a pretty interested and methodical fashion. I kinda wondered what he could be researching, but other things caught my attention.

Maybe half an hour later we heard a deep and agonized moan come from one of the washrooms. I noticed immediately that the (presumably) homeless man was now absent, and the books he’d collected were scattered in disarray at his abandoned seat. Me and a security guy hurried to the toilet. Upon entering, we saw bare hairy legs peek out from an opened stall. There was quite a bit of blood on the floor. He was sort of hugging the toilet bowl, positioned on all fours, and he appeared to have a pocketknife stuck somewhere in his exposed rectum.

Between groans and weirdly placid huffs he said things like ‘Must’ve overshot the mark’ and ‘Once again, I dug to deep’. There was a medical textbook, drenched in blood and diluted fecal matter, near him. The visible page said something about tapeworm removal. I’m glad to report that I saw nothing of that, but I only dared to look at his mauled ass for a split-second before gagging the hell out of the there…

The weirdest thing I ever saw was one of our crazier, but contained regular patrons clearly off her meds or having a mental break. She was pacing around the library, ranting, and couldn’t be interrupted. It was unlike her. We called the police.

This is a common story, but it evolved humorously. Our effeminate, polite, older computer lab operator had to report someone masturbating in the computer lab every day. It was quite the face journey.

Someone died in their car in our parking lot, but I didn’t have to look, thankfully.

A child threw up on the very first day of opening our brand new library. Cheers.

When I was in college, I had a job working the front desk of the college library. I worked evenings, so it was after the day shift permanent staff left, but before the night management came on duty. As a result, I was basically in charge of the entire library.

One evening at the beginning of the school year when the fraternities were enrolling new members, a large group of young men filed into the main study room, stripped down to their boxers and started singing at the top of their lungs.

I thought it was hilarious, but since I was technically in charge of the library, I felt like I should probably do something. I called campus security, but they didn’t believe me. I finally convinced the security officer that I wasn’t pranking him. (It was a very small college and it had only one person on duty at night.)

He came by and ushered everyone out. They didn’t get in trouble though, other than a scolding and a suggestion that maybe they should hold their activities somewhere where people aren’t trying to study.