Librarians on Reddit are sharing the weirdest thing that's happened to them at work, and let me tell you now that they are heroes we don't deserve.
1. The musical streaker:
"A patron at the local public library returned a VHS tape a few years back. She complained about additional film after the credits. Someone had video taped themselves playing a xylophone naked. The offender made sure his face was not in the film. The local librarians ended up checking every VHS tape in the collection and found several more instances of this. He had even gone so far as to mark the tapes he had already modified. Apparently his goal was to add footage of himself on each and every one. Eventually, they were able to catch the guy."
2. The interesting method of censorship:
"Someone went through a romance novel and censored all profanity with a black permanent marker. They left in all the sexually explicit romance novel sex scenes."
3. The mystery poo:
"A coworker was checking in a huge bin a few months ago and it STANK sooo bad. There ended up being a turd smashed between two picture books. The patron wasn't nearly as mortified as she should have been."
4. The unexpected jam:
"I worked at a large central library for a year. The book drop was a large mechanical thing with a conveyor belt that brought all the books down a couple floors to a basement room, where they all dropped out onto a table and could be sorted. One morning, we noticed that it looked like zero books had come in overnight. The conveyor was jammed, so we sent the janitor up to investigate. There's some rattling, and then a pile of books come sliding down the chute. Then more rattling. The janitor comes back down five minutes later, asking for latex gloves. Someone found him a pair, and back he went. He returned about a minute later with an 8-inch purple dildo that had jammed up the conveyor belt."
5. The unhappy accident:
"A book got run over by a car. There were a full set of weird tracks on the cover. It tore the spine right off, bent lots of pages, but it didn't rip the mylar cover. Somehow it got past check-in and shelved because it could still shut."
6. The unsanitary surprise:
"I work at a decent-sized library. One morning before we opened, my coworkers and I were picking up from the book drop. I lifted up a book and there it was, staring right at me: A USED CONDOM!"
7. The meaty discovery:
"I once opened a book to find two thirds of an intact meat pie inside (in New Zealand, this is a common convenience store snack). Seriously disgusting."
—nrnr
8. The hungry patron:
"We always encourage book marks and give them out quite frequently. Well, one time a book was returned with a unique bookmark. A TORTILLA! How does that happen?"
9. The "nice" gesture:
"I worked in a library for several years, and I once found an entire cherry pie in the book drop. It was whole, in a box, like someone had tried to do something nice and give us a pie, but the library was closed."
10. The unhygienic bookmark:
"We had a book returned by a teen patron with the bone from a fried chicken wing as a bookmark. Oil stains and skin remnants included."
11. This horrific discovery:
"Years ago, we had a bunch of DVDs returned with about a half-dozen (mostly live) earwigs in it, including under the DVDs themselves. One of the DVDs had also been exposed to some sort of liquid, which made the paper cover mildewy."
12. The "treasure" hunt:
"I was working in the library at my university. I was in the bathroom when I saw a call number on the wall. Awesome! Treasure hunt! I got and hunt down the book. Inside, there is a scrap of paper with another call number on it from a different floor. I go through three more books before I finally find the 'treasure.' It was hardcore porn, badly photocopied."
13. The cracker culprit:
"I'll never forget the time I was unloading the drive thru book drop and heard a little girl talking. She was asking her mother about the drop, seemingly very curious and interested in it. She decided to experiment by dropping a single animal cracker. Then another. And another. I'm chuckling at this point, finding it amusing how excited she was getting watching the crackers disappear down the chute. About 20 crackers later, (this girl was going ham, mind you) her mom decided it was time to drop the books in, putting them all in at once. Crrrruuunnch. The crackers at the bottom explode from the impact, causing the little girl to squeal with glee at the sound. I realized that I would have to clean up this mess — a real FML moment. It turned out that some of these crackers were in her mouth and were wet and soggy, making them smoosh into the books."
14. The nightmare situation:
"At a university library, a graduate student left a bin full of books that were infested with cockroaches in the book drop."
15. The not-so-innocent switcharoo:
"I worked as a page for a couple years, and we always checked the DVD cases when they were returned. I found this one case that had a blank disc inside of it instead of the correct DVD. It was a Morgan Freeman movie. I asked my boss what I should do and he instructed me to pop the DVD into the computer. Lo and behold, the blank DVD was a porno. I was welcomed by a pair of boobs on my work screen."
16. The feline surprise:
"I was a library page in high school. Our book drop was free-standing and located several feet from the door. One time, I went to empty the drop and a cat jumped out. It's a good thing I came around, as it was summertime and really quite hot outside."
17. The expensive mistake:
"I had someone slip their Macbook Air through the book drop one time. A MACBOOK AIR! The lady was really not nice about getting it back either."
Librarians...we truly don't deserve you.
