#I feel so lame writing this out

[artificial-condition]

You work at a library? What are some weird questions YOU'VE Gotten?

Yes I’m a library clerk (going to get my masters in library science)!

Just a couple weeks ago I had a patron come up to me and ask an elaborate series of questions about my dating preferences. She first explained the common dating age rules (I think it was the lowest age you should date is half your age +8 or 9 years?) (highest is twice your age I think?? I don’t know I was already getting the ick at this point)

After she explained she starts asking me if I would date the lower age range (which was 18 or 19 for me) and I’m like no. But then she asks for my reasons why and after I tell her that we’re is different stages of our lives she starts trying to correct me!!! Telling me not to let “societal pressures” impact my decisions and I’m just giving her the side eye super uncomfortable not digging this

Then she asks if I would date the upper range and I again say no, saying that’s my parents age (all of this not including the fact that I don’t date!!! I’m probably on the aroace spectrum so I’m just like agh) and she’s again telling me I’m wrong and trying to convince me of why I’m wrong!!!

She ends the conversation saying that I’ve messed up her paper she’s writing for school and I’m just relieved for the conversation to be over haha

We had a lot of very interesting questions come in when we weren’t open to the public during covid. We have a program called just ask where people can call and “just ask” us anything and we’ll try to figure the answer out for them; for covid we expanded this greatly and had people at each branch answering these lines

I got a lady who wanted to know the origin of a bunch of common English phrases (I can’t remember the phrases themselves, it was sayings like “beat around the bush” and “hit the sack”) (one of the phrases I think had the word pot in it and she wanted to know if it was a drug reference) (it wasn’t) anyway and she went on to talk at me for an hour about how she spies on her neighbors and how awful they are but that’s not on topic

Another lady wanted to know the difference between farm raised cod and wild caught cod. She was not getting when I tried to explain one is raised in captivity and one in the wild. It is hard to find nutritional facts about farm vs wild caught cod.

I can’t remember too many more at the moment but I’ll probably reblog this when I think of more. I’ve only worked in the public system part time for four years, I hear crazy stories from my coworkers who’ve worked 15+ years (I’ll reblog when I think of them too)