Death to noisy typists! And other rules for working in a modern library

In another sign of just how far and fast Scotland is pulling away from England in all the important measures of civilisation, the University of St Andrews is to start issuing parking ticket-style warning notices to users of its library who leave their belongings on desks and then disappear for hours, leaving workspaces unavailable for those who actually want to – uh – work, which say “These belongings have been left on this table for more than one hour. You are free to use this seat for study.” This is a righteous move, but it does not go far enough. As a user of libraries to work in when my home office walls start to close in, I suggest we also need penalties, ranging from polite notices to death, for the following:

Heavy typists

I don’t mean overweight people. I mean the kind of people who hammer at their laptop keyboards as if they were miniature Test Your Strength games at a fairground, so that the very air around you reverberates to their unrhythmic pounding. Stop it, or I will set fire to your hands.

Talkers

All persistent talkers should be killed. But at The London Library, where famous people are forever having famous gossipy conversations just out of earshot, special measures are required. Namely, to be forced to repeat their famous gossipy conversations within earshot so that I can sell on any salient tidbits to appropriate tabloid outlets. Then they should be killed.

Phlegm snorters

Oh God. Anyone with mucus – have yourselves drained, or STAY HOME TIL IT’S GONE. Stop publicly, audibly, sickeningly sucking it down the back of your throat or hoicking it into a handkerchief and then carrying on turning the collectively-owned pages with your damp, smeared hands. Oh GOD.

Dog-earers

I’ve seen it with my own eyes. People dog-earing books they don’t even own. You are everything bad about humanity. I hate you more than the paltry resource of words can say, even though I am sitting next to the dictionary shelf.

People who do not understand that reading rooms are for reading.

They are not called phone bleepy-bleepity rooms. They are not called gnack-gnack-sound-of-gum-chewing rooms. They are not called discreet masturbation rooms. Though at the same time if you are going to masturbate, DO be discreet about it. (Incidentally, St Andrews’ library was in the headlines in 2011 for a note warning against exactly this activity.) And PS – “reading room” is short for “reading while breathing silently through your nose only, the mouth should never enter into the equation room.”