My first class on Tuesdays and Thursdays is at 1:00, so I get to school at about 11:00 or so and take care of my homework in the library before class. I was reading my ethics text this afternoon when my attention was grabbed by two university employees passing through the corridor behind me, carrying on a very loud conversation about
iSight. Not only were their voices beyond library levels, they were beyond outdoors and in the midst of heavy construction levels. And it didn't help that the corridor they were in happened to be quite echoey. But, being the nice guy that I am, I was willing to tolerate it for the few moments it takes to pass through. But then something terrible happened:
they stopped walking. That's right, they parked it a mere ten yards behind me and continued their unnecessarily loud discussion, right in the midst of a dozen irritated students who wanted nothing more than to study in peace and quiet. I looked around the room. Some students were looking around nervously, unsure of what to do. One guy had a textbook held up against his ear to block the noise. Sigh. I knew I now had two choices: I could be like everybody else and just bend over and take it, or I could confront the loud talkers and ask them to shut up so I could study. I decided that I hate confrontations like this, so I continued reading my ethics book and just tried to ignore the talking. But then a third guy came and joined the conversation! That did it. I got up from my chair, walked calmly over to the noise-polluting triad, and said politely, "Gentlemen, could you please keep it down a little? This
is a library, and you're very distracting." I was amazed at their reaction. I had barely gotten the first sentence out when they fell silent, a little bit shocked and a little bit confused. They just looked at me for a moment like deer in the headlights, and I really wasn't expecting that reaction any more than they expected to be chastised by a student, so I just stared right back at them. I was determined to come out on top though, so I turned around and walked away immediately. Score one for the common people.
But that wasn't the end.
A few minutes had passed, and I was back into my ethics homework, when I saw the skinny guy with the mustache, who was the leader of the loud talkers, approaching my table. I figured he was either going to apologize for his disruption, or be a jerk and cause trouble for me because of my confrontation. Turns out he did neither. "I just spoke with the librarians," he told me, "and they told me that this isn't a quiet area. There are designated quiet areas upstairs if you're interested." Wow. I wasn't expecting that. "Well," I said without missing a beat, "then I apologize for the misunderstanding." And with that, he walked off, and I returned to my reading, and that was the end of that episode.
Misunderstandings are always good entertainment; seven seasons of
Three's Company is proof of that. But it wasn't the misunderstanding in itself that makes this incident stand out to me. It's the
reason for the misunderstanding: as far as I've ever known, libraries are places in which you don't speak at all, and if you really need to, you do it as quietly as possible. So of course I assumed that the gentlemen carrying on a conversation in the middle of the library were inconsiderate jerks. The very concept of designated quiet areas in a library is so foreign to me. Has it really been so long since I've been in a library that the rules have changed, and talking is now permitted? Is it now common sense that if you want quiet in a library, you must seek out one of these designated quiet zones? If that's the case, then to the talkers I must have seemed an ignorant, unenlightened boob who never got the memo that it's okay to talk in the library now. If that's the case, then fair enough, since I thought the converse of them. Live and learn. And as long as these guys don't make a habit of conversing right next to me every day, I'm sure I'll manage to live in peace with this "talking is allowed" arrangement.
Sitting quietly even though I'm not in the library,
-Caleb
Misunderstandings are always good entertainment; seven seasons of Three's Company is proof of that. But it wasn't the misunderstanding in itself that makes this incident stand out to me. It's the reason for the misunderstanding: as far as I've ever known, libraries are places in which you don't speak at all, and if you really need to, you do it as quietly as possible. So of course I assumed that the gentlemen carrying on a conversation in the middle of the library were inconsiderate jerks. The very concept of designated quiet areas in a library is so foreign to me. Has it really been so long since I've been in a library that the rules have changed, and talking is now permitted? Is it now common sense that if you want quiet in a library, you must seek out one of these designated quiet zones? If that's the case, then to the talkers I must have seemed an ignorant, unenlightened boob who never got the memo that it's okay to talk in the library now. If that's the case, then fair enough, since I thought the converse of them. Live and learn. And as long as these guys don't make a habit of conversing right next to me every day, I'm sure I'll manage to live in peace with this "talking is allowed" arrangement.
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