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I don't get what's so hard about remembering to return a checkout card when you're done with the computer. I put at least five notes a day in patrons' records that they left a card at the station and to tell them about it (that they could get a fine by doing so, etc). At least a fourth of these are multiple "offenders". Some of them are massively multiple - they leave cards again and again and again, despite being told over and over and over not to do so. Sometimes it's even despite having paid fines as a consequence thereof, and our fines are pretty hefty at $5 per hour, levied all at once at the start of the hour (net effect, 10 minutes late gets you a full $5). Yet I am always entering these types of notes. To me it seems a matter of simple logic: someone behind the desk gave you this card, so you should bring it back to them when you are finished with it. Am I missing something?
Addendum: Boxes on videotapes. I am willing to concede that it may sometimes not occur to someone that bringing the tape back in its original box is important, and that substituting another box is not okay, because they may not have noticed that it has special labels and stuff (they are otherwise ordinary commercial boxes, like the ones tapes come in when you buy them at the store). But bringing it back with no box at all? And when we tell them it has to stay checked out to them until they bring the box back because we can't check it out without the proper box, they try to tell me it shouldn't matter because the tape is what's important and therefore they shouldn't have to pay an overdue fine? I always liken it to bringing a book back without its cover. You would hardly expect the library to accept that, would you? So what made them think that bringing a tape back without its box would be okay? Unlike a book cover, we can cook up another box, but we charge $15 to do so because someone has to hunt up a box, label it, put a new barcode on it, and then change the item's ID in the catalog. You can bet they are always aghast at that one too.
Addendum: Boxes on videotapes. I am willing to concede that it may sometimes not occur to someone that bringing the tape back in its original box is important, and that substituting another box is not okay, because they may not have noticed that it has special labels and stuff (they are otherwise ordinary commercial boxes, like the ones tapes come in when you buy them at the store). But bringing it back with no box at all? And when we tell them it has to stay checked out to them until they bring the box back because we can't check it out without the proper box, they try to tell me it shouldn't matter because the tape is what's important and therefore they shouldn't have to pay an overdue fine? I always liken it to bringing a book back without its cover. You would hardly expect the library to accept that, would you? So what made them think that bringing a tape back without its box would be okay? Unlike a book cover, we can cook up another box, but we charge $15 to do so because someone has to hunt up a box, label it, put a new barcode on it, and then change the item's ID in the catalog. You can bet they are always aghast at that one too.
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Date: Feb. 11th, 2004 04:53 pm (UTC)From: