I found this article today via Boston Bibliophile / @bostonbibliophil ’s twitter page (thanks, by the way!) and thought it was just fantastic!
Just to give you the gist of it: San Francisco Public Library waved overdue fines on any owing books if the patron returned them with a good excuse as to why they were late. Apparently they received 30, 000 returns ($55, 165 worth of fines) – as opposed to the 5, 000 returns they received the last time they simply waived fines – along with some fantastic excuses.
You can click here to go straight to the excuses. My favourites included:
– Frederick
“I checked out some books and while I had them I cleaned my room, they were put up on a shelf in my closet and forgotten about until I went to the library to check out more books. I now have about $300 worth of fines and all because I cleaned my room. This is why my room is best left ‘uniquely organized'.”
– Kristin
“I was abducted by aliens, they just brought me back after 2 months.”
– Antonio
5 comments :
I work in a library and you wouldn't believe the excuses we get. No aliens yet, though! What really amazes me is when patrons get angry that they have fines and indignant when I won't waive them. (I will if the circumstances warrent it). Forgetting is not good enough. Sorry for the rant.
working in a uni library we get all sorts of excuses but none of them hold any water... the return schute is ipen 24 hours a day 365 days a year - so the Christmas/Easter/public holdiay excuse doesen't work and our catalogue is web based so the 'overseas holiday' doesn't cut it either. but boy do they get mad when they realise there's no escaping fees and no graduating with fines on their record! I tell it's simple renew your bools on time = no fees (it hasn't caught on yet)
I never really mind paying fees if my books are overdue. I consider the library a good cause. I was a little mad, though, when I was in a car wreck, our car caught on fire destroying two or three library books, either by smoke or the water and I had to pay full price for them. A little sympathy, please.
This is fantastic! I love stuff like this ... and the excuses were just so funny! I'm going to have to link to this!!! : )
I've never used an excuse on a late library book. I just return it and pay my fines (once I kept a book a whole semester because I needed it for a paper and they wouldn't let me renew it). Maybe I should start coming up with creative excuses, though....
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