And what’s your excuse…?

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:

“I immensely enjoyed reading the book and thought it was my own copy.”
– 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