World Library Series

About 40 minutes ago, I didn't even know that the World Series was even going on, but I just had to kick 40 baseball fans out of the library.

They had all arranged themselves around a computer monitor in a horseshoe of chairs and were watching the game, sans sound, and trying, unsuccessfully, to keep quiet. I wouldn't even have gone downstairs (which is where the quiet study area is), except that I was trying to find the person who had actually had an entire meal delivered to the library. We don't allow food in the library, in case that needed to be said, which it apparently did.

So I traipsed down the stairs, wandered past the huge group of people (looking over at them with a confused look on my face, I'm sure), and walked up and down the rows trying to find the person with the sandwich. No go. I then went back to the group and told them that they needed to find another place to watch whatever it was that they were watching, especially since I could hear them on the other side of the level.

Honestly, I didn't care that they were watching the game at the library. I even made sure to tell them that there were better places to watch it than in the quiet study area of the Library. We have two levels; the lower is the study area. The upper is also set up for studying, but you can also socialize, talk on your cell, and otherwise irritate those around you.

They asked if they could stay until the next run was over and I let them. It was incredibly amusing to watch them all keep tightly quiet and try not to make any noise. Lots of grimacing and waving of arms while watching the screen. Then their connection timed out. Hee!

They frantically (and quietly) tried to get it going again and eventually gave up and left. The janitors had just come downstairs, so I explained what was going on. Some helpful patrons and I put the chairs back. I went back to my normal duties (upstairs) and let the student workers know what was going on. Then one of the janitors waved at me to get my attention.

Turns out that a sizeable collection of the viewers (the noisiest ones, naturally), had run upstairs, across the library, and down again via the back stairs and had set up their viewing station again!

This time I called security, but the phone wasn't working well, so I set off to kick some butt.

Once again a large group had gathered, while people around them were still hunched over their books actually studying (surprise, surprise). I marched over to them and simply said "out." Complaining, whining, and stony looks followed. Then I turned off the game. I probably gained lots of bad karma in that move. I stuck around for a few more minutes to make sure that we didn't get a repeat occurrence of the sneaky back-stairs trick.

Back upstairs, where the noisy-contingent had gathered around a monitor. Again. But now I didn't care because we were in the nearly-anything-goes-except-for-food area of the library. Yay!

And to show what I nice person I actually am, I even had one of the students explain to me what the hell was going on with the game (I don't follow any sports) and how much time there looked to be left. I was going to set them up in our viewing room where they could watch the game on a huge screen with the added bonus of sound, but they had dicked around too much already playing avoid-the-person-in-charge and the game finally came to an end about 7 minutes later. Oh well.

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The library is really quiet now and the only remaining students have fallen asleep at their tables or are sucking down caffeine in a valiant effort to stay awake. I'm still here until the library closes at 3am, but I think that most of the excitement is done for the evening. At least tonight I didn't have any trouble staying awake, unlike yesterday.

So...what's on the game schedule for tomorrow night? :-)