Most people come to the front desk of the Library for the usual things. They want to pay fines, get cards, request a book, find out where something is. They want information, or to return something, or to inform us of something. But underneath all these business-as-usual visits there sometimes lurk secret motivations, and among our wildly diverse visitors can be found a dizzying array of hidden reasons for these front desk visits. While the mundane issues of Library transactions are the always, and sometimes only, issues present, these secret reasons lurk underneath so often that I can only list some of the most common ones here. Any more and we could be here all day! You don't want to be here all day, do you?
You do? Well, I am touched. Gosh. May I mention here that my prose is deeply layered, and if you would like to be here all day, you could read this over and over, extracting new meanings at each go. Memorizing, a la a poem, and then reciting this post to friends could also be satisfying in this regard. Just, you know, as a heads up.
And so with that taken care of I present you with the seven most frequent secret reasons to visit the front desk at the Library.
1. Sheer, unremitting, abject loneliness.
2. In the hope that somehow something good will happen, kind of like a free slot machine!
3. To get a general feel for the place. Want to know if our library is welcoming, cold, friendly, weird, or carnivalesque? You need merely ask for a pencil, or whether we have any F. W. Murnau movies, and you should get a fair glimpse of what you really want to know.
4. To establish oneself as a member of the Library community and not just one of the people who anonymously come in to play colored ball games on the computers.
5. Fishing, as in, when a person is sure there is a real reason for coming to the desk, but they just don't know it yet. They figure it will emerge at some point during their payment of a 10 cent fine in pennies, or perhaps during their inquires about the Library "closed" dates in the upcoming years.
6. People are just naturally drawn to where the party is. Woot.
7. Someone wants to let us know that they're up to no good and make sure we're okay with that.
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