For some reason,
libraries which are city-owned are allowed to pay something like a dollar less than
minimum wage to their employees. If this is not the case, then someone spent a couple hundred dollars for me while I wasn't looking. I got $4.25 per hour while working at the local library one summer.
You can't read the books you're shelving, which was one of my reasons for taking the job in the first place. You can't talk to the other employees, especially the attractive ones, without a
supervisor coming along and noticing. And when you are caught, you can bet on being given a lecture of some sort, which consists of how you're fortunate to be working there (even though they're short on staff, and are always trying to hire more), and how their job is so much harder than yours.
Blah blah blah.
While you're shelving books in the adult non-fiction section, people will come up and ask you where they can find books to read to their kids. While in the
books-on-tape section, people will come along and ask where they can check out
library books. While you're working the check out counter, people ask where the
encyclopedias. You know, but you don't necessarily tell them. Mostly, you just point to one of the largish signs nearby, which have little arrows explaining where things are. Not that it would do any good to actually tell them; it's practically an invitation for them to get lost and come back to you within several seconds. Sometimes repeatedly.
There are, however, perks. You can check out books that nobody is allowed to check out (reference, rare, etc) simply by virtue of being able to walk out the back door, where there is no detector to see if you're walking off with books that haven't been "properly" checked out. These books always showed up back in the correct place after people were done persuing them, of course; it would never have gone on if there were any concern about that. And when books were checked out legitimately, there was no concern about whether they were late or not. It's easy to take care of that when you run the computer that handles these things.
You can also
make out, smoke
pot, etc. in the elevators between the first and second floors. This was
standard practice for the employees, as it was necessary to remain sane, or at least to keep from quitting altogether. Nobody noticed, somehow.
It's been about 3 years. I don't go to the library much anymore. I owe them too much in
late fines. But somehow, I miss it there.