where not to keep your paperbacks

so at the "training" i went to friday the head of community libraries spoke to us. he was actually very entertaining, telling us all sorts of interesting anecdotes about the various experiences he has had in libraries. about half way through his speech however, i realized that he was not actually telling us anything about the organization we all work for. nor was he "training" us in any way. but he was so entertaining. he was definitely the best speaker i had to listen to.
anyhoo, he was telling us how he revolutionized this one library he worked at ... massively raising their circulation. so someone asked, "well ... how did you massively raise circulation?" and he mentioned some various common sense things he did, but then he mentioned how the public bathrooms in this particular library were very large and the rest of the library was kind of small. SO, he decided to shelve paperbacks in the bathroom. in the bathroom! he put romance novels in the women's room and westerns in the men's room. he said this was amazingly popular and the books went out like crazy.
well, i feel sorry for whoever has to reshelve those books. yuck. when i worked at albany public the biography section was dangerously close to the public bathrooms. men would typically grab a biography on their way in and then drop it somewhere when they were done. (of course they never actually put it back in the right place when they were finished with it. they would just kind of leave it anywhere.)
no one ever wanted to reshelve the biographies. i tell you, no amount of hand sanitizer would have gotten me anywhere near those biographies.
shelving books IN the bathroom .... indeed!