Prohibiting people is a lot of work.

“Excuse me sir, is this your rat?”

The truth is that it’s a lot of work to enforce the rules at my library. So I try to pick my fights for where they might be effective. No one I’ve seen has brought their rat to the library, or their opossum, but yesterday someone was carrying around a dog.

“NO DOGS ALLOWED!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Some rules just need to be enforced!

Actually I did nothing. As long as their behavior was exemplary I’m not going to be The Law. But they’re already over the line, so one peep from that little rat, I mean dog, and I’ll step in.
 

“Oh, it’s not your Puma Cub? We may have an issue. I’ll see if I can scrounge up a fish or something.”

All the mask and Covid stuff has certainly created a glut of flashpoints for rule managing at my library. And because 40 percent of the population has gone stone cold insane on the issue it’s all the more reason to parse out one’s confrontations. I’m not likely to enforce a mask rule on someone who will clearly be out of the library in a minute or two as doing so runs a real risk of them actually being in the library unmasked or breathing from their exposed nose while we adjudicate the situation. You pick your battles. Expediency matters.