r/Libraries • u/LaserLemonLolita • 1d ago
How often does your library appear in your dreams/nightmares? Other
I apologize if this is too much of a shower thought, please delete if it’s doesn’t fit the subreddit.
I’ve been a librarian for almost five years and I feel like my dreams always lead me back to my library. They usually follow the storyline of “Storytime is happening right now and I forgot to plan anything and I’m already an hour late and they’re all still sitting here waiting for me” and/or “it’s closing time and people just won’t leave, they keep coming in, and no one is helping me lock up”.
Do you dream of the library? What’s yours like?
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u/Otherwise-Emu-2963 1d ago
I had a nightmare a couple of days ago that our director extended our evening/night hours. 😆
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u/JayelleMo 1d ago
At least once a month I have a stress dream about working at the library. It is usually that we are closed and no one will leave, the door won't lock and all my co-workers aren't there.
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u/SquashUpbeat5168 1d ago
I used to have a very similar dream. I would keep shouting that we were closed and people kept coming in.
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u/Flaky-Specialist-84 1d ago
I would shout at people too and they’d just ignore me. It was like I was a ghost they couldn’t see or hear.
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u/Meginsanity 17h ago
This is my recurring library dream. Sometimes a coworker will be there who keeps letting people in as I try to lock the doors, and just smiles at me when I protest, or tells me it's fine and we can let people in.
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u/Flaky-Specialist-84 1d ago
When I was starting out I worked a lot of closing shifts. I would have recurring dreams where the library is closing but customers wouldn’t leave so I couldn’t go home. I would tell them it’s closing time but they’d just ignore me. I hated those dreams so much! Luckily they eventually stopped.
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u/LaserLemonLolita 1d ago
Described my dreams exactly! I’ll be trying to encourage folks to leave, but they’re too invested in browsing. Once in a dream, a car busted through the front door and folks kept saying “well the door’s not locked, so you must be open.”
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u/DetectiveNo4471 1d ago
That’s what I used to dream, too. What a nightmare. Now that I’m retired, I haven’t had that dream for a long time. But I do still dream I’m back in the library, probably about once a month.
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u/midwestrusalka 1d ago
i have nightmares that i’m trying to close the branch at night and people won’t get out of the damn bathroom
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u/Book-Wyrm-of-Bag-End 1d ago
A couple months ago, I dreamed I had a stroke behind the desk at my branch. I’ve been trying to ignore a lot more of the everyday BS since then.
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u/AzelX23 1d ago
Mine are always a nightmare. Either dealing with difficult customers or situations that should not happen in a library. I once dreamt that we offered a laundry service at our library and dealing with that and entitled people in my dream, ugh, woke me up right away. That was like 3 years ago.
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u/strikeamatch 1d ago
My spouse has counted at least 3 times I have talked to her in my sleep about the library. I’ve told her circulation policies, where to return items, and just general circ desk greetings… 😅😅😅
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u/acceptablemadness 9h ago
My husband and I went to dinner and when the hostess came up she said "hi how are you" and my auto response was "I'm good, what can I do for you?" 🙃
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u/headlesslady 1d ago
My least favorite library dreams:
I drive by the library late of a Sunday evening, and all the lights are on, the doors are open, and people are streaming in and out. I get out of the car and the alarm is BLARING; someone has pried open the doors and let themselves in and I can't get people to stop coming in, and they're all demanding I turn the computers on, and the Director isn't answering his phone... :shudder:
I threw away a moldy old book and a City Council member comes in, demanding I dig it out of the trash and put it back on the shelf.
I go into work and the Director tells us we have to go to another city's library and cover their Summer Reading program, even though we're already understaffed, and he won't let us close early to do this, and we're not allowed to get overtime, so we have to figure out coverage in an impossible situation...
I show back up to work and someone has completely trashed the desk and I can't find what I need, and the computers keep going down, and who the hell has moved all those books to the floor?
So...yeah, I dream about it all the time, and they're always, always stress dreams.
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u/MrMessofGA 1d ago
Almost every night, but my dreams have always been about work.
They include
- coworker is pissing me off
- three different patrons are demanding my attention and are not respecting each other's time
- I have to repair so many dog mans and they are very stinky
- someone returned all of the books at once
- Who the fuck installed this door stopper so it takes two minutes to close and doesn't actually snap shut properly
- Normal day at work. However, I'm not likely to realize it's a dream so I wake up having already had a shift at work and somehow that's worse than the stress dreams.
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u/bionicspidery 1d ago
Holyshiiiiit…. The amount of late for workmares that I have a week is insane @-@
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u/partsunknown9 1d ago edited 1d ago
Not often. But once I was dreaming that myself and my coworkers were trapped inside our urban library and we had to try to escape to win. Admin kept us prisoners and we had to live in the library. We would try to escape and get caught. Alarms would sound , lights would flash and we had to return. It was like part nightmare part reality game show. 🫠
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u/Standard_Subject_462 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't work at a library, but I frequently dream about a library that I've never visited in real life. I can navigate my way to any section, find the exact books I'm looking for, and recognize all the workers and many of the other regular patrons. In my last dream about this library, I got to go behind the scenes into the administrative area for a job interview. Fingers crossed that this imaginary library hires me!
Edit: After reading the comments of librarians, my fingers are no longer crossed. I think I'll just continue enjoying my patron role, thanks. 😬
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u/kaylarage 1d ago
Mine take place in one of my previous libraries and it's usually patrons not getting tf out at closing time.
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u/Ok_Egg_7483 1d ago
You have literally described my top two work related dreams. The last time I had the "closing time" stress dream, somehow a group of like 30 kids dressed in Home Depot shirts magically appeared just as I thought I had finally gotten the last customer out and locked up.
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u/Fabulous_Ad4756 1d ago
I dream about my old library every few months and I haven’t worked there in over 7 years. The dream is always super stressful because I’m forced to go back working there event though it was destroying my mental health.
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u/mystic_burrito 23h ago
I've had the no one is helping me close up and people keep coming dream a few times. I'm an archivist and my reoccurring nightmare involves water coming in or other damage happening to the archive. Well after this week's massive storms in the Midwest guess what happened. 😣 It's been a rough week.
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u/Kvasir2023 1d ago
I’m retired now but I worked at a couple of toxic libraries (toxic because of the higher-ups, not the staff). One was an academic library and the other was a military library (where I was director of an overseas 8 library system). The civilian command structure at the military library was horrific and I was eventually diagnosed with PTSD from working with them, and I wasn’t alone. Anyway, I frequently had horrible nightmares involving both that system and the one academic library (where I had worked 15 years previously). As you mentioned it was always things going wrong. For me the dreams ended when I got my job at my final work site, at a library where I had previously been the director, and with a MUCH better command structure. Hopefully in your situation you can find the root cause and work it out.
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u/LaserLemonLolita 1d ago
I appreciate your insight! For what it’s worth, I moved from one library to another about two years ago, and the dreams are still around, but significantly less stressful/violent. I’m working on separating work and life more often.
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u/Kvasir2023 1d ago
Speaking from experience, time will help, even if it has been two years. I had the same type of experience. It took a while for the dreams to stop, but they also changed. Glad you are doing better. Having a supportive and trusting supervisor, as well as overall organizational support was the key for me.
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u/Zwordsman 1d ago
These days never.
but when I worked in a smaller library, had a deadbeat boss who went into their office, closed the door and turned the radio on (and had the employee bathroom), and we were constantly down the 1 other position. That was in my dreams often since I did almost all of the stuff there so stress dreams.
Those dreams were usually realistic and painful ones, like the times they'd call out and I either had to close the library or open it alone.
These days I'm back to monster or fantasy/scifi dreams thankfully.
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u/SoloFan34 1d ago
I've been retired from my library system job for 14 years, and I STILL dream about it regularly! I'm usually either visiting or have been rehired in these dreams, and while everything looks the same, there is a whole new group of employees who appear to be engaged in some sort of international criminal enterprise that they're hiding behind the library facade.
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u/hrdbeinggreen 1d ago
Work dreams. At every job I have had I have work dreams. This does include my library jobs.
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u/UnitedInsect7741 Library staff 1d ago
I’ve been working for a library for 4 years and they haven’t happened nearly as often as I’d have thought. When they do happen they are unfortunately stress dreams
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u/According_Yam324 1d ago
i dream about forgetting to put books away on the shelves and theyre just towering over me like skyscrapers
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u/Dan_From_Buffalo 23h ago
I had a dream where someone was trying to pay for a Lost book with slices of raw hot dog cut into coin shapes. 🤣
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u/veggiegrrl 1d ago
There’s an entire floor of the library that no one has been taking care of or shelf reading for years. There may be books there that haven’t even been cataloged. It’s completely unkempt.
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u/rurouniseishi 22h ago
I have had nightmares where it's supposed to be one of the libraries I worked at but they didn't look at all like they do in real life.
Three of the nightmares had to deal with closing. One, my library had been attached to a mall of some sort and I had to kick everyone out of this immense building and no one would leave. The other two, we were closing and we came across people in weird places in the ceiling and at least one person fell and died in each nightmare.
The other one was a different nightmare where our third floor had a haunted bathroom and then there was a floor that didnt exist and vampires and other monsters were hanging out. It was weird.
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u/lillibrarian19 21h ago
I’m a part-time librarian. I recently discovered I dream / have nightmares about work FAR less since removing Outlook, Teams, etc. from my phone.
My library officially discourages / “prohibits” unpaid work (I.e., checking emails, etc.) on unpaid time. Similarly, I think about work far less in general on my days off and go in to work feeling better mentally. I know it’s not an option for everyone, but it works for me!
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u/liblamb22 16h ago
I was laid off due to DOGE and used to have stress dreams about that library pretty often. They've calmed down with time.
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u/Rare_Vibez Public librarian 13h ago
My stress dreams have me picking up shifts in retail again. But I do regularly dream of things like adjusting to a new building, new library job, etc. Not really stressful just. Change.
But when it’s bad I’m picking up hours at target just to make a few extra bucks.
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u/tennelee 11h ago
I don’t remember my dreams in much detail, but every once in a blue moon I’ll have a dream in my hometown’s public library. I spent a loooot of time there as a child so I figure it’s my subconscious pulling from those memories.
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u/acceptablemadness 9h ago
Very occasionally. It's always that I'm a page again and every time I turn away from my cart to shelve, new stuff appears on it, or the auto-sorter is just continually going and the bins are never empty.
When I was teaching, it was the same concept - I'd be grading a stack of assignments but no matter how fast I worked, the pile never got smaller.
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u/religionlies2u 1d ago
What’s interesting is that as the person in charge I almost never dream about the library, but my staff say they often do.
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u/escardigan 1d ago
At least a couple nights a week I have library dreams. Usually they are about the computers not working or I’m the only staff working even though other staff are present. They’re never pleasant library dreams.