"Just because I got into Harvard

doesn't mean I know how to fill out a form." That's what you're telling me when I ask you kindly to please fill out a barcoding slip for one of our many items in the stacks that have yet to be barcoded (when you have a collection of over three million volumes in-house, and another seven million or so stashed away in a repository in Southborough, you're bound to have a few hundred thousand here or there still waiting for a barcode, believe it or not), and you completely and totally fail the task of providing such an important detail as the call number of the book on the form. Now it's not like you don't know what a call number is, because you obviously looked it up in our catalog and used it to find the book in the stacks, unless by Blind Providence you simply wandered in and happened upon the object of your searchings, which is not bloody likely. So what gives?

Of course there's the possibility that you're indignant that I asked you to fill out the form in the first place, and that this is your passive-aggressive manner of protest. Bravo. What do you care that there's a very good reason for this policy, that in case of a deluge of books without barcodes we can split the labor so that you can leave in a more timely fashion with the material you need and to ensure that we don't gum up the works and keep other patrons from not getting their books because filling out forms was beneath you. By intentionally doing a sloppy job, you may win your own little personal moral victory, but you're still not getting your books any sooner, because I need to check and double-check the slip before I stamp it, put my initials on it (which ensures that I will hear from people far more frightening than you if I let you slide), and give your book the barcode it needs in order to leave the library.

I'm sorry that you're a Fulbright scholar or a Professor Emeritus or an undergraduate with an attitude. Do you pull this crap at the Registry of Motor Vehicles when you're renewing your driver's license? No? Why not? Oh, I see, because if you did, they'd throw you out on your ass. Well, we may be a little nicer about things here, but the same principles apply: if you want the book, fill out the form; if not, don't. It's that simple.

Don't make us throw you out on your ass.