Local Leonia Man Rebuked for Not Recycling at Ramsey Library

A local Northern New Jersey man from Leonia reported that he was sternly rebuked at the Ramsey (New Jersey) Public Library recently for throwing two empty plastic water bottles into a garbage can rather than a nearby recycling container.

“I work near the library, but hadn't been there in a few months. On a whim while driving back from the gym, I decided to stop in and look for some jazz CDs. As I was getting out of my car, I noticed a couple of empty water bottles and an old Wall Street Journal on the rear floorboard of the car." (Actually, he said this is true of nearly every time he gets out of the car.)

“I struggle with unread newspaper guilt, so it is very difficult for me to throw out a newspaper that I've not read, let alone opened. But the bottles were a no-brainer,” said the man, who preferred to remain anonymous.

The man reported that he walked toward the recently-renovated library and was surprised to find no garbage cans outside. “I mean, c'mon, a multi-million dollar renovation and you'd think they would have put at least one garbage can outside for patrons, but they didn't!” he said. So the man walked through the first set of automatic sliding doors with bottles in hand, looked over to his left, and saw a garbage can along the wall (#1 in figure near arrow).

Layout of Ramsey (NJ) Library, where local man
was rebuked for not recycling

“I walked over and slam-dunked the bottles into the garbage can. I think I even heard cheering in my mind at that moment and had a thought about Lin-sanity.” The man went on to report that he had not yet reached the second set of sliding doors (arrow in figure) when a stern, sour-looking librarian bolted toward him before he even reached the second set of doors. “It was less than three seconds and she was right there to rebuke me. I couldn't believe it!”

The woman spoke sharply: “Sir, please place your plastic bottles in the recycling container in the future!” The man said he was taken aback by such an aggressive librarian. “Not for nothing, but most librarians I've seen are timid and would never bother anyone. But this was a full-on rebuke by a librarian!” The sharp words stunned the man because he said the body language was so stiff and cold. “Everyone knows 55% of communication is body language, and her body language was scary.”

Layout of Ramsey Public Library entryway
where local man was rebuked for not recycling

The man considered attempting to defend himself to the librarian because he felt the placement of the recycling against the rear wall was not easy to see when a person is nervously walking into a library for the first time in a long time after major library renovations (see figure). But he decided just to quietly accept the rebuke and move on. After a few minutes, he was able to calm down and find four compact disks of jazz.


“I really do recycle,” the man offered, “well, most of the time, but maybe this is the universe's way of getting back at me for throwing batteries away in the garbage. Maybe that woman was doing the universe's work that day! It's such a pain to save old batteries up and take them to the recycling center, which is only open twice a year and I'm always busy on those days! Besides, I'm a Midwesterner, and we normally just burned our garbage in a barrel in the back yard and threw our old tires in the woods. You know, normal stuff like that. There's so much land we didn't really worry about it.”

In the future, the man said he will probably just go to the Mahwah library since it is the same distance from his work, they have a garbage can outside, and the librarians smile at people when they walk in.