The Secret Life of a Public Library Security Guard

Marko Petrovich is a security guard at the public library in Portland, Maine. How you see his job depends on how you use the library. While he stays on the lookout for people who use drugs, fight, or otherwise abuse the facility, he also keeps in mind that the library’s mission is to serve all of the public. In winter in Maine, it might be the only indoor space some people have access to, and those folks are as deserving of consideration as anyone else.

The typically quiet library is a vast, open space. When voices escalate, they carry. Even the smallest harrumph can become very public. Petrovich will often put his arm around misbehaving patrons and corral them to the security office to chat. It’s a gentle and vulnerable gesture, and people seem to respond with concession and openness. To be an officer of the library is to be a steward of it. They must be civilized and caring toward the space, its resources, and, most importantly, its patrons.

Enforcement is a defensive act, not an aggressive one, and Petrovich learned the distinction between the two at a young age. “My grandfather telling me one day, ‘You are soldier but you no murderer,’” he recalls.

Those words must have been bellowing in Petrovich’s memory on the night that he deserted the Serbian army, fleeing the country. It was a flight to protect his life, and to protect other people from the killing he’d been tasked to do. Petrovich could fight soldier-to-soldier, or against anyone with a weapon. When there’s fire on both sides, it is, as Petrovich says, “you or them.” His job as a sergeant was to protect his soldiers, but he wasn’t willing to do the job of killing innocent civilians. He had begun to refuse orders that looked to him like he was simply going into villages to murder hundreds of people just because they were Muslims. They were the kind of orders that make what Petrovich calls “bloody hands.”

“I cannot do that,” he says. “It is not my moral things. Not my code. Is not my job.”

Well, that escalated quickly. Yes, the article goes into detail about Petrovich’s job at the library and how he goes about his duties, but it’s also a profile of a dedicated worker with an interesting story. Read the story at mental_floss.  

(Image credit: Alex Nall)