You’d better recycle all those

The Culture of Butler Library is strange indeed, especially in the dark days of finals. People sleep, eat, and brush their teeth in the library. Wars are waged over seats in the ref room. People lose their humanity in there. One particular example is the peculiar habit of accumulating piles of garbage around an individual’s dedicated workspace. While in a more civilized library (like noco) where drinks are forbidden people throw out coffee cups and red bull cans once they have been consumed, the denizen of Butler just lets them pile up throughout the day. This explains why so much of the library reeks of piss and stale coffee. Here Editor-in-chief Britt Fossum provides a handy calculation to convert the quantity of garbage at a given neighbor’s desk to approximate hours spent within the bowels of the But.

B-of-the-E Assumptions, Empirically Derived:

• One small coffee (hot) (12 oz) is consumed in approximately 20 minutes.
• One medium coffee (hot) (16 oz) can be consumed in 30 minutes.
• Anything larger (hot) will be consumed in approximately 90 minutes: the first half at a normal rate, the second half at twice the normal rate because it has cooled to lukewarm and is drank only grudgingly.
• All iced coffees are nursed over at least 120 minutes.
• One red bull, monster, or other energy drink will only take ~15 seconds to consume but will provide for at least 180 minutes of uninterrupted studying.
• Candy, pastries, and power bar wrappers add 10 minutes each.
• Any other kind of food: add 30 minutes.
• WEIRD things (jerky, beer, halal): infinite minutes. This person lives in Butler. No calculation necessary, just don’t let them hear you complaining about how long you’ve been working.

Mathemagic:

• Number of Minutes in Butler=10*(# candy wrappers) + 20*(# small coffees) + 30*(# medium coffees + # random foods) + 90*(# large coffees) + 120*(# iced coffees) + 180*(# energy drink cans)
• Divide by 60 to calculate number of hours in Butler
• Add 3 hours if they at any point pull out a toothbrush, hairbrush, or sleeping bag.

Conclusions:

• Y’all work really hard. And study a lot. But take care of yourselves!
• Also take care of everyone else in Butler by throwing out your garbage.
• Seriously, are you trying to build a fortress or something so people don’t see what you’re writing? Trying to claim your territory with piles of empty coffee cups? Would it kill you to stretch your legs every now and then by walking over to the garbage can?

Second tier solo cups via Shutterstock