To all of my older female library coworkers...

I have a better understanding of why every fan in the library is set to Category 5 -- every single day of the year.

I don't think the A/C turned on at all today.  Yes, there were numerous complaints from patrons, but because upper management feels the need to micromanage every single thing, including every branches' thermostats, we were stuck with a warm, stuffy library.  This is when the temperature actually peaked, it was a steady 80 degrees all day though.

If I ever make bank, I will buy all of my library friends individual fans for their cubicles.

The Public Library, the Public's Personal Whipping Boy

Yeah, I get it, the public pays our wages, unfortunately that gives the public a sense of overreaching entitlement when they come to the library.  After awhile your skin gets thicker and you don't take it personally.  I have also witnessed these type of interactions take place at the Post Office and I'm sure the DMV employees go through this as well.

They don't teach you this in library school.  My problem is, is that when I find myself being berated by a patron over something trivial and/or something completely out of my hands my natural reaction is to laugh, so I try not to make the situation worse and I try to suppress it but it just turns into a ish-eating grin.  I can't help but laugh at the fact that someone has gotten so angry at something I am not to blame for.

Most recently, it was a busy Saturday at the info desk and there was a steady line of patrons and I was efficiently helping each one.  A couple comes up inquiring about absentee voting, I give her a handout with the in-person option and her husband asks about the mail in.  I refer him to the lobby where our handouts reside, he thanks me and goes his way.  A minute or so later he comes back to the desk all red-faced and angry, he shakes a piece of paper and says, "This is an application for the absentee ballot NOT the ballot itself."  I was currently helping a little boy find some sports books and he continued to lecture me that I should learn the difference and explain it because "someone might take you at your word and think its the ballot."  Oh really?  First of all, congratulations on your reading comprehension, second, are you familiar with the electoral process?  The young boy I was helping looked like he was the one getting lectured, and I tried my best not to laugh.  Looking back, I should have told him that I was currently in the middle of helping a patron but he was more than welcome to wait to lecture me.  Damn you hindsight!  When I told my supervisor, his first reaction was, "Did he really think that absentee ballots are just laying around?" 

Speaking of absentee voting, I was at the desk with our new info desk volunteer when a lady came up to the desk and asked when absentee voting started.  Now we've been keeping a tally of voting questions we get at the desk, on average there's at least 40 questions a day probably more if we remembered to mark it down each and every time.  So it is knee-jerk reaction to say, "It starts at 2 pm."  She obviously didn't like this answer because she bristled and replied, "Your website says 8 am."  Yes, MY website.  I asked her if it was the library website that said that, because if it did I would have to get that fixed, she just said, "I don't remember, I had my husband check this morning."  She even said that there was a sign outside that mentioned 8am.  I told her that it was probably for a different location, so she goes back out to prove me wrong.  She comes back and makes no mention of said-sign.  There wasn't really anything else to say, so I just said, "Well, I'm not sure what site said that, but it starts at 2."  She of course tells me that she is a very busy person and that she couldn't come back in an hour.  Lady, I really don't know what you want me to do.  Before she stalks away, she tells me that she'll "print the website and prove me wrong."  The info volunteer had a look in her eye like, do I really want to do this?  I'm still waiting for her to come back with that print-out.


I had another patron who threw a full on grown-up hissy fit when our public printer wouldn't take more than $5.  When he tried to put in $1 over the limit, the machine just started spitting out coins.  He threw his other dollar on the table and complained, "What the hell!?  Why won't it just take the money and print my papers!??"  Our children's librarian was talking to me at the desk and she is completely allergic to any sort of confrontation so she just froze.  I ended up showing the patron the sign that showed the $5 at a time maximum and ended up doing it for him.

I had an elderly patron who walked straight up to the desk and said that she needed "help on the internet."  I have learned to decipher this phrase as meaning, "I am completely computer illiterate."  So I called for back up to cover the info desk for me and I walked her over to the public computers.  I usually have the patron sit down and I sit next to them, she told me that she doesn't know how to "do it," and told me to.  So I logged in for her and asked her what she needed to do.  "I need to get a travel visa to Brazil."....  okay, what have you done so far?  - Nothing.  Do you know what you need? - No.  So basically she as well as I learned all about the requirements to obtain a travel visa to Brazil.  Apparently, she's going on a group tour to South America and no one wanted to help her, and I figured out why.  She kept huffing and puffing after each and every question on the visa questionnaire.  "Why do I have to give them that?"  "Why do they need my parents' names?"  "I just want to travel there, why is this so difficult?"  Oh geez, no wonder your travel agent is suddenly, "unavailable" each time you called and the person at the Brazilian embassy kept telling you to do it online.  This person has gone through 70+ years of their life and still has not learned that you attract more flies with honey.  I seriously feel bad for her travel group, she's going to be the sour-puss that will try to ruin their vacation.

This was a long post, but then again this is my therapy.  Are the elections over with yet!??  If you're going to bitch and blame me for the rising gas prices, I can't promise I won't laugh in your face but I'll try.

Public Libraries for Learning or Entertainment...

Now I'm in the Mood for some Tacos...

The library branch that I work at, was recently remodeled.  Besides all the, "Wow, it looks so much better," comments, I have also received several comments about the current state of the collection compared to the previous branch's.

Some comments echo one of the biggest arguments about public library collections: "What happened to all of the nonfiction books?  The older library used to have a lot of good reference and research items, now it's all this best seller fiction crap."  "Why aren't there more copies of (so-and-so  title of the latest NYT fiction best seller)?" or "Why doesn't the library have more blockbuster movies on DVD?"

I am a "gamer,"  I have an Xbox 360 and a Wii, I built a custom PC which could handle modern games but I doubt that I even use 1/10th of its potential.  I say gamer in quotes because I don't play everyday nor do I spend hours gaming when I do.  And I will be one of the first people to question whether public libraries should carry video games.  Video games are damn expensive and what are the main motives for libraries to carry them?  Fluff up the door count and circ stats, so that when it comes time to hammer out next year's budget the library can plead its case about how many people plodded their way into the libraries and how many times the latest abomination of 'Modern Warfare' was checked out.

On the flip side, patrons who come in expecting the library to have 'The North American Council of Professional Development for Sub-Saharan Lawn Mower Manufacturers' and getting upset that we don't have it are asking just a bit too much.  The public library does have a good coverage of nonfiction and scholarly materials and subject matter, but constrained budgets be damned, they cannot obtain everything on everything.  There's nothing more the public library wants than to get more people coming in by carrying items people want.  Sometimes patrons will pull the tax-payer card: "my money pays for these books, it should carry the books I want."  Yeah, yeah, play that fiddle -- I technically pay part of my own paycheck.

The Library isn't perfect, and they do try their best, but when you're dealing with the public, you cannot please everyone.  And despite all the patron bitching about the library's collection, the current collection is the same as before the renovation, if not there being a little more materials in every genre with all the new shelving.  I guess it really all depends on if you view the shelves as half full or half empty.

The Patrons Have Spoken...

Finally, after months of patrons complaints about the front row of LEV, Low Emissions Vehicle, parking spots, the library board announced that the County will be removing them and scattering them around the lot.

Any time a patron complains, I have several scripts to reply with in my head:
"Yes, it is cold in here."
"It should be easier to download e-books, blame the publishers."
"Would you like me to get the branch manager?"

Whenever an LEV parking complaint came across the desk, I let the patron know that while it may temporarily feel good to bitch/vent to me, but there is nothing I could do about it.  And that the next time they came to the library, they would get riled up to see the LEV reserved spots in the same exact spot again.  I gave them the Supervisor's contact information, since HE was the one who wanted them in a prominent position for a PR blurb.  But I guess that has run it's course, so now that he's gotten his local newspaper article cut out for his album, the spots are now being dispersed like they should have been in the first damn place.

Politics as u-su-al

L.E.V. Parking Spots are the Worst...

My branch is newly remodeled, it's all fancy with its LEED - certification and green roof.  Unfortunately, the parking lot needed a certain amount of L.E.V. (that stands for Low Emission Vehicle you anti-green, polluters) spots and they happened to place them all together in the front row.  I'm sure this move makes for great P.R. for the district supervisor, but it has been nothing but hell for library staff.

We get so many curmudgeons coming in to complain about them, it's become an almost daily event.  Last Wednesday was the worst for me.  3 different patrons during the whole day took the time to bitch to me at the info desk.  The first two were funny, the last was just a pain in the ass.

The first patron to approach me asked in a Seinfeldian way, "What's the deal with the LEV parking?"  I gave her the spiel about the LEED certification and that the library had no input or control in the matter.  I gave her the district supervisor's number, since it's pointless to bitch to me thinking I can just put on a hard-hat and redo the parking lot myself.  Then she went on a tirade about "all these damn Leftists, controlling how the majority lives."  "You know what, if something isn't healthy for you then don't eat it, but don't take that option away from me."  Amen to that sister, eeerrr ma'am, you can take my parking spot but you'll have to pry this Krispy Kreme from my cold, frost-covered fingers.

The second patron came up to the desk and asked me what constitutes an "LEV."  He doesn't drive a hybrid but gets 28 mpg.  I gave him the same spiel, blah blah not the library's decision blah blah supervisor blah blah.  When I asked if he wanted to district supervisor's number, he said that he would look it up.  Before he turned around, he asked the name for the supervisor.  After I told him he replies, "Oh, THAT guy??  He's an idiot!"  I couldn't help but laugh at that.

Lastly, came the worst.  She came up to the info desk and pointed at the lady who had just walked up to the circ desk and told me, "That lady right there just parked her Lexus SUV in one of the LEV spots."  My eyes just glazed over and I stared blankly in her general direction.

Oh, you think I can/will do something about that?

She pretty much tattle-tailed on that woman to me, who knows maybe it was RX - Hybrid, which isn't just a plain old regular LEV, it's a SUPER-LEV, ooooh-aaaaah!  I knew from the tone in this patron's voice that there was not going to be an amicable ending to this interaction.  So I figured, eff it, I'm going in, no attempt to try to appease her.  I told her that those spots are not enforced.  I got the reaction I was expecting, "What?! Why not?"  Because no one cares, park there, it's not that serious.  She kept repeating over and over, "But that lady parked her SUV in one of those spots."

I asked if she wanted the number for the district supervisor, she said she was just trying to be in and out, so I told her she could go get her books and I'll find her.  It really only took 10 seconds, and she also failed to mention that her "in and out" also meant spending another couple minutes bitching to me about the lack of materials.  I told her that we, at the branch level, do not make any of the decisions.  There's a whole department called Acquisitions, that, shocker---acquires ish.  She said, "Well, have you made any suggestions or advice?"  I said no because it's not in my job title, then she says, why don't you take the initiative, I quickly got bored of her inane arguing and asked if she wanted the number for the library director.  She could only reply, "I'm so sick of this bureaucratic nonsense, 'it's not our fault, blame this or that.'"  Well, lady, I don't know what to tell you, blame the system.