I am getting gradually better at the customer service part of my job. After a number of years of ONLY paging (i.e., putting things back on shelves; fetching things from shelves), I have been working on the checkout desk now and then; and, recently, I’ve been increasing the number of desk shifts I cover for other people, in order to get more experience/money. I am getting less scared of the library patrons (I would not have described myself as “scared of them,” but it’s the explanation that matches my behavior), and less panicked/flustered when asked to do something I don’t immediately know how to do / don’t immediately understand. I can’t believe I am 50 years old and this is still an issue, but here we are, and at least it is nice to see there can be progress within repetition. I keep thinking about how, in my pharmacy job many years ago, there was an arc from panicked inexperience to calm expertise, and how gratifying it was to get to the point where I could take almost any problem and just SOLVE it. Insurance rejecting the claim? Diagnosed and fixed! Customer says their copay used to be $5 and now it’s $40? Investigated and explained! Customer needs something tricky, like an early refill of their medication to take on vacation, or a replacement for pills that fell into the sink, or maybe they’re from out of town and also normally use a different pharmacy chain but they’re having a medical situation and their doctor is trying to get them their medication here and it would be really nice if their $1200 medication could still go through their insurance and be $15? I GOTCHA. And I will get there with this job, too, if I keep practicing. The first two years are the hardest!
Yesterday I dealt with several situations a significant level up from what I used to be able to handle. One is a type of situation I’ve had several chances to deal with lately, and it’s where a patron has a book in mind, and they are giving me both the somewhat wrong name of the author AND the somewhat wrong name of the book. I used to punt that directly to a reference librarian (is “punt” the sports word I want? maybe I mean “hike” or “pass”), but now I spend at least a few minutes seeing if I can gently figure out what we’re looking for. (But not TOO long, because nobody wants that.) It’s very satisfying to untangle it and IN FACT FIND the thing they’re looking for. (Ah ha!! Thunderstruck by Erik Larson! Not Thunderstorm by Eric Lawson!)
I also dealt with a patron who started a conversation by saying WELP he’d lost $850, and then went into a long story about something he’d bought online that hadn’t worked out, and I managed to hold up my end of the conversation despite the non-library-related twists and turns, including one part where he said that in the last 16 years things in this country had really changed (hmm, what happened to this country for the first time in 2008 I wonder), and now the migrants were pouring in, and I said, Oh and also! there’s our downtown area! It was built for when this town was 1/3rd the size, and now it just can’t handle all the traffic, but there’s nowhere to expand! not without tearing down historic buildings!—which completely redirected him. He then kept talking long enough about those buildings, and about the cell phone coverage in the area, that a coworker attempted to bail me out by bringing me a little pile of work, but when I left the desk with that work, he started telling his story to two patrons with young children, so then I successfully extracted THEM from his conversation, and anyway I spend every work shift with damp underarms but also with increasing feelings of ability and competence.
Well, and increasing numbers of Work Stories. The other day I dealt with a patron who came up to the desk and was telling me about one of his many theories, this one involving AI—and then he paused and said, as if in sudden anxious consideration of my feelings: “Wait…are YOU a robot?” Friends, I was grateful to be wearing a mask on the lower half of my face, so that I only had to worry what my eyes were expressing. After a pause, during which I thought of the “meet them where they are” training of my eldercare job, I realized this was a question I could truthfully and directly and simply and easily answer, and so I did: “…No.” He went on with his story, reassured.
What a fascinating glimpse, I truly mean that. I also find it to be true that the longer you just stick around at whatever it is the easier it gets. Expect for parenting, but maybe I‘‘m in for a pleasant surprise somewhere down the line… The story about the book with the similar name sounds a lot like a treasure hunt. I would feel so accomplished! Anyway, I hope that you will share more about your work (only if you feel comfortable to of course), because it’s just so different than my 99% office work. Thanks for sharing!
Being a non-robot librarian must be a lot like being a pastor’s wife: people are always telling you things you’d rather not know, asking questions for which you don’t necessarily have answers, and telling you to fix things you have no authority to fix. I love your “meet them where they are” thought; that sounds like a gracious and kind way to handle these types of interactions.
I congratulate you on the redirecting and rescuing with my 16 Years and also on not messing with AI guy (“I am programmed to tell you no” or “No I am not a robot” delivered as robotically as possible)
Oh man I’d have been unable to resist.
I have found in my job (I own an oil analysis company, of all things) that so many people just want to talk. They just need someone to talk to. Learning the skills and patience to steer (and end!) those conversations are True Life Skills. You’re doing good work there.
Please keep telling us library stories, I love them SO MUCH. It’s fun to get good at something, isn’t it? My husband is always telling our girls, “Everything is hard before it’s easy.”
I was having the nicest chat with someone the other day, (I was printing her some forms which was taking a minute) and she just went right into, “YOU KNOW THE ILLEGALS” It just came out of NOWHERE! But! No one has every asked me if I was a robot. A kid the other day asked me why I was so fat though……
I love “are you a robot?” Well handled. As a second generation librarian my mom and I have a running joke about patrons looking for “that book I read? I think it was blue??” MANY OF THEM ARE. Also, “I’m looking for some rhapsodies” vs “I’m looking for some rap CDs.” Now, I never worked a public library desk, but when I worked in an academic music library I haaaated being on the desk. It should be easier (no one wandering in off the street, just students with esoteric questions about viola literature), but like you I really prefer to be behind the scenes. Give me some new materials to catalog and no one to talk to and I’m all set.
I admire you and your varied careers/jobs. I, too, was a librarian-although once a librarian, always a librarian. I was a school librarian, now retired, but my favorite question from students was if I could help them find a particular book and the only clue was the color of the cover. Hahahaha
Are you a robot? Well. That was not what I expected to read, particularly after the fellow who is disgruntled about the state of the country and also the cell phone service, but Swistle, I applaud you in every way. Wow, talk about redirecting! And not laughing about the robot thing! Sometimes I forget how disturbed in the mind people can be, and I am so in awe of your grace to deal with those situations, with kindness and gentleness. You made them feel seen without being shamed or without agreeing to things you don’t agree with.
I am typically non-confrontational but my face does things without my consent when I hear something with which I don’t agree. For many reasons, I would need to go back to masking if I worked with the general public.
Another vote from me for hearing all the library stories!
Are you a robot? HAHAHAHAHA. I definitely would have lost it at that one. What I’m picking up here is that these people are lonely and your thought about meeting them where they are is a lovely response.
My sister is a librarian and has stories. Of note, they have to deal with obscene phone calls more than you would think.
My library has a wall with a sign that says “I don’t remember the title, but I think the cover was red” and it has about fifty books with red covers displayed underneath. I can only imagine the amount of frustration that caused its existence :)
MY three year old would like to be a robot when he grows up.
I love these little peeks into your librarian life.
I worked reception at a welfare office (not in the US, and not at all cold or impersonal – I knew the regulars by first name) for 18 years, and fully agree about the comfort level with solving problems for “the public”. When I started I was all “I’ll get your worker”, and by the 3rd year or so, I was looking up why their cheque hadn’t arrived, and by the fifth year we were chatting about their kids, grandkids, rental situation and latest mental health issue like old friends. I miss some of them now I’m retired.
That’s a lot of finesse handling the opinionated library patron.
But… that’s exactly what a robot would say!
Right?? He was a fool, a FOOL, to assume my programmers would not have anticipated this question!!
I had assumed our subjugation by robot overlords would be facilitated by Elon fanboys, not librarians.
I need to renew my card, and now I don’t know whether it’s safe.
I love how you bring your experience from other careers into this one. And Also, you are just a wonderful story-teller.
And ALSO ALSO this is how I know you’re not a robot, because AI is a terrible story teller.