Can I go home now? - Deluxe Edition

I'll try to tell this story coherently...but if I start to blather, be kind. Mercury is retrograde and the Moon is in caacaa.

First, you have to understand that this is not actually my sixth day in a row at work.

For "human resources" reasons which have to do mainly with denying weekend workers overtime, our municipal payroll week runs from Saturday to Friday. Probably works okay for most Monday to Friday city employees, but the library opens seven days a week. That means we all have to alternate working Saturdays, and once every eight weeks we have to work a Sunday.

Long story short, according to HR, I am not working six days in a row this week. I am working Monday to Friday in one pay week...and Saturday in the next pay week.

Never mind that my body has to get up and drive here six days in a row.

Hour One. So anyway, here I am, a supervisor, preparing for opening hour at a public service desk. I notice that we can't log into the network which controls the public access computers. I call City IT. They say, "Yeah, we downloaded patches to all our servers last night, so it's taking a while to get them working."

[I've always loved this explanation. It worked okay before the patches, but now....]

I'm trying to print an OUT OF ORDER sign, while explaining to impatient customers what a server is and why I can't fix it right away, when one of our librarians calls out sick.

Saturdays are short-staffed, with everyone working five to six hours out of eight on desk, so this means a complicated scheduling fix...which I can't do here at the desk while I'm also explaining the esoterica of the Internet to a persistant young man and trying to get the desk computer...which is unconscionably slow...to bring up Word so that I can print a sign....

Hour Two. Now I'm on the out-of-the-way third floor lobby desk, where for some reason computer customers line up in droves, even when all the machines are obviously in use.

My colleague from the previous hour hands me the phone customer he's been trying to help for the last ten minutes and rushes off to relieve someone else in our call center.

I'm not logged into our customer accounts app or anything else yet, so I ask the caller to hold on. Once I'm ready, I learn that he cannot log into his account remotely through our website, because "every PIN you people give me doesn't work!"

[Why, oh why, did folks back in the 20th century claim that machines—computers in particular—would be "labor-saving devices"? Surely it was only so they could sell them to us.]

I open the caller's account, change the PIN, and try accessing his account through our website myself. No go. I change the PIN again. This time it works, so I give it to him and tell him to try it.

"It doesn't work."

We go in circles for several minutes, until I discover that the caller has bookmarked the login page...which, of course, "saves" PINs. I walk him through closing the browser, reopening it, going to our home page, Clicking on MY LIBRARY ACCOUNT...which he cannot find...to get back to a fresh login page....

While this is all going on, three customers have accumulated around the public access sign-in scanner, and a fourth is standing at my desk, waiting to ask for help, and...

...up walks our resident third floor lobby schizophrenic, the one who ritualistically purifies the whole area before logging into a computer.

In an angry voice she announces, "I was the one who resurrected Jesus Christ last night! Not YOU!"

Three customers walk away briskly.

Can I please go with them?

Ooooh, nooo...!

It's science project time again!

Worse news: I got the "radish question" again!

Fortunately, this time I knew to ask if this was about chemical versus organic fertilizer and took my young client to the organic gardening books.

Whew!

Published!

I’m pleased to report that, thanks to a recommendation from Traci Avet of Florida’s Ask a Librarian live chat reference service, I’ve had a Surly Librarian piece published in the December 15th issue of Library Journal: "Can I Go Home Now?."

Thanks to Traci, and to editor Mirela Roncevic, for taking an interest in my grousing.

:-)

On the other hand....

First thing every morning, our street people regulars get their only exercise for the day...as they race each other up the Grand Stairway to Periodicals to get the three copies of the local paper and the one USA Today.

Thereafter, it's a matter of rotation for turns. They watch each other like hawks...vultures?...till someone returns a copy to the desk. And new arrivals glance under the desk where they know we keep the papers and shrug.

Just a moment ago, though, there was a comic twist to the usual with a new arrival.

He glanced under the desk, saw no papers, and shrugged.

Then he saw what looked like a paper lying on the desk.

"What's this?" he asked.

As soon as he realized that it was the Sunday Classified Job Listings, though, he waved his hand dismissively and went on over to the armchairs.

Ah, public service!

Can I go home now?

Attitude adjustment

Yeah, it's been a while.

And it looks pretty sorry that I got a Blog Award and then immediately vanished for four months.

Phyllis Diller used to say, "See this body? There's no excuse for this body. Lots of reasons, but no excuse!"

Well, substitute "blog" for "body" and....

But I have been busy. In fact, that busyness has nudged me through several successive layers of attitude adjustment.

When I look back to just before I took time out from this blog, I find a post called Vulnerability. The core of it was this passage:

You could call [this vulnerability] "thinned-skinnedness," except that's not quite it. The issue is personal boundaries and how strong they are, how permeable yet resilient they are.

Perhaps the more relevant term is empathy. Those of us who are sensitive to the wants and feelings of others are also vulnerable to them. At our best we hone the skills of being just open enough to others to be helpful, without being so open that our own boundaries are invaded.

Which brings us to burnout.

I went to library school in 1999, after resigning in despair from the clinical counseling career which I loved, yet which had burned me out....

Now I struggle daily as one anxious, demanding person after another comes to the Ask Here desk, needing help to seek and apply for email accounts, unemployment benefits, jobs, food stamps....

And I resent them. I catch myself wandering around the stacks muttering, "I HATE this job!" I want them to leave me alone so that I can "get my work done...."

Whoa! That's burnout.

And for me, it's a warning of a deeper challenge. I'm realizing how much—way more than I thought—the scars of my earlier burnout have gotten in the way of genuinely practicing empathy.

That "scars of earlier burnout" bit is the revelation.

It’s taken me nine years...ten, if you count library school...to realize how far I had retreated from being able to maintain that permeable yet resilient boundary.

I haven't been feeling very empathetic toward customers. Just obligated in a tired professional sense. Obligated either by their demanding attitude of entitlement, or by my awareness that they genuinely needed help which I didn't feel up to giving.

Fortunately, I started to break through this impasse during the summer. Ironically, the six weeks subbing as manager of the little African-American neighborhood branch was actually the key to opening myself to new possibilities—rather than being the awful responsibility I had feared.

My more mature awareness recognizes that what I fear about supervisory responsibility is the necessity of taking a stand with customers (or staff) and saying "yes" or "no." I've lived a life of avoiding conflict…and, hence, of avoiding situations in which I am the designated person responsible for dealing with conflict.

"But wait a minute," you say. "Didn't you work 'on the yard' in a medium/maximum security men's prison for 12+ years?"

Well…um…yes. And I constantly surprised myself with my ability to stand up to inmates (and staff) in a professional, non-violent way, and say "yes" or "no." In other words, the innate ability is there. It's the feelings that get in the way.

Back to that word "vulnerability."

When any of us aren't certain, at that subconscious gut level, that we can protect our own boundaries, it feels unsafe to take a stand. This isn't really about knowing the right answer, though my fear is likely to mislead me into believing that to be the issue.

The former manager of Main Library gave me a great gift one time, when I was telling her about a difficult situation I'd had to handle as designated Person in Charge (PIC). I had acknowledged my discomfort with being unsure what was the "right thing to do" in that situation.

She said: "Mike, when you're Person in Charge, you are in charge. Just do what you think is best at that moment. As long as I can see that you are acting to protect people and property, I'll back you up."

I experienced this silly, wonderful sort of "aha" as the weight slipped off my shoulders. It was as if the overbearing inner policeman who's chronically after me for "not knowing" had been outranked…as he had indeed been…by someone with real authority.

What my manager was reminding me of was what I knew all through those prison years: real authority is about personal authority, not about having a title and enforcing the rules.

And, of course, this truth applies to all of us, not only to supervisors or PICs or managers. In any and all life situations, the real effect of our presence with other people depends upon our having the courage and faith to use our personal authority…to act out of personal integrity and a sense of fairness, not out of "being right."

One incident from a month or so ago demonstrates what I mean.

I was back at Main Library, PIC on a Saturday—a circumstance I usually dread, since not only am I PIC but most of the other supervisors, especially the circulation supervisor, are not at work.

I got the call:

An angry customer, furious because her card was blocked because the drop-box address she had used as a homeless person when getting that card five months ago is now not considered adequate but she had just paid over $17 in fines in order to unblock her card so she could get online to do coursework her counselor had recommended so she could get a job and….

You get the picture.

And somehow, thanks to some sort of grace, I just handed her my business card and said, "I understand, ma'am. I can't change the policy, but I want to find some way to help you get online today."

After finding no one else "more" in charge than I to ask for help, I went back to Circ desk and gave her a free Guest Pass for the day.

She, meanwhile, had calmed down. She apologized for her angry rant.

Then she said she gets some mail at her aunt's address.

I said, "Oh, well, bring some of that mail in Monday, and we can use that address on your account."

She left satisfied.

I left flying.

There's something about setting aside the fear of having boundaries invaded, the fear of "not knowing the right thing."

Something about just saying, "Here are the rules, but let's you and me together figure out some way to get what you most need without breaking the rules (if we can)."

It's that "let's be allies in this" shift that makes the difference.

The situation stops being my boundary versus yours. It stops being a boundary situation.

It becomes two (or three, or more) people puzzling out an awkward challenge, compromising, making do.

At such moments, for a change, I don't have to ask, "Can I go home now?"

Thanks,
Mike

Can I go home now? (Case #4)

When I whined about science project questions not too long ago, an unexpressed part of the complaint had to do with the weird mixture of disinterest and expectation I sometimes get from customers.

As in: "I'm not interested in doing this for myself. I expect you to do it for me."

Back in library school, my fantasy was to work in an academic library. I foolishly imagined that my patrons—what we used to call them before consumerism took over—would actually be interested, not only in learning things from the library, but in learning how to find things for themselves.

Instead, here I am in my ninth year in a public library, flipping burgers for customers.

Well, actually it's not that bad. I've learned to find real satisfaction in those exchanges with customers when I've connected them with essential help or when we both realize we've solved a puzzle together. Such transactions take me back to the best moments of my career as a prison counselor.

Still, my original fantasy continues to distract me: patrons who would "actually be interested...etc."

Here's my curmudgeon's philosophy of library customer service:

My job is to show customers how to use our tools and resources to find the answer—so that I won't have to do it for them next time.

Grumping aside, I actually do believe this.

If customers are dependent on someone else to find them what they need, we aren't doing our jobs as public library staff. Whenever I do a search, whether it's the online catalog or the Internet or our databases or our physical collection, I always "take them along." I turn my computer screen and make them watch while I narrate every step as I do it.

Sometimes it clicks with them, sometimes it doesn't.

Early in my public library career, I was at a regional branch which served kids from three local schools. The buses would dump them all in our parking lot at 3:30 every weekday, and they would tromp in, drop their backpacks with a crash on the nearest table or chair...and head for the computers.

Once in a while, one of them would come over to the reference desk with homework. Not to do it, but to get it done.

My all time worst case was a middle school girl who said to me, in a voice which was simultaneously annoyed and bored: "I have to do a two-page paper on physics. Would you show me all the websites on physics?"

After I stared at her and got no uptake, I started the usual reference interview, trying to help her narrow and specify her search subject.

"What sort of topics did your teacher suggest?"

"I don't know...."

"Okay...well, what sort of physics topics are you interested in?"

"I don't know...."

It went on like this for almost ten minutes!

Back on my first counseling job out of grad school, I went to my supervisor once to find out how long I should keep trying when a client wasn't making any effort.

"I never work harder than my clients," she said.

That has been my rule of thumb ever since. If I have a client, patient, patron, customer, what-have-you, who repeatedly goofs up but keeps on trying, I work. If I realize the person is waiting on me to "fix it," I stop and wait.

With my prison clients, I could say, "Hey, I go home at 4:30. You have to live here." In the library, "These things must be done delicately."

"Okay," I said to the middle schooler. "Let me get you signed onto a computer, and I'll show you how to search Google."

A somewhat better case occurred at the same branch. A mom came up to the desk with her kid in tow. (He was staring longingly at the row of PCs across the room).

"He has to find three articles for a biology paper," she said.

"Okay," I replied, speaking to the kid. "What's your paper topic?"

"Planaria," said the mom.

"Ah." I turned the screen so the kid could see it. "Maybe you could search our online science database."

Mom: "Would that have articles he could use?"

Me (to kid): "Yes, it has full text articles from dozens of different science research journals. Let me show you how to search it."

Finally the mom caught on.

"Listen to the man!" she said, swatting her kid on the shoulder. "He's trying to help you." She pulled a magazine out of her bag and walked away.

I don't remember whether I got very far with the kid, but at least I now had a "teaching moment."

The best recent example was actually that same science project question I complained about. Granted, the kid with the homework wasn't present. However, the mom and I really engaged with each other in redefining and targeting the search. She was happy with the titles I found, and she was particularly pleased to learn about our online databases—especially the fact that her daughter could continue the research remotely from her home PC.

What I have to keep reminding myself is this:

• I'm an old guy who's been working since 1968


• It's too early to retire (in this economy, it may always be *groan*)


• What I most want to spend my time on now—reading, writing, coffeehouse conversation, sitting in the sun—I'm unlikely to get paid for


• I don't want to have to satisfy an editor or a tenure committee to get paid


• I am actually very good at customer service (I know how to put the curmudgeon on hold and be a real human being with my customers)


• Sometimes I enjoy it.

Hmmm.... Does this mean I asked for the job?

Deeper thoughts on "Case #3"

An exchange of teasing comments and email with our library system's training coordinator resulted from the previous post. This in turn led me to revisit some of the basic issues around which this blog revolves.

I first addressed this in "Customer service for curmudgeons":

I'm one of those introverted people whose temperament is most suited to solitary intellectual and creative pursuits, or to interesting conversation and recreation with a few close friends.

Probably library schools have a real challenge now when it comes to discerning which people, with which temperaments, would make good 21st century library professionals.

Back in my century [haha] it generally worked okay for introverted people to become librarians. The core concerns of the field were organizing information and being able to recover it. The skills of dealing with human beings weren't so central.

Now the whole field has shifted its focus from information to the customer's need for information. The very use of the term "customer" [ugh] underscores this reality.

As a 20th century curmudgeon, I personally regret this shift. To me it reflects a disturbing shift in what our culture values. Away from valuing the proactive processes involved in learning and doing critical thinking. Toward valuing the reactive processes of consumerism, because-we-can "innovation" and the marketplace.

However, the realities of institutional funding demand that libraries become "businesses" serving "consumers," giving priority to what they believe they want, rather than to what we know might be useful.

And this reality, in turn, demands that we become even better at doing what we used to call the reference interview. Because we do know what might be useful, and they don't (necessarily) know what they want. And if we can translate from their "want" to our "know," we can win them as customers.

Another way of looking at this—a way of shifting the focus back to the proactive role of librarianship—is to push against the tide of consumerism in a deliberate and professional manner. "You think you want that, but, look, wouldn't this be much more useful/rewarding/entertaining/informative to you?"

What a challenge!

Mike

Can I go home now? (Case #3)

There's no use pretending. I HATE science project questions!!!

Aside from the usual issues, like it's the kid's Mom doing the research, while the kid is (a) not there (b) playing on the computers (c) playing one of those hand held idiot boxes (d) staring off into space (e) all of the above,...

...and like the fact that teachers who assign these projects don't seem to do any preparatory instruction about (a) what a science project is (b) how to pick a doable topic (c) what constitutes useable research literature (d) how to go about finding it (e) whether the public library has anything on the topic to begin with (f) all of the above,...

...my main gripe is that the customers ALWAYS start at the wrong end.

The voice on the phone says: "My daughter is doing a science project on daikon radishes. We need five books on daikon radishes."

*biting my tongue*

"I suppose you need books on growing daikon, not cookbooks?"

"Yes."

"Well, I know we won't have books just on daikon, but let me do a catalog search."

daikon ---> no results
daikon and gardening ---> no results
chinese cabbage and gardening ---> no results
chinese vegetables and gardening ---> 2 books at another branch, both checked out

"As I suspected, I'm not finding you useful sources with this search. Tell me a bit more about the project topic."

"Well, she's doing something on organic versus inorganic fertilizer."

AHA! Now I know that the actual science project is (of course) a comparison of different methods of growing daikon. It doesn't matter if we find anything at all on daikon.

*grrr!*

This is one of the points I wish teachers would explain to their students:

A science project is a matter of comparing different processes, methods, variables. The supporting literature you need has to do with what is already known about those variables, not about your particular combination of variables.

"Okay, let me try a subject search on 'organic fertilizers'."

Below are the results of a Browse Search based on your topic: "organic fertilizer"

ORGANIC FERTILIZERS 1 title
See related headings for: ORGANIC FERTILIZERS
COMPOST
MANURES
NIGHT SOIL

*Rats!*

"Okay, Ma'am. Maybe you can use full text articles from our online science databases. I'll tell you how you can get to those through our website. But first, I'm going to try 'organic gardening'."

Ah! That gets several dozen hits. I tell her.

"Do they have those at my local branch?"

"Let me see [limiting search by SU organic gardening and branch name]. Yes, they have at least 13 titles there."

"Can I use the databases there?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'd recommend you go in and ask a librarian to help you find materials on 'organic gardening'."

"Okay. Thank you very much."

I mutter to myself: "They should have had a course on 'science project questions' in library school!"

Of course, the real point here is that science project questions are among the greatest challenges with regard to doing a really effective...here comes that horrible phrase...reference interview.

When I listen to all the whining in the media about "the end of librarianship," I know that it's ridiculous. To me, the primary characteristic of trained librarians is that we are Professional Searchers.

And the key to being a professional searcher is being able to help the customer figure out what she actually wants.

So...I should stop complaining already. When someone comes to me with a science project question, I should welcome it as the best sort of challenge for me as a professional. Right?

Naaaaaaaaa....

Mike

Can I go home now (Case #2)

This week we have a guest case, from Brian Herzog of Swiss Army Librarian.

Brian's entry:

Patron: I’ve never used a computer before, so can you help me find a job on craigslist?

Sigh. For non-reference librarians, here’s why this simple request is especially hard:

• Almost any kind of job-related request can be difficult
  
• Most of the job resources available in the library are online, so having no computer experience is automatically a setback


• Craigslist? It is certainly a valid job search tool, but there are other places I’d be more comfortable starting off a computer novice (she never did tell me how she got referred to craigslist)

Sigh! is right.

Brian follows with a good explanation of why this is not the "teaching moment" some might think it is. But he also advocates for public libraries to find some solutions to the challenge.

Thanks, Brian.

Mike

Can I go home now? (Case #1)

Okay. I can't resist.

Our Call Center patched a customer through to me at Reference this afternoon. Here's the gist of the exchange:

Customer: "I need to find eternal security on the Internet."

Me: "Um...."

[Glancing at Caller ID, I see that it's "_____ Shoes." My colleagues will know who I mean.]

M: "Uh, what is that in this case? A book title? A website?"

C: "It's a belief."

M: "Oh. Um...let me put the phone down while I do a search." [Googling....] "There are a couple of sites here...."

C: "Do they have an 800 number?"

I'll spare you the gory details.

Mike