Saturday library shenanigans

A Saturday library shift just wouldn't complete without a patron, when asked politely to take her loud cell phone call out of the Reference Room, losing her shit and declaring the following:

"THEY know all about this and are FINE with it, so you need to walk away." (Gesturing at the Circulation desk staff)

"You don't have ANY IDEA what's going on. This is A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH." (I'd expect an emergency life-and-death call to be less giggly and chatty, but what do I know? Of course I didn't say that, but I did tell her that, if there was an emergency situation going on, anyone on staff would be happy to help in any way we could, and did she need assistance? She ignored that.)

"You WILL be spoken to!!!" (O...kay? I asked her if she'd like me to give her the library director's card. She ignored me.)

"I HOPE YOU FEEL REALLY GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF!!!" (At the moment, I just feel confused...)

"I hope you enjoy LOSING YOUR JOB." (Yeah, good luck with that, lady.)

The patron in question had been sitting at a table with her late-teenage daughter -- the two of them seemed fine, just chatting and laughing together. It looked to me like the daughter was maybe doing homework, and Mom was just flipping through a magazine/ playing with her phone. I had spoken to them once, when the daughter's voice got a little loud while she was talking -- I just asked her to try to keep her voice down a little bit, while smiling, and while the daughter was all "Oops, sorry, okay" Mom was giving me an absolute Death Glare. So I guess it wasn't a huge surprise that, when I had to go back over 45 minutes later to ask her to take the cell phone call out to the lobby (and seriously, people, we have signs posted everywhere, it's a quiet area, and the lobby is ten feet away), she blew up at me. It was pretty bizarre, though.

On her way out, she beelined over to Circulation, and I followed to see what she was going to tell them/ give them a heads-up. Of course, the circ staff had no idea what she was talking about, in spite of her insistence that they were fine with her loud phone call. She got the director's card, demanded my name (which I cheerfully gave her) and then stormed out, leaving us all befuddled.

Clearly, there was an issue going on that didn't have anything to do with me -- obviously if either Mom or daughter had seemed upset in any way, I would have approached them differently -- I'd have asked if they were all right, and if they needed assistance, or if they'd prefer to use a more private area of the library. (We don't have many, but there are a couple.) Apparently the two of them had been in the lobby talking on the phone and maybe arguing a little bit earlier in the day, but still, nothing to indicate a LIFE AND DEATH SITUATION OMG. And really, asking people to quiet down or take a cell phone call out of the quiet area? Is no big deal. I usually just stop on my way past to do whatever, and very quietly and cheerfully ask the patron to try to keep their voice down/ take the call out. I only become Stern Librarian if I have to speak to the same person multiple times.

Of course, all this happened while the other librarian was at lunch, so when she came back, I told her that she'd missed all the fun, and filled her in. While we were talking, another patron who had been using a computer nearby came over and said that she'd overheard the whole thing, and that I'd been nothing but nice, while the angry woman has been completely out of line. And I spent the rest of my shift writing up an email to the director, letting her know what had happened just in case this patron contacts her. Fun!! And I'm working a Sunday shift tomorrow, so I hope the craziness all happened today, and tomorrow will be quiet.

In the meantime, though, I shall continue to knit away on mitts for Jeff:

They're fingerless, and will have a mitten flap that can be folder over to keep his fingers warm, or folded back. (That line of light-colored yarn is marking the spot where I'll be picking up stitches for the flap.) The pattern has been annoying me to no end, but I'll post more about that when the mitts are done.

I also finished my Giant Cowl of Warmth:

It's big and squishy and comfortable! Definitely keeps me warm on my walks to work. It's been so damn cold lately, I needed something to cover the gap at the top of my coat, that could also be pulled up to keep my face from freezing off. It's big enough to cover most of my ears, even!


And in closing, here is Finnegan being attacked by a swarm of Wild Socks. The horror!

I just can't with this weather anymore.

So, this is my path to work:

The snowbanks on either side are almost shoulder-height on me. (I'm about 5'9".)

This is also my route to work:

At least the city has come through and cut pathways along the sidewalks -- for a while, only some of the sidewalks were sort-of shoveled, so my walk to work was a lot of fun. (Walking on the street, with a wall of snow on one side and traffic on the other, praying that no one hits me...)

This snow pile behind our car in our driveway is at least ten feet tall. I couldn't get a better picture because I couldn't back up any further to get it into the frame -- my back was against a snow wall. 

The Mollycat has the right idea:

Oh, to be a pampered kitty:

Cold Sheeping

Or, at the very least, trying to use up some stash this year. I'm not saying I won't buy ANY new yarn this year -- in fact I still plan to order the yarn I picked out as a birthday present very soon -- but I am genuinely trying to use up some of the yarn that has been languishing in my stash for years.

First up: some Malabrigo worsted! I have six skeins of the Indigo colorway that I bought years and years ago, and never figured out what to do with. What with all the snow and cold lately, I decided I needed a hat, so spent some time browsing patterns on Ravelry and finally settled on the Spiralini Hat. I'm fussy about hats -- I generally hate wearing them, because they're too snug, and make my forehead itchy, and do awful things to my hair, so I wanted something light and loose. The hat fits the bill nicely:

(Oliver the guinea pig helped me model it.)

That used up a little less than one skein. I'm using another to make the Bandana cowl, which I'm hoping will make a nice snug neckwarmer to tuck into the front of my coat, but that's also big enough that I can pull it up over my nose on really cold walks to work. 

I also want to finish some works-in-progress, including two pairs of socks, a scarf, and a sweater. Which means I should get busy knitting. 

Suberb Owl Sunday librarianing, oh my...

Well. Since it is the Day of the Superb Owl, I was hoping for a nice quiet afternoon at the library, but we've only been open for twenty minutes and I've already had:

One elderly woman banging on the back entrance, starting around 5 minutes before we actually opened;

At least three different people repeatedly calling the Reference line, hanging up instead of leaving a voicemail, and immediately calling back, over and over and over, while I am either helping a patron at the desk or on the other line; sometimes, folks, your friendly librarian is BUSY, and cannot answer the phone. This is why there is a voicemail box on that line. If you LEAVE A MESSAGE, your friendly, yet frazzled, librarian will call you back as soon as he or she is able to. Hanging up and calling back over and over not only won't make the line of people who requested assistance before you called magically vanish, but it will, in fact, make the already-busy librarian even busier, since he or she now has to go through and listen to all the damn empty voicemails in the box, and delete them, one by one.

More "Do you have tax forms?" questions than I can count. Nope, we don't. Not yet. And when we do, we won't have many. Don't get pissy at us, get pissy at the partisan bullshit the GOP pulled in Congress that resulted in the sequestration, which cut lots of money to various government agencies, which means the local IRS offices can't afford to send us lots of forms. Also, you can get them online very easily.

One woman who was shocked and appalled that the brand-new, highly-acclaimed best-selling novel she placed a hold on recently isn't available for her yet. It's so new, we don't even own many copies of it yet, and there are nearly 300 people in the queue. If you placed your hold within the last couple of weeks, ma'am, I'm sorry, but... it's gonna be a while. A month at least, but probably longer. Nope, I cannot move you up in line, that's not even remotely fair to all the other people who want to read it just as badly as you do. 

And while it would be lovely if the library could have a copy available for every patron that wants one, instantly and with no wait, that's not possible. We own two copies, and have six more on order. With the super-popular best-sellers, we buy even more copies than that. And then, once the demand dies down, those books just sit and gather dust until we put them into the book sale... where they gather dust because nobody wants to buy a battered, dingy copy of, say, 50 Shades of Grey, so we give up and chuck the books into recycling, and then someone finds out that the library is throwing away perfectly good books OMG the horror! And there are news stories and people complaining that we shouldn't waste those wonderful books! We should give them to the homeless! Or to the schools! Or ship them off to Africa, because those people over there would LOVE to read those books! Because sure, the local elementary schools want 20 copies of 50 Shades of Grey that have been manhandled by dozens of readers. And it wouldn't be at all cost-prohibitive to mail those beat-up old books to the poor people in Africa who don't want them in the first place. If YOU won't pay a quarter for it, believe me, nobody else wants it either. Why do people assume that the people they deem poor (like they assume every single person in Africa is) want their trash? Ugh. 

(I would say don't get me started on the subject of people who don't understand that libraries have to weed their collections, except I sort of already did. Oops.)

Whew, okay, we're an hour in, and it's slowed down a tiny bit. Clearly the local schools have projects coming up due, because there are loads of kids in here looking for books on various term-paper-ish topics. Not many helicopter parents doing the research for their kids, which is nice! I'm really just looking forward to going home, curling up with my knitting, and watching... no, not football, because I honestly could not possibly care less about the Super Bowl (which is damn near heresy, since I live near Boston and all. But nope, I still don't care. Even more heresy? I wouldn't be even remotely surprised if the Patriots did deflate the damn footballs to get an advantage, because I get the impression that they'll skirt the rules in whatever way they can get away with. But I think every other team probably does, too, and it's the least of the NFL's issues). No, I shall be watching some gloriously awful movies on the Syfy channel: Airplane vs. Volcano, starring Dean Cain and Robin Givens!! Asteroid vs. Earth, with Tia Cararre, whose name I probably spelled wrong! And Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies, starring a bunch of people I've never heard of, and which I am certain that Syfy doesn't hope people confuse with Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. I have a deep fondness for guilty-pleasure Syfy disaster movies, the cheesier the better, so tonight will be fun. And then tomorrow will be another snow day, since we're supposed to get another 8-12 inches or so on top of the two feet we got last week. And then I think I really shall just take to my bed until spring.

In the meantime, though, there's now an hour and a half left of the Sunday Librarianing. Wish me luck. Happy Superb Owl!

Ow.

So, this happened:

The snow was up over my knees in our driveway. It wasn't heavy -- it was too cold today for the snow to be very wet -- but still. I shoveled a path around the car while Jeff worked from home, and once my arms decided that no, in fact, they did not want to lift the shovel again, I gave up and went inside. Leaving the house is overrated, right?

Attack of the Library Vigilante, or How Not to be a Good Library Patron

Sunday library shifts are entirely different animals from weekday shifts, or even Saturdays. We're only open for three hours on Sundays, but with fewer staff members on duty than weekdays, so we're usually pretty busy. Today started off busier than usual -- the phone was ringing off the hook, and the local schools clearly have a project due soon, because the Helicopter Parents were out in force looking for books for their kids' projects. (Seriously, parents: make your kids do their own homework.) And, as usual, the Internet Folks flooded in to use the computers as soon as we opened the doors. I spend a lot of time on Sundays telling people how to make a reservation for a computer, since they fill up so fast. And there are always, always glitches with the reservation system, or someone will reserve the "next available" computer, and then see someone else leave a computer and another person sit down and start using it, and then they'll be all upset because that isn't fair, and... there's nothing I can do about that, really. Computer use on Sundays is crazy.

Aside from being busy today, though, everything was pretty much fine... until the Library Vigilante came along. She was well-dressed and coiffed, seemed pretty comfortable in the library even though she wasn't a familiar face to anyone, and appeared perfectly pleasant... until about 15 minutes before closing, when she approached the Reference desk to complain that a teenage boy on one of the computers was being rowdy. She said he was playing a video game, and kept cracking up laughing and shaking the table, and it was disruptive. So I told her I'd check it out, and talk to the kid if necessary, and thanked her for letting me know... and then she said "Oh, I already told him to knock it off, and he didn't listen, so before I left I tapped him on the shoulder, told him to take the goddamned earbuds out of his ears and told him 'you know, you're a real son-of-a-bitch!'" Then she smiled, looking very pleased with herself. I was aghast, but tried not to look shocked, and explained to her that, if there is an issue with another patron being disruptive, she should let a staff person know instead of trying to handle it herself, and that it was very inappropriate for her to call another patron names or to use profanity toward them.

Well. She was displeased! She insisted that "EVERYONE over there was yelling at that kid and it didn't do any good!" Which... yeah, I don't care. It's not appropriate to scold another patron, and it's especially not appropriate to swear at them. She argued that the kid would just ignore me, too -- I explained that we have procedures and policies in place for such occasions, and that it's our responsibility to enforce the library's standards of conduct. That's what we get paid for! She was having none of it, and threw up her hands and announced "Well, YOU just lost a customer!" before storming off. (Which was surprising, because again, up until that point the conversation had been fairly calm and pleasant. I mean, I was telling her that she'd done something inappropriate, but I don't think I was remotely argumentative or strident about it. If fact, I was pretty proud of how calm I was, since one of the things I've been trying to work on is keeping my cool during less-than-pleasant interactions at work.)

I noticed that she was headed toward the Circulation desk, so I followed her over to make sure her story didn't change on the walk over -- it's amazing how often that happens! So, the two staffers at Circulation (one of whom is actually my higher-up at Reference! She just fills in at Circulation on Sundays) had, essentially, the same conversation with her -- she again proclaimed that we'd lost a customer because I "gave precedence to that kid over me!!" Which, no, that's not remotely the point. The point is, don't take it upon yourself to try to correct another patron's behavior, because you never know what issues that patron might have. Or the patron behavior you think is wrong is actually permissible.

I suspect that was actually the case here -- I had been in and around the area where this woman claimed the noisy kid was off and on all afternoon, and hadn't noticed any issues. In fact, the only people in that area that I'd noticed being a little loud were an older couple who were working on something on a computer together -- they were talking, loudly enough that I noticed them, but not loudly enough to be a problem. And while I did go over and speak to the kid who was using the computer over there, I did so gently, and the older couple didn't react at all. I really think that, if the Library Vigilante had been telling the truth about the kid being so loud and crazy that EVERYONE in the Art Department was telling him off, the older couple would have reacted to my talking to the kid with a nod, or a smile, or something.

I feel pretty conflicted about having spoken to the kid, in fact -- again, I did so gently, and didn't accuse him of anything, I just told him that we'd had a complaint, and that sometimes it's hard to tell if you're being loud when you have headphones on, and to just be aware of that. And I really only did that because my colleague indicated that I should. I honestly don't think the kid was doing anything that rose to the level of a rule violation. He might have been laughing, but if he had been disruptively loud, I'd have heard him, since I was putting out magazines on the shelves about two feet from him (and again, only heard the older couple talking quietly) and had been in and out of the area helping patrons, etc. As for shaking the table, well, that table is a little wobbly. It's old. And really, I don't care if the kid was swinging from the rafters, don't try to handle it yourself! And for crying out loud, don't cuss at people! (She said she thought the kid was 16. I don't think he was that old; he was tall, close to six feet, but his face and demeanor read younger to me. I think he was maybe 13 or so.)

Honestly, after the second time she told us we'd lost a customer, I wanted to thank her! And on our way out after closing, we were wondering what her actual problem was: was it that the kid was playing a video game? Because they're allowed to do that. In fact, there were at least a half-dozen adults whiling away the afternoon playing online games on Facebook and such. As long as it's quiet, we don't care. Maybe it was that the kid was African-American? If so, then I feel worse about talking to the kid if he really wasn't misbehaving. Maybe it was just that he was a kid? Maybe she was just a nutjob?

What would you have done? Talk to the kid, or not? I still can't get over how pleased with herself the Library Vigilante was after calling a kid a son-of-a-bitch. Who does that?!

Things that do not help job searchers, part 1

One of the things I do a lot at work is help people who are trying to get their resumes together and apply for jobs. A lot of people aren't terribly computer-savvy, and maybe have been out of the workforce for a long time, or they're just starting out, or whatever, and it's stressful for them, so I spend a fair amount of time talking people through the basics of resume writing, cover letter writing, showing them how to apply for jobs online, etc. And one thing I've learned is that the people out there who teach classes on job-hunting and resume-writing give out a lot of really useless information that isn't helpful and just bogs their students down, and it drives me batshit, because job-hunting sucks enough all on its own! Don't add more stress to the process by telling them to worry about things that don't matter!

Today's example: a woman in her 20s, fresh out of one of the vocational schools, who was trying to get her resume and cover letter polished up to send out. She needed some help with the computer, just figuring out how to get the files from her email to the computer, then to save them to a Flash drive, so I walked her through that. Then she needed to tidy up her resume, and we hit a little snag when it came to the formatting: she was worried that the headings weren't fancy, and thought her resume looked bad because of it. I assured her that no, simpler is better, and as long as the different section of her resume were clear, she was good. Plain headings in the same font are fine, as long as you bold them. So, she finished the resume, and then needed to re-type her cover letter, and that's when we hit the major obstacle that she just couldn't get past.

The cover letter example she had from her school had been set up with a specific template -- just the basic business-letter style, but with weird spacing in the address sections and such. she wanted to know how to do that in Word... and really, I almost never get into messing with templates in Word with patrons, because Word sucks, is non-intuitive, and half the time the templates just completely screw up what you're trying to do. And frankly, when a patron has trouble just managing to get to their email, I'm not going to muddy the waters with advanced Word stuff. And you don't need a template, anyway! It doesn't have to be complicated! So I explained that she didn't need to worry about using a template, she could just type it up: She could put her name, and then Enter for a new line, then her address, etc.

"No, that's not right. Look at the space between the lines. It's too big, and that's wrong." So I went in and showed her that she was typing single-spaced, and it can't go any closer together, but her best bet was to just type up the letter and print a copy, so she could see what it would look like on paper, and it'd be fine. "No! My teacher said it has to look EXACTLY like this! If it's not exactly like this, they won't read it!" Which, no, that's not true! Employers do not care if the line spacing in your address is single-spaced or 1.15-spaced. Double-spaced would be weird, but they probably wouldn't give a shit about that either. They care that you spelled everything right, that your grammar is good, and that your letter sounds professional and clear. They aren't taking a ruler to the margins, and they aren't going to throw it away if you use the wrong font. (Well, okay, don't use, like, Papyrus. Or Comic Sans. They won't ding you if you use, say, Veranda instead of Times New Roman. Or vice versa.)

She would not be convinced. And since I have no earthly idea how her teacher set up the sample letter, I'm unable to exactly replicate it. I was only at work for a couple of hours today, and so she was still trying to wrangle it into looking the way she thought it absolutely had to on the screen when I left. I hope she figured it out! But mostly I wish they wouldn't teach this stuff. It doesn't matter! Hell, most of the time now you apply for jobs online anyway, and they have you copy and paste your resume and cover letter in, or upload them as attachments, and then all the fancy formatting gets stripped off on the employer's end. Telling people to worry about the tiny details doesn't help. It makes the already-daunting task of finding a job even scarier, because it adds the fear that you'll be rejected for some tiny mistake you didn't even know you made.