Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Advertising

Today I spent the morning taking flyers about our upcoming programs to various neighborhood institutions. In three hours, I: scheduled a program with someone I'd been trying to get in touch with for weeks, collected 3 advertisements for job openings to add to the library's Job Seekers Board, met a former library employee who is now a social worker at a local senior housing complex and who is going to be my new best work friend, and was given a free strawberry crepe.

Shoe leather--it continues to pay off.


Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Some thoughts

As regular readers have likely inferred, Mystery Library has been a bit of a struggle for me. That's almost entirely due to things other than the work itself, but I still have a lot of stressful days and as a result the blog has been kind of negative lately.

You see a lot of librarians writing on various forums about the frustrations of library work: how they are underpaid, lack professional respect, are asked to do an impossibly varied set of tasks from tech support to storytime, etc. I definitely don't want to say those things aren't true or that it isn't important to try to change them. However, I also want to say that, despite those things and despite the recent tone of the blog, I love being a librarian. I love coming in to work and only having a vague outline of what I am going to be asked to do that day. I love being part of the breakthrough that someone needs to get something important done, whether it's finding them a template to write their own lease agreement or getting a paper printed out that's due in two hours. I love eavesdropping on people telling each other about their favorite books and movies, and I even love eavesdropping on people telling each other about the stories that they hated. I love getting to tell people that a library card is free and that so are all our programs.

Above all, I love having a job where my natural dilettantism is an asset rather than a liability, where knowing who wrote The Dork Diaries off the top of your head and being good at un-jamming a printer are abilities of roughly equal value. I think a lot of what people in high school or college are afraid of about entering the working world is being reduced to just one aspect of all their interests and skills, being stuck only being about to think or talk about, say, accounting, for the rest of their lives, when they think of themselves as a multidimensional person who has so much more going on than that. I really appreciate that my job makes you squash yourself down a lot less than most other jobs do.

On that note, I gotta go. I'm trying to figure out how to work the logistics of a speed dating event that is open to people of all sexual orientations, and a deadline is looming.

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Today's consulting firms

If I could save up the money to hire a software developer, I'm 100% confident that I could create a better product for computer management and patron printing than Envisionware, which currently dominates the public library market.*

After shelving in a little-used area, I'm also considering expanding my hypothetical weeding business to encompass all kinds of discarding. We will also take down all your posters advertising programs and services that no longer exist, recycle your cupboard full of outdated electronics, and toss out all the mysterious objects filling up the drawers at the service desk that each employee is afraid to trash since she worries it belongs to someone else. The more that I think about it, the more I would happily provide that service at cost.

*Also, I'm 95% confident that I could create a company that's better to work at, too. I did a Google search for "envisionware problems" to see if I could find a good illustration for this post, and the first hit is its Glassdoor page, showcasing its 1-star review average.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Exciting and cute

It's been a rough week at Mystery Library (you can see this is becoming a bit of a theme) so it was especially pleasing to be involved in this interaction this afternoon. A little girl and her mom were checking out their books with the teen librarian, and the little girl goes "We saw a hawk when we were walking here!" so Teen Librarian says "Oh wow! What was it doing?" Little girl: "it was, it was---actually, Mom, can you show her the video?" And that's how me and Teen Librarian both got to watch a dramatic video of a hawk eating a pigeon today.

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Effective description

A polite teen reported that one of our computers had a virus by saying, "Excuse me, miss. That computer be trippin."

As practically a caricature of a white lady, I was flattered that he assumed I'd know what he meant. It's actually a really concise yet effective description.

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Tired Tuesday

Is the election here? times 5. No, sorry.

Is tax help here? times 5. No, sorry, it's just across the parking lot.

Can I use a study room? (I don't know. Can you?)

Help people navigate our user-unfriendly computer reservation system. I hate it more than I hate any other technology except for the website of the local housing authority.

My poor coworker who is ethnically Hispanic but not a Spanish-speaker gets accosted by a Spanish speaker, my Anglo self has to rescue her to everyone's embarrassment and confusion.

Do you fax?

Do you have citizenship classes here? Well, do you know of anywhere I can take them?

Our HVAC is acting up. Better put in a request for our facilities people to investigate.

Lots of matching sets of people--the two Jehovah's Witnesses in their smart-but-dorky outfits, a family of four kids in school uniforms, a couple who comes in all the time and you regularly see person 2 wearing the shirt person 1 was wearing last week, etc.

ESL teacher wants to know who is going to sub for him when he is out next week!?

Today's broken technologies: Microsoft Outlook, 1 of our 3 staff PCs that aren't at a 
service desk.

I need some books about white voodoo. (Clarification reveals that this is voodoo used for good, not voodoo for/by white people.)

What happened to the school that used to be over there? Are you sure?

Can you help me access this driver's ed course online, times 5. These trends mystify me. I helped one or two people with this in 2017, and now it's two a week. What happened?!

Is it okay for us to leave these flyers here?

Check out people's DVDs to them, times 5.

Coworker: Emma, can you pick up the phone? It's español. 

Excuse me, do you have a bathroom?

Do you have any books about psychology?

Someone checks out an 'amazing insects!' book from a display I made. Yessssss.

Saturday, March 10, 2018

T.M.Very-I.

We have a regular patron who is an older man, maybe around 70. He comes in most days to read the newspaper, and all the staff know his name and greet him when he arrives. Today he asked one of our library assistants if she would read over his writing and give him some feedback. The notebook he gave her turned out to include a sort of essay about each staff member in the library and why he found them attractive. It was...very explicit.

I advised her to return the notebook to him and let him know that what he had shared was "too personal" for her to read.

Yikes.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Cookie monster

As I mentioned, I've been 'in charge of the building' a lot lately. Due to various issues, it ends up feeling like being a substitute manager more than just the person who gets called if a rude patron demands to speak to the person in charge. I am getting a real taste of what management must be like in bad times. I was thinking about what to write to indicate how busy I was, and what I settled on is simple: Not once, but twice, I have stuck a cookie in my cardigan pocket to hide it while I go help someone on the public floor.

It's not enough to be so busy you're eating at your desk. It's got to be so busy that you're eating at your desk and you get interrupted so often that you don't even stop to put your food down when it happens.

Source: https://amig0.livejournal.com/84449.html


Friday, March 2, 2018

In charge

My boss is on vacation this week (which she wrote on the calendar but didn't email us about or verbally tell me...) so I have been 'in charge of the building' since Tuesday. Maybe I don't want to be a manager after all.

Thursday, March 1, 2018

Positive reinforcement

Today two different patrons told me I was "muy amable," which seems to be the standard compliment for good service in Spanish around here, and another patron said I had "the patience of Job" for helping a very confused man with a job application. I appreciated it greatly!

Language barriers

Today a woman had a huge amount of trouble getting into her email on one of her public computer because her password included an á and a ¿. Of course when she is using her phone, its keyboard is set up for Spanish, so she was confused by this problem.

I also learned from my English Conversation Practice students that the word for "mustache" and the word for "whiskers" are the same in some Latin American countries. They wanted to know what a "mustache" was, and why it wasn't pronounced the same way as "headache," and "stomachache." I love this program, but it's making me start to hate the English language a little bit.