The soul of discretion

 

While I am shockingly frank with the library visitors I help at the front desk and on the phones, and though I might say all manner of daring things that occur to my fervid mind, I don't say everything. I read my audience. I don't want to offend anyone. I don't want to confuse people more than necessary. And I certainly don't want to make anyone feel bad, unless they really, really deserve it.

For instance, in the recent kerfuffle with computers worldwide, we had no public Internet for two whole days. We have over a hundred Internet computers and a large chunk of our library population is passionately devoted to them. Some of these people simply left upon finding we had no computers. Some asked endless questions about it hoping for a loophole that would allow them onto the Internet after all. And several cried out to me:

"But what am I supposed to do here then?!!!??"

At a library, no less.

I did not say: "You could read a book."

Though I will admit that I tried to convey it with my body language .

Another recent example involved a man for whom I was registering a library card. During one of the short periods where I was putting in information, but didn't need anything actively from him, he wanted to know if he could look for something briefly and come back. Because I would have an occasional essential question for him, and, crucially, because other library patrons would think that I was thus available to help them as there was no one standing there, I said "No."

I did not add:

"You are my human meat shield."

You might be surprised to find that there actually is an audience for a comment like that. Unfortunately, there is no Venn diagram overlap between them and the people who would want to wander off while getting a library card.