Two experienced library workers

Oh man, there's no telling what two experienced library workers can do!

Under the right conditions, that is. The conditions have to be perfect.

The conditions were perfect!

There were six carts of requests to shelve, plus the curbside pickup routine we're running here at our pandemic closed library. But by 6:30 in the evening the curbside pickup dies to nearly nothing. So those six carts of requests were all that stood between us and having nothing to do a little later.

Nothing to do. Aye, the promised land. 

Neither of us likes working in particular, but we occasionally see the rightness in working, sometimes, especially if it can be done efficiently. So we are both capable of working as hard and efficiently as possible. And we do it all in the hopes that we can make it all be over as soon as possible. Or sometimes to prove a point, though I'm never quite sure what point, but we tend to have a lot of points to prove.

So we shelved, splitting along rough halves of the alphabet, handling the phones, which were still ringing, on the fly.

Total concentration.

Tireless dedication.

No movement wasted.

Mastery of the alphabet.

You think you know the alphabet?

Well, no offense, but you are not a professional. I mean you are probably very good with the alphabet and do a fine job with the layman's 26 letters. I mean no disrespect.

We were using the professional 112 letter standard alphabet.

No, I can't explain it.

Plus we were fueling our shelving not just on a desire to be finished shelving, and with the dream of nothing to do, but we were also fueling on anger. The phone kept ringing and interrupting us. People would call and tell us the wrong things. They would misspell their names. They would say they were here to pick up books that weren't here for them to pick up. Our back up person disappeared and we had to take care of everything, just the two of us. The table out our front door needed to be dried from an afternoon snow storm. Someone had put a book for pick up on a cart under the patron's first name!

And we had only our shelving to take out our anger on. 

So we did.

We shelved like madmen! Pages flew into the air. Empty carts crashed ferociously together. Minutes passed in a fever of wild activity.

And then before you know it, we were done.

It took like 20 minutes or something.

And now we have about three hours to just sit here.

And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Eh, I'm not complaining.

What it's like working in a closed library

I risked my life for this.

Yours too.

I came in to work at my closed library as required.

For three hours I chatted with my co-workers. Eventually, to my gratification, everyone was calling the County Manager "Hairdo".

Every once in awhile I answered a phone call as well.

At about ten after four I realized it was my dinner break hour! so I took a cart of genre fiction upstairs to shelve. I mean really, what's the difference?

Time is just whatever happens in between washing our hands.

Adventure in a city library

On my day off I went to the library. It was not the library I work at. It was the library a long way down the street where some items were on hold for my wife who was home with the flu. It's a pretty library with a lot of glass, located in a pocket of Minneapolis full of mild street crime and homelessness. It has one of the worst parking lots in the world, always full, and all tight, inadequate, one way, and awkward. I know one of the people who works at this library because she used to substitute at my library as one of her three jobs. America, man. She always described working at our large, near urban library as like a vacation. I guess that's because we don't have patrons smuggling our dvd's out the door to sell across the street at the pawn shop to raise drug money. By all accounts she's doing pretty well professionally in the Minneapolis system now, so she doesn't have to take working vacations. Maybe she's down to two jobs even. I stopped over to say hello.

We caught up, having a nice sarcastic conversation about how excited we were about Oligarch Bloomberg's Presidential run. We were soon interrupted by a nervous woman who wondered if they had some of the white tape instead of this scotch tape. She couldn't remember the name of the white tape. My former colleague and the guy who was also working the desk there looked vaguely around in case some white tape showed up, but no, it didn't. What was that white tape?

I took a stab at it. "Do you mean masking tape?"

I got it in one.

They didn't have any masking tape. The woman took it pretty well and had to get back to her baby which she had abandoned somewhere in the library. That's what she said, although to be fair she didn't use the specific word "abandoned".

Another person came up to urgently talk to my colleague so I went off to get my wife's holds. I checked them out on the self check out machines, experimenting with all the few features of the fancy kiosk out of professional interest. It had two font settings. I switched back and forth between them. Hmm, two font settings. 

My colleague was still busy so I went up to the other guy working at their main desk there. "I'd like to complain bitterly that there are only two font options on your self check out!"

He took it pretty well. My colleague was freed up and turned her attention to us. "Tell him about your blog." She said, probably reminded of it by overhearing my mercurial sense of humor (hint for beginners: I think two font sizes are plenty). She's a pretty nice advocate for my blog even if I'm not sure if she ever reads it.

"Oh, I don't tell people about it anymore. It never goes the way I think it should go." I replied.

She said, no, she'd told him about it before and he's a fan, or something like that.

I was secretly pleased and suspicious about how true it was all at the same time.

"Great then." I said, turning my attention back to him. "You'll be reading all about this font issue any day now!"

And maybe he is.

Library circulation workers for managers

I am not one to generally provide advice to managers. Managers are like genies. Their power and promise is irresistible; maybe they will fire your incompetent co-worker, perhaps they will recognize your area of creative expertise and give you interesting responsibilities, or maybe, if you say it at exactly the right time, in exactly the right way, they will even institute your excellent, innovative workplace improving idea. But alas, like genies, if a manager does take your advice, your wish, they will only apply it in a variant version that is darker and less ambitious than the dream that formed your wish in the first place, and your best possible outcome, only if you're very lucky, will be minuscule improvement. It could come out much worse, and it will never come remotely close to the fulfillment of your heart.

This is because managers have managers. 

And a certain amount of sense, whether native or manufactured, for appealing to managers is in itself what led to any manager becoming a manager. In any hierarchical system the more power, benefits, and freedom one has, that is the more managerial one is, or the higher one is in that hierarchy, the more one is inclined to find that the system one works in is fundamentally whole and just, even if one still might think it could bear improving. Concomitantly the lower down one is the more inclined one is to understand that said system is fundamentally broken, which it is, and in serious need of dramatic fixes and improvements.  

I have been thinking of these ideas all afternoon and I could go on at great length about them. But then I remembered: I came here today to help library managers.

And since in this space we are all neutral, equal sorts of people, with me getting to choose every single word that is expressed, I will share some important information about library circulation staff, useful in their hiring and firing, and also useful in understanding their very few, but very important levels of quality.

Please note: I will call this "circulation staff" henceforth "clerks" because it's such a glamorous, mellifluous sounding word and one compellingly attractive to the Internet.


The five rating levels of clerk.



Level Five: There are no fives. The job, constrained by institutional rules, lack of autonomy, low pay, too many hours of work, and conflicting demands, makes it impossible to be a five.

Level Four: There are fours. I'm one! I know exactly what I'm doing. I care. And I only screw around 50 percent of the time (okay, 60). Reluctantly I acknowledge that there are other kinds of "fours". For instance one could mostly know what they're doing. Sort of care. And only screw around ten percent of the time and be a four. It takes a village!

Level Three: It would be easy to say a three is merely a less of the above, but surprisingly that is only sometimes the case. Yes, on the one hand a three can be exactly like the above only less so, and yet a three can also be exactly like a four except full of shit about it.

Level Two: In the preface of my remarks about twos I want to prepare you for the fact that a two, while ranking higher than a one, is actually the worst of all clerks. I have seen many times how keeping a level two clerk can cause literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to a system over the years. Their mistakes, corrosive nature, and lack of productivity are a terrible drain on any library. I currently work with two of them and just spent two weeks (not) training one. But what is a two? A two is someone who by nature does not really care because they don't know how to. They don't exactly screw around any amount of the time because they have nothing to contrast the screwing around with. And they don't ever understand what they're doing except in the sense of pretending to do the job they're doing. They are not actual clerks. They merely feign to be one. Their co-workers and the public will regularly fall for these often pleasant, but ever desperate liars to the extent that they think they're clerks, albeit bad ones. But alas, these people at the level two only know how to roughly simulate what the job of clerk looks like.

Level One: Level one clerks sort of don't exist because no one normally will hire them or retain them, but they do actually show up sometimes through various loopholes. They're like the level two above except they are not false in manner. They can't fake that they know what they're doing so usually they quit somewhere in training. I have nevertheless worked with a few grandfathered in level one clerks who thrived as wards of the state and were assigned to a narrow, simple array of tasks. My theory is that level two clerks can be retained by being treated very consciously as level ones, but it would take a far more committed and clear-eyed manager than I have ever run into. The temptation would always be there to treat the two as a real clerk in times of need and that would never be the right thing to do.

Conclusion: To properly staff your library you will want to have a good mix of all of the four clerk types. 

Just kidding. You want all level fours. There will be easily enough problems just with the highest level of clerks. Nevertheless you will sadly get threes whether you wanted them or not. However any level twos are a sin against god and say bad things about everyone involved, and they should only be pitied after their death or dismissal. Not from malice, but for the protection of other people.

And the ones? Having a one around is very trying and exhausting. It is also unlikely to happen. And while I personally feel glad we don't currently employ one in my library, I nevertheless believe they're good luck and wonder if we shouldn't make the sacrifice. 

Library worker levels

One night recently I was out at the front desk of my library. I was engaged there in general conversation with my desk partner. And in thinking about a blog post I was working on I needed to describe the level of this co-worker.  And so I have created, or perhaps merely articulated, these useful level descriptions for my library co-workers:



Level one: Platonic ideal level

No co-worker can actually achieve this perfected level, but I like to have it out there so they can unwittingly measure against it.


Level two: Friend level

These are the people you'd want to run into at the library, and so would I. Everyone has their flaws, but their bonus gift for being at this exalted level is that I won't discuss or acknowledge those flaws. They're all minor enough anyway. 

I expect them to look out for me, which, to my surprise, every rare once in awhile, they do! I expect them to read my blog, which, well, same, I guess.


Level three: Colleague level

We're in the same boat, sometimes even rowing in the same direction. I like them, and I only speak ill of them to people I trust, and even when I do I try to thickly lace that passing criticism with a wry affection.


Level four: Acceptable level

Mostly they are just... there, but we have our moments of sympathy, our chats at the desk or back room, and, hopefully a shared desire not to alienate each other too much. These people are... fine, they're fine. No, really, they're... fine.


Level five: Beyond the pale level

These are the few people who are deeply bad at their jobs, but maliciously so. Although here is a strange thing I have discovered in a quarter century of working in tandem with a variety of colleagues:

All people who are bad at their jobs are bad at them maliciously. Incompetence is never enough on its own. 

A secret touch of malice is actually required for a person to be bad at their job rather than merely acceptable.


Level six: Librarian level

Ha ha. I'm totally just kidding. They mix in just fine to the first five levels.



But they might want to watch themselves.

The waning days of the job title: Clerk Typist 3

At my library we are currently feverishly caught up in a broad and bureaucratic process in which everyone has to fill out elaborate forms saying what their job responsibilities actually are. The point of it all is allegedly to determine whether all the job titles and descriptions throughout the County are accurate, whether compensation is appropriate to job classifications, and, er, I guess that's about it. A huge out-of-County consulting firm has been hired at great expense to conduct this review. Teams of high level County Managers are overseeing the project. 

Down in the library trenches this is getting us library clerks stirred up. The problem for us is that we are vestigial. Once upon a time we were a distinct library job. We alone were the front desk of the library, handling all the customer service interactions of registration, fines, problems, check out, check in, etc. There were Pages, but they all worked mostly behind the scenes doing processing, shelving, and bookrunning. And there were Shelvers, but they strictly shelved. There were also, of course, Librarians, and they did every single scrap of reference work. It was all very orderly, but not terribly flexible. Then, about eight years ago, intentionally and unintentionally, and coinciding with a new and larger library building, everything was fractured into pieces and sort of just mashed together. The Shelver position was basically eliminated. And the work of Pages and Clerks was integrated and broadened. Even varying chunks of Reference work, Building Management, and Supervision drifted over to circulation in all of this too. 

After that sea change fewer and fewer Clerks were hired, until now only a small group of us huddles together fretting about our job classification. Pages are the main population of our Circulation Department. I was working with a Page at the front desk last night and she said "I wonder what will happen since The Pages and The Clerks do the same job."

I felt a brief flash of piercing hatred for her.

Then it passed.

We don't do the same job!

We so don't do the same job!!!!

Well, and we do.

Let's say with her, individually, I do 75% the same job. With another Page it might be 50% or 80%. And then too let's point out that at any particular individual time I might be doing the exact same work as The Circulation Supervisor, a Librarian, a Library Associate, a Custodial Worker, a Volunteer, The Building Maintenance Man, The Automation Staff, or The Branch Manager. I might even be doing the same work as a Library Patron, which, of course, isn't work at all, but still constitutes a fair chunk of what I do at my job if I can manage it. Some of almost all of these matchups might be true for some pages and some clerks, and sometimes none of them are. 

And so after all of this you may ask: "What's your point?"

Oh.

I'm not sure. It's complicated. Much too complicated for me to say. Which is why I've hired a large, international consulting firm to figure it out for you.

Look for their results in a year or so.

Lost and found gone wrong

I played only a bit part in this lost and found drama at my library. And there were people involved that I don't want to drag over any coals. But I find the event too astonishing to merely set aside. And though I suspect the story I heard might have an essential flaw in it, I cannot let go of the possibility that the story is disturbingly correct. Nevertheless I'll try to bring as much neutrality to the situation as possible. You can read the story and try to determine where my sense of astonished horror comes from.


Someone left a rare coin behind at the library. It was in a Plexiglas case, almost like a small paperweight. It was found by one of my co-workers out on a public work table behind the front desk. She brought it to the back room to muse over. It was from the 1920's. It was in very nice shape. I looked it up on the Internet. It was gold! It was worth, retail at least, between three and four hundred dollars!

"Wow." We all said, because this is the bland suburbs, and because none of us make very much money.

My co-worker did with this treasure exactly what it is both our culture and our policy to do. She put it in the safe under the front desk and told everyone working in the vicinity about it.

But as it happens the staff working everywhere from the back room, to the desk, to the phones, and even to the many manager's office, changes with the tides. It ebbs and flows. It sweeps in and out. So when the person who left this valuable coin called us up, fairly frantic, some hours later, all the people who knew about the coin were somewhere else, shelving, or at lunch, or wandering remote corners of the library aimlessly.

And so we come to the first confusion of the story. Everyone available looked for the golden coin, but none of them looked in the single most likely place we would keep a valuable item. No one looked in the safe we have for the keeping of lost and found items of value. I don't know why. But there it is. They didn't find it anywhere, and they reported this bad news to the very upset man.

He was distressed, so they said they would take his name and number in case we came across his coin. But this is a big library. Where would one put this note? Fortunately they had an obvious solution. They put it where, if we found something valuable, we would put it.

They taped the note to the front of the safe they never looked in.











 

From the ALA

A message from the American Library Association:




Dear Library Professional:


We are delighted to announce a new upgrade in the names of library professionals. While we cherish the proud history of the term "Librarian" we are also aware that this storied title has, in the past decades, become more and more loosely applied. At this point, to many lay people, it means pretty much anyone who works with books in a library. Instead of fighting this understanding we have decided to accept it, and, at the same time, upgrade the title formerly known as "Librarian" to a term more befitting of the great training and stature of the work done by these people.

From this point forward all people working with books and materials in libraries, regardless of training, will be know as "Librarians".

Meanwhile, also from this point forward, the highly trained professionals formerly known as "Librarians" will henceforth be known exclusively as "Bibliogoblins".

Congratulations to all the newly minted librarians and bibliogoblins among you, and keep up your noble work.



In regard and fellowship,


Lucius Allesandra Mesomorph, Bibliogoblin (MLS, 1992)
Secretary Chair of the ALA Naming Rights Committee

Taboo

I have been writing about library work life for well over five years now, and though I have covered the vast array of standard library subjects ranging all the way from animals in the library to the various substances that cover returned materials, I suddenly realized that there is still one issue I have never addressed.

It is possible I have never talked about this issue because it is so mundane. But I believe its mundanity is merely the bland face it uses to hide the real reason it is not discussed. It is taboo. It is unmentionable.

No one in library land discusses it. No one admits to it. No one acknowledges how it makes them squirm.

Yes, I am going to talk about the single thing library circulation staff hate more than anything else.

Well, as they will tell you, they don't hate it, they're fine with it, if only...

Ha! They hate it.

They will do anything to get out of it.

They know it's not that bad of a job, or even that hard. The good ones even know that their willingness to embrace it, do it well, and even invite it is a testament to their professionalism.

But they hate it.

Are you ready?

Are you sure?

It's going to be disappointing.

Okay then.

It's...

Library card registration.

What? You cry. Library card registration? Seriously?

Yes. Seriously.

Although even I'll admit it's all a little mysterious.

There's something about the way that a card registration always takes a fair chunk of time, no matter how fast one is about it. There's something about its sheer lack of variety. There's also something about all the canned speeches that have to go with the process. But there's something intangible about it as well. I have seen library clerks all over the country try to squirm out of registering a card, but act like they're not squirming. I have seen them try to invoke rules to dissuade people from getting cards. I have seen them make up rules to stop people from getting cards. I have seen clerks make every argument in the book as to why it's not in someone's interest to get a card just then. I have seen library staff go into hiding at the prospect of a library card registration. All of it while being as pleasantly passive aggressive about it as possible.

But no, ask one of my colleagues about registrations and -insert series of minor complaints here- they're fine with it.

If I haven't made it clear, I don't believe them.

Over the many years my co-workers have ranged from excellent to execrable, but one thing even the least capable of them has been able to do is smell a library card registration coming from a mile off. And in all my deep studies of library front desk dynamics I have noticed one thing: no one likes a registration. Some people are complete assholes about it, blithely ducking out of the way, as if by accident, or lingering with a patron to try and evade a likely upcoming registration, and some try to overcompensate for their evil inclinations by cheerfully inviting a registration. But I recognize the tell tale signs of wilt, of quailing in everyone, even if it be dauntlessly covered over in the blink of an eye. Even if some of those people refuse to acknowledge it fully to themselves.

I cannot be convinced otherwise. Because after 24 years I have glimpsed the very heart of the God of Library Circulation Staff.

And it's not pretty.

Though it's not all that ugly either.

Professional comedian

A group of us library circulation workers were having a bit of a chat in the workroom of the library. Up for discussion was a kids' book covered in pee and a long list of strange diseases that one of us had contracted over the years from working in the children's room. There were nail fungi, nose infections, and something... weird. The person thus affected then proclaimed something I've often considered over the years:

"After working in this environment, with this level of exposure, I've probably built up fantastic immunity."

I was eating a rather tasty strip of maple smoked salmon when I quipped "Yes, this is why the peasants of 11th century Romania lived such long and healthy lives."

As I said this a little bit of the salmon went flying out of my mouth and landed on a chair in front of me.

I was hoping it would make my comment funnier, but it didn't.

I try to be honest about myself

My manager came out of the managers' office and said, conversationally to me and another co-worker, "We're going to have a skeleton crew here tomorrow."

After hearing of a couple of people who would be out for illness and vacation I asked "Will I be working tomorrow."

"Yep." My manager said "You're here."

"Oh great." I responded. "I love working with me. I'm such a pleasure to be around."

My co-worker said "Be careful what you say, or she'll schedule to work with yourself at the desk."

"Eh." I said, nonplussed. "That's happened before, and it's okay. One of us works really hard and the other just goofs around the whole time."

Library cart

Oh man, working a job in common with others can be a tough haul. I am part of an unwieldy mob of people who staff a large, near urban library (as you probably already know, but think of the one stray person on the Internet who has wandered newly upon this blog and, bewildered, simply needs... nope, they're gone. We lost 'em). Anyway, individual work is largely added up to make a whole. Like many jobs we here are like a team of oxen pulling a cart. Look at that team of oxen pulling that heavy cart on a rough road. You tell me who's doing the heavy pulling. You like that one who really looks like it's straining and giving its all? Or maybe you like that one with the glossy coat who seems to be staying cleanly in its reigns? Who knows? Speaking as an oxen the only guarantee I can offer is that you'll probably pick the wrong one. And that everyone has lots of opinions about everyone else. And that who's pulling a lot and who's hardly pulling at all can change on a dime! Actually that's a whole lot of guarantees here. But I have one more guarantee that's a bigger guarantee than all the rest:

Each of the oxen thinks they're doing a pretty damn good job. 

Yes, even those two wandering lost in a nearby field.




 

Library shirt

Awhile ago my wife and I were buying some library/book themed t-shirts. I decided to go for the one that's a series of large, roughly stamped sequential dates, you know, old-school due date stamps. Not only did I consider this vaguely legal for my library job dress code, but also an amusing conversation piece, especially with us all being in a library.

I was wrong.

While I appreciated this shirt for not hitting anyone over the head with its obviousness, I hardly considered it subtle. In the context of where I would be wearing such a shirt, combined with the authentic feel of its design, I certainly didn't expect people not to get it.

But many, aye even most, did not.

"Are those dates significant somehow?" Many a confused query went.

"No," I replied, demonstrating by pointing pointlessly at the shirt they were already looking at "They're, you know, like library due dates."

"Oh." They said emotionlessly and suddenly keen to get to work, then they went somewhere else.

"Well," I thought "That must be a weird blip on their part. It certainly won't happen when so and so sees it. They'll think it's hilarious!"

"What's with all the dates?" So and so asks when I show them my shirt.

"They're meant to be library due dates, like from an old due date card."

"Huh." They say. "Well it's confusing because they're dates."

This sort of thing happened all day. Is this the general level of understanding my co-workers operate at? How have I never noticed this before?

It was a sad day.

After washing it I put the shirt at the back of all my t-shirts on my shirts shelf.

I didn't wear the shirt again for a long time.

Then today I reached back there and pulled out this shirt.

Huh.

I put it on. Apparently the pain had faded just enough for me to try again. After all it is Holiday Potluck Day today at the library.

And then I reflected upon what had happened last time I wore the shirt and suddenly the light dawned:

The were all just trolling me!

Ha ha ha, they were messing with me! They were just joking!



I hope. God, I hope.

National library clerking

It's a quiet night back on the automated check in machine at my library. After an industrious 45 minutes all of my needing to do anything was sucked into a slow, peaceful, caught up silence. I wandered about checking up on everyone and everything. Then, that tour exhausted, and with some groaning and muttering, I sat down at my high computer with nothing to do.

I thought for awhile, staring into space. I looked at a book of pictures of Tuscan towns, and then with an hour til I could go home I started on a blog post.

This is that blog post!

It is very quiet around here tonight.

Recently at my library we all received a powerpoint of our benchmark data. This is an annual review of our usage data vs. all the other local libraries and a selection of similar sized libraries around the Country. Our ranking shuffled around in the middle of the pack when it came to how much money we got per capita (some) and how much we spent on our collection (not all that much), but when it came to circulation, to how many things we checked in and checked out per person in our system, per square foot of the library, and per hour of people working here, the numbers were positively freakish. We circulate, check in and check out, so much more stuff per capita and per employee to handle it than any other library that the charts look like there's been a mistake somewhere. But the numbers don't lie. I myself handle almost exactly twice as many items per year as my average colleague, working the same hours, does all across the Country.

Which brings home this astonishing fact:

As I write, all over America, there are library workers doing even less than I am right now.

God bless them.

Trainees phase 2

We recently received three new circulation staff to train in at my library. It's been a week or two and I think they might have gotten the basics down, more or less. Now they are starting in on the secret rules, the culture, and who they will be here.

Today I have noticed that the first thing that each one of these new people has learned is that talking with, or spending time with the Manager is a safe zone from working.

I am sad to say that this is the 187th thing anyone should learn here, and ideally I like to see it learned through cynical observation, not through its happy occupation.

Careful living

It is no good living life too cautiously. And yet there are times to lay low. One of those times is on the eve of a big journey. Big journeys, to slightly exotic, sort of foreign destinations like, for instance Paris, are enough of tempting fate as it is. There's the flying, the pickpockets, the terrorists, the uneven sidewalks, and, most importantly, the there's things you haven't thought to worry about. Those are the killers. So maybe in the couple of days before departure it pays to appease the gods, keep ones head down, and lay low.

So here at work I have decided to be a model employee. I have decided to tempt no fates. I will simply do my job in the manner of my most isolated and friendless co-workers, head down and with a blunt and tireless vagueness. This is hardest to do during free time, oops, I mean during shelving. No book reading for me! I do not write a blog post up in the stacks. I simply shelve. But, I'll admit, I'm still me, so while I shelved I memorized this blog post, because it's not like I didn't still have blog posts to write. It was a lot of work memorizing this blog post. And even still I mostly got it wrong. For instance I'm pretty sure this post had a super snappy, really good ending. All I remember of it now is "Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah." which is funny, but would be way funnier if remembered the key missing bit.

And that's the moral of today's post. We pay a price for living too cautiously, but sometimes that price is worth it. I will fly off to Paris and I won't be worrying about some petty contretemps I ran into with my manager, or some caustic thing I said about a co-worker who might have overheard it and not understood how affectionately it was meant. I will rest in the aura I have cultivated of harmless, inoffensive perfection.

Oops, well, I better get going. I'm fifteen minutes late to replace the people at the front desk.

Shelving

Shelving books at a library wears everyone down. Everyone. We never have had, and never will have, a great, long term shelver of books.

We could have an explicit rule that says "For every hour one is assigned to shelve books, we expect a person to shelve books for at least 30 minutes." The advantage of this rule would be that it is roughly accurate to what everyone actually does. The disadvantage of this rule is that, due to human nature, everyone would probably start shelving for 15 minutes, thinking "Surely no one expects me to shelve for the whole 30 minutes of my hour of shelving!"

On the other hand maybe if we had that 30 minute rule nothing would change. I don't believe most of us hate shelving. There are times when most of us like it. It can be our one chance to get away from everybody. How long can I, for instance, wander around the library working myself up into a lather about how no one else is doing any of the work I'm supposed to be doing, or thus may have to do. I need a break. Sometimes shelving is that break.

But one can't live on shelving.

Oh sure, every rare once in awhile we hire some amazing new person and they look like a real shelver. Naturally everyone is delighted with them. They are diligent, and industrious, and they like shelving. Give them a whopping three scheduled hours shelving and they spend three whole hours shelving. The manager, the one who only wants people to look busy, will adore them. But thinking they are just the sort of person they want to see around more in the workroom they will assign them to less and less shelving and more and more to tangential tasks, where they can observe and admire their industriousness. These once great shelvers will get a taste for these stray jobs. Everyone does. There's a feeling of responsibility, importance, and control of one's destiny that goes with them. Soon they will have taken something like organizing the incoming book donations, which got by for years with no one at all doing anything about it, and grown it into a mildly useful six or seven hour a week job. Now when it comes time to shelve for an hour they're just too backed up with book donation organizing to get to it right away. They need to empty these three boxes first. Then it's time for their fruit snack. Then they can get to their shelving. No problem, there's still about half an hour left. 

Which brings me to an older, cherished fantasy of shelving I still harbor: Every worker, at any level, who comes to the library, should do a small tithe of shelving.

I made a joke, as in joking on the square, last night, to a visiting branch manager that did not go well. She asked where our P.I.C. was, which took me a moment until I realized she meant Person In Charge. I said that we're more of an egalitarian library, not dominated by hierarchical structures. She became a bit more terse, and I instructed her on her way. She went and joined three other managers for two hours of a community program that required somewhere between zero and one staff members, closer to zero. It was an interesting program. Do I object to their gathering to chat, fuss around it, and then watch it for 90 minutes? No, no, no. Just so long as, since they're here, they put in an hour of shelving. This might seem like a lot, but it only takes half an hour, and even less if one works really hard.

Getting the job done

One of my not very good at all co-workers came to me while I was manning the phones at my library. She handed me an envelope. It was an open piece of mail from an insurance company. The envelope said it was very important. 

My not very good at all co-worker said "This was found in a book."

"What would you like me to do with it?" I asked.

"Merlion (Another not very good at all co-worker) found it and gave it to me. I thought you could call the person it belongs to."

"I don't usually call people." I said. "But I'll take care of it."

I looked in the envelope. It was a bit of meaningless information from four and a half months ago. I threw it in the recycling.

I guess that's why so many people from all over the library route their problems over to me. I'm always willing to take on these extraordinarily complex issues.

You trust us...

A less experienced colleague of mine comes from the front desk of the library to consult with me in the back room. "There's no way to give a receipt to someone for returning books, is there?" He asks.

Actually there is! People don't ask for them often, which is why only old timers like myself are keepers of this ancient technique. It doesn't work well, but we can do it. However, because in every case I have encountered, it is a wildly obnoxious request, and one that if even five percent of our patrons made would grind our circulation to a crawl, I always seek to make it as miserable as possible for the patron making the request. I am not cold or mean. Patrons are prepared for that. I am friendly. I gather together as many staff as possible at the computer. We discuss and instruct how the check in receipt is generated. We experiment with futile attempts to find a better check in receipt option. We must make sure to clearly demonstrate that this is a special occasion, a freak occurrence to be used as a wonderful teaching tool for the obscure processes of circulation. No time or effort is spared. We strategize over new ideas, how to communicate the process throughout the system, and what really is the best procedure.

But of course we're delighted to do it for the patron. It's just, naturally, with something so bizarre and particular, going to take a long, long, long time.

So after an extended trial we get this patron the check in receipt that really doesn't show much anyway. I am free to return to my backed up work on the automated check in machine.

My colleague comes back a little later. The same patron doesn't have card or I.D. and wants to do some small thing on their record. Can we?

No no no! Of course not! Never!

You don't trust us, how can we trust you?

More time, more helping

I have long found that the number of people a clerk helps in a given time at the front desk of the library is a strong measure of the quality of that clerk. This is not absolute, and I do work with people who can cut through certain patrons quickly by using off the cuff, often wrong, answers, and lots of directions to other desks and locations elsewhere. But the options for telling people to go away are surprisingly limited when you're a front desk clerk, and though I have seen clerk evasion techniques such as lying, inventing work avoiding policies on the spot, and being repulsive, rude, and truculent to get rid of people, even those techniques take time. And so ever we fall back to the original barometer. With my worst co-workers, during perverse phases where I have kept close track, I have clocked five to one ratios during notable hours, and more than seven to two ratios on a steady basis. By that I am saying that I help seven people for every two they help. And that doesn't even take into account when they tell someone that they can't look up a book for them, or when they inform some new patron that they will have to go to another library if they want to get a card.

But no matter how excruciatingly long these awful co-workers (or perfectly nice, but inept co-workers) take with the patrons they help, it is incredibly hard to see just what it is they are doing with these patrons for all that time. While I am reasonably efficient, I am also a loquacious, helpful, over-explainer who considers it a personal defeat if I have to send a patron for assistance anywhere else. That is, I mean, unless I am intentionally punishing the patron or the people I am sending the patron to by such a transaction. 

I'm just saying that, as it is, I am a full service desk person.

But despite all my confident feelings of superiority, because I cannot fathom what is going on (endlessly) over at that desk next to me, I am left with a little doubt. What if, despite all appearances to the contrary, my seemingly inept colleague is doing something amazing over there, something that is utterly beyond me? What if they get to discussing the patron's health and my co-worker says "Oh, you have liver cancer. I can cure liver cancer. I just need to hang out with you here for twenty minutes, fiddling with stuff on my computer and my desk and looking very confused the whole time."

"Wow!" The patron exclaims. "Thanks!"

I want to be able to cure liver cancer out at the front desk too! That's better than any front desk tricks I can do. Can I learn it online? Do I really have to go around all addled and looking like a hypnotized chicken to be able to do it? 

Ah well, I guess there's a price for everything.