or, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Fear and Loathing at a Public Library Reference Desk


Reference Question of the Week – 9/13/15

   September 19th, 2015 Brian Herzog

jerkSince the public library serves the entire community, we see patrons on both ends of every spectrum. Last week there was a nice litte girl, and this week I encountered these two people:

Patron 1
On Monday , five girl scouts came in to help with a project. And because girl scouts are shorter than me, part of the project required a ladder. After we were all finished and I was cleaning up, I was walking through the Reference Area to return the ladder to the back room - now, keep in mind, I am carrying a ladder at this point - when I was stopped by a patron who asked,

Do you work here? Are you busy right now? Can you help me with the computer?

I looked at the ladder, looked back to the patron, and said sure. So I carried the ladder over to his workstation, held onto it with one had while I pointed at the screen showing them where to click with the other, and then proceeded on my way back to the office to return the ladder.

Patron 2
Then the next day, a patron called in to have her account's PIN reset. As she was reading her barcode to me, I could hear a cell phone start ringing in the background. She hurriedly finished reading her number, said "can you wait just a minute," and then I could hear her answer her cell phone.

You might ask, "Brian, what did you do while you were waiting for that patron to finish her cell phone call?" Well, I started typing this blog post.

Her other call only took a minute, and when she came back I reset her PIN for her, made sure she could log in, and both of us happily hung up. I've seen stores with a "if you're using your cell phone in line we will serve the customers behind you until you're finished" sign at the cash register, and I've even been helping someone at the desk when their phone would ring and they'd go somewhere else to take the call, but I've never been asked to wait while helping someone. I suppose it's no different than call waiting, but I was still annoyed.



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