Trigger Warning

Very quickly into our exchange I could tell I was not in the mood for this woman.  It had been a very long day of a very long week. My boss was on extended vacation, leaving me truly in charge for the first time since I started this job in July. Since then it’s been one thing after another. One staff member broke a bone and needed surgery. Another was called up for jury duty. Several others had family emergencies. I’d spent hours every day, while also doing ten other things, staring at the schedules, calling in subs, willing it to all work out.  

And now here’s this woman having trouble with the copier machine, with an attitude that is just daring me to suggest that it might be her fault and not that of this awful machine that has it out for her.  She hit the button but no print had come out. Yes she had put in her money, she insisted. Yes, it had stolen her money and not delivered the print.  

As I start troubleshooting, she continues to talk at me. Why didn’t it give her her print? Why did it steal her dime? I’m moving through the places where the seemingly simple act of making a copy can go wrong, while trying to answer her questions politely and non-committal.  Check coin return, in case the machine hadn’t “stolen” her dime but spit it out instead. Check return trays in case the copy had come out someplace unexpected. Check the screen to see if the copier thinks it’s waiting for something. None of the checks reveal anything, which might to some suggest user error. “And you’re sure you put the money in?” I say as politely as I can. There are a lot of steps. It’s easy to forget. She looks offended.  “Ok,” I say. “Let me get the key.”

She follows me to the desk, still peppering me with questions about the copier. Then, suddenly her questions change tack. Now she’s talking about the fact that just minutes ago she’d been over on the computers and she had printed out ONE page but it gave her FIVE copies of the same page and she’d paid for it but WHY had it done that?

Now my bullshit meter hits red. The answer is that it doesn’t. It doesn’t print out one page 5 times unless you ask it to.  Instead of immediately responding with “It doesn’t. You are either incapable or lying,” which I am not really allowed to say, I try to stay focused on the task at hand, the photocopy she wants.  As she continues to pester me about the 5 extra prints, I copy the 2 sheets of paper she handed me. The copy comes out as one double sided page instead of two separate pages. She responds with incredulity. Why did it do it that way? (Because the machine defaults to that unless you ask it not to.) She insists that she must have them on two separate pieces of paper. It’s for a court case, she tells me. I look at this print of what appears to be screen grabs from Chrissy Teigan’s Twitter account and realize I need to pass this woman off to someone else.  I am not it the right head space for this, and I’m about to go to the mattresses over .50 in copy fees.  

When I switched from my library desk job, far away from the front lines, back to front line library service, this was exactly the kind of interaction I was worried about.  When I’d done reference work years before, this kind of interaction would piss me off at least for a few hours, if not days. For the opportunity to lead a team and break out of my career rut, I took the risk that maybe I was better at it than I remembered. 

Turns out, copier chaos woman aside, I am better at it than I used to be. In general I’m calmer. I don’t panic when I’m not sure how to help a person. Whether it’s the years or the extensive amount of leadership training I’ve been marched through over the last 3 months, I’ve gained a kernel of truth, a little nugget that I remembered while facing copier/printer disaster lady, which is that if I’m getting really pissed at someone, it’s at least a little bit about me. 

On a day when I’m not tired, not stressed and worried, a day when I’ve recently consumed some homemade brownies from the staff room and am running on full caffeine, the woman changes from my nemesis to a woman who is possibly crazy, possibly scamming us, possibly incredibly skilled in unintentionally breaking machines but just a woman who needs help, even if it’s just an ear to listen.  And maybe I’m not offended, but a bit amused, and maybe I have the skills to gently redirect her away from her voracious dime grab. That’s knowledge. Wisdom is the part where I recognize that congenial version of me has left the building and will not be coming back today, so someone else needs to finish up.  

It doesn’t always work, though. The other day I lost my temper with a frequent flyer patron who likes to call and ask esoteric questions primarily for the purpose of showing off his own vast and superior knowledge.  This is a characteristic familiar to anyone who has worked in libraries, either because they’ve had patrons like this, or colleagues like this, or they themselves are like this. So, I should be used to it.  

But this guy! I can’t even express how annoying he can be. Once he had me looking the whole wide internet over for the phone number of the “headquarters” of a national gas company. I did the whole reference interview, making sure I understood he was talking about the “headquarters” of the whole company, but when I finally found it, he rejected the number I offered him because it wasn’t a “local” number. At this point he revealed he was looking for the number of the local gas station, “Not someplace in Connecticut!” he said to me scornfully. What would he want that for? 

The time I lost my cool, I recognized his voice as soon as I answered the phone, so I was already on alert. He prefaced his inquiry as an “easy” question, and proceeded to ask an esoteric history question.  Phone reference is supposed to be quick reference, and my search of the internet immediately revealed this wasn’t a quick answer.  It would involve a lot of reading through history more detailed than Wikipedia to give an accurate answer. All the while I’m searching, he’s pestering me. “This is a simple yes or no answer,” he said. “Isn’t this what you’re “magic box” is for?” he said.

I finally say that I’m sorry, it’s not a simple question. It would require more in depth research to answer accurately. I’d be glad to print out some information for him, but I was not able to read detailed history while holding him on the phone.  “THIS,” he said, voice dripping with condescension, “is EVERYTHING that is wrong with the world today. People don’t know how to READ anymore.” I told him that I believed I’d helped him all I could for today and hung up, seething.  

I wasn’t happy about this guy’s ability to push my buttons, but working with him has helped me identify one of my own “triggers”. I have less than zero patience with older men who talk to me like I’m stupid, and/or behave as if the ENTIRE world is just set up to inconvenience them. It’s more than annoyance. I’m unable to let it roll off my back. My executive functions disappear and all the brain I’m left with is Kevin Klein in A Fish Called Wanda screaming DON’T CALL ME STUPID.  It’s something I really need to handle better, primarily because older men who know more than I do about everything and believe the entire world is set up to inconvenience them make up 87% of our clientele. 

Recently the library closed all the branches for a day and had staff attend a program on ACES (adverse childhood experiences) and trauma informed public service.  If you’re not familiar with ACES or the Kaiser/CDC study on the impact of childhood trauma on adult health it’s worth going down the wormhole and spending some time absorbing it.  The gist of it is that there is a direct correlation between the amount of specific negative experiences a child encounters before the age of 18 and their health in later life.  

The other part of our day of training was how to deal with people who, because they’re struggling with their own shit, are not offering us their best selves.  Which is really training about how do we deal with our own selves. I have no control over shitty phone guy. He will continue to call or come in and ask impossible questions in a snotty, know it all tone that makes me want to explode. Printer/copier woman will continue to come in to the library 20 minutes until closing, demand the impossible and generally sow chaos. As much as I may fantasize about greeting her entrance to the library with a firm NO, just NO. Whatever the hell it is, just NO, I can’t do that. I’m here to serve her. I’m here to facilitate her lawsuit against Chrissy Teagan’s twitter feed without judgement.  

Public library staff provide a unique kind of public service. It’s not our job to diagnose someone, or get them care. It’s not our job to educate people, or license them. We’re not asking them to prove anything, or to exhibit some level of competence beyond keeping their clothes on and not interfering with others’ use of the library.  It might not seem immediately obvious why training in ACES would be useful for us, except for the reminder that almost all of humanity is dealing with something. When shitty phone guy is calling to ask circuitous questions that are impossible to answer correctly, it’s not about me. In his own way, he’s looking for some kind of connection. He’s looking for reassurance that he is the smart clever person (smarter than a librarian even!) that he needs to believe he is. 

The universe has been telling me lately that the work is on me now, to figure out not only what pushes my buttons, but how I can interrupt the emotional cascade that follows.  The funny thing about my thinking of Kevin Klein’s Don’t Call Me Stupid character when I’ve been triggered by some supercilious ass is that in the movie that character IS stupid.  He cares more about people believing he’s a genius than putting in the work to become one. Why do I care if shitty phone guy thinks I’m stupid? I don’t have an answer, but I’m working on it.