Customer Service

I am one of those odd people who don't mind going to the DMV because--contrary to popular reputation--the employees at my local are friendly and helpful. I still have to wait in line to be told which line to wait in so I can wait in line, but I can handle bureaucracy if it’s polite.

So when a colleague asked if I’d mind picking up the Library's order of Rules of the Road booklets on my way into work, I was more than happy to oblige. It was, after all, just across town.  How hard could it be?

This particular DMV crew must not have gotten the "we're nice here" memo. I interacted with three people in my ten-minute visit and the best thing I can say about all three interactions is that they only lasted a couple of minutes apiece. By the time I received what I came for my face was flushed, my hands were shaking, and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. A little oversensitive? Who, me?

I find that to be terribly sad. Not the fact that I, a grown woman, allowed the DMV to intimidate me (though I did give myself a stern talking-to in the car), but that there are people who work in an industry that has such a poor customer service reputation. How lucky am I? I get to work in a well-loved industry. Libraries have their own reputation. And it's a very favorable one. 

Librarians are friendly, knowledgeable, interested in their patrons, and (usually) more than willing to go out of their way to chase down that title, research that question, or make a copy of that article. People are eager to go to libraries. They spend hours here. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been late getting to lunch because one more patron has sought me out to say hello. And I don’t mind, because that means I’m doing my job. I am a friendly, approachable librarian.

There is a difference between customer service and good customer service. Anyone can be taught customer service. Answer the phone. Put a book on hold. Help someone print a document. Explain how to download an audiobook. Learning the mechanics of serving the public--whatever industry you’re in--is easy. It’s attitude that matters. Did I get what I came for at the DMV? Yes. Was it a pleasant experience? No.

So what is good customer service? Service with a smile. It’s all in the delivery. There is a world of difference between a flat “that book is checked out” and “I’m sorry our copy is checked out, but I can add you to the waiting list.” Or “Unfortunately, we don’t have the capacity for public FAXing here. Let me print you a list of nearby places that do” versus “You can’t FAX here.” All four of those statements are true, and all four are customer service. But not all four are good customer service.

I think I would rather be told “I’m sorry, we don’t have/can’t offer (whatever)” by a polite employee with a Plan B (i.e. putting my name on a waiting list or sending me elsewhere) than get exactly what I came for from a rude employee.

That might just be me, but I know one thing for sure. If I ever provide just “customer service” to my patrons, I hope someone calls me on it.

Honorary Cat

I know I’ve written about the joys of home ownership before, particularly when it involves small and unwanted furry rodents before. Today I’m going to introduce you to Fieval, Wallenda, and Tucker--three of the cutest and stupidest mice I have ever run across. This all happened within about 72 hours or so.

I caught Fieval in the downstairs bathroom while I was getting ready for work. When I stumbled into the shower, I noticed Snafu and Fubar both camped out on the floor. Which is weird, but I figured they were just cats being cats. So I did my shower stuff, got out, got dressed, and made myself breakfast. Cats still hadn’t budged. Wouldn’t pay any attention to me, or their breakfast. Lazy little buggers.

The last thing I do before I leave for the day is scoop the catbox. So I pulled the box toward me to be able to reach it better…and a fat brown mouse dashed out from behind the box and froze. So did I. So did the cats. I slammed the door shut, locking all four of us inside. After some calculating, swearing, and a lot of frantic scufflings that resulted in one very unhappy mouse trapped under a handy bucket…I called my boss and informed her of the situation. Probably the weirdest “I’m gonna be late” reason she’s had in quite a while. Definitely the weirdest I’ve ever given. I retrieved my trusty “catch and release” trap from the basement and convinced the smallest idiot in the room to crawl in. My plan was to release the little dummy in a nearby wooded area and then head off to work. Fieval, it turned out, didn’t want to leave. Just sat there huddled in the trap. I ended up having to leave the open trap in my yard. He was gone when I got home.

A day or so later I was once again getting ready for work, when I heard a ruckus in the parlor. I walked in, and found Fubar frantically trying to climb the floor-length lace curtains. I looked up…and there was Wallenda, balanced on the curtain rod and--I’m sure--laughing his ass off at the stupid cat. Snafu, it should be noted, was politely supervising from the settee. All four of us took stock of the situation, and then I went to get the Mouse Removal Bucket. Wallenda, it turned out, had other ideas. That little shit gave us a run for our money.

He ran across the curtain rod. He ran down the curtain. He ran over my hand (I screeched). He ran back up the curtain. He took a flying leap of desperation over my head and landed behind the space heater. I had a brief bout of hysterics until I realized he hadn’t jumped on my head (if that’d happened I would have called in "dead" to work and had a nervous breakdown). Ran out from behind the space heater. Ran into my purse. Ran out of my purse. Ran into the dining room. Ran up the dining room curtain. Ran across the curtain rod. Fell off and landed in the bucket. The four of us needed to catch our collective breath. I didn’t even bother with the trap this time. Left Wallenda to cool his little paws while I finished getting ready. Then I took the bucket to the woods and dumped him out. Last I saw, he was under a log.

Tucker came along not twelve hours later. I went to bed at midnight and was just dropping off when I heard a commotion from downstairs. After being unable to convince myself that it was just normal cat play I went down to see. Both boys were crouched under the china cabinet with a very familiar look on their furry little faces. In a fantastically stupid move, I stuck my face under the cabinet and shone a flashlight. Tucker and I were almost nose-to-nose. He squeaked and ran. I squeaked and stomped. One brief scramble later, and Tucker was safely in the bucket. I scolded him roundly as I shoved my feet into shoes and pulled on my coat. Told him exactly what I thought of mice who kept the whole household up past their bedtimes. Then I went across the street to the football field and rather rudely plopped the little fur wad out onto the grass.

It turns out that not only am I not afraid of mice, but I’m also a better mouser than my cats. Which should make me an honorary cat. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to drink a bowl of cream and curl up in a sunbeam.

Happy National Poetry Month!

I wrote my very first poem when I was in fifth grade. Inspired by Harold the Dog’s appreciation for his backyard in James and Deborah Howe’s wonderful Bunnicula, I dashed off an (in retrospect) incredibly trite little piece that compared all the stuff one finds outdoors to different-colored jewels. What can I say? I was ten. At least I got an “A” in class.

My 5th grade teacher introduced us to poetry every chance she got. When it was time for practicing our penmanship, she wrote short poems on the blackboard for us to copy. To my knowledge, that was the first time I’d been exposed to poetry beyond the odd tidbit my mother would recite, and I loved it. 

(Shout out to “There Was a Little Turtle”...the first poem my mom memorized. She was five, and made sure everyone she came across on the way home from school that day knew the poem, too!)

After copying, we’d talk about the poems. How did they make us feel? What did we think the author was trying to say? Did s/he succeed? At the end of the year, we each bound all those copies into books. I think I still have mine somewhere.

Somewhere along the way, though, poetry became a chore. Whenever the inevitable “Poetry Unit” popped up in high school, I’d groan just as loudly as my classmates. We’d have to read a poem, analyze every bit of beauty out of it, and then go on to the next. It robbed us of the chance to relax and simply enjoy the music of poetry without worrying about symbolism and metaphor and rhyme scheme. I learned a lot of “poetry understanding” but almost no “poetry appreciation.”

Things got worse when we had to write poetry. Write a sonnet. Use iambic pentameter and the proper rhyme scheme. Write a haiku. Count your syllables. Write a villanelle. Watch your stanzas. Write a sestina. Choose your six words with care.

(Okay, I actually enjoyed the challenge of a sestina. Not that I admitted it to my teacher.)

College wasn’t much better. In my “American Authors” class we each had to memorize a poem and recite it to the rest of the class. Up until then, I’d managed to escape such a task. There’d been memorization before, of course (hello, Sonnet 116), but this was the first time I was expected to spit it back out. I went back to the dorm and whined about the assignment to pretty much anyone who’d listen. And then I recited my chosen poem to anyone who would listen.

(Little did I know that both the sonnet and my eventual memorization of Robert Frost’s Acquainted with the Night would stick with me and become party tricks. I once won a chocolate bar at work for being able to recite a poem at the drop of a hat.)

Yeah, poetry and I were not friends…until I started at the library. We used to run an annual poetry contest, and my English Major background pretty much ensured I got to be one of the judges. For the first time in decades I got to read poetry without analyzing it to death. And some of those entries were really good. I looked forward to it every year…right up until one of the participants started repeatedly hounding staff in an effort to find out who the judges were so they could ask us what comprised a “winning poem.” I suspect their ulterior motive was to design a poem that would win. This person is one of the reasons we no longer have a poetry contest.

I could go on and on about poetry. It’s never too late to learn to enjoy it, even if you’ve only been taught to pick it apart rather than actually like it. 

For years at the library, at the first fall of snow,

I’d write a poem to my coworker, just to let her know.

I don’t remember when it started

But she entered my game whole-hearted

We’ve exchanged doggerel verses for years

Sometimes laughing ourselves to tears

She retired probably ten years ago

But we still exchange poems, even so.

Women in their 40s

I turned forty-three earlier this month. If I were a race car, I’d be Richard Petty’s. Possibly driving on Route 43 here in Illinois. If I were a president, I’d be George W. Bush. A chemical element? Technetium. I’d be Idaho on the list of when territories became U.S. states. An alcoholic drink? Licor 43. And if I were a movie, I’d be Movie 43.

Biologically speaking, the forties can be kinda depressing. Things that were high droop. Things that were tight sag. My temperature--and my temper--fluctuates wildly. My hair’s thinning in places I want hair and growing faster in places I don’t. If I so much as think about food I gain weight. I’m now on prescription meds that I’ll be taking the rest of my life. And I have a lot more mystery aches and pains these days that a good night’s sleep doesn’t always fix.

On the other hand, however, I’m finding my forties to be gloriously freeing. Nobody expects me to go out clubbing at midnight. I’m finally past all the awkward “when are you going to have children” conversations. Random men are much less likely to actively hit on me. And if they do, I’m much more likely to clap back than I am to meekly submit. I finally look like I have the experience to do my job, instead of a fresh-faced newbie straight out of school. I eschew fashion for comfort (good-bye stilettos…hello flats!) and I don’t have a meltdown if people see me without make-up or my hair combed. I’m at the age where I can get away with shit I’d never dream of in my 20s, and not just because nobody cards me anymore.

I’m a much more take-me-or-leave-me woman now that I’m in my forties. I’ve finally outgrown the notion that everybody has to like me, that I have to tailor myself to the needs of everyone around me. I do what I want to do. When I want to do it. With (or without) whoever I want. I don’t need to ask anyone’s permission to do--or not do--something. I don’t tolerate fools nearly as well as I did when I was younger.

I’ve learned to say yes. To relax a little and go with the flow. The world won’t end if everything isn’t on the exact timetable I’m used to. And I’ve learned to say no…without feeling the need to come up with an excuse. I can fly solo, or I can be in the middle of my crew. I’ve come to appreciate the value of eccentricity. Of standing out from the crowd, instead of trying desperately to blend in.

As I continue to age I’ll try to keep Andy Rooney’s opinions about women firmly in mind.

A woman over 40 will never wake you in the middle of the night and ask, “What are you thinking?” She doesn’t care what you think.

If a woman over 40 doesn’t want to watch the game, she doesn’t sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do, and it’s usually more interesting.

Women over 40 are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won’t hesitate to shoot you if they think they can get away with it.

Older women are generous with praise, often undeserved.

Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to a woman over 40. They just know.

Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over 40 is far sexier than her younger counterpart.

Older women are forthright and honest. They’ll tell you right off if you are a jerk if you are acting like one. You don’t ever have to wonder where you stand with her.

To all my sisters of a certain age, have a glass of wine, eat some bonbons, and celebrate your fabulousness!

Other Duties As Assigned

Even the most detailed of job descriptions come with those magical words “and other duties as assigned” attached. My job is no different. I have done many things over the years that can only fall under that “other” category.

Years ago, my current library underwent an enormous reorganization in order to be able to remain in our existing building after our referendum for a new building failed to pass. At one point the entire main floor was under renovation and off limits. Our book drops were on this floor. We were downstairs. The elevator was inaccessible. So was the dumbwaiter. Which meant that about eleven other staff members and I ended up doing a bucket brigade of book-laden baskets from upstairs to down…while singing “Found a Peanut” and “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” at the top of our lungs in our concrete-and-metal fire escape stairwell. My hearing still hasn’t recovered.

I’ve built intricate card houses for our display windows. Don’t be impressed. I cheated outrageously. Sometimes tape is a girl’s best friend. It was either that or rebuild it every time someone banged the door on their way through the nearby public entrance.

I once went through 37 boxes of “donated” books that a very kind but very misinformed colleague had accepted for our sale cart on my behalf. Talk about an archeological dig. I found mouse poop, random photographs, many stains that ranged along a whole scale of stickiness, spider egg sacs, a check dated from over a decade ago, and an incredibly friendly live spider who darted across my hand and disappeared. God bless the person who invented rubber gloves.

Our library went through a phase of live frogs mysteriously appearing in our outdoor book drops. At the time, I was the youngest employee (besides our HS pages) by a good decade. Which meant I was the one limber enough to chase and eventually do a catch-and-release for the little amphibious invaders. In heels. And a skirt. With an audience of very interested ladies of a certain age.

I’ve even retrieved lost body parts. A man tripped coming up our entrance stairway and smacked his mouth on the top step, losing a tooth. Armed with a rubber glove, I found the AWOL tooth after about ten minutes of searching and in return endured the nickname “Tooth Fairy” from my colleagues for about six months.

My point here isn’t to expand on my resume. My point is that librarians always rise to the occasion even if they aren’t sure what the occasion actually entails. We’re so much more than materials and computer help and maker spaces and directions and programs and collection development and public interaction. No job description can contain us and no list of duties will ever truly communicate what we do. We are librarians and we do everything.

International Women's Day

To celebrate International Women’s Day I would like to tell you about one of my favorite women, my grandmother.

Because I’m the youngest grandchild by a good ten years, my cousins all have many more memories of family celebrations and momentous occasions. I was three when she died, and always felt a little left out growing up. My sole memory of Grammy is that she wore black reading glasses on a chain around her neck and if she wasn’t careful they’d swing forward and bop me on the nose when she hugged me. Rumor has it that, as a baby, I was so fascinated by her pearls she had to tuck them inside her shirt. I’ll take my mother’s word for it.

Grammy was a librarian at Lyons Township High School in La Grange, Illinois. Like me, she went back to school later in life. Unlike me, however, she had a husband, three kids, and a dog to take care of. I have no idea how she did it.

Grammy attended Rosary College--now Dominican University--when my mother was in junior high. She didn’t drive, which meant my grandfather would drive her up to River Forest and back (round trip was about an hour) so she could attend classes. She was firmly ensconced at L.T. by the time my mother enrolled as a freshman. Mom would often reminisce about studying in the library and bugging Grammy for lunch money!

When I entered L.T. in my own turn, I signed up to be a Library Page and discovered my grandmother’s legacy lived on. I asked my supervisor if there were any librarians that might remember my grandmother. I’ll never forget the joyous reaction I provoked. Every single librarian there had worked with or heard about Grammy. She was a library legend. They told me stories about her work, showed me the sizable collection of books marked “In Memory of Kim Leonard,” and even pointed out where her desk had been. Suddenly, I had a piece of Grammy’s memory that was exclusively mine. Not a single one of my cousins is a librarian. And (as far as I know) none of them ever attended L.T. Nor did they work in the same library our grandmother had.

Fast forward a bunch of years.

Somehow a colleague and I started reminiscing about our childhoods. Not only did he grow up a couple blocks away from where I did, but his parents had attended L.T.! He mentioned the coincidence to his father, adding that my grandmother had been the school librarian. His dad dug out an old yearbook and e-mailed a copy of Grammy’s picture (see above) to my colleague, who shared it with me. I ran back to hug my colleague and was so thankful as to (probably) be almost incoherent.

When I got my own degree, my uncle--Mom’s brother--said he had the perfect gift. He gave me a copy of Shakespeare’s plays and a biography of Melville Dewey. Both items had been Grammy’s and had her handwritten notes in the margins. I was dumbstruck that he’d kept them all these years, and so touched that he trusted me with them. They have pride of place on my bookshelves and always will.

Every time I look at them, or my degree, I feel a swell of pride. Of sisterhood with this woman I scarcely remember. They’re reminders of just whose granddaughter I am, and the very special legacy we share.

The Bottom Three

We’ve all had bad days, right? Overslept, had a cat hork up a hairball in an inconvenient spot, got into a fender-bender on the way to work, kid mouthed off, dinner got burnt, washed a red towel with the whites. Life happens.

But there’s a difference between a garden-variety “bad day” and what I refer to as a “terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.”

(I stole that phrase from author Judith Viorst’s wonderful book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. One of my very favorite titles.)

I’ve had childhood THNGVB days. Going with my dad when we had to get our Cinnamon Ann Dog put to sleep. Breaking my wrist at recess and puking (spectacularly, I’ve been told) all over the hospital’s fancy MRI machine. Getting ostracized by my former-best-friend on the first day of middle school. Being utterly convinced there was a wolverine in the basement and refusing to go to sleep until my dad checked…and then double-checked. He drew the line at the third request.

(That last one was thanks to an old episode of the television show Growing Pains where somehow a wolverine got loose in the house. It was only on camera for about two seconds but that was enough to totally freak me out.)

And I’ve had THNGVB days as an adult. The day I had to tell my mother I flunked out of college comes to mind. I was eighteen and out from under my parents’ thumbs for the first time. Ended up with a GPA of 1.12. I still remember walking up the road by our house to meet her as she came home from work. The first time I heard the words “breast cancer” ranks right up there, too. I will never forgive the snotty little radiologist who--after droning on in technical language--summed up his report with, “well, it is cancer, so what you’ll want to do is…” I don’t remember the rest of what he said. I just remember tissues and an incredibly kind group of nurses gently explaining what “breast cancer” would mean for me.

But. I’ve also got my “Bottom Three.” The three single-worst days of my life. Days that make THNGVB days look spectacularly wonderful by comparison (well…maybe not my breast cancer day…)

The three worst days of my life, in chronological order:

• The night before my father died. I was twenty, and he was in the last throes of bone cancer. The hospital moved him to an empty room and suspended visitation rules for my mother and me. We spent the night, sleeping in turns on the other bed (which the hospital charged us for the use of, if I remember rightly). It was my first close-up experience with dying, and the delirium that can accompany it. My father moaned, tossed and turned, and kept reaching his arms up to grab at something I couldn’t see. I felt utterly impotent, and to this day I’m convinced that night was at least a year long.

• The day my mother died. I was forty, and she’d been going steadily downhill for the last few years. Nine months beforehand she’d fallen and moved to an assisted care facility. I was at the car repair shop, getting routine maintenance before heading downstate to visit family, when I got a call from one of the nurses. My mother wasn’t doing well, the nurse said, and I should make plans to head over ASAP. I sat by her bed alone hour after hour and watched her slip away. I remember I could not get warm. I had my coat and scarf and hat, and the nurses kept me supplied with as much hot tea as I could stomach. I just sat and shivered. At one point a volunteer came in and said “so, what’s her deal?” and jerked a thumb at my mother. The things I said at that point do not bear repeating.

• The night I broke up with my long-term boyfriend. That was only a couple of months ago. We’d known each other since our college days, and started dating in 2009. Slowly, I became dissatisfied to the point where I finally, finally got up the nerve to break things off. I told him I was tired of being the responsible one. The one who paid the bills (no job, no apparent motivation to get one), managed his communications with the outside world (broken phone, no desire to replace it), etc. I sat him down and said the four most terrifying words in a relationship: “we need to talk.” I hated every second of it. I don’t do confrontation, even the completely peaceful kind.

Each of these three was unbelievably beyond the THNGVB day rating for all involved. I didn’t just lose a father, my mother lost her husband. I didn’t just lose a mother, my mother lost her life. I might have lost a boyfriend, but he lost a girlfriend and his place of residence.

The good thing about my Bottom Three is that they didn’t last for an indefinite period. As awful as they were when I was going through them, they had definite “end dates.” I still mourn them, but I don’t re-live them over and over. In the grand scheme of things, I’ve come out stronger, wiser, and able to weather the sometimes-shit-show that life can be.