Monday, October 29, 2012

Hurricanes and Tempests in Teapots

First, I hope everyone within Sandy's reach has prepared and stays safe.  (Somehow images of horror films where everyone should be safe but circumstances dictate otherwise come to mind. )

Next, last Friday a student worker stopped at my desk at MPOW and asked if I could help them at the circulation desk with a problem person who was demanding to see the manager, but said manager was involved in a very important meeting.

I agreed, as I am the Experienced One and should be able to move a Situation to a Satisfactory Conclusion.  Hurricane Sandy move aside.  The person was a non student user who had unfortunately been given wrong information and was insisting we could check out materials on a card from another library.  Now here's where it gets glitchy-- a little.  Yes this person could have the special permission to check out materials--but only if the form is filled out at the library where the card came from.  I was tempted to just fill out a form and send it over to that library.  However, I didn't.  Meanwhile the person is growing more irate as we were not acceding to an increased barrage of demands and finally we did have to call down the manager.  Our solution was to give away another borrowing card, but in the meantime it was discovered that the material desired was not at our library and there was an even greater error in communication.  The remains of this tempest was that the student left with nothing but a new card which was not desired and probably going to vent rage on the primary library for the misinformation.  We were left to pick up the debris of worried feelings and a little finger pointing but not much.  The Experienced One is still picking at things today.

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