Thursday, November 03, 2011

things i will say...

...when I become a professor at library school.

Raise your hands if you like books. Good, good. Raise your hands if you like people. Good, good.
Now put them down and think about this: do you like people when they are nice to you or do you like grumpy people? Because that's what it is to be a "people person." You like people even when they are not giving you the correct information, when they are acting ignorant, when they need help irrationally. This cannot be taught. If you do not like those people, you might as well decide now to become something else when you grow up. Because even if you become a cataloger and sit in your basement office, you will have to deal with librarians. And sometimes, you will have to sit at the reference desk.

***

I dream about these things, I do. I wake up and create these scenarios, of things I will tell my students. Since I most likely will never have a son or daughter, and won't be taking my nieces for long drives in Pittsburgh, I will probably never be able to explain why you change lanes after the U haul (because people turn in that lane) or why if you get a green light, you keep going and turn at the next intersection, not at Elfinwild. But if I get into grad school, I will get a chance to share my from the front lines info about working in a library.

Yesterday I watched a really awful "customer service" video. It was one of those 17 minute deals, short enough so that you could pause it a few times to talk about things and still not go over a half hour, something you could show before you had a meeting. I sort of remembered that I had watched it before when I saw the accompanying worksheet. This guy was trying to cover every transaction in a library and show the right and wrong ways. I bet this guy has a similar video for cardiac nurses. Since I'm trying to watch these videos and write reviews as a form of comp time (read: work in my PJs) as I recover from the sinus surgery, I decided to research some YouTubes. I found a 6 minute video that gave the same basic information, but gave heart reasons. Because in the end, customer service is not about the 3 P's or remembering mnemonic phrases. It is about the heart. Do you like your job enough to respect the people you work for and with? Will you help the unhelpful? Because if no, then maybe you should make a career change.

***
So yes, I'm recovering from the surgery. I worked 4.5 hours at work and 1 hour at home, which included doing Mother Goose (where I sing with babies and their mothers) twice. This morning, after the most bizarre mix of dreams, I woke up at 9:43. Since I nodded off around 12:30, that would be over 9 hours. Which is about what I've been sleeping, lately. Roughly 9 hours.

I would write more, but I actually have a lot of errands before work today.
  • Call admissions person.
  • Go to Pharmacy, ask about a medication
  • Go to Pscyhiatrist appt, ask about that medication
  • Drive to work
  • Lunch (somewhere in there.)
  • Work at least 4 hours.
And when I come home, a fresh new episode of BONES, the premiere of the seventh season!!

(Bones is what I watched as a part of my recovery. There was one channel I watched, the bones only bones only bones. Somehow it soothed me.)

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