My Librarian Heart Goes Pitter-Patter

There are times when being a Librarian is very rewarding. And, of course, there are plenty of times that it's so frustrating that you start thinking people - in general - are incompetent. Other times you get a glimpse of humanity that you weren't expecting.



Yesterday I was having a cruddy day at work - one of those days where there aren't enough hours in the day to finish all the stuff you need to do... and people keep giving you more. So, I spent most of my day huffing around, being irritated, but getting stuff done.

About an hour before my day was over, I had a customer encounter that turned my entire day around. And was very surprising considering the clientele I'm used to working with around here.
An older (for this section) guy was looking for a book that we had down in our storage area in the basement of the Library. I told him I would send someone down for it, and he could hang out till they came back. While he was waiting, I had a woman come to the desk having issues with a Nursing test she was supposed to take.

I'm sure we all have fond (*cough*sarcasm*cough*) memories of those Analogy sections on standardized tests. This was the part that the woman was trying to get help on. After looking through some of our study aid books, I decided that she might need to look in GRE study guides - because I remember coming across that when I was studying for that test.

As we were talking about this, the older guy stepped in. He told us that he teaches GRE study courses and knew exactly what we were talking about. Not only that, but he said he had seen something on that over in the adult section last week - and then proceeded to walk the woman over to the area she needed to be in.

This doesn't happen. Ever. Especially not around here. I was truly impressed and grateful to that guy - luckily we found him a copy of the book he wanted. It was just something that made me smile and think that people aren't too bad.

That is, until my next customer demanded I produce a book we don't own... but that's par for the course :). But that didn't keep my heart from doing a little pitter-patter.