Everyone Behaves When the Boss Works

The branch manager worked the evening shift with me last night. At our branch, the Info Desk is a nice, big, curved counter, with a short end at the entrance to Children's, and a tall counter pointing into the rest of the library. Most evenings (we close at 9 p.m.), both librarians work side-by-side out at the desk, so it's a great chance for a Beginner (me) to learn from everyone else's style.

I haven't worked an evening with the Boss in a while, and the incidence of Freaky People has been high this few weeks, so I was glad for the chance to observe her strategies. Only, nothing particularly zany happened! No challenges to needing a card to use a study room, no complaints about the noise, no possessed computers. I might have shushed a pair of women chatting on and on by the printer, but at that same time, the Boss and I were making final choices on some books to order, so that didn't seem fair.

Mr. You Have a Name did come in just before the Boss came out to the desk. He needed the classifieds -- one of only three or four very popular resources we keep behind our desk, and the only one for which we will ask to hold onto your library card. He wanted to make a scene about how I was going to "ask him for his first born" [Yeah, um, No thanks.], but he could see someone else was waiting, so he kept it short. He spent a lot of time over the classifieds and gave them back to the Boss with no drama that I know of. He seemed to corner a mom and her two boys to talk their ears off, but, no, she seemed to know him because she asked him a follow up question! And I was set to leap to her aid so she could excuse herself gracefully. A Circ Staffer (dignified, experienced, unflappable) later reported that Mr. Name studied our DVDs for a while and then struck up conversation with her about why it was all "boring literary stuff" -- an odd contrast to the earlier mayhem observation.