Maintain a Positive Attitude

With the economy in sad shape, library use has increased around the country. It's good that people are remembering and discovering the resources available at the library. With all this busy activity, heavier workload, it is easy to forget the real reason we are here in the library. We are here to serve.

Dealing with stressed and frustrated people takes patience and time. Just about every time we work through that frustration to get to the real need and hopefully meet that need, it is well worth the effort. We win another person sold on the value of the library. We get the satisfaction of a job well done. We learn new tools for our customer service tool box. Everyone gains and wins from the experience.

After attending a library customer service workshop with Susan Berk, I took time to think about what sets me off and to think of ways to respond without letting my emotions and feelings get in the way. It didn't take much time to think back about some customer encounters that I wished had gone differently. I went over the scenarios and thought of some scripts. Since that time, I had a few difficult encounters, but I was able to diffuse the situation and I went way less stress and frustrated myself.

Another thing I tell my staff is to work, really work, at maintaining a positive perspective. We are not just locating a book for someone or helping a patron set up an email account, we are making a difference. We open a new world to that someone, or a new career to the patron. There are endless possibilities in the library and we are opening up those possibilities to everyone who walks through our doors. For every difficult patron you may have, there are a hundred that walked away happy. You found the book someone was looking for. You were able to find that difficult to find statistic for someone else. You may just be the smiling face that asked someone to have a nice afternoon that turned his or her lonely day into something a less lonely.