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Aug. 30th, 2023 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreJust had a 10-minute phone conversation with a library patron who is (understandably) saddened and upset about some of the recent changes to our website - she was a big fan and heavy user of a lesser-used feature that has gone away with our move to a new system. And that sucks! I have a lot of sympathy for her distress - I hate when stuff I love about a website goes away with no useful replacement.
However. This is about her 10th phone call on the subject, and she keeps insisting that no one has offered to help her with the new system, no one has answered any of her questions, no one is willing to listen to her concerns. At this point, I think everyone at our branch and members of the operating council and someone from the Foundation has talked to this lady. It's just that none of are giving her the answer that she wants, because we're not going to revert the website back to the old system. It sucks, and I'm sorry, but it's not going to happen.
She's cutting the library out of her will, apparently.
After my phone call, I was talking about it to my manager (since I had promised to - once again - pass along the patron's complaints) and my manager mentioned that this patron is a retired librarian from another system. Of course she is. I love my coworkers and I think we're great people, but I have learned in my 18 years working here that anyone who walks up to the desk and says, "I used to work in a library" is invariably going to be the worst patron imaginable. They act as though they're uniquely virtuous ("I never have overdue books!"), they can't accept that procedures might have changed over the years since they retired or be different in a different library system, and they're always convinced they know best. (They also frequently want to reshelve their own books, which I don't understand at all.)
Like, I'm sorry this lady is sad about our new website and I sympathize with many of her complaints but if she became an ebook-only patron I wouldn't shed a tear about it.
However. This is about her 10th phone call on the subject, and she keeps insisting that no one has offered to help her with the new system, no one has answered any of her questions, no one is willing to listen to her concerns. At this point, I think everyone at our branch and members of the operating council and someone from the Foundation has talked to this lady. It's just that none of are giving her the answer that she wants, because we're not going to revert the website back to the old system. It sucks, and I'm sorry, but it's not going to happen.
She's cutting the library out of her will, apparently.
After my phone call, I was talking about it to my manager (since I had promised to - once again - pass along the patron's complaints) and my manager mentioned that this patron is a retired librarian from another system. Of course she is. I love my coworkers and I think we're great people, but I have learned in my 18 years working here that anyone who walks up to the desk and says, "I used to work in a library" is invariably going to be the worst patron imaginable. They act as though they're uniquely virtuous ("I never have overdue books!"), they can't accept that procedures might have changed over the years since they retired or be different in a different library system, and they're always convinced they know best. (They also frequently want to reshelve their own books, which I don't understand at all.)
Like, I'm sorry this lady is sad about our new website and I sympathize with many of her complaints but if she became an ebook-only patron I wouldn't shed a tear about it.
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Date: 2023-08-31 05:38 pm (UTC)So I sympathize.
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Date: 2023-08-31 06:03 pm (UTC)Sometimes if you can package it as "yes, I don't like it either, but unfortunately the decision wasn't up to me and it's not feasible to change it back" and that helps. But you've probably already tried that with this lady. You'd think former library peeps would get how little power we current library peeps have in these situations.
All we can do is try *not* to be that patron one day when we retire, I guess.