Spirit messages

I get a 'phone call from Milkbeck Library:

"I'm calling on behalf of the volunteer who's doing the family history session. He can't get any of the People's Network PCs to log onto the network."

Two points here: the person ringing was the member of staff responsible for that day's running of the library, including providing access to the Internet for the public; and it's their job to have logged those PCs on at start of play,

Sigh...

A few words from a graduate from the Rank Charm School

We're not allowed to fill vacancies at the moment, in case the jobs need to be needlessly destroyed in response to a doctrinaire hatred of public services displaced as part of the efficiencies. But we still need to keep the doors open so we're using people from an employment agency. Unfortunately, this means that we're starting to employ women below the age of fifty at Umpty Library.

A customer greets a new, young, face at the counter:

"Hello love, I've not seen you before, are you new here?"

Bunty leans over and says:

"Don't get used to her. She's a temp."

Smells like teen spirit

This is wrong on so many levels…

Some of us have our sexual magnetism wave the white flag and give up at an early age. Not Mr. Tallyhassen, one of the regulars at Umpty Library. Evidently he still has it, even at the age of 74 judging by the conversation I've just overheard.

"I've just been helping Mr. Tallyhassen with his email."

"Ooh… Mr. Tallyhassen. Have you smelled him?"

"Oh yes. I leant over to point at the screen and it was all I could do not to go all funny at the knees."

"I know what you mean. Lovely."

Ovaltine was a blessing

Half the staff are just getting over the lurgi and the other half are knee-deep in cough drops. Even Lucy, who takes stoicism and self-denial to extreme lengths, has had to admit defeat and go home to a hot bath and industrial strength Covonia.

The effect on public service goes further than our struggling to staff the counters and presenting the service as a collection of red-cheeked shivering wrecks. A customer came into Gypsy Lane Library this afternoon and put her scarf and gloves right back on.

"Eee... It's cowd in here!" she said.

"Is it?" asked Pansy.

Pansy's been running such a high temperature that she hadn't realised that the heating had tripped off at half ten this morning.

All the wood you can eat

Posy's had to persuade an overly-amorous couple to cease and desist in the lending library.

"In the end I had to show them a medical dictionary."

It will not grow outside the lab unless it is deliberately injected or sprayed into a goat

Ouch.

A customer comes in to Helminthdale Central Library. It's Posy's turn to be on the reception desk.

"Good afternoon, can I help you?" asks Posy.

"Are you new here?" asks the customer.

"No, I've been working here more than a year now."

"Is that right? I wouldn't have thought: they're not big on smiling in here."

Never use a mobile phone while you're peeing

As part of our ongoing commitment to the healthy living agenda we're stocking a lot more information about Men's Health Issues. You know what I mean: Men's. Health. Issues. Quite so. In particular, we're stocking a few monthly magazines that explore the issues concerned in the discrete and unsensational manner fitting for The Stoic Northern English Gentleman that they can use for easy reference in the reading room upstairs in Helminthdale Central Library.

All they have to do is know that we stock them, go to the enquiry desk, ask for a copy of one of the magazines; sign a receipt; read the magazine; go back to the enquiry desk; return the magazine and receive the cancelled receipt as a receipt of return.

To read a magazine in the reading room.

"We've had people steal magazines before now," explains Eileen.

Frozen wastelands

Billy Meredith walks by, doing as close to an impersonation of Ernest Shackleton as I ever want to see at the workplace. The mobile library's heating packed in six years ago so it's going to be a nippy sort of day for them and their customers. Especially seeing as the vehicle's so dilapidated these days that the customers elect to stand outside to have the books handed out to them.

"It's the wind chill factor," explains Billy. "When you get the wind howling through that gap in the floor by the rear axle it cuts you right to the bone."

The anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority

Posy's just been dealing with a customer who's a distance learner doing her degree online. Posy, who's fresh out of library school, told her about a lot of the free academic library resources you can find on the web; talked her through signing up for a few free e-journals; and sent her away with a spring in her step.

So of course somebody has to take her to one side to tell her that she "pitched that too high."

I despair.

There are parts of this service that imagine that every enquiry can be answered with:

• "It's on that shelf over there."
• "There's a PC over there, you can look it up on Google."

or

• "Not today, thank you."

Four engagements and a hospital visit

"Hettie's been on the 'phone," says Maybelle. "She says that one of their customers has been in twice today to use the computers and what should she do about it?"

I'm surprised at the question.

"The same as she has been doing for the past ten years, surely?"

I don't know why it's an issue, it's not as if people are fighting for the computers at Catty Library. Libraries love a bit of rationing.

Good luck with your OFSTED, Mr. Chips

"I had an awful morning at Pottersbury Road," Deirdre moans, "the kids were running amuck."

"Did you tell them to pack it in?" asks Thelma.

"Well, no."

"I think that might be why."

Which one do you think was a teacher?

A million miles from the Ovaltine

Going through the library I pass by Frog's Summer Stories Session. He's using one of those Nick Sharratt books that are split down the middle so that you can play mix and match with the pictures ("Exquisite Corpse" as the Dadaists would say).

"A bath full of custard!" he said. "Have you ever had a bath full of custard? How do you think it got there? Do you think it came through the taps? Cold custard through that one and hot custard through that one? Perhaps it's all cold custard - ewww! I bet that would clog up the plugs!"

I listened to this and looked at the faces of the children and wondered what the fuck we were doing making him sit in meetings listening to gobshites telling us how clever they are at engaging with the community.

Not good uns, just recognisable

Not a good idea...

We're coming up to end of day. The staff on the counter have switched off all but one terminal. Three staff are behind the counter waiting for time's up. One is serving a queue of customers at the terminal that's still switched on.

I'll make a point up being up here tomorrow evening and perhaps lend a hand if the circumstances recur.

She's been out all night frightening policemen

A customer has been into the library raising Cain and spitting feathers about the book she'd just read.

"Filth," she snapped at Norma. "Absolute filth. What have you got to say about it."

"Well.. The Library Service doesn't write the books, we only buy them."

"Fancy wasting the taxpayer's money on filth like that. Disgraceful. Who do I complain to about this."

"You're doing a very good job of complaining to me about it, but if you want you can fill in one of our customer feedback forms and I'll make sure it gets given to the right person for them to reply to you."

"Hmpf. Well. I suppose that's good enough."

"Can I help you with anything else?"

"Have you anything else by the same author?"

As worn as the palms of a bored monkey

I've spent the morning in a meeting about a programme that's none of my business. (Well, you know how it is when you're bored and you find a party you can gate-crash.) I left it feeling old and dejected.

It's a subject I know a bit about and have practical experience with and I used to care about it deeply. Ten years ago I would have been chipping in there like a terrier, chasing every key issue like it was a rat smeared with aniseed. I would have had a note book filled with ideas and cross-references to pieces of work we were already doing, with notes to try and connect the players involved. My notes for the morning are:

Possibly? See if Jim knows about this one.
Argh!!!!
no, but we should
bollocks to that one matey
check emails from C___________
not
the next person who mentions 'channel shift' will be required to provide a definition

Which isn't inspiring.

Looking round the table I felt yet more old and tired and jaded. There were but a couple of us left in middle age. We nodded over coffee and compared battle scars. The enthusiasm of youth around the table was uninfectious. Earnest and knowledgeable enough, all freshly-scrubbed and with clean collars and brand new Helix pencil cases (though I noticed that one girl from the Strategic Management Support Team had 'I love PRINCE2' scrawled in biro on hers). I wondered if I weren't becoming even more jaded than I pretend to be. Perhaps I am. Perhaps. More dispiriting is the realisation that for all the talk about customer engagement and performance and delivery the major change in local government over the past twenty years has been a shift of focus away from the services we provide towards the processes of the ticking of boxes. All the talk this morning was about the machinery of bureaucracy and the needs of the machine.

You might like to bear this in mind some time when you're really in a hurry and the person serving you has to break off, answer the 'phone and ignore you awhile so as to meet the council's mystery shopper response time targets.

Orchids for Miss Blandish

It's been pointed out that although we've quite a few books on breast cancer and cervical cancer in our Healthy Living Collections there aren't any on testicular cancer and none on prostate cancer less than five years old.

"Ooh," says Kitty, "if they're checking themselves there I hope we're going to be issuing them with rubber gloves as well."

By the way, how is your ping-pong?

Fun at Senebene Library. A lady comes in to use the toilet (according to the district auditors this is the primary function of a public library service). Lucy explains that the light's on a sensor and comes on automatically when somebody goes in.

"Oooh! I can't be doing with that! I'll have to leave the door open just in case."

Lucy manages to persuade the lady that the door needs to be pulled to, for modesty's sake. And for everybody else's sake too, judging by the five minutes of prolonged grunting and straining that follow.

Then the lady starts screaming. Lucy rushes to the door.

"Are you OK?" she asks.

"You think I'm crazy, don't you?"

"Not at all. I'm just worried that you might need help. Are you OK?"

"I am crazy, you know..."

I knew that when she wasn't busy being an international terrorist she had a sense of humour

Teachers. There, I've said it. Some of my best friends are teachers. But some teachers need a hard dose of reality, possibly because they've only ever gone to school, gone to college, gone back to school and not even been allowed to write their own letters to parents.

Last week, one of the teachers at St. Ignatius Lilo Primary School arranged for her class to visit Epiphany Library. This is routine stuff, we do it all the time. We're a library service. We encourage classes of schoolchildren. We let them borrow books. We suggest books and stories suitable for the children. We suggest books and stories suitable for the teachers and the classroom helpers. Wherever and whenever possible we try to provide a bit of value-added with a bit of a story time or some reading games. Which is why the teacher wanted to come to the library: she'd already been a few times and it had been a good thing.

Unfortunately, she wouldn't be able to come to the library herself this time but a colleague would be doing the honours.

Doubly-unfortunately we've got a few people off sick, a few on maternity leave and a few vacancies that haven't been filled, so we're struggling for staff to keep the doors open. It became horribly apparent yesterday that the staff at Epiphany Library would "only" be able to welcome the class, show them around and help them borrow as many books as they liked but that she wouldn't be able to do a story time as she'd be having to deal with the other customers as well (she's also having to do the caretaking duties but that's another can of worms). So Posy rang the school to explain the situation and to stress that while we were very happy to see them we could only give them the key deliverables. The teacher seemed OK with that and all was well.

The kids came in, were welcomed, were shown round, etc. And all went swimmingly until the final moment of the visit when the accompanying teacher turned to the Library Assistant and, instead of saying "thank you," said:

"You should have spent all your time with us instead of standing round at the counter answering 'phone calls. It's very unprofessional."

By and large we have extremely professional (small and important "p") front-line staff. Far too professional for one of them to point out that a well-paid role model's dissing someone on half her salary in front of a class of impressionable young five-year-olds isn't exactly the acme of professionalism.

There's never a labrador puppy when you really need one

Bronwyn's covering at Umpty today. There's been the usual trouble with vandals there lately so they have to keep the toilet doors locked and customers have to ask for the key. A little old lady asked for the key, which Bronwyn duly proffered.

After a while Bronwyn started to worry.

"Oh shit. She'll have forgotten and put the key in her pocket and wandered off and I don't know if there's a spare anywhere."

Unfortunately she was on her own and the library was busy so she couldn't nip over to investigate.

After a few minutes another little old lady wandered up to the counter.

"Excuse me, do you have any paper?"

"There's some scrap here if you're wanting to make a note of anything."

"No, I mean toilet paper."

"Toilet paper?"

"My friend's using your loo and she's just texted me to say there's no paper and please could I get her some."

Dracula has his cloak and you have your cardigan

The staff in Helminthdale Central Library don't have the time to make notes in the day book about whether or not someone's reported problems — nor, indeed, the nature of the problem — but they do have time to make notes like:

"Challenged two children in the library to find out why they were looking in adult non-fiction. They were looking at books about cars."

and

"Challenged lady using a computer in the children's library. She claimed she was OK to use it as she had a child with her in the library."

[Note: all our computer sessions are staff-mediated, so anybody using one of them will have had prior permission from a member of staff.]