The clock strikes back

In an earlier post I talked about an accident that happened when I responded to a request for help with the A/V equipment in our conference room. The group using the room had hung their homemade clock over the door so when I went in the room, of course it fell off and shattered into a million pieces. I felt terrible about it but at the same time was annoyed that they were stupid enough to hang it in such a precarious spot.

Well, I finally heard back from them in sort of a roundabout way. The leader sent a whiney message to our meeting room librarian and complained that we have treated his group very rudely over the past several months, citing the clock incident as one of several examples. He said, and I quote, "Also, I used to have a Laurel & Hardy clock, specially crafted by one of my group's members, that I would hang on the back door of the conference room at each meeting. About three months ago, one of the librarians opened the door to address me, and the clock fell to the floor into a broken, unrepairable state without a single word of apology from the librarian."

Man, that really burns me up. I DID apologize - I remember saying, "Oh, I'm so sorry!" and then attempting to help pick up the pieces, but the group members were so horrified that they yelled at me not to bother. They could clearly see it was an accident but were so grumpy about it that I could think was, "why the hell did you have it hanging in THAT particular spot?" So I was angry that their stupidity had caused me to be the agent of destruction, and I guess I wasn't abject enough in my apology.

Of course I had to respond to him, and I'm pleased to say that I (mostly) took the high ground and sent back a genuine apology (because, truly, I am sorry it happened). From his reply it seemed he was mollified, so all's well that ends well, I guess.

Vote early, vote often!

Early voting is in full swing at my library and while I'm ecstatic that people are so passionate about voting for the candidate of their choice, it has been somewhat annoying at times.

For instance, there's the lady who called to ask if there was a line to vote - she wanted the person who answered the phone to leave customers waiting at the circulation desk and go all the way out into our lobby to check. Which is kind of silly - I mean, even if there wasn't a line when she called, that's no guarantee that there won't be a line when she arrives.

Then there was the man who thought he left his cane in the voting room and wanted the staff member to go look for it. Now, we've been told that voting security is crucial, and in fact staff members have been chided for coming into the voting room, so I can't imagine the voting people would look too kindly on a staff person rooting around the room looking for a cane. Plus, if the man was able to walk out of the voting room, out of the library, and out to his vehicle without his cane (without even realizing he didn't have it), does he really need it?

And let's not forget the voting people themselves. They scolded our custodian last week for coming into the room to empty the trash, but this week they complained that the trash hadn't been emptied! There's no pleasing these folks. They feel free to come back into OUR work area to use our copier and microwave, and even have gone so far as to take food (not their own) out of our staff refrigerator.

Plus, I'm amazed at the number of people who walk into the library, right past the open meeting room door with all the people milling about, not to mention signs all over the place, and come all the way in the library to the reference desk to ask, "Where is the voting?" I want to say, "You walked right by it on your way in - how could you have missed it?"

I will be SO happy when this election is over!

Update on meeting room snafu

After our stressful morning the other day, things started looking up in the afternoon when the organizer of the group whose meeting somehow got deleted from our meeting room schedule came over and apologized for getting so angry. It's amazing what a difference a few hours can make. We were both so antagonistic in the morning during the inital confrontation but later on we had both calmed down and were able to have a cordial conversation. This is not to say that I no longer have bad feelings towards this group - with them it's always something - but at least this particular crisis was resolved with nobody going away dissatisfied.

My own difficulty with remaining calm in the face of accusations and verbal abuse is part of the problem, of course. My response to their belligerence was anger, and showing that only escalated the unpleasantness. When am I going to get control of my quick temper?? Gotta work on that.

Ommmmmmmmmm....

Doom and gloom

Well it's only 2 pm and so far today has been one disaster after another. The computer signup system was down when we got here so we called that in. The IT folks had the signup part working when we opened but then we realized we couldn't access the staff client software. This is after having both printers in the adult area go down yesterday, so we were having to move print jobs to the teen printer, but we couldn't access the staff software to do that. So we called that in. About an hour later we realized that nobody could print anything anyway, so we had to call THAT in. Apparently when they re-started the system this morning they neglected to re-start all of the parts, so we had to keep calling them in individually. Weekend tech support. Sheesh.

In the middle of all this a group showed up claiming they had the meeting room reserved. They didn't. There were at least 75 people in the lobby waiting to get into the room for this presentation, but a different group was already scheduled to use the room. The organizers got very, very belligerent with us about it, claiming it was our fault. They have caused lots of problems in the past so I wasn't feeling at all apologetic, and heated words were exchanged. In the past they've had the room booked for one date but advertised a different date, so we would have all of these people showing up with flyers saying they were going to be there, but the booking was for a completely different date. They are impossible to reach and never call us back when we leave messages. They often mess with the equipment, unplugging stuff and moving things around. So I do not have any warm and fuzzy feelings towards this group.

Unfortunately I cannot ban them from using the room due to political reasons. It would be a public relations nightmare if I cut them off from using our room. I won't go into any more detail, but that's not really an option. If only.

I ended up booting out the group that was legitimately scheduled in the room - they were a smaller group and could fit in a smaller room (albeit somewhat uncomfortably) and let the loudmouths have the large room. The whole time we were getting them into the room they were verbally abusing us. I was trying to stay calm but I didn't really succeed. This afternoon when they are finished in the room I am going to have to talk to them again to confirm the rest of their bookings to make sure this doesn't happen again in the future. Do you think I want to talk to them again? I do not.

Unfortunately I found out in the interim that at one point they WERE scheduled to use the room today, so it looks like this actually WAS our mistake. The person who used to be in charge of the meeting rooms was very careless and probably accidentally deleted their booking. So now we do have to make nice and apologize to these jerks.

Only 3 and a half more hours to go today. I can't wait until closing time. Sigh...

Meeting room mishap

We have a group that meets every month in our conference room to watch Laurel & Hardy movies. Their DVDs are some kind of European format (or Japanese format? I don't know) so they bring their own DVD player and hook it into the back of our TV. In my dealings with them before they have been haughty, impatient, condescending and just generally difficult to deal with, so I'm never happy to hear they need help with the equipment.

But this evening that's exactly what happened. Now our conference room has two doors, one leading out into the lobby and one inside the library proper. When I heard they needed help I went to the closer entrance inside the library and opened the door. Feeling some resistance, I sort of craned my neck around the door to see if there was a chair or even a person on the other side. Seeing nothing, I pushed the door all the way open, and immediately something crashed to the floor and everyone in the group gasped in horror. Their handmade "It's Time for Laurel & Hardy" clock lay in pieces on the floor.

I felt bad but at the same time PO'd because why the hell are they hanging their stupid clock over an ENTRYWAY, for god's sake? The looks on their faces, especially the guy in charge, were murderous at that point. I tried to pick it up and put it back together but it was a lost cause.

To top it all off, I was unable to assist them with the DVD player, either. While I was looking at it, several of them made snarky comments that REALLY pissed me off, so I just gave up and had them move to a different room where I knew the equipment worked.

I did the best I could but I know they are very unhappy with me. And I DO feel bad about their clock (as dorky and nerdy as it is, it's theirs, and they obviously love it), but it was an ACCIDENT, which was at least partially their own fault for hanging it in such a precarious spot.

Sometimes you just can't do anything right. Sigh...