I was going to write about this morning. It was one of those days and all before noon. School was out in the local district, but it wasn't the kids, it was the parents. I was going to write about the parent who wouldn't believe me when I was trying to explain that the
Ralph S. Mouse paperback we had was the same one her kid was reading in class even though the cover was different. Or about the parent who called three times wanting the volunteer hours her son worked over last summer because
she had to turn them into the High School today. And when my co-worker called her back, the cell phone was off. So mom then came in because she needed it in writing and signed, so I did and I wasn't even there last summer. Or about the parent who came in with her son who was assigned a research paper on
anything he wanted and thought the librarian would have good ideas for a topic. Did I mention it could be on anything
he wanted? So I suggested he think about his interests and spent 20 minutes taking them through a process to discover something he might have fun doing and some preliminary searching.
But I won't because something very cool happened this week.
Our part-time IS person is leaving in two weeks. It was suggested to the IS/YS staff by the former manager that we might want to consider turning her hours into clerk hours. We have an incredible amount of materials and holds moving through our building so we are always days behind on processing. The manager thought more clerk hours would take some of the clerk stuff away from us and give us more time before we opened. This would impact our night and weekend schedules and more and he wouldn't do it if we didn't want to make the change.
Alternative schedules were suggested, by us. We also knew that to really make a difference, we would probably keep the send item list in the morning and give all the clerk hours to circ just to help them keep up and hopefully not have a backlog like we do now. It was all about what was best for the patrons and good customer service. We would run leaner on our desks. Vacations and sick days may get scary, but patrons might be able to have their holds in less than a week. The circ staff may actually feel like they are accomplishing something instead of always being behind.
We were encourage to submit any random thoughts or ideas to the new manager. I thought one of my comments was blown out of proportion when it came out and caused too much discussion. It was about one small part of the change. I came to realize that it was only because they wanted me to be comfortable with the situation and were really behind me. I even had a co-worker actually tell me I had the right to say "No" if needed and not just accept the situation because I thought it was my job. This same person explained my situation better than I could to someone else and who then actually saw it in a new way.
So what was so cool? There wasn't one IS or YS person who said clerk stuff isn't my job. We knew that even though the former manager's idea was to free up some of our time, to do what was needed that wouldn't happen and it didn't matter. There wasn't one IS or YS person who was against this change. This has to happen. We would make it work. We would at least try it.
I am very fortunate and proud to be a part of this team.