Saturday, April 7, 2007
Don't Touch That Phone!
Very busy day behind the desk: one of our receipt printers kept going down, and a (large) family came in to get the family cards they'd registered for online, and when we established that, for whatever reason, we didn't have them, my colleague had to handle the transaction then and there: paying multiple fines on individual cards, etc. etc. It took FOREVER and the people just kept coming. I was moving them through as quickly as I could, which wasn't very quick at all: three people in a row needed cards themselves, the phone rang and rang....it was stressful and frustrating, and the bins were filling with materials that people would ask about and after saying, for the fourth or fifth time, "No, I'm afraid we haven't been able to discharge anything you've brought back yet" I was tempted to post it on a sign. In the middle of the mayhem I beckon another customer up to my computer, and he has a printout of his account from what I assumed was his home computer. This is never a very good sign, and sure enough, it wasn't this time, either. He wanted me to discharge his items while he stood there- to verify to his satisfaction that I had done so- and wanted me to explain to him why, if he had renewed his CDs online, he was being charged a late fee on them. I looked up his account and found that he had successfully renewed them, but that they were several days late when he had. I told him I'd waive his fine since he felt so strongly that he was being charged in error, but he insisted on paying....complaining the entire time that he shouldn't have to. I quit listening at that point, nodding and "hmmm"ing, as he went on and on about how many people he knows who agree with him that there ought to be a disclaimer on our webpages stipulating that it is unreliable and should be used only in desperation because "not one thing about it is satisfactory." Right about now- he'd already been served and really needed to move on- the phone rang, and I reached for it, still nodding and appearing to be sympathetic, and he says, "Don't touch that phone. I'm right here in front of you, and it's your job to serve ME first." Jerk.
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And, see, I'm confused about the guy who renewed overdue items from home. I can't make the system do that. If something is overdue, it won't let me renew. I don't understand how he managed that.
But beyond that...how do you keep getting these special people? Is there some "come-hither" look you give the cranky ones that just makes them seek you out? And how in heaven's name did you keep from spitting in his eye? (Did you go ahead and answer the phone? I think I would have, just to end the conversation with Mr. Charming.)
He couldn't have renewed them from his home computer. He had to've called, because you can't renew something that's overdue online. In the course of the conversation, he mentioned being in the hospital at the time of the renewal. I'd be willing to bet someone else renewed them for him (which we don't do, but if someone calls up and says, "my husband/father/uncle has had a heart attack and is in the hospital, could you please renew his CDs" I bet someone would've done it anyway: what're you going to say? "No, he has to call?")or he renewed them when he got home. He kept saying, "I don't mind giving the library .75 but this is just wrong. Those items were renewed." Well, they were...but were already late. I bet he'd told someone to renew them, they didn't get right to it- having other things to do than be concerned for Mr. Cranky's three overdue CDs- but told him he/she had, not realizing that he would be fined, since they were already late when renewed. I run into this problem all the time and have worked up a little speech to alert the person calling that yes, I can renew your items, but THEY'RE ALREADY LATE. Renewing them doesn't erase the fine you've ALREADY ACCRUED. Happens over and over. (There's another renewal issue that I see regularly too that confuses customers: if they call to renew/renew online before the item is due, it renews from THAT date and not from the original due date. I have a speech for that as well, because there are a lot of people who assume they can just tack an additional week onto the date their DVDs were due and are surprised and indignant when they're fined, because, after all, the items were renewed.)
Mr. "Don't Touch That Phone" subtly altered his story in the middle of the transaction (from "I renewed these online" to "these were renewed"), no doubt because he figured out that I knew he couldn't have renewed his overdue CDs online. I don't think he had any intention of paying his 75 cents until it dawned on him that I knew, from his account, that he had renewed his items when they were already late. He tried to blame computer error then but some of the snottiness had gone out of him. Not enough, though: that order not to pick up the phone was pretty offensive.
There's a personality type I call the M.O.D. (Mean Old Dude): it's the kind of elderly man who thinks nothing of speaking sarcastically/bossily/impolitely to someone who is "serving" him. I've waited on Mr. Don't Touch That Phone before, and he is never pleasant: always angry about some aspect of the library, e.g., how unsatisfactory our selection of classical CDs is to him. I told him that time all about ILLs and how he could order CDs from other libraries and he bit my head off then too: he shouldn't have to order anything! He should be able to go to the closest library and find what he wanted! Etc. Um....okaaaaaaay......
I don't have a monopoly on jerks, actually: later that same day a woman came up to the desk with more than five DVDs and Sandy told her our policy and asked (there was another woman with her) if they had two cards, meaning that if they were both to check out, each could take up to five DVDs. The customer thought Sandy was asking if SHE had two cards, and she did: she's been using her daughter's card because she lost a book and her own account is blocked as a result. Sandy had to tell her that she couldn't use her daughter's card, and she insisted she'd been doing it, so Sandy's explaining that since the account comes up with a woman's name, there would've been no reason to assume it was her daughter's account and not hers, and the woman proceeds to tell Sandy that of course we knew it was her and not her daughter! Why, she's in there all the time! That all the librarians (she illustrated this by waving her hand at the counter, where I was trying to appear absorbed in anything but what was going on in front of Sandy) know both her AND her daughter and we've been allowing her to use the card etc.(Note: I didn't know this woman from Adam. And if she's a regular, why didn't she know she could only take out 5 DVDs?) She left in a huff: a living example of another classic scenario: you lose a book. You're not- shockingly- trying to blame it on the library: you've lost it and you know you have. However, rather than pay for it, you simply never use your card again. This is so common that there ought to be a name for it, and comes up when applying for a family card/getting caught using someone else's card/ or- my personal favorite: school book report time, when hordes of irritated moms descend on the biography/geography/science shelves and come up to the counter with the book their kid absolutely must have because (of course) the report's due tomorrow, but when you scan her card....I can often tell before I call up the account if this is likely to happen, based on the degree of impatience the mom (it's almost ALWAYS a mom) is showing. The first time this happened to me, I'd just started in circulation and figured it was one of those once-in-a-blue-moon situations (the mom in this case was very, very angry. Her account was actually marked "barred" due to an extremely overdue book that belonged to another library, which had fined her the cost of the book plus an additional $10 fee that I couldn't explain...not that she was giving me the opportunity. She was employing a technique (this should also have a name, it's so common!) that drives PODs crazy: you're trying to help, but the customer's talking, talking, talking; cutting you off constantly with a barrage of words that won't stop coming. I couldn't figure out how to open her account because of the "barred" aspect (override wouldn't do it; you have to go into "modify," and technically, you shouldn't unbar it anyway if another library has barred) and asked Trissa to help me (huge line had formed by this time, too.) This customer had done another classic thing: she was returning the book in question but hadn't put it in the bins: it was in the stack of books she wanted to check out for her kids' (who were all with her, observing their mother being a jerk) reports. So I say the name of the book and she snaps, "I'm returning that now!" as though I should've realized that was her intent. Hmmm. So I discharge the book, have to get her card (again) to reopen her account, she's still barred, and even with the book's price now removed from her fine, she's still over the limit, because there's another book (one of our items, this time) she's being charged for, as well as our $2.00 processing fee for a lost item, AND the mystery $10 (this turned out to be a fee the lending library- Elyria, I believe it was- charges when they turn an account over to their collection agency.) Well. She has no intention of paying for the truck book- claims she knows right where it is and is going to bring it back- and certainly isn't paying any $10 for something I can't even explain to her, and by the way, what do we think we're doing charging a $2 processing fee for a lost item blah blah blah. I'd been on the job no more than two or three days and was in over my head with trying to figure out the "barred" status (this is pretty rare) and so on and STILL HAVE TO TELL HER SHE CAN'T CHECK OUT! It was awful. There's her kids, whining "But Mooooooooommmmmmmm, I neeeeeeeeeeeeeed my booooooooooook for class tomorrrrrrooooowwwww," she's furious....yeeeesh. But there you go: she'd had no problem just not using her (family) card with two "lost" books on it, until her kids needed book report books. Classic scenario. Classic.
PS
You BET I answered the phone! Contrary to what Mr. "It's Your Job To Serve ME First" thinks, we do indeed answer the phone regardless of whether or not we're helping someone else. I don't like to (it doesn't seem polite) but the danged things ring all day long and have to be picked up, even if all you can say is, "I'll be right with you."
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