A mysterious phone call

I was working on the 2nd floor desk on a Sunday afternoon the day after our big Festival of Words, given every other year by the library's American Indian Resource Center. Not long after we'd opened, I took a call from our AskUs Hotline, the short-answer reference phone service that also acts as a central number for the entire library system. "She didn't say why, but I have a caller who is asking for the 2nd floor desk" was how the Hotline librarian introduced the call. As it turned out, she was on the cleaning staff of the service that the library uses, and she wanted to make sure it was okay that she'd moved some chairs and tables back after the festival was over. "I knew they weren't in the right places when I cleaned this morning, so I moved them -- but then I worried that I shouldn't have done that." I assured her that not only should she not have worried, she'd done us a favor and deserved our thanks.
Laura, associate librarian

Sometimes a blind phone call on the desk can be not great news (for example, someone looking for a lost phone, which is almost always gone forever, especially in a building as large as my library), but in this case, I was happy to talk to this lady. She really did deserve gratitude for what she'd done -- it was above and beyond what she was being paid to do, and it helped staff the next day, even if we didn't realize it.

(Having moved my share of chairs and tables in the library after events, I was especially grateful when I knew what she'd saved me from that day.)

Her call made me think of a few different things that I'll try to bring back to some kind of public-library-administration meaning.

First, I was impressed by the level of commitment to doing a good job for the library -- by someone who wasn't even working directly for the library, but through an intermediary hired by the library. (If that sounds a little convoluted, that's intentional, because the process seems rather convoluted.) I mean, she even called the next day to make sure that going above and beyond her job was okay. Who would do that if it didn't matter to them?

People naturally want to do well in whatever they do -- something I try to keep in mind when a waiter gets my order wrong or the cable company "is experiencing an unusually high volume of calls".

Next, I wonder if the library ever originally had a janitor or cleaning staff that they directly employed. My guess is yes, and that contracting out cleaning services was an efficiency suggested, who knows how many years ago (20? 30? more?). Paying a service is no doubt cheaper than paying a direct employee, who you would have to also kick in health insurance, vacation days, and lots of et cetera.

The library is, of course, not just an idealistic conception of lifecycle learning and dedicated relationships and all of that emotional stuff I tend to value and talk about endlessly. It's also a building that must be cleaned. Sometimes, a lot. (Bathrooms, especially.) I certainly wouldn't want to do it -- I have a hard enough time keeping my own home at the level of barely acceptable.

Nevertheless, I appreciate that, in order to run a library without wasting the public's money, such efficiencies are necessary.

But I'm still glad there are people in the world who care enough about what they do -- even if it's not deemed "skilled" by our society -- to follow up in the way this lady did. She taught me a good lesson in librarianship, actually: pay attention to others, go out of your way to help, and double-check to see if what you did helped.