I get it.

The customer is NOT always right. Sometimes they are jerks. Sometimes they are there just to make your day miserable.

And yet: our entire job, no matter what you are doing in a library is customer service.

The entire profession is built around helping people find information they need, in whatever format they need it: verbal, books, movies, programs, toys – whatever.

Customer service is all we do.

And it’s hard. It’s hard every single day. If you let it, this part of the job will make you angry and bitter and unpleasant.

I have been thinking about this a LOT in the past couple of weeks. I needed to get new social security card, driver’s license, health insurance card, passport – all those tedious documents that you need to get through life.

I absorbed a couple of good lessons.

First: I’m an incredibly privileged person.  Yes, I know this on a daily basis, and I do work on gratitude all the time. I currently have a wonderful job that I love, I have great colleagues – in the office and around the state, I’m pretty confident every month that I’m going to afford housing AND food, and I have access to all the library books I could possibly want. These things have not always been true for me, and I’m a big believer in recognizing that all of these gifts have not arrived because I work hard or that I’m a nice person. Good things arrive in part just due to being fortunate in ways you have no influence or control over – so be grateful.

I’m immensely grateful that my daily life does not involve needing to get things from social security, the driver’s license facility, or other such offices.

Because the second thing I absorbed was not new, but worth noting: the customer service in these places is awful.

Everyone I have dealt with in the last couple of weeks hates their jobs, hates the people they deal with, and – unsurprisingly – have become hateful people. They were rude, bored, uncaring, and unhelpful. The only time they seemed to be happy with work was when they were thwarting what I asked them to do.

Fortunately for me, I did not desperately need anything from these people – because it would be horrible to have my life hanging in the balance with these people who just don’t care, or are even actively trying to make me upset. And yet: it was just awful to deal with these people who showed me such terrible service. In the midst of trying not to have a stroke in excessive annoyance and frustration with their idiocy, I did take time to be grateful that I was merely deeply annoyed – my life was not actually impacted in a big way. (Let’s see if I can actually get onto an airplane with my new ID….I’m slightly doubtful. But maybe providing some substandard, actively unhelpful, service to me made their day a little brighter. Someone should get something out of it, after all.)

And it made me think about libraries.

All libraries have hard customers, and people who drive them nuts.

But let’s strive to be better than just a knee-jerk response of annoyance and frustration to people. It’s not easy. It’s very hard. But nobody deserves to bear the brunt of our bad days – even when they are the cause of that frustration for us.

None of us are constantly perfect at customer service. I know I can look back and wince at people I’ve treated badly, or could have been better to. But in the spirit of the new year, this is a great time for all of us to think about how to improve in this area with a few basic ideas.

• Positive attitude. Yes, this will not save you from bad patrons. But starting off being annoyed and angry will definitely cause the person you are talking with to catch those negative emotions. Work on staying positive, and see whether you can reduce or even turn around a bad situation.
• Show a little empathy. You don’t have to overdo this – it can be exhausting and unproductive if you overindulge. But if you take a moment to empathize with the person who has screaming children (be thankful you only have them for a short time), the one who smells bad (thankful again for your indoor plumbing), who seems incapable of understanding directions or implementing them (be thankful for your skills) – it can reduce your frustration and give you a little boost of service energy to try it one more time.
• Depersonalize situations. Hopefully you have some patrons you like, and enjoy chatting with each day. Great! But do not feel like you have to pour all your emotional energy into interacting with people who bring good or bad energy. When you remove your personal feelings from a conflict situation, no matter how small or large, it gives you a surprising boost in your ability to deal with people. (Was I a delightful example of this over the last week? No, I was not.)

You can think of many more ideas – some that work for you individually, and some that work for everyone.

You may already be a star at good customer service, you may be feeling your skills slide in the face of unrelenting annoyance from patrons. Wherever you are, it’s good to take a step back and recognize that this is a crucial skill.

We are a customer service profession. It’s all we really have and all we do. Keep striving to provide the best service you can!