I heard someone talk about complaints

Context
I'm a long term care visiting volunteer for the Caddo Council on Aging's Ombudsmen Program for nursing homes, so I get to hear a lot of residents' complaints about the facility I visit. Today, I had occasion to discuss these complaints with a staff member, and she expressed her belief that some people will always have something to complain about and will never be satisfied.

Commentary
I just have one quick thing to say about customer service: the fact that someone always has something to complain about doesn't eradicate our obligation to address the complaints.

What did you hear today?

I saw a call for experts

Context
An e-mail list I subscribe to called HARO (what this stands for and more details here) is supported by ads. One of today's ads came from an internet media company. They were looking for experts in various fields to star in podcasts distributed to a number of their websites. I'm not providing a lot of detail because the terms of service on HARO say I can't reproduce the contents of the e-mails elsewhere without their express permission.

Commentary
One of the reasons I joined the HARO list is because they say something I believe: everyone is an expert on something. When I read the ad today, I thought, "I could provide an expert opinion on a couple of topics, like customer service or writing."

On the other hand, I don't have an expert's credentials in either of these fields. I'm interested in both and believe I have useful things to say, but does that make me a credible source? Maybe I'm just someone with an ax to grind and a fondness for hearing myself talk. OK, no "maybe" about that, but you get my point.

In fact, it's even hard to say if people who do have credentials are credible. I recently borrowed a book called Wrong: Why experts keep failing us - and how to know when not to trust them from the Jefferson Parish Library. Even though I haven't started it yet, I doubt it's lacking in examples of experts failing us.

So how does one know what to believe? I try to use a three-pronged approach:

1) What are the credentials behind the theory? Credentials are far from infallible, but for a starting point, I find the CDC more believable than an actress on the topic of vaccines. Also, credentials imply commitment to me, someone who considered the subject important enough to jump through what may seem like meaningless hoops to the rest of the world because he/she really wanted to arrive at the correct answer.

2) How does this theory fit in with what I already know? I may be an expert on nothing else, but I do know my own mind. Too much reliance on it means I only listen to people who support my prejudices, but too little and I end up unmoored and unable to tell anyone why I've chosen one course over another.

3) Does this mode of thinking yield good results? In almost all cases, only time will tell on this one, but once time has told, I don't get to rely on #1 and #2 to override the evidence before me.

#3 makes me believe flexibility is the key to untangling the expertise knot. If you follow an expert of any stripe for just as long as her/his approach yields good results and no further, I think your rate of failure will be quite manageable indeed.

What did you see today?

I heard about an exclusive service

Context
I’m attending a class just prior to the COSUGI conference this week. It’s the same conference as this post and this one, and even this one referred to, but they’ve changed the name of it to accommodate a merger of two vendors. This year’s conference is at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort, where it's hard to get off the grounds of the resort itself on foot. If you want to go to Disney attractions the resort provides a free bus, but all of us in the class have found it difficult/expensive to go anywhere non-Disney related. Today I went exploring and found a Lynx stop in the “cast member” (that’s what Disney calls staff) parking lot. When I went to the concierge desk to ask for a route map for Lynx, they told me that stop is for cast members only.

Commentary
I try to stick to "just the facts" in the Context section, so now I'm going to add some emotion.

1) I mentioned that we were finding it difficult to travel to non-Disney destinations. I didn't mention that we've been here for five days and we're desperate to get off the reservation!

2) The people at the concierge desk were genuinely perplexed by my desire to ride a public bus. I, in turn, was astonished that Disney asserts enough power in Orlando that they can reserve a bus stop (probably several bus stops) for their employees only.

I'm also a little curious about what would happen if I attempted to board a bus at the "cast members only" stop. Disney prides itself on customer service, after all. On the other hand, and I mean this as a compliment, cast members at this resort have proven remarkably gifted at saying "no" while still smiling brightly. I'm still annoyed by the exclusivity of the service, though, and not just because I'm being thwarted in my plans.

I think it's also because of the message the hotel seems to be sending. One of the reasons my classmates and I want to go someplace "normal" is that Walt Disney World is unrelentingly entertainment-oriented. This is, of course, not surprising, but it can be a little wearying. Even my incredibly nice husband is concerned that he may go off on the next phone operator who wishes him a "magical evening."

This attitude may be particularly grating for me because when I go to a work conference I go to, um, work, not play. (OK, I blog, but sometimes that feels like work!) I'm not trying to sound goody-goody; I'm just a person who does not generally mix business with pleasure. I don't go to theme parks when I supposed to be attending a conference and I don't usually check e-mail when I'm on vacation.

What's interesting is I think the administration at Disney understands this work/play separation very well. That's why the public bus stop, where mundane things like commuting to and fro a job happen, is hidden a good ways away from the magical guest areas.

What did you hear today

I saw an irate message

Context
A few days ago I received a call from a library patron who was puzzled because she couldn't use our Overdrive service. After investigation, I let her know that was because she held a Green Gold card. These cards are issued to patrons whose home library is in a parish near ours and allow the bearer access to our physical resources, but not our electronic ones.

The patron was dismayed by this for two reasons:

1) The Overdrive service was the only reason she had applied for the card, so she could have saved herself a trip from Minden to Shreveport.

2) Her friend had applied for the same reason, and she wasn't being blocked.

I apologized for our mistake in not explaining the Green Gold restrictions better and, trying to cover all bases, asked the patron if she wanted to rat out her friend so I could block her. The patron said, "No." The next day I received a message from a fellow staff member letting me know who the "friend" was. I had not solicited this information, but I used it to go ahead and block the second woman.

Today this e-mail the friend's husband sent the message to the "support" link on the Overdrive website. Messages sent to this link go to an account that everyone in our department reads.

"Well it seems the rumor is true. We heard that even with the Green Card and a membership in the Shreve Library, we were going to be cut off. You see we live in Minden, and made 2 trips to the Shreve Library with the intent of joining to be able to download E-Books. This was addressed up front and approved and now we are shut off. I am really disappointed. You see we spend probably more money in Shreveport than we do in Minden so its not like we don't support your city. I served 20 years in the Air Force and I don't recall saying I would not help if Shreveport was bombed or in some sort of trouble. I served my country including Shreveport. If us checking out an E-Book puts your system in that much of a bind then God have mercy on your city. Its all about greed from the man on the street to the Mayor and President. Thank goodness I don't live and die for your perfect city. Oh yes, card #[redacted] is the account and good luck on your greed."

Commentary
I could of course make many, many comments about the e-mail message above, and I'd be lying if I said we didn't pass the message around and make several of those remarks this morning, to general hilarity.

However, I'm more interested in talking about my immediate response when I saw the message. I started thinking of several replies I wanted to make to the patron and I could feel my pulse racing right along with my brain. In other words, a fight or flight response (as is customary for me, I was leaning toward "fight").

This was irrational. First of all, I'm a religious pacifist (yes, I'm reusing links from previous entries, cope!). Also, under no conceivable set of circumstances was I facing a threat. Truthfully, the circumstances should have provoked no other response but laughter and pity, but there it is. I didn't behave violently, but my body wanted to. My pacifist principles only go so far; they don't completely change my makeup. In fact, the Bible says my subsequent snarkiness does constitute violence.

Where does that leave me? Mindful of how wrong my immediate reaction to a situation can be, for one thing. Glad to be a Christian for another. I can say, along with the apostle Paul, that the good I would do, I do not do (another version here). Some people may think of this as a cop-out; I think it's just a realistic assessment of how badly we need the grace and love of our Father.

What did you see today?

I heard a patron express appreciation

Context
A woman called my workplace today wanting to confirm her reservation of our computer classroom for a group she was sending to the library. She did not, in fact, have a reservation, but I went ahead and made one for her. It was a little later than she wanted because I had to wait for the machines in the classroom to be freed up, as they are used by the general public when no classes are in session. In order to fill the gap between the time the session was due to start and when the computer classroom would be available, I made a reservation for the group to use our meeting room as well.

After the group arrived, they stayed in the meeting room much longer than I expected, so long that they missed their computer classroom reservation entirely. The computer classroom is one floor below my cubicle in the Main Library, so I was called downstairs to resolve the situation, at which point I told the teacher (who was not the lady I had spoken with on the phone) I would try to go upstairs and make another reservation. After I had accomplished this and checked back with the teacher, she said, "I appreciate you."

Commentary
At one workplace or another that I've occupied over my lifetime, there was a sign over someone's desk that said, "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." I was irritated with the group today because I felt like they didn't have their act together, and when I bent over backward to get them what they needed anyway, they were too disorganized to take advantage of it! I even suggested to the teacher that she reschedule for another time, rather than continue to make the machines in our computer classroom unavailable to the public, but she wheedled some more reserved time out of me. And then she said she appreciated me. I couldn't help myself; I said, "it was no problem." I just couldn't stay mad after she expressed gratitude.

The library-oriented comic strip Unshelved recently ran this installment, where the protagonist mentions you can get away with saying almost anything about a person if you immediately say, "bless him/her." When I was little, I was taught that "please" and "thank you" were magic words, and today's incident really makes me believe it. I guess on the simplest level I was feeling angry because I thought my efforts weren't being valued, and then they were!

I wonder if a lot of our anger comes from feeling underappreciated. Let's try an experiment: the next time someone's mad at you, try thanking them for something. Or blessing them.

What did you hear today?

I saw a waitress trying to do her job.

Context
I'm still at the SIRSI Superconference. For the second day running, I went to the hotel buffet for breakfast. It was much busier today than yesterday, and unlike yesterday, I didn't ask for anything special to drink. Today when I completed my meal I had to flag someone down and ask her how to get a check because unlike yesterday, I didn't know who my waitress was. The woman who eventually brought my bill was very apologetic.

Commentary
Two blog entries in two days! Conferences are inspirational!

You may think this is going to be another rant about poor customer service, but it's not. It's going to be about something else near and dear to my heart: hog-tying professionals.

I like breakfast buffets, but I think if I was professional waitress they would bug me. First of all, any time you work in concert with self-service you get tipped less ("I did all the work. Why should I tip her?"). But I also think it would get in the way of doing my job. Consider: a good waitress has a routine for getting all her tasks done quickly and efficiently (e.g. get drink orders, bring drinks, get food orders, bring food, check progress of meal, bring check, pick up check, bus table, done). She probably also has an internal clock that tells her approximately how long each of these tasks takes. As customers, part of what we consider good service is that each stage of our meal is neither rushed nor unduly delayed.

Now change the scenario to how a buffet works: the waitress only does some of her tasks and the rest are taken over by people who a) don't really know what they're doing and b) don't follow her standard rhythm at all. And yet she's still expected to know where they are in the routine so she can respond when she is needed. The structures that have been put in place to make the procedure easier for laypeople make it more difficult for her. But we still don't tip her!

As a librarian, I see this situation play out when it comes to information seeking. I have training on how to make databases give up their secrets. I won't bore you with the details. But these days the expectation is that everyone should be able to find their own information. Since most people aren't trained in how to do that, interfaces become more forgiving of vagueness and mistakes. Perhaps this means that most of the time when you search for something on the Internet, no matter how little you know about what you're doing, you find something useful somewhere in the results you're offered.

But often when I do an online search, I have to take extra effort to weed out results that don't really fit my query because the program thought I might have made a mistake formulating it. What makes life easier for you makes it harder for me. As a result, my hard-won skills become devalued because "anyone can find adequate stuff on the Internet." Possibly, but if the user-friendly software would get out of my way, I'd find better stuff faster. I'm a professional, after all.

What did you see today?

I saw some people sitting around talking

Context
I went to give blood today. The person who attended to me struggled with almost all of the tasks associated with drawing blood and the end result was that my pint had to be discarded due to air contamination. Most of the time she was struggling, four or five of her coworkers were sitting around talking.

Commentary
Because of the Quaker testimony on integrity, I try to make the Context part of my blog as straightforward and fact-based as possible. Now that I'm in Commentary, I can tell you I was royally pissed off about the situation this morning.

I am what they call a baby blood donor, so I try to donate regularly. I enjoy the chance to do something that helps out and normally causes me very little trouble. Today's missteps at the blood collection site not only inconvenienced me, they made it impossible for me to donate for another eight weeks, which is likely to inconvenience some babies! So I'm a little perturbed about that.

However, I found the woman's coworkers blasé attitude even more disturbing. It's entirely possible that there was nothing they could have done to improve the situation, but from my viewpoint they looked like their work was of no consequence at all to them.

So that got me thinking about salvation. You don't really want to know how my mind works, because you'll become just as crazy as me, but here's what happened: my husband and I had a discussion about religious universalism yesterday in which I was generally in favor of it (my opinion on this topic changes almost daily). His main objection to universalism is that it fails to give enough importance to God sending his Son to die for us. In response I said, "yeah, but salvation doesn't seem all that important to some people."

That made me wonder why salvation is more important to me than many people I know, so I resolved to spend some time thinking about it today. Here's the progression I then went through: I think salvation is important because I believe in sin, which I know is not true of all everyone. Most of the people I know who don't believe in sin are moral relativists. I think moral relativism starts from a good place, i.e. "there are different moral standards in different contexts." However, it too often seems to end up at "since there's no absolute morality, it doesn't matter what I do!"

Do you see how I got back to the blood center workers? I believe that the moment we start believing that what we do doesn't matter, we start doing wrong. I also believe we get really depressed because it sucks to not matter, but that's an issue for another time.

What did you see today?

I heard a student compliment my patience

Context
I teach computer classes at the Shreve Memorial Library, both for staff and patrons. Most of my students in the patron classes are seniors. Today a student praised me for being patient even though they learn slowly.

Commentary
I get the "patient" comment a lot. I was taught that it's rude to reject a compliment, so I always say, "thank you," or "you're kind to say so," or whatever. However, what I was thinking today was, "it's not like I have something better to do."

Said in a certain tone of voice, the above sounds churlish, but I mean it sincerely. The library pays me to teach people to use computers, so at that moment I don't have anything else I'm supposed to be doing. I'm not actually being patient; I'm just doing my job.

In my mind, here's what impatience is: it's what happens anytime I believe my current situation (waiting in traffic, going to school, listening to an elderly aunt tell the same story for the umpteenth time) is keeping me from truly important business. Psychologically, it's a bizarre combination of helplessness and arrogance. I feel that I have no control over the circumstances, but if I did I would put my time to much better use. As a person who has a strong sense of time being a precious commodity, I can get very impatient indeed.

My religious beliefs make this a problem, though. A certain amount of helpless feeling reminds me that I'm in God's hands, so that's a good thing. However, the arrogance that asserts I can put my time to better use than God does is foolish indeed. It's forgetting what my real job on this earth is and who's the boss. I don't actually have better things to do than what He places before me.

What did you see today?

I saw my coworker encourage someone to fill out a form

Context

A patron at the Shreve Memorial Library saw us giving a computer class today. When she asked about registration, I handed her this form. She then asked about scheduling, and I told her that we have a months-long waiting list. She said she couldn’t wait that long, so my coworker showed her a self-help program on the computer. Then she encouraged the patron to fill out the form anyway.

Commentary
I am the youngest of four children by quite a bit and, as any of my siblings will gleefully tell you, that means I’m spoiled rotten. I guess they say that because I only do what I want to do. In some ways, this makes me a wretched person. I have almost no sense of obligation, and I get royally hacked off at people who try to make me obliged to them. I’m even suspect of gifts, in case they come with strings attached. Also, when I don’t like the situation I’m in, I tend to bail. Hence my checkered employment history.

However, I think there’s something good about being spoiled rotten. For one thing, I’m not subject to peer pressure at all. Also, in my case at least, it tends to be a global mindset. I want everyone to do what they want. It’s one of the reasons I’m good at customer service, but would be terrible at sales. I don’t try to convince people to do something, I try to make sure they’re able to do what they want. In fact, I sometimes frustrate the people who sign up for computer classes, because they’ll ask, “what should I take?” Ick! “Should” sounds like an obligation! So I ask them right back, “what do you want to learn?”

My coworker’s actions today puzzled me, because her mind went in a direction mine never would have. My way of working is the patron asks us for something she wants, and we let her know if we can provide that. Yes, we have computer classes. No, you can’t take them right away. End of transaction.

My coworker took extra steps, showing the patron the self-help program and talking her into filling out the registration form anyway. I think the former was a case of trying to make our available services fit the patron’s wants, which was absolutely appropriate. The latter, however, shaded into trying to make the patron settle for what we have. It felt like my coworker was saying, “go ahead and sign up to wait for a few months. You said you didn’t want to, but maybe you didn’t really mean it.” I think that’s wrong. I know what I want. I try to spoil everyone else by assuming they do too.

What did you see today?

I saw my sin

Context
Shreve Memorial Library, where I work, held a Staff Development Day yesterday. One of our speakers came to talk with us about the Fish! Philosophy. Fish! has four basic components: play, be there, make their day, and choose your attitude. After I’d been back at work for a little over an hour today, I had a conversation with a coworker that caused me to mentally convert “choose your attitude” into “slam their attitude.” A little while after that, I recognized how wrong, wrong, wrong that was.

Commentary
It is my perception, correct or not, that I have a more sensitive conscience than other people. My sins are like Cole Sear's dead people; I see them all the time. This is one of those traits that some people think must make me unhappy. On the contrary, I consider my conscience a huge blessing from God for a couple of reasons:

1) I’m really, really aware of other people’s sins, too, as you can tell by my comment about this morning. I’m already pretty insufferable about it; imagine if I didn’t see the log in my own eye.

2) I cannot be a Christian without it. People have many different definitions of Christianity, but mine, which probably owes a great deal to my upbringing in the Lutheran Church, is this: it’s the religion that exists because people sin and they need to be saved from it.

I believe in Jesus Christ is the person who saves me from my sin. Having a tender conscience reminds me of my sin and so, perhaps somewhat ironically, reminds me of everything Jesus has done for me. So every time I see myself sinning, I see Jesus. Yay! St. Paul has something to say about whether we should continue sinning so grace can abound, but that’s a topic for another time.

What did you see today?

I saw that reality isn't as bad as my imagination.

Context
I disagreed with my boss about something today, and thought she was going to be mad about the disagreement. Turns out she just didn't have the same information I did, and that information caused her to change her mind. Duh!

Commentary
My title looks strange to me. I think of people most often saying, "xyz wasn't nearly as good as I anticipated it would be." I don't usually imagine good things; I imagine bad things.

I don't think this makes me a pessimist. I don't actually believe the worst possible thing will happen, I just prepare for it. Unfortunately, "prepare" sometimes means running through a veritable smorgasbord of stomach-knotting outcomes just so I'll be ready for each one.

I also don't think this makes me a dour person (people who know me well might disagree). In general, situations do not turn out as badly as I expect them to, and I'm constantly pleasantly surprised by that. I'm rarely disappointed by life, and in that respect I think I'm much better off than many people.

For most of my working life, I've held customer-service-oriented jobs. My favorite customer service slogan is, "underpromise; overdeliver." Well, that's what life does with me on a fairly consistent basis.

In a way, this is a meta-entry for my blog. I only discover the superiority of reality over my imagination when I open my eyes. Or, more accurately, when God forces me to open my eyes.

What did you see today?