Find your own &@%* books!

[houdini]

I work as a Librarian in a private company, and we work for a university. The students are technically our customers *sighs* and that's where we get problems. Because of the nature of their courses (it's a bit of a special university, with very short-term courses), we are supposed to give them a LOT of help. They get most things spoon-fed already - they get given a lot of books when they start courses, get a tour of the Library, get several reading lists and then several more for each essay they get given, print-outs of important chapters, anything we can't print scanned onto the internet, we buy in the important books so that they all have a copy...so this suck was on top of everything else.

Now, we are all very helpful. We appreciate that our classification system is hard to use, particularly if your first language isn't English. We will quite happily talk people through it, show them how to use it: we're Very Helpful People.

But when a fairly polite foreign genetleman walks in, gives me a sheet with twelve books, and says "Find them"...

Ok, english is not his first language, so I may have missed something in those few words. So..."Of course, sir." I point out the classmarks and books, mention how the classifications work and that the system starts at 1 and goes down to 9, point out where the section he wants is likely to be, and then say in my sweetest tone with a nice smile, "And if you have a problem finding anything, please do let me know."

Ooh, if looks could kill! He spent the next half hour wandering around trying to find the books (and I admit, was successful). But for whatever reason, he then brought the stack of books back to me to issue, and spent the whole five minutes of the 'transaction' glaring daggers.

He's almost up there with the chap who snapped his fingers at me...*growls*

[emax4]

It'd be nice if you could just snap back with, "hmm.. ok, this job you're commanding me to do will cost $1.00 because it's distracting me from my regularly paid duties. Funny thing is that my supervisors ask me nicely to do things, and I get paid more... "

Still, very well played.

With the finger snapping, I would snap back and ask, "what's this? (snap)"

[Sapphire Silk]

Clearly he wanted you to step and fetch. And clearly, you told him, no.

Wonderful pwnage.

[Lucky Charm]

Psh, and I suppose he wanted to sit back while you found all his books, wrote his paper, did his laundry and got him a fruity cocktail I get the same thing at work, but it's usually men's jeans. Good on you for not letting him boss you around like that.

[houdini]

Dammit, if we had fruity cocktails in the Library, we'd be too busy drinking them to fetch any for the students! Hmm, maybe my boss would agree to on-site cocktails...or beer...

[aurelemsrealm]

Just like I would lock the front doors of the store and spend my shifts sampling the selections of the beer cave if I could. It's called product quality assurance.

[rose_metal_nz]

Hahaha reminds me of the time I was browsing the library after work (so, work clothes, blouse or something). Guy must've mistaken me for a librarian ... He walks up, takes a few goes to get my attention (I zone out while I'm reading) and then throws a handwritten list at me & says "Find these!"
*Raises eyebrow* *points at computer* "There's the computer, find them yourself".
He got so mad, I can't remember my exact response but it was something like "it's not that hard, do it yourself!" - completely not realising til wayyy afterwards that he thought I was a librarian.
It'd never occur to me to do that, unless of course I asked really really nicely for help. But I seemed to have saved them some grief