How To Ruin Someone's Day

Gage and the iron rod that was blasted
through his skull.

Yesterday my day was ruined when I didn't get my senior discount at a grocery store that shall remain nameless so I don't get any more tweets from the Employee Retribution Department - and it "ruined my day." That's what I told my husband, anyway, and proceeded to do some serious moping because what is the point of getting old if you don't reap some minor benefit of sixty cents off or something.

Anyway.

My husband said, "Don't let this ruin your day." I pouted more. "Well, only let it ruin your day for a little bit," he amended. "Like an hour or two?" I bargained. And really, if I hadn't embarked an hour later on nattering about my reading of an article about Phineas Gage, my ruined day would have continued with sullen silences and meaningful sighs, even in the face of BBC Radio Comedy and All the Jigsaws In the World.

So, if I don't want the careless clerk tracked down and lectured/humiliated/docked/fired, then how do I intend to remedy this situation? Well, by golly, next time I will repeat my demand for the senior discount right there at the till even if there is a line behind me. If I want that discount so badly, I will just have to keep insisting on it, despite the embarrassment entailed and the annoyance of people behind me. If the company does anything, it should be to tell everyone how this seemingly minuscule slight causes pain and suffering all out of logical proportion. I mean, look at Phineas Gage! His iron rod was blasted through his skull one day and did he whine about it? Did it ruin his day? Well, it may have ruined that day. And maybe a few after that ...

Most of my job is customer service (that which isn't playing with puppets, singing songs, and making simple crafts with children), and I have to rain on someone's parade every day. I get no pleasure out of telling people they can't have a laptop because they don't have a child with them. It would make my work life easier and more pleasant if I could just hand out the laptops willy-nilly without having to check to see they 1) have a child with them, 2) have a clean library account, and 3) don't run off with it. But it does give me pleasure to find a book for someone and put it right in their hands in a timely manner. I don't give up after looking for one minute or pausing to answer someone's question. I will stick with it until I have either found something or determined that what the patron was looking for just plain isn't there. I would be mortified to discover I had done less.

So, unnamed clerk, you are forgiven. I'm sort of over it. Some day when you look in the mirror and see your parent's face looking back at you and you reel in horror, that free coffee (ew!) for being over 55 or sales tax forgiveness of 1% for being over 85 may be all there is to make you feel better and you'll understand.

By the way, Sam Kean's book, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons sounds delightful!

Torn

I consider awarding myself a new badge.
Which one is for Existential Dread?

A mom with two toddlers in tow (riiiight, like they aren't bouncing off the walls) brings a woman to the library to help her with a résumé. 

My mind starts running like this:
Gosh, those kids are bouncing off the walls. Is the Children's Room the right place for this? This is a loud adult conversation - will this intimidate the children whose space this is? They're doing this right at the coloring table. Oh, never mind. That other little girl is going to color there anyway.

Then it moves on:
You know, we all sit around wishing we could help someone and thinking we have no time for it, but this mother, who has her hands full of toddlers, is making the time and is actually doing something. I should be doing something. She is actively helping someone get a job. I should be teaching someone English in my free time.

And then I get all angry:
Why? Why does this mother have to do this? She's making a  résumé for this woman and doing a practice job interview (that the woman is floundering around in). Surely some of my taxes are going to pay some people to do this. In fact, the Jobs place is barely two blocks away from here. I've been there myself when I was looking for work. 

I have actually asked my co-workers about this. Why do the people come here instead of going to the Job Connection? Someone there sat down with me and went over my résumé and gave me advice and showed me how to look for jobs on what passed for a search computer in 1990. A co-worker's response was: We're nicer. 

Really? We are?! OMG, how horribly must those people be treating the job searchers over there?! I know we get really cross with patrons gaming the system and we are not supposed to help them too much (we can get them started, but we cannot sit with them and walk them through using computers and getting an email address - we have classes for that), but despite all our sighing and frowning and glowering and such, we're nicer than the people at the Jobs place?!

I don't believe this.

In the end, the mom watched her kids' puppet show and made them pick up the amazing messes they made before they left. But I am still "so utterly fussed and rattled and torn." I don't want to deny the nice mom her good feelings of helping someone - a specific someone - in distress (no job, nowhere to live). I like being helpful, too. It feels nice. It feels much better than glowering at someone for perceived transgressions. And most of that comes from dealing with the public day in and day out. 

So, perhaps this is what has happened over at the Jobs place. Day after day they deal with people who have no computer skills (and most jobs have to be applied for online these days) and less and less desire to actually get work. 

I remember how frustrating it was for me. You just want to give up. I was out of work for four years. Eventually I took poorly paying positions, one after another, until I was able to get this library job. But being unemployed is disheartening, even when you are in a comfortable situation - I was living with my parents and had plenty of money saved. Sure, living with my parents put me back in the Child Role again, and I was pretty unhappy about that, but I had no utility bills and didn't have to wonder where my next meal was coming from. There's a big difference there, and I was still dispirited. 

In the end, the experience of both the unemployed and the people tasked (and paid) to help them wears them down and breeds a dull hostility. At least I get to help a little kid find a book and I get to watch the excitement when it's something he really, really wants. The Jobs people don't get that. I guess. So it's up to us at the library to take up the slack. 

But should it be?

I don't know.