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.