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Calling on Jesus.

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There was a lady who came in yesterday to check out. Her fine was too high. In my system, if your fine is over $20, it prevents you from doing much of anything. It doesn’t have to be at 0, but it has to be at least at $20.

I could tell by her fines that this was a regular occurrence. There were a lot of little fines accrued over time. It wasn’t as if she had gotten some videos recently ($1 a day if they are late) and gotten a sudden accrual. I told her she would have to pay $3.50 in order to check out. She goes digging through her purse and finds 40 cents and asks me if that is enough. Uh. No. She was serious. I was too.

It isn’t like the library gets this money. It goes to a General Fund for the city. I have no idea what that money does, but it sure doesn’t buy books. But the point is still the same. If we have a rule where your fine has to be at $20 or below, it doesn’t do any good to alter that rule for somebody. The rules have to apply to everyone, otherwise what is the point of having rules?

She walks out and comes back a little later with some ones in her hand. She gives me her library card again, and it turns out she has $3.40. She looks at me earnestly. It is still not enough, and she knows it. She digs through and finds some pennies, and somehow is hoping that four more pennies will do the trick. I’m really getting stumped here. I’m really wondering what kind of math is going on in her head.

Then she finds a grimy dime, one that looks a lot like a penny, and gives me $3.50. She says she wants to give the four pennies towards her account as well. Our fines are all in 10 cent increments and it kind of messes things up to do anything less than that. I told her we don’t take pennies, so just keep them.

She said “Jesus!” She said it angrily, frustrated.

This isn’t the first time that someone has done this in front of me, and it makes me cringe every time.

I said “He has nothing to do with this.”

She said “He matters to me.” (So what about the “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain” rule, I thought to myself.)

I said that “He has nothing to do with the fact that your books are late. There is no reason to use His name as a curse.”

She was quiet. I put up the fine money and checked her out.

It may not have been my best moment. I wasn’t in a great mood that day. I’d just noticed that my “check engine” light is on, again, after just a month ago spending nearly $2000 to repair my car. My husband and I got into a little argument just before I left for work – something about how he was 3 months behind on a house repair project that had a time limit. Other people had sniped at me for stupid things before her. It may be surprising to realize that working at the library isn’t the safest of places for shy people.

I might have done this exact thing, in exactly this way, in spite of my less-than-perfect start to the day. I don’t have a lot of patience for people who act as if everything always just happens to them and they have no responsibility for their lives. It was her fault that she had a large fine – not anybody else’s. It was her fault that she didn’t have enough cash on her. It was her mistake that she thought that a lesser amount would do.

She wasn’t taking responsibility for her actions, and I think that is the core of my frustration. To then yell at Jesus for it is strange. Jesus heals the lepers, restores sight to the blind, makes the deaf hear, and raises the dead. Jesus isn’t the reason for your problems. Jesus is the solution to them.

Book addiction

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You might be addicted to books if you understand this –

That feeling to get when your book runs out before your lunch does, and you forgot to bring a back up.

When you finish a book and you don’t want to start another because you are still in the world you were reading.

That delightful feeling when you find a new-to-you author who has a lot of books in a series. Finding a series means you don’t have to get acquainted with new characters.

That feeling when you really love a book and you realize there isn’t a series, so you will never learn anything more about those characters.

Not wanting to finish a book because you don’t want it to end.

Always having a spare book in your car just in case.

Having more books on your to-read list than you have time.

Going to used book stores when you are on vacation in the hopes you will find a new favorite book.

You have library cards in vacation places you visit regularly.

You talk about book characters as if they were real.

You have flashbacks of what book you were reading the last time you were in that restaurant.

You get your friends to read the same books you are reading so they will understand what you are talking about.

You have an understanding with your spouse that you will both be reading books when you go out to eat.

A sad library book.

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A book was returned in the book drop this morning. This is what it looks like.
book 1

This is amazing. There is no way the patron checked it out like this. Sure, it has had over a hundred checkouts. Sure, it is over 10 years old. But there is no way it had this water damage when we checked it in.

Books aren’t supposed to be wavy.
book 2

Pages aren’t supposed to be falling out.
book 3

Now sure, we are human and we make mistakes. We miss things sometimes. But then it is on the patron to bring it to our attention while in the library and not check it out.

Returning it in the book drop, like we wouldn’t notice it, is really squirrelly. So of course I billed the patron. It is only $7.99, plus a processing fee. She could easily buy a replacement copy and bring it in and not have to pay our fee. We actually like that better. That way we get a copy of the book.

But that would require bringing in the book, which she didn’t do to start off with. Maybe she was busy. Maybe someone else returned it for her. But there are some things you should do in person. Admitting that you destroyed a book is one of them.

I can’t tell you the number of people who say “What do you mean I have to pay for this? You can still read it!” Or “I can’t believe I have to buy a new copy of this book – it is used!”

All books in the library are used. If they are checked out even once they are “used”. But if the patron hadn’t damaged the book, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Books should be returned in the same condition that they were checked out. This seems logical. But sadly, not everybody shares this opinion.

Books come back sopping wet. Books come back dry, but with wavy pages from water damage. Books come back with pages that were ironed as an attempt to press out the wavy pages that were created from water damage. Here’s some tips. Don’t read library books in the tub. Put books in a plastic bag if you are bringing them back on a rainy day. Better yet, don’t return them on a rainy day and just pay the late fee. It will be cheaper than being billed for it.

Water damage isn’t the only damage that occurs to library books. Books frequently come back chewed up by pets. Very common are the “dog training” books that come back chewed up. Somehow I don’t think the book did the trick. Sometimes people deny that their pets chewed up the books. The best reply was that the person said he didn’t even have a dog, and accused us of taking it home and letting one of our dogs chew it. Now, that is insane. Why would we do that? It is as if he thinks we want people to yell at us. Trust me, that is the farthest thing from our minds.

Yes, people yell at the staff in the library. It isn’t the “safe” place you think it is. Anybody can come in, and they do.

Books come back with coffee stains, syrup smears, and jam spots. Yes, we bill for that. Books come back with sentences underlined, pages dog-eared, and “bad” words blacked out. Yes, we bill for that too.

Strangest damage? A whole slew of books came back with the dust covers torn off and the books covered in a fine grain dirt. It turned out that the patron’s younger son had taken the books to the ballpark while they watched the older son play baseball. He’d taken off the dust jackets “to protect the books”. The dust jackets are on the books to do exactly that. Taking them off not only exposes the book to damage, it is also a pain to put the cover back on.

The moral of the story? You can do whatever you want to your own books. But library books aren’t yours. You get to borrow them. You don’t have the right to damage them in any way. They belong to everybody in the county. So be nice to library books, out of thankfulness that you get to borrow them.

“Hated”

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We recently went to get gas at a local store. A carload of young black males pulled up in front of us at a diagonal. They were there to get snacks at the shop and to get gas. But how the driver parked was weird. He parked in such a way that there is no way we could pull forward to leave, and there is no way another car could have pulled through. How they parked was selfish and thoughtless and inconsiderate.

Then their music was insanely loud. I was in the car with the windows closed. Their windows were also closed, yet their music was still so loud I could clearly hear it. They did not care whether other people wanted quiet or not. Through their actions they showed that they didn’t care about other people at all. One of the passengers pulled out a roll of cash and started fanning it. There had to be at least five hundred dollars in his hands.

Then I noticed the driver’s shirt. It was black and had huge letters in a white typeface. The letters took up a fourth of the front of the shirt. They spelled out “HATED”

What a way to self-identify. My thought was if you feel like you are hated, then stop acting in a way that makes people hate you. Act in a civilized manner. Start acting as if you aren’t the only person around.

Then I remember how I’ve seen a lot of black mothers talk to their children. Not all, certainly. But I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. Maybe one in ten use calm, friendly tones with their children. If they talk to their children at all it is sharply. It is hostile. It is frustrated. They bark at their children. “Stop doing that”. “Get over here.” The tone from these mothers says “you are a waste of my time. You are an inconvenience. I didn’t want you. ”

No wonder their children grow up feeling hated. No wonder they grow up angry. Maybe their mothers spoke the same way to them. I’m just reporting what I’m seeing. I’m not saying it should be like this. I’m saying it shouldn’t. I’m saying it is time to change things.

How much of this comes from the mothers reading “urban erotic fiction” with such winning titles as “Thong On Fire” and “Pit Bull in a Skirt”? No, I’m not making these titles up. Sadly, the most popular reading genre in my library for black women is “urban erotic fiction” – where the men are gangsters and the women are whores. It is junk food for the soul. Actually, it is worse than junk food. It teaches women that they are nothing. They are meat. They are things. They are something to be used and thrown away. Women read this and they learn this script. They learn that they are less than nothing. They learn that they have no purpose in life other than to get laid by a man, who is going to leave them.

Why would anybody want to put this message into themselves? This is poison.

While I support the right of everybody to read what they want, I also reserve the right to think that what they are doing is harmful to themselves, and by extension, society. I think the same of the general American culture as well. People can refuse to exercise and eat well. They have that right. But I still have the right to point out that not only will they suffer for their bad choices, but we all suffer from having sick people. We cannot possibly move forward if we are all stuck to the couch. And it doesn’t matter if we are on the couch eating junk food, or reading junk books.

It’s always the quiet ones…

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There is a lady at my workplace who seems really antisocial. Maybe she is just shy. She stutters a little, so maybe she is afraid to talk.

I know very little about her, even though I have worked with her for 13 years. She likes football. I’ve heard she used to be a nurse. She has never been married. This isn’t much for all these years of working together.

I used to say hello to her when I saw her in the morning. If she replied at all it was a grunt. More often she would turn her eyes away from me and not even look at me. She would never initiate a “hello” or a “good morning.” This isn’t personal. She does this to everyone. She does this to her boss. Fortunately her job does not require interacting with the public.

I started to think about this. Maybe she doesn’t like to say good morning. Perhaps I am expecting too much. So I thought about it more. Perhaps she doesn’t see the value of social pleasantries.

It sure makes things awkward.

When she does talk it is to complain. She will suddenly speak up and say “I don’t mean to complain, but…” and then will launch into a complaint. This is the most common phrase I’ve heard from her. This isn’t a great thing to be known for – complaining, and not being friendly. Kinda makes me think about the stories in the news, you know, the ones where they say the killer was quiet and kept to himself.

Maybe she has a learning disability, and interacting with people is hard. Maybe she is embarrassed of her stutter and has decided it is easier to not talk at all. Maybe I’m making up a story so that I feel better.

I want to have a better relationship with her, but then again, I don’t want to. Sometimes I think I don’t want to go to the effort of making it work. It takes two to make a relationship after all.

Then I think maybe I’m trying to make her into my own image. I’m expecting her to be like me. I’m not letting her be her. Maybe being quiet and aloof is how she wants to be and I need to adapt to it.

Apparently I already have. I’ve not pushed it. It has been many years.

It still feels weird.

Training, pension plans, government jobs – musings from the library.

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I’ve realized that I can’t stand training new people at work anymore. There have been so many of them it is hard to care. It is hard to form an attachment. How long will they stay? Are they going to be gone in a year, having found a job that pays more? Are they just a temp and will work at another branch?

It is hard, having new people there. They are in my way. They are underfoot. I’ve been there since the beginning. That is thirteen years of being in the same place. We have a certain routine, a lot of which I formed. There are certain ways that things get done. There are certain places where things go. I get a little bent out of shape when I can’t find something, or something isn’t restocked, or something isn’t completed.

I’m thinking I have a bit of Aspergers’. Or maybe this is just being old and being set in my ways.

I’ve tried to really invest a lot of energy into new people for all these years. I want them to do well. I want them to learn all the tricks. But then I remember that nobody told me all these tricks. I had to learn them the hard way. I had to figure it out and struggle through and then mess up and get yelled at by either the patron or the branch manager or both. I wonder why I’m trying to save these new people from all this when nobody tried to save me from it.

Maybe this is selfish of me. Maybe I should want to save them from a lot of trouble, even though nobody saved me. Maybe I’m really trying to make myself feel better by thinking I’m useful to them, or I’m trying to establish myself as an authority figure they can go to when they need help.

Or maybe I am a curmudgeon.

Or maybe I’ve spent just enough time working for a government agency that I realize that even if I give my job my all, that I won’t get paid more and I won’t get promoted and I won’t get noticed. There is something about working for the government that promotes mediocrity. The worst employee, who is just doing the minimum, and the best employee who is really inventive and creative and enthusiastic are the same in the eyes of the job. They both get paid the same. They both get the same benefits. It is kind of disheartening.

And then I think that part of my issue isn’t new employees at all. It is the fact that I dislike spending all my waking time at work. All of my healthy, productive years are given to a job. I’ll be 60 before I’ll be allowed to retire with a pension. While I’m grateful for a job that uses my skills and has a pension plan, I also resent the fact that the job gets more of my useful years than I do.

This is why I shoehorn in my writing time. I write before work, at lunch, and any other time I have a spare moment. I write in doctor’s waiting rooms. I write while waiting for my car to be serviced. I write while my husband is driving us on vacation or to go out to eat. I write all the time.

This is also why I exercise. I want to be healthy enough to enjoy my retirement when I finally get it. My parents died before they could retire. I’m very aware of how short life is.

Ideally, I’d work part time, or at most 30 hours a week, but the pension plan won’t cover either of those options. So I’m trying to fold time a little to get some living in there in the meantime. Because you never know if you will make it to retirement. You might get cancer. You might get hit by a bus. You might get stuck in a tornado. Things happen.

In the meantime, I keep having to train new people. Why have I stayed here this long? So many others have left. It doesn’t pay much. There is no real path for promotion. But if you are a people watcher, this is the best job ever. People come right up to you – you don’t have to make up stories about them. Every part of the drama of human existence happens at the library. Sometimes it is explained in books. Sometimes it is lived out in patrons or coworkers. There is a lot to learn in a library.

Honestly, I’m not sure I could do much else. I have a degree in English, but my training is in retail. Working in the library is a lot like retail. It has a better image than retail, sure, but the process is the same. And I feel really tied to the idea of health insurance and a pension and vacation and sick time. I’ve built up quite a bit of time. If I started at somewhere else, I’d start at the bottom.

And I’d be the new person, in the way, having to be trained.

Big library/little library

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There are twenty branches and one main library in our system in Davidson County. One of them is closed for the foreseeable future because of flooding. The entire basement flooded, six feet up the walls. Men in hazmat suits have had to go in and clean things out. All the books have been removed to prevent them getting moldy. The employees have been reassigned to other branches.

This is a big deal. The branch that closed was a tiny branch, and my branch is a huge branch. There are patrons that went to my branch when it opened and shortly learned that it is not their style. They now are having to come back to us. It isn’t very easy for them.

It reminds me of when I tried to leave Bank of America. I was sick of being treated like a number. I was sick of stupid rules that made no sense. I should be able to write my account number on a check I’m depositing when I go through the drive through, rather than park my car and come in to get a deposit slip. But, they didn’t see things my way. They have a lot of customers. They can’t make exceptions. I opened an account at a smaller branch and was greeted by name every time I went in. The turnover of the tellers was minimal. I got to know them, and enjoy going in. I refinanced my mortgage that was with BoA in order to begin the process of leaving BoA. Sadly, the mortgage was resold to BoA within two weeks. My master plan was foiled. I was stuck dealing with a huge entity.

These patrons are in the same boat. They want the personal service of a tiny branch, but that is impossible with a large branch. The employee who has been reassigned to us said that two hours on the desk at my branch was like a whole week at his branch. We serve 800 people a day. We can’t take the time to learn your name and the name of your children and husband and what books you like to read and how your medical history is going. We just can’t.

And I’m OK with that. It is a library. It isn’t a bar and we aren’t bartenders. It isn’t church and we aren’t priests. People forget that sometimes. There is something about a library that makes people think we want to hear all about their problems.

Sure, we care. We do. We are human. We enjoy stories. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t read books. Books are full of stories. But people aren’t like books. We can’t close them when they get to be too much. Books don’t get their feelings hurt when we get overwhelmed with what is going on. We don’t feel trapped when the problems in books are too big for us to handle. It is human nature to want to handle problems, to fix them, to make things better. That expectation isn’t there with books. Books are books, and people are people.

People are messy things. People are difficult and complicated and weird. They are amazing too. But there isn’t any training when you go to work for the library that tells you how to deal with people who feel that they need to tell you everything about their lives.

I don’t remember this happening in retail. Working in the library is a lot like retail and yet different. People treat you better, for starters. But they also share a lot of deeply personal stuff. Sometimes it is too much, too deep, too personal. Sometimes I want to run away. Sometimes I’m fascinated. Sometimes I’m grateful for the pastoral care training I’ve had that helps me to just be a calm presence for them.

“I don’t read”

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There is a lady who comes in the library who only gets movies. She has started to complain that she has seen all the ones we have. We have a very large collection of movies, but she gets several at a time so it is possible that she has seen them all.

But then she’s limiting herself. She isn’t getting any of the TV series. She isn’t getting anything educational. She isn’t getting anything that is foreign and has subtitles.

Just movies. All the time. Every time.

Somehow I can’t comprehend having this much spare time to throw away on watching movies. It totally goes against my philosophy of being mindful and not wasting your life. But it is my philosophy and not hers, and I’m trying to be here, in the moment, trying to see things from her perspective.

I’m not doing very well.

I can’t relate. I’ve suggested she get some books because we have a lot of these and she’ll never run out. Her reply – “I don’t read”. Perhaps she can’t read. Perhaps she has some sort of learning disability. Perhaps she just doesn’t like to read. She wouldn’t tell me why she only wants movies. I want to know because I want to work around it. Maybe I can talk her into audiobooks.

Maybe I’m trying to make her in my own image. Maybe I need to let her be her and not think she is wrong for not being like me.

And isn’t that really the problem when we try to “fix” someone? Tolkein tells us that “Not all who wander are lost” and we think that sounds cool. We use that as a defense when someone is trying to make us conform. But sometimes we forget it when we are dealing with other people.

Or at least I do.

Because to let someone be different, to let her be herself and not be like me is somehow to say that maybe I’m not ok the way I am. Deep down I know this isn’t true, but I feel that is my unconscious motivation.

We either like ourselves or we don’t. We either are comfortable with other people’s differences from us or we aren’t.

We often compare ourselves to others. She’s taller than me, so I’m too short. She has beautiful hair so mine is mousy. She is larger than me so I’m so proud of the fact that I exercise. She is smaller than me so she is too skinny.

See how bizarre this is? Everything is in relation to ourselves. It is as if we are the center of the world.

Remember how in the Middle Ages people thought that the Earth was the center of the solar system and that the Sun went around it? Never mind the fact that the math didn’t work out to prove this was true. The authorities (the Church) said it was true and it wasn’t questioned.

Until it was.

Galileo discovered the truth and he got excommunicated for it. The Church has an issue with truth. But so does any authority system.

Now it is time to do the same to our view of others. Instead of heliocentric, we are egocentric. It’s time to stop comparing ourselves to others and stop trying to “fix” them because they aren’t broken.

On my knees.

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I’ve discovered it is pretty easy to pray while I’m working. My job really only requires part of my attention when I’m off the desk. I can pray or meditate or be receptive to what the Spirit wants me to receive. This is where and when and how I get most of my ideas for this blog.

Today I was out in the stacks pulling paging slips. We are part of a large library system and we get requests for books to be sent to other branches. Sometimes I’m the one who goes and pulls them from the shelves. I was back in the biography section and was praying about my calling. I want to be on the right path, but I also want to know how close I am to seeing it fulfilled.

Yeah, I’m trying to make that tadpole into a frog again.

The Spirit said that it was already happening, that it has already started. The Spirit has said this before. I’m having a hard time believing this because I don’t see it yet, but I’m feeling more content about this.

Then I felt compelled to go to my knees. Right there. In thanks.

This is really weird. But I’m pulling these books and I think it wouldn’t look out of place for me to kneel down in front of this shelf as if I’m looking for a book. I kneel, feeling obedient but silly and a little self conscious. I give thanks.

It was a small moment. When I looked up, I noticed a book was facing me. It was titled “Nowhere But Up”. I took it as a further affirmation.

I wouldn’t have noticed this little bit of encouragement if I’d remained standing.

Sometimes we have to get on our knees to know we are on the right path.

Nametag

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I wear a nametag at work. I guess it is better than wearing a uniform. It identifies me as an employee, as someone helpful.

But I hate wearing it. I’m all for people knowing I work there. I’m for people asking me questions. I also stand behind my actions so I don’t care if someone feels the need to call downtown to the Main library and complain that I wouldn’t let them do something which is against policy or illegal.

But I do mind the over familiarity this encourages. I don’t like strangers calling me by name. That seems like a huge boundary violation to me. This may not be a problem for other people, but it is a problem for me. Perhaps it has to do with how I was raised, where my space, my thoughts, and my body weren’t mine. I was stolen from in many ways as a child. It has taken me many years to come to terms with the amount of damage that was done to me, intentionally or not.

Or perhaps I’m not alone in feeling creeped out when someone I don’t know acts like he knows me.

I’m glad that my legal name is Elizabeth, but I go by Betsy. So there is a layer of distance there. It isn’t an easily guessable nickname either. It is a way of differentiating. When a stranger says “Hey, Elizabeth” I know they aren’t real. I know they only have my name from my nametag.

They think they are being personable, but they are actually being the exact opposite. They didn’t get my name from a person (me), they got it from a piece of plastic.

It is important to call people what they want to be called, if you want to be personable. I knew a guy named Michael who would get really violent if someone called him Mike, or Mikey. It was too intimate, too casual, too familiar for him to handle. He once told a story about slamming a guy’s head into a table for calling him Mike, after being told not to.

That is a bit extreme. He has anger management issues. But hopefully you get the idea. Names matter.

We don’t have a naming practice in the average American culture in that you get to pick your own name. It isn’t really yours, so much as something that was assigned to you. But it is yours, in that it differentiates you from everybody else in your family.

Sometimes people will call me by another variant of Elizabeth – I’ll get Liz, or Lizzy. I think this is a terrible nickname. I hate how it sounds. And also – it isn’t my name. Why would I respond to it? You might as well call me Donna. Once again, people are trying to be familiar and they haven’t been given that permission.

The bad part about my job is that I am expected to be friendly with everyone. That in and of itself isn’t bad – it is where that goes. I think people are interesting, and I like being friendly with people. I don’t like it when they assume that my being friendly with them means that I am their friend.

Because I’m not. I’m not their friend. Sometimes I am, and sometimes I enjoy it when they come in. I enjoy talking to them. Those are the people who get “Betsy” as the name to use.

So, be mindful when you use the name of someone who works at a store. When you use their name because you’ve gotten it from their nametag, you aren’t being friendly. Oftentimes, you are at an advantage. Often, they don’t have your name. It isn’t friendly – it is a power play.

Here, I use Betsy, because I’m being very personal here. I’m sharing myself. I’m trying to be as real and as open as possible. And, well, it goes well with Beadhead, which has been my nickname for over half my life. So, in a way, I have named myself, and I have given you permission to use my “real” name.

Writing a blog is very public and very private at the same time.