The following theme appears throughout the book (you should be able to recite it from memory by the end):
Every library employee will pay attention to his or her own safety and the safety of his or her colleagues. Every employee will strive to provide great customer service to all patrons, even when those patrons are challenging or difficult. And every employee will work together to make certain the code of conduct is enforced in ways that are firm, fair, consistent, and assertive.
This is an empathetic model for service excellence and one in which the consistent application of library policies and codes of conduct can go a long way toward creating more uniform responses to and for patrons and toward having the library be a safe place to visit and an enjoyable place to work.
When I ask library people, “Who is in charge of safety and security for your library?,” the most common answer is, “The police department or sheriff’s department.” Some people will say, “The library director,” and a few brave souls will give me the correct answer: “Everyone who works here and even the patrons. We’re all in charge of safety and security, just like in this nation and in our communities.”
Safety and security at work is everyone’s job. This includes the library director, every department head, every supervisor, all full-time and part-time employees, library board members, Friends of the Library group members, elected officials, and even patrons, who can and should tell us about safety or security situations we need to address when they are using our branches. There are not enough police or sheriff’s deputies to take care of every single situation. We must use them wisely and for those incidents for which their specific type of expertise is required. The rest is on our shoulders.
Since it’s a part of all of our job duties, we must agree to take care of one another here by being proactive. That doesn’t mean we go around looking for problems that aren’t there or creating confrontations with patrons in an attempt to turn the library into a place that’s too strict about the rules and no fun to visit.
Facility safety and security is a big responsibility and an important one; we’re talking about people’s lives here. And since we know we already live in a world where crime and conflict and violence are real possibilities, it helps to have some absolutes when it comes to our methods and approaches to keeping staff and patrons safe. I suggest these five:
▪ We will treat all patrons with respect, even and especially when we disagree with their behavior. We won’t use “profiles” about threatening, dangerous, or violent people because they don’t exist. We will accept all patrons, without having to accept their inappropriate behaviors.
▪ Our library organization won’t tolerate crimes, threats, or acts of workplace violence. We won’t wait for events to make smart security improvements. Security and safety at our facilities is a work in progress.
▪ There should be consequences for patrons, outsiders, or criminals who violate the law, our codes of conduct, and our safety and security policies.
▪ We will offer support and assistance for every employee and every patron who asks for or needs help with safety or security concerns, including bringing in law enforcement.
▪ As to our work culture, we will agree that employees’ asking for help does not mean they don’t know how to do their jobs with patrons; it just means they need help at that moment. And we will ask all staff to do their jobs safely, not just do their jobs. There’s a critical difference between the two.
When you’re watching out for one another and keeping safety in mind, you are in what I call Condition Yellow. This does not refer to some kind of rare tropical fever but simply to your ability to pay attention to your safety and security anytime you’re on the library floor, in the stacks, at the service desk, in transit between the floors of your facility, entering or leaving your facility, or in view of or in contact with the public. Condition Yellow represents the everyday level of alertness that you use in your job, but you should keep in mind the other two security levels: Condition White and Condition Red.
Perhaps it’s best to view Condition White along a spectrum. It serves its purpose when you are on a break, in the back office where it is safe, eating your lunch, chatting with colleagues, or safely behind the scenes and otherwise not actively engaged with patrons or other strangers. In those instances, Condition White means relax, catch your breath, and regenerate your energy to finish the day with as much of the same useful stamina as when you arrived. The other end of the Condition White spectrum is when you are caught unaware by a situation or a patron’s behavior because you weren’t paying attention and didn’t consider the possibility that he or she would erupt. The operant phrases for the not-good Condition White are these: “What just happened?” “I didn’t see that coming.” “I was caught off guard.”
Here’s an example of Condition White in action: I live in a small mountain town east of San Diego, California. We’re big enough to have a Starbucks, but not big enough to have two. On a regular basis, I will watch men and women drive into the Starbucks parking lot, park their expensive SUV or fancy truck, leave the engine running, and dash into the coffee shop to get their favorite iced or steaming beverage. When they return to their (quite expensive) vehicle with the keys still in the ignition, everything is fine, they hop in, and drive off. However, I can’t help thinking that sometime an enterprising young car thief will jump into their $45,000 automobile and drive away with it, thanking them silently for making it so easy.
Condition White is when you make mistakes about interpreting people, safety, or security based on what Hollywood security expert Gavin de Becker calls “The Myth of No Past Problems.” This myth gets its label from the fallacy that because yesterday was boring at work, today will be boring at work; because the last time I dealt with this patron he or she was cooperative, he or she will be just as cooperative again today.
Condition Red gives you two choices: Get out of the dangerous situation immediately or, if necessary, protect yourself by fighting back. I prefer the first to the second, as I’m sure your supervisor, library director, HR representative, municipal attorneys, or joint powers insurance carrier does as well, but I’m not discounting the need to protect yourself physically. The majority of the discussions in this book are for what I call “psychological self-defense”—how to outwit, outthink, outmaneuver, or outtalk difficult people. But the book also covers (briefly) how to protect yourself physically since there is a time to talk and a time to move away smartly or protect yourself, as any reasonable person should do. Many people have done brave and heroic things to protect themselves when faced with violence and lived to tell about it, even if they originally had thought they never could.
These three elements—self-protection, anger and stress management, and working smart—are certainly important when viewed alone, but in combination, they can work to keep you safer (and saner) while you interact with patrons.
You can’t take care of others if you’re not safe from harm. When you are working around people you don’t know, it always makes good security sense to stay at least arm’s length away from them until you feel more comfortable coming a bit closer. When people feel crowded, they often react with anger, so give people their space, especially if you see that they are starting to get upset.
It’s also important to stay out of the face-to-face zone with angry people. Phrases like “He got in my face” and “She got in my space” exist for a reason. Try to approach angry people at a slight angle, just to the side of either of their shoulders.
You can use proxemic barriers when dealing with hostile people. Proxemics has to do with that bubble of space we all carry around ourselves. We engage with most people using “social space.” We use “personal space” around our friends and people we know, like, and trust. We let people we love into our “intimate space.” To limit angry people from accessing our physical space, we can use available proxemic barriers, like tables, counters, chairs, windows, and even the telephone (“No need to come down here, sir. We’ll e-mail you what you need”).
Read situations with angry or entitled patrons by examining their tone, facial expressions, and body language for signs that they feel deeply embarrassed, humiliated, and/or disrespected; maybe there are no good solutions or you see escalating anger or sudden rage. In these events, their next response is often to use violence, and when that happens, you have every right to disengage, physically leave the situation, and go get help, including calling the police. You can’t just walk away if a patron raises his or her left eyebrow at you, but you are under no obligation to stand at your desk or on the library floor and wait to be assaulted either. Justify why you left and got help after the situation has stabilized.
You can’t take care of others or yourself if you’re losing it. As my customer service training colleagues like to remind me, when it comes to dealing with difficult or challenging patrons, who may use mean words to try to degrade you, your job, or your efforts, always remember QTIP: Quit Taking It Personally. The majority of the time, angry or entitled patrons aren’t mad at you personally; they’re mad at who or what you represent—an employee of a public space entity that has rules, a code of conduct, and policies they find irritating, chafing, or not meant for them.
It’s just business; don’t take bad encounters with equally bad patrons home with you inside your head. If they ruin a night of sleep for you, then they win, which is not what you need or want. They don’t have the right to abuse, threaten, or harm you, but you will have to use your patience, perspective, and customer service skills at all times when dealing with every patron in general and for those problematic patrons in particular.
The best way to manage your personal stress, either throughout your day or especially when dealing with demanding, entitled, angry, or threatening people, is to control your breathing. (“You aren’t going to give us a lesson on how to breathe, are you, Steve? We’ve all been breathing for many years.” Yes, I am.) Stressful breathing is short, shallow, and anxious. It raises your pulse rate and blood pressure to uncomfortable levels. When you’re in the fight-or-flight mode that comes during stressful breathing, you can create a vicious cycle: The shorter your breaths, the more of them you need to take. Without good oxygen control, your body shifts into fight-or-flight mode faster than you want. You get tunnel vision and tunnel hearing, as the blood leaves your brain and moves to your extremities. All of this makes it harder for you to think, speak, and act effectively.
In contrast, stress management breathing is slow, deep, and calming. Practice this when things are calm around you and you have a moment of transition: Inhale deeply, hold it for a second or two, and then exhale deeply, hold it for second or two, and start the next inhalation. Repeat for about twenty breaths and you will see instant results as your pace slows and the environment around you clarifies. Make this your mantra: “The more out of control the situation is, the more I need to control my breathing.” (Appendix D offers some additional material for you on stress management.)
This last concept asks you to know what to say, what to do, when to stay or go, who to call, and how to get help when dealing with challenging patrons. Getting help is no sin and is not a reflection of your customer service skills as an employee or a library professional. Most times you can use good communication skills to solve a patron’s problem; sometimes you just need to get another employee or supervisor with a different approach.
Think about this concept of “the right person for the right patron in the right situation at the right time” as an alignment of sorts. Human beings align and connect with one another for a variety of reasons, including race, age, gender, religion, country of origin, neighborhoods, hobbies, and lifestyles. You can use this concept to your advantage in service situations by trading off with one another based on who gets along with the approaching patron the best. You’ve certainly seen this many times in your career. A patron comes in who seems to like you but hates your coworker’s purple guts, or here comes the patron who can’t stand you, and tells you so, but seems to connect with your colleague in a way that’s both obvious and a clear signal for you step away and let them interact. Once you figure this out with your colleagues, you can start “trading off” with them for those patrons who seem to align best with each of you. It’s not always possible to do this, but when it is, you can choose to go with the patron’s flow instead of trying to swim upstream.
My first understanding of the critical importance of alignment came when I interviewed double workplace violence murderer Robert Mack in a California prison in 1993 for my Ticking Bombs book. Mack told me he was a twenty-five-year employee of his company, General Dynamics, when he was fired by a labor relations manager who was twenty-five years old. In his depressed and angry mental state at the time of his termination, he took this to be a great insult. How dare the company send a guy who was in diapers when Mack started working there to fire him? Who knows whether bringing in a longtime HR executive to handle his termination hearing would have made any difference in “aligning” his emotional state and thereby prevented him from shooting two people, but the possibility is certainly worth considering.
A key component of working smart is your ability to document bad behavior, using an informal memo or e-mail to your boss or a more formal approach, like filling out a Security Incident Report. Here’s one example where after-the-fact documentation can help protect your professional reputation: You are speaking on the phone to an increasingly angry patron who starts cursing at you. You warn him once that he can’t speak to you this way if he expects you to help him and tell him that if he continues, you’ll hang up. If he keeps cursing, keep your promise (firm, fair, consistent, assertive) and hang up. Take a few stress management breaths and then document the conversation, including the actual curse words, verbatim.
Here’s why: When this type of patron calls back to complain to your supervisor or, better yet, shows up in person to meet with your library director, he or she is often wearing a shiny halo and a set of tiny angel wings. This is what the director will hear: “I’ve never been treated like that in all my years!” or “I was shocked, insulted, embarrassed, and now I’m thinking of speaking to my lawyer.” It’s important to depict accurately exactly what the person said—not just “He cursed at me” but what specifically was said—to help your boss justify why you did what you did in light of what the patron said. Your boss should say, “My report indicates you called our employee a ‘stupid mother@!#$&%’ at least twice. We don’t allow our employees to continue with the call at that point.”
▪ Know that a good predictor of future bad patron behavior is past bad patron behavior.
▪ If you impose no consequences for a problem behavior, expect it to stay the same or escalate.
▪ Don’t trade security for convenience. Lock employees-only doors, protect yourself and your colleagues, and use your security devices, policies, and procedures.
▪ Don’t rationalize irrational patron behaviors.
▪ Don’t ignore safety or security problems; they rarely go away.
▪ Listen carefully to your colleagues and the patrons as they explain their view of a situation.
▪ Avoid snap decisions unless it’s an emergency situation. Assess several possible responses before you make a decision.
▪ As best as you can, stay focused and nonjudgmental; don’t lose your patience or your temper or become fearful, as these hurt your decision-making process.
▪ Paraphrase what you hear back to the patron until you both agree on what the problem is.
▪ When you understand what the problem is, take action, if you can, to resolve it quickly by valuing the patron’s time.
▪ Explain your position using firm, fair, consistent, and assertive language.
▪ Keep your tone neutral and polite. Take special care not to use a condescending tone, especially when you’re tired or frustrated or at the end of your day.
▪ Use the power of your colleagues to work as a team on particularly difficult patron situations.
▪ Get outside help, support, and advice if necessary, especially from your stakeholders in safety and security (police or sheriff’s department, HR, city attorney, county counsel, risk management personnel, facilities staff).
▪ After a particularly difficult patron situation, debrief, support, and praise one other when it’s safe to do so.
It’s no secret that library work draws introverted employees. You may define yourself as being an introvert trapped in an extrovert’s profession, as do I. Each week, somewhere in the United States, I stand in front of total strangers and talk, often for many hours, all day. Since I routinely engage in a behavior that causes fear in even the bravest souls—public speaking—I must gear up for my work as if for an onstage performance because it feels like I’m acting in a play. Fortunately, since I wrote the play and I know when and how to say all the lines, I’m comfortable doing this.
You may feel like you’re onstage every time you leave the relative comfort and safety of the back office and start interacting with patrons. It can help to see your work in a public contact job as a bit of a performance for several reasons: You can step a bit outside yourself and focus on your role as a professional information-providing specialist; you can shift on the fly and adjust both your responses and your reactions to the different patrons who make demands on you when they are rude, abrupt, demanding, eccentric, officious, obnoxious, stressed out by life, or just in a huge hurry; and you can learn to QTIP.
To quote my dad, Karl Albrecht, an author of several best-selling books on customer service: “Good service is about good feelings. It’s more than just smiling or being friendly; it’s an attitude that comes from wanting to help people from the moment they arrive.” Some people wrongly interpret this idea as having to be subservient to others or somehow sacrifice your personality by bowing down or kissing up to people, especially when it’s not what you feel like doing. This is an incorrect perspective. Professional service providers take pride in what they do; they enjoy a lot of their work, even if they are introverts by nature.
Customer contact, taxpayer contact, or patron contact jobs demand that you make yourself available to people and not bend to their will, allow them to ride roughshod over you, or be mistreated. Consider the best service people you’ve ever encountered. Maybe it was at a hotel, a restaurant, or over the phone with your bank or an airline. The encounters had common characteristics: The service people made you feel important; they were real and spoke to you like another human being, not like a robot; they didn’t use canned speeches or countless apologies when things went wrong; they took ownership and solved your problem; they valued your time; and they probably added some small bonus at the end that made it all come together correctly.
Do you want to know how they were able to provide you with excellent service, even giving you something unexpected, beyond just the basic human pleasantries? They faked it. Yes, you read that correctly. Skilled service people know that they don’t always come to work at peak energy. They know that they have some days when they wake up feeling like the wrong end of the dog. They get just as frustrated with customers and tired of working in their respective bureaucracies as you do. Their secret is not letting it show.
Sometimes when it comes to dealing with angry, entitled, eccentric, impatient, rude, or demanding patrons, you have to fake it. I don’t mean being insincere; I mean gearing up for your daily performance like you were an actor or an actress in a play. When you see a play or a musical or an opera or any live performance, including standup comedy, you know those performers have said those same lines hundreds of times. It may be the 353rd time for them, but they know it’s probably the first time for you. You should approach your patrons in the same way. The library branch is your world, not theirs. You know every inch and you know how to do your job because you’ve already done it for months, years, or decades.
Service jobs can be challenging. If you have a high human contact job and low control over the work you do, it’s easy to get bored, look bored, sound bored, go home tired, or even want to quit. The more transactional—as in repetitive—your job is, the more you have to find ways to do it that make it interesting for you. Even if you do the same tasks over and over (and over), it’s new to your patrons. First time for them but not the first time for you—act just like you were being paid to perform, because you are.
Over the phone, body language is missing, so tone of voice is all you have. Make certain you are always neutral, friendly, and polite on the phone because most people can hear boredom, condescension, and rudeness in your voice, even if they can’t see your face. As I like to say in training classes, “Angry or entitled people can hear you rolling your eyes over the phone whenever they say something you think is ridiculous. They can hear you looking at your watch if they think you believe they are wasting your time. Pay attention to your tone for the entire call.”
We all hate it when a customer service person tries to do two or three things while listening to us, even if it’s on our behalf. Get permission to put a patron on hold or to multitask during your phone conversation: “Ma’am, I just need a few moments to look that up. Would you prefer if I called you back or can I put you on a brief hold? I promise to come right back as soon as I have that information. Thanks for your patience.” “Sir, it looks like it’s going to take me a bit of time to research what you’re requesting. I know your time is valuable. I’d feel better calling you back within the hour instead of keeping you on hold. Will that work for you?”
These days, even with our allegedly sophisticated and expensive landline phone systems, there’s no absolute guarantee that the person you put on hold will still be there when you come back. And if they’re calling on a cell phone, they might just get timed out by the machinery and disconnected, so get a callback number.
The public’s confidence in government at any level is as low as ever recorded. Patrons either have unrealistic expectations about what you can do for them or are distrustful of government agencies in general and don’t expect much. I always suggest that one way to surprise patrons with a level of unexpected service is to “underpromise and overperform” for them. This means that if you promised them the information by tomorrow, call them back with it today. If you said that you’d have it for them after lunch, get it to them before lunch. They may not immediately recognize the gesture, but it can go a long way toward changing their perception of what libraries and public servants can do for them.
Last, recall the value of setting boundaries over the telephone for a patron’s bad behavior. You did not sign on to be yelled at, cursed at, belittled, insulted, or threatened. Give one fair warning, and if the behavior continues and you feel the need to hang up, then hang up. Document the conversation for your supervisor and protect your reputation as a firm, fair, consistent, and assertive library customer service professional.
My dad has many claims to fame, but his most successful book, of the dozens he has written, was Service America! Doing Business in the New Economy (Irwin, 1985), which sold nearly one million copies. In that book, he said that good customer service doesn’t happen by accident; it’s a managed event, using the right people, systems, and strategies for the business. What follows are the signs he sees in employees who have lost their human touch with their customers. Library supervisors should keep their eyes open for these sins and address them with coaching meetings, using examples if they are exhibited by employees. Too many of these can lead to a rise in the number of valid complaints from patrons about how they are treated.
1. Apathy
2. The Brush-Off
3. Coldness
4. Condescension
5. Robotism
6. The Rule Book
7. The Runaround
From this list, the sin that drives patrons the most crazy, that leads to the most angry complaint calls or visits to supervisors or the library director, and that makes patrons feel like they are being spoken to or treated like a child is the fourth one, condescension. This one can come on when employees are physically and mentally tired at the end of the workday, when they’ve worked too many days in a row without a break from a sea of demanding patrons, or when they are starting to feel the symptoms of job burnout.
Condescension shows up mostly in an employee’s tone and body language: “Yes? What is it this time, sir?” or “You didn’t fill out the form correctly now did you, ma’am?” It’s critically important to catch yourself before you let condescension “leak out” over the phone or face-to-face. And as a supervisor (or if you want to be one someday), you need to watch for this sin, catch it early, and correct it with examples, support, and coaching meetings. The biggest negative impact of this sin is that patrons go away mad from the encounter with the employee and they don’t really know why. It all starts and ends with how they are treated.
I’ve annotated the following ten behaviors to match the service rigors in the library world:
1. Greet each patron immediately or when passing by. If you’re not initially helping them, catch the eye of patrons as you pass. You’re onstage all the time on the public floor, and they see you as a representative of the library.
2. Give each patron you meet your complete attention. It’s easy to get into multitask mode and stay there during an exchange with a patron. It’s certainly acceptable to look up things on your computer or in a book; just be careful that you don’t get distracted while a patron is asking you questions while you try to do ten things at once.
3. Make the first thirty seconds count for the patron. First impressions do count.
4. Play your part to be real, not phony or bored. As my dad would say, “You’re not allowed to be a Bozo or a Bored Zombie.” See your encounters with patrons as your ongoing opportunity to add value, solve problems, and be the information professional that you have trained to become. This attitude of wanting to help people is not about being subservient or sacrificing your personality; it’s about feeling good about yourself while you help others.
5. Show your energy with sincere friendliness. Never forget that you’re onstage. You may have to “act” enthusiastically even when you’re tired. Play your part in the play.
6. Be the patron’s problem solver. You may not be in charge of everything, but you still have the ability to create positive outcomes for patrons, by taking ownership of their issues and finding unique, clever, or outside-the-box solutions for them. Saying, “Let me work on it for a bit and get back to you” is so much stronger than saying, “That’s not my job” or “I’m not allowed to do that.”
7. Use your common sense. I recall a company that asked its employees to try to answer their telephones after the second ring. Some employees would pick it up on the second ring and then hang it back up again because “No one told us we have to actually speak to anyone, just answer it by the second ring.” Your employers are paying you to be smart; prove them right.
8. Bend the rules when the situation calls for it. An example: Let’s assume that library policy says a patron can’t check out any more books if he or she owes at least $10 in fines. One library employee might simply tell the offending patron wanting to check out a book, “Sorry, no can do. Rules are rules. I don’t make ’em; I just enforce ’em.” A service-oriented library employee would ask the patron, “The computer tells me you owe ten dollars, and you say you only have five dollars on you today? Let’s apply that five dollars so you can check out the books you want. We’ll get the rest on your next visit.” The first employee is certainly correct and following the letter of the law. The second employee is following the spirit of the law and creating a better experience for the patron at the same time. Don’t give away the keys to the building, but look for opportunities to bend the rules and still keep your boss and the patron happy.
9. Make the last thirty seconds count for the patron. Last impressions count too. Most people remember the beginning of a service encounter and the end of it.
10. Take good care of yourself. Service jobs with high human contact can be tiring. You can’t be your best if you don’t feel your best. Get enough sleep, eat a healthy diet, get some exercise, and don’t ever come to work with a bad case of “tequila flu.” (All things in moderation.)
I say this with love in my heart, but after having looked at dozens and dozens of code of conduct rules from libraries across the nation, my conclusion is that many of them look and sound like they were written by city attorneys or county counsels, not by true library people. The language often sounds stilted, stiff, and almost biblical (i.e., “Thou shalt not consume thy foods in said building”). This is hardly new news since much about compliance with policies, especially in government, is derived from advice from our legal friends. I like a visible, posted, and patron-friendly code of conduct, written so there are not a lot of gray areas about what you can and can’t do, but not sounding so legalistic that patrons get a little mad by the time they’re done reading it.
I’m always puzzled when library directors or their employees tell me they have a lot of behavioral problems in their libraries and yet the only place to find the code of conduct is on a clipboard behind the circulation desk (which no patron has ever actually asked to read) or on the library’s website.
Having your code of conduct posted in several highly visible places throughout your library is an important first step toward getting patrons to be compliant and keeping them that way. Hiding these important rules from view is a mistake because it allows patrons to fall back on standard answers about noncompliance: “No one ever told me.” “I didn’t know I couldn’t do or say that.” “You’re picking on me because I’m [fill in the blank].” “Other people are doing the same thing.” “I’ve been coming here for a long time, and I always thought I could do this or that.” And on and on.
I’m a big believer in putting the rules of library conduct on large posters that are visible near the entrances and other common areas (so you can see them from outer space). I also like changing the language from negative to positive; for example, “No cell phone calls in the library” should be rewritten as “Please take your cell phone calls outside,” or “No eating or drinking in the library” can be recast as “Please enjoy your food and beverages before you come inside.” You will get better compliance from patrons and create more of an “Enjoy our library” tone by using positive language rather than negative rules, which suggest, “This is how we run our library, like a bureaucracy.”
In the forthcoming two chapters on typical challenging patron behaviors and common challenging patron types, I’ll address both the language for codes of conduct and how to respond in different ways that can help you sound more human and less lawyerly, approaches that tend to get you better results.