We Want Them To Return, But Also Not Come Back
I’m a stocker in a library, meaning I sort and shelve the books people return. As a result, I’m out on the floor a lot, and while I’m not technically a librarian or customer service representative, people do come to me with questions. Today, while I’m shelving in the children’s département, a man in his thirties comes up to me.
Visitor: “I’ve accidentally returned my books in your mailbox, and now they’re still marked as unreturned in my account even though I don’t have them anymore.”
He’s talking about the mailbox that says ATTENTION: PLEASE DO NOT RETURN LOANED ITEMS HERE on it in big block letters, but I just barely resist the urge to point this out to him.
Me: “You should go to the customer service desk upstairs, they can probably help you track it down.”
Visitor: “I just went there; they sent me to you.”
He looks at me expectantly. I know this can’t be true, because I work in the entire building and there is no one stationed in the children’s department specifically, so customer service has no way of knowing if there is anyone here at any given moment. I look back at him questioningly.
Visitor: “They said it probably ended up back on the shelf.”
Ah, so he needs help locating them. I ask for the title and author, and start leading him in the right direction.
Visitor: “I already found them; they’re over there.
He looks at me expectantly. I look back at him questioningly.
Visitor: “How do I know it’s the same copy that’s on my card? The website shows you have multiple copies.”
Me: “Can you pull up your account? It should show the item number, and we can check that against the copy on the shelf.”
He doesn’t; he pulls up the listing on our website, which shows the location of the book. It says this location of the library only owns one copy of the book. This is the same for all four books.
Me: “It says here there’s only one copy of each of these books, so this one on the shelf right here is definitely the right one.”
Visitor: “So now what do I do?”
Me: “You take these books and go put them in the return slot downstairs.”
He looks at me questioningly. I look at him expectantly.
Visitor: “Okay… I guess I’ll try that.”
He says this with a tone of ‘that doesn’t sound right, but sure’.
Me: “Yep. Best of luck.”
I walk away. He stands in front of the shelf for a good while longer. I’m not confident his books will ever be returned.
