[WEB4LIB] Re: In defense of stupid users

[Andrew Mutch]

> <snip>
>
> >From our side of the desk, we experience as an endless steam of
> people asking the same things over and over and over, never learning,
> never advancing, never getting to new knowledge or more interesting
> questions or anything different.  Is it any wonder we occasionally
> burn out?
>
> How do we handle that?
>
> Tony Z

</snip>

Some go home and have a strong drink. But most of us go to conferences and
workshops and tell war stories of dealing with "that patron", the story that
invariably garners nodding heads, knowing looks and more stories along the same
lines. We get it out of our system by sharing our patron stories with our
colleagues and then we can return to the trenches to keep up the excellent work
that we all do. That's why when someone earlier posted about being distressed
about the stories heard at conference I thought, "no, that's a good thing".
Better to get those out of your system in a safe environment than to keep them
bottled up so that one day, you snap and go librarian on someone.

Andrew Mutch
Library Systems Technician
Waterford Township Public Library
Waterford, MI