The charming business of reference
An older, retired gentleman kissed my hand at the reference desk today.
A few months back, we started offering fax services at the library. So many people asked if we offered faxing, and upon assessing that we could offer the service without significant negative footprint to our day-to-day business, we decided, “Why not?” For a nominal fee of $1.00/page, patrons can send outgoing faxes right from the Information Desk, where we also offer notary service (all reference librarians are notary publics). And we get quite a bit of traffic on our cranky-but-serviceable little fax monster.
Anyway, the aforementioned older gent comes to the Information Desk at the library three times a week to fax his timesheet for his part-time job. His days start rather early (today he lamented he had been up since 4:30am), but what bothers him more than the early hours is the fact that he needs to fax his timesheets in three times a week.
We have taken to affectionately calling this particular patron “Fax Man,” and he is well aware of his moniker. There is a certain level of aloof familiarity that comes with regular patrons who make us smile, and so when he approached the desk, I was naturally conversational, but not so much that it could be misconstrued as *too* special. After his comment about disliking all the faxing, I replied, cheerful and somewhat matter-of-fact, that if he didn’t have all of this faxing, he wouldn’t get to come visit us at the library as much.
The man held out his hand, and said thank you, and I reached across the desk to shake it. Much to my surprise, as he told me I was right, and thanked me for making such an astute point, he kissed my hand with a 1950s-style politeness, and told me I was very charming. I told him we all do what we can. 
I’ve had some ups and downs lately that have made me feel everything less than charming overall, nevermind in my interactions at the desk. As a librarian, I am a customer service representative for a community and information service point, it’s really, really hard to just call in cranky or not-so-service-inclined. Sometimes I just strap on the, “No, really, I’m polite, I can help you,” mask and do my job. Today it felt natural, and it was nice to be noticed for it, so I thought I’d share.
Tags: work
