Thread by @the_musser

I think a lot about how vital kindness is in librarianship: A THREAD.

I know there's often a lot of bracing when one starts a patron interaction, with good reason: sometimes patrons are jerks. But people - patrons or not - are rarely jerks in a vacuum. Frankly...

... a lot of our patrons come to us carrying trauma that most librarians never have to grapple with.

They're bracing just as hard as we are, or harder since we're people in positions of power & privilege. Likely they've had many bad experiences with folks like us beforehand...

... so when they aren't perfectly kind to us, or (yes, even) jerks, it's because their template of a human that WE fit into corresponds with one that's done them bad in the past.

An importance difference is that at the end of the day, we walk away from the interaction...

... with immense privilege intact: our upbringing, education, employment, etc... Our patrons don't.

I think we sometimes forget that, and we let our egos get in the way, which leads to attitudes of "helping a patron with this simple-but-time-consuming-thing is beneath me." ...

Seeing that happen frustrates me to no end.

Yes, we're largely well-educated professionals with under-utilized skills. But our profession EXISTS to support our communities' info needs, and sometimes that means doing the boring thing because literally no one else will help.

Every day that I go to work, I do my best to be the librarian I never had:

I stop what I'm doing, smile and wave, say hello, make eye contact -- and from this, SO MANY folks actually engage me in conversation that would otherwise view librarians as cold or too busy to help. ...

I try to stay humble with them. And because of this, (I can't prove it but I do strongly believe) I RARELY have a patron interaction where the patron is a jerk to me, which is why I Fucking Love My Job.

Are there confounding factors? Absolutely! The biggest: I'm cisgender male.

I've no doubt that fewer people confront me because of my gender, and I hate that my colleagues don't get that benefit.

I also know that a lot of my colleagues have been at it longer than I have, and that compassion fatigue is absolutely real.

BUT REAL TALK, Y'ALL:

The majority of my colleagues have also never been poor or experienced the many and varied traumas that go along with that. But I know someone who has.😬

This isn't a pissing match, but more to recognize that I think it's relevant. Of course, one doesn't *need* these things...

to be a good librarian, but it certainly makes it so much easier for me to relate to my patrons and not fall into the "above this kind of work" attitude.

Hell, If I bought into any argument that the MLIS req should go, that'd be it:

Nixing the MLIS could (possibly, maybe) bring more folks who are priced out of the profession, thereby helping our patrons see themselves facing back from the desk
(but that's a totally different discussion)

But lived experience is not req'd for kindness, as many of you prove!

(This has been lot of words 😬)

Crux: We all 110% deserve a healthy, safe workplace where we're treated with respect by coworkers & patrons alike. I think that getting to that point means being able to dig up some excess kindness and dishing it out liberally.

Just make sure that you save some of that for yourself, and when you're not on the clock, show yourself the same level of care so that your batteries aren't in a constant state of depletion.

I like you a lot & I want you to be happy and healthy, for all of our sake. ❤️

@threadreaderapp unroll please!