To the paranoid old lady who spent hours researching the credentials of various area mental health professionals:
I know the copier has the wierdest fucking setup you’ve ever seen. Some sadistic engineer at Ikon decided to make the least user friendly fucking photocopier on the face of the planet. But it wasn’t broken; you had the book turned the wrong way at the wrong end of the damn machine. Yelling “I’m not to turn it YOU SONOFABITCH!!!” while shoving me in the chest is not cool. You’re lucky I didn’t clock you. If you touch me again after you ask me to help you with it, I’m calling the fucking cops and pressing every charge at my disposal. No more free printouts and NO FUCKING REFUNDS for you, bitch.
To the woman who just hung up on me after calling me stupid:
You called asking a very specific question on bipolar disorder. So what phase are you in today, hmmmm? Out of the fifty or so books on that topic here at the Public Library, one is in my subject department. The rest are in the Science and Technology department, which has everyfuckingthing else on mental illness and psychiatry in general. Yes, we have psychology here, but BPD classes in psychiatry. If you can’t wait the thirtyfuckingseconds to be transferred over to someone who could actually help you, maybe you could go dig up Melvil Dewey, give him a couple of blowjobs, and get him to change the goddam classification. Until then, I’ll remember your voice, and every time you call, you’ll accidentally be “cut off.” Fuck you, too.
Am I reading this correctly>? do you work in some capacity in a mental health setting? where people are calling asking for information regarding treatment, mental disorders etc?
and you seem surprised that the ‘customers’ have issues?
wring, from his OP, it looks like he works in the department that does not contain the majority of the books on most mental health disorders. From my experience working at a Public Library, each department has books on a wide variety of subjects. The Public Library worker would not necessarily have expectations regarding the mental status of any particular caller as they could just as easily be calling regarding one of the other subjects covered in that department.
What tevya said. I’m in E&R; it stands for Education and Religion, but we like to say that it really stands for Everything Remaining. Off the top of my head, we’ve got library science, the occult, philosophy, psychology, most of the social sciences (general and social anthropology, race and gender studies, crime, ethno-cultural studies,) etiquette, holidays and festivals, games, sports, hunting, and fishing, in addition to education and religion. Oh, and nonprofit grants research.
So it’s not a matter of being unwilling to help; it’s a matter of what my expertise is supposed to be. Getting angry with me for not being able to answer your questions about bipolar disorder is like getting pissy when some poor slob in the garden department at Home Depot can’t answer all your questions about plumbing. It’s rude, immature, and a sign of Inferior Character And Breeding. When I politely referred her to someone who’s better qualified to answer than I am, she threw a temper tantrum. Fuck her sideways, now and forever, amen.