~There’s a river to cross and a mountain to climb
Patience, patience, it’s gonna take some time~
~ Dreamgirls
I’ve had guests tell me – in none so many words – that I have the patience of an angel. This is not true, I have the patience of an angry venomous snake if you know me well (there are multiple Pack and family members who will completely vouch for that!), but what I do have is an extreme amount of understanding for people who have no patience with themselves.
I have only two rules in my “office”, neither of which is that difficult to remember, though you’d be surprised how easily people – myself included – tend to forget.
1) Treat me with the respect that you want to be treated:
I am trying my best to assist you; I am trying my best to give you as much one on one attention as I am humanly able to give. Do not judge my technical ability simply because I do not where stripes, or because I happen to be a woman when you’re used to a male tech manager. Accept that I will do my utmost to fix your problem and soothe your nerves, and that if I cannot find that resolution, it is not for lack of trying and I take no joy in not being able to fix something. Yelling at me may make you feel better, but it will not make your problem resolve any differently or any faster.
2) Do NOT call yourself stupid, or brainless or any variation there of:
“No one is allowed to call themselves stupid in my library”, that sentences passes my lips about twenty times a shift. Just like I ask you to not be hard on me, don’t be so hard on yourself! Technology is a pain, it’s constantly changing and difficult to follow. Not knowing how to do something doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it means that you don’t know how to do something, that you haven’t learned yet. That’s not a problem, that’s fixable. Be patient with yourself, the more patience you have with yourself, the less angry you will become, the better the silly computer will work for you. You are NOT incompetent, you are ill-informed, there is a huge difference between those two things. Trust that you don’t always need my help, don’t need me to hold your hand every step of the way. How do I know this? Because I know absolutely that you are much smarter than you think you are…you just need to realize that is all.
Two rules. So very basic. Really, just two. Is that really so difficult?
Similar to when I was a store manager, “No such thing as a stupid question.” If you have a question, you need an answer. If you ask the same or close to the same question more than once, I’m not explaining it in a way you understand, I need to change how I explain it.
Pre-sactly….
Such wise words