Friday, September 21, 2012

It's a library... there must be a newspaper around here somewhere for you to start checking the classfied ads

A playgroup we are a part of decided to meet at a local library this week. We rotate around to different libraries on rainy days and, although I had been to this one a handful of times before, I had never met this particular children's librarian. This particular *grouchy* children's librarian.
The library, like many others, boasts a nice play area complete with a train table, a kitchen and some other fun activities.And the kitchen includes a couple of kid-sized shopping carts which, of course, the kids are eager to push around.

One of the kids in the playgroup was pushing the cart quietly around the rest of the very large (mostly empty) children's room when the librarian looked up and said, "she needs to take that back to the play area." Then, when we stepped out into the hall outside the children's room to say hello to a friend, the librarian chased us out, told us we needed to return the same shopping cart to the play area and said, "And you need to help clean up the play area."

Trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she thought we were leaving (without our coats or bags?) and maybe she thought we were the types of parents who walk out on a mess (we're not), but I didn't appreciate the tone.

And personally, if you're not a fan of kids and how they do things (they wander, they move toys around, they are prone to leaving designated areas over and over again), perhaps you might want to find another line of work. Or just, you know, chill out a bit.

Note: I feel like I repeated the word "librarian" a lot in this post and I don't mean to mock anyone but this particular woman and her lack of flexibility, especially when working with kids. The library we went to is a great one and happens to be the same place that employs my favorite librarian (and one of my most faithful readers). We'll visit again, my friend, but maybe on that lady's day off!

1 comment:

Sarah said...

I shall leave my complaints and comments about the person in question for a less public forum. I think it's probably best that way. ;-)