Secret Shopper Surprise

I went to a large library in a smallish town west of Indianapolis. The library is relatively new, with large and expensive add-ons being built onto an old Carnegie library building.

As I entered the building, I could go downstairs for the children's area or up a small flight of stairs to the adult and teen spaces. At the top of the wide-open stairway, the information desk was front and center with adult reference off to the left and circulation over to the right.

I went straight to the adult reference desk and was greeted by a very busy young lady while she was bustling away to an office in the back somewhere. She told me she would be right with me. She DID smile, and I WAS reassured, but she was gone for about 5 minutes. In the 5 minutes that I spent standing at the AR desk staring into space, not one other librarian (and I saw at least 5 shuffling about the place) approached me to see if they could help.

When she finally made it back, she sighed dramatically and asked me what I needed, which made me feel like I was really a rock in her shoe. I didn't lie to her. I told her I was attempting to read outside of my comfort genres for class (though I did not tell her which class) and that I knew absolutely nothing about Urban Fiction. Her eyes lit up as she told me she just took a class on urban fiction at another library. So we got pretty lucky there. She said that her library didn't stock much UF because there wasn't much of a demand for it, but that she was sure they had some swimming around.

She took me straight to the adult fiction shelves and started browsing with me. She asked me to help her find Vickie Stringer on the shelf. We found Let that be the Reason. And that appeared to be the end of the conversation. She found the one book she knew she had that fit the bill and once I had it, she was done with me. She said, "... and there you go. If you need anything else, you know where to find me." She had her back to me before I could even say "thank you."

I didn't even check out the book. It doesn't interest me in the slightest. She didn't even attempt to let me know what I was going to find inside, which is a big deal to me when I specifically told her I didn't know ANYTHING about the genre.

Boo!