Circ librarians are blessed with the wonders of books drifting into our lives at just the right time and place. Here are some excerpts from
The Power of Kindness by Pierro Ferrucci
"The virtue of patience is first of all about dealing with difficult people: Those who won't listen to reason, easily get upset and just refuse to get along..."
"Then we also have those people who clearly make a nuisacne of themselves. Let's face it, in our everyday life we are destined to run into them all the time: the ones who interrupt us every other word, who criticize us for the sake of criticizing, who insist on getting our time or attention or money, who whine or sabotage, who start talking to us and won't let us go even though they know we are in a hurry, and so on. Everything is relative, so we are all at different times both victims, and to some extent, persecutors. We have all met difficult people, and have all somehow been difficult ourselves for others-perhaps without even realizing it.
But some people are champions They get first prize for pushing our buttons. Our reaction when faced with them is to feel irritated. And we either express our annoyance or suffer in silence. It is also possibile, however, to practice the art of patience and to help these people feel better about themselves.
I had proof of this once in an airplane. To start with, a plane is, for many of us, an extremely frustrating place. it is hard to endure the time, crammed with others for hours in a noisy, unstable contraption. But what happens if our neighbors are a nuisance? Well, behind me on this flight was seated a man who was clearly drunk-and growing louder and more aggressive the more he drank. At one point, he dropped his meal tray: French fries, mushrooms, and macaroni went rolling down the aisle. Then suddenly I was shocked to realize he had brought a huge toad in a box. (Don't ask me how he got past the security check.) Soon the stewardesses stepped in. But instead of reproaching him, as I secretly hoped they would, they began to talk with him, joke, pour him a little more wine, admire the toad; and they cleaned the mess without a word. The drunk calmed down and soon fell asleep.
This is one of the hardest criteria for testing our patience: having to deal with someone insufferable. Those stewardesses get full marks. It seems to me that what works is not to react to the annoyance, but instead to treat the person with skill and kindness. Difficult people are not used to that type of treatment-they are usually neither liked nor tolerated. And what happens if you continually meet with irritation? They end up falling into their role of nuisance. With our own reactions, we all unwittingly help reinforce their role. They are often unhappy people who-belive it or not-awkwardly and desperately try to be accepted..........
This is the Leaping Libertine Librarian talking now. This is how we differ from google and amazon.com and the gadgets, the nooks, the kindles, etc. We are live flesh and blood people. We can make the difference in the experience of our staff and of our customers. We can be patient. We can be kind. We provide a real person, a human face to help answer those questions, to ease the stress, to explain the parking situation, to help find the book.
Here is an example from my day off. My partner and I drove all the way to Newton, MA to go to the Taste cafe. This is an independent place with lovely food. Unfortunately, the place was being renovated. So we settled on the ubiquitous Starbucks. The customer service was terrific. The food, however, did not have the heart and soul of the coffee house. There is something about a place that makes their own "real" food rather than the packaged, chain type of a place (and I love Starbucks, don't get me wrong). We librarians represent that real human connection that our taxpayers are entitled to. We are often filling more than one role in our days. Manager, collection developer, social worker, incident reporter, promoter, marketer. We wear so many hats.
Therefore, let's be patient with ourselves and those we serve. Let's remember that we are not a "chain". We are not impersonal. We really do represent a place of patience and kindness, a place of connection.
Radical, perhaps. But comforting! 
