Talk about your bonafide Clash of the Titans! My big boss from The Greek Institute is here from Athens, so when he stopped in to do a little browsing through the stacks he invited me out to lunch for my break. We didn't go far - just to Bartley's, the best burger joint on the East Coast, hands down, where oddly enough neither my boss nor I had hamburgers (we both had the French onion soup, made with Guinness and cheddar cheese, and it was delish) - but by the time we'd settled up with the check and I'd ferried him back down to the Institute, it was already 1 o'clock, and I still had a ten-minute walk back to work. In the land of the Greeks, being ten minutes late is more like being ten minutes early; but among the Germans, ten minutes late is more like ten hours late, and as it turns out my supervisor here on the Saturday shift happens to hail from the land of punctuality and good beer.
So what to do? I did what any good Mediterranean would do in my situation - enjoy myself, come back late, and apologize profusely. Besides, it's fun to bend your Teutonic coworkers out of shape, every now and then! All kidding aside, though, I do like Walter, even when he's reading me the riot act for being tardy. Walter's a veteran here at the Circulation Desk and I must say that he is the undisputed master of telling people no (an unfortunate yet essential skill when you work at one of the most restricted-access academic research libraries in the Western Hemisphere). He is simply unflappable. One time I swear I saw him go for about forty-five minutes with an individual who was trying to get access to the stacks without a letter of introduction or any other of the required documentation, just sitting there, calm and collected, repeating "That's unfortunate, but there's nothing I can do for you." Sometimes when I find myself in a difficult situation with a patron, I ask myself: What Would Walter Do?
No joke. I think the Circ Staff here should all have t-shirts saying just that!
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