This is my second awful experience here with the children's librarian Meri. I work with a young adult with special needs who loves to read. When we were here in August, Meri reprimanded the girl I work with for reading too many books. She said she was messing up the entire shelf. I kindly explained to her that we were working on a system where she only reads a few at a time, but it might take a while to implement. The librarian proceeded to berate me, telling me I don't do my job well and am not teaching my client appropriate library behavior. Even after I tried to limit my client to the books she already had, the librarian came up to me AGAIN to tell me I am doing a bad job (even though we were doing EXACTLY as she requested). I went up to the front desk and complained to her manager, who apologized and helped to find a solution.
Today, I am back with my client, and told the same librarian, Meri, that we would only be reading 5 at a time. She said she appreciated this because a past worker (ME!) allowed my client to completely destroy the shelves and then complained about the librarian to her manager. In case you didn't catch that, she complained about me TO ME, thinking I was someone else. My client has been doing an okay job with the 5-at-a-time, but occasionally pulled a few extras off the shelf when I wasn't looking. As soon as she pulled 3 more off the shelf, Meri came over to me and reprimanded me saying "what happened to only 5?"
I honestly have no desire to bring my client here again, though she truly loves this library and loves some of the other librarians. It is such a disgrace how insensitive a children's librarian can be to someone with special needs and how rude she has been to me. I sincerely hope someone will work with this librarian on how to be more empathetic toward people with special needs (and their workers), or move her to the main library. read more