Book Companion:

Library and Information Center Management,
Seventh Edition

The Politically Incorrect Employee

Newly appointed Parkwood University Library Director Jeff Archer sighed as he read his e-mail messages at the beginning of the day. Carol Parham, the head of the reference department, had e-mailed him to inform him that she'd received a complaint about Max Walker, a 63 year old reference department employee.

It appeared that Max had been working at the reference desk the previous evening and had indicated that he was available to help the next patron by telling her, "I can help you over here, little lady." The patron had taken offense at being called a little lady and had filed a complaint with Carol, who, in turn, had passed the complaint on to Jeff, as library policy decreed.

When Jeff pulled Max's personnel folder in order to file the latest complaint, he noticed that Max had several complaints of this nature already in his folder. In each instance, a patron had complained when Max had used an out-of-favor term for referring to a particular person or group of people - he'd referred to a group of Korean students as "the Oriental kids," for example.

Other than the complaints about Max's choice of vocabulary, however, Max's personnel record was excellent. He'd worked at the library for 35 years and had received many departmental awards for providing good service; it appeared that only his lack of a master's degree in library science had prevented him from advancing very far along the reference department career ladder. Max had always been a dependable employee and was willing to pitch in whenever his help was needed; indeed, since he was a bachelor, he'd often been called upon to work during the holidays or on weekends, and he had always cheerfully done so.

Just as Jeff was replacing Max's folder in the file cabinet, Carol knocked on his door. "Since you're holding Max's folder, I assume that you got my e-mail message," she said. "What are we going to do about Max?" she asked. "He's such a sweet guy, and I know that he doesn't mean to offend anyone. It's just that he's 30 years behind the t times, and he doesn't seem to realize it. I've talked with him on the other occasions that he's received complaints, and he always apologizes and says he'll try to do better in the future. But he also says that it's hard for an old dog to learn new tricks, which I imagine is true. It must be hard to learn new ways of addressing people. But at the same time, we can't have him offending the people who come to the reference desk for help."

"Is there anywhere else that Max could work?" Jeff asked.

"Not really," Carol replied. "He's only ever worked at the reference desk, so that's all he really knows how to do. We could try to have him answer e-mailed reference questions so that he wouldn't be in face-to-face contact with patrons, but he's a little hesitant about using computers. He can perform basic functions using a computer, but he doesn't type very quickly, and it takes him a long time to figure out how to do what he needs to do on the computer, so I think that he'd become frustrated quickly if we were to reassign him to computer reference duties."

"Do you know how much longer Max is planning on working at the library?" Jeff asked.

"Well, I know that he really loves his work, and he doesn't have any big plans for after he retires." Carol answered. "I would imagine that Max will be here for another four or five years at least."

If you were in Jeff's shoes, what would you do about Max, and why would you make that decision?

Case written by Cynthia Thomes