One of Those Times.....

We all have those moments in which we feel the need to go "above and beyond" for a patron. These transactions usually result in self-satisfaction, in knowing that you did your job well. Sometimes they also result in a remarkable amount of gratitude from a patron, and that adds to your own sense of pleasure at having been able to help him.

Late last week, I had just such a patron. I'll call him Joe.

On Friday, Joe, a man who was probably in his early seventies, came in to use one of our computers. It was not long before closing, and it was obvious that he'd need some assistance in sending an e-mail.

Ordinarily, I'd have explained to Joe that he would need to make an appointment with one of our student volunteers, who could spend an hour assisting him one-on-one.

Ordinarily, I'd have looked at the clock and shaken my head politely but firmly, explaining to Joe that we just didn't have the staff at that particular time to assist him. He would need to come back.

But it was not an "ordinary" situation. Joe was typing his wife's obituary, and wanted to e-mail it to a local newspaper for publication in the Sunday edition.

The staff who worked at the Desk before me had told me about Joe. They had set him up on the local newspaper's website, showed him how to click the link to send the obituary, and let him type. He was typing the document when my shift began.

But Joe didn't have an e-mail account. And that is where the problem was. He had spent a great deal of time typing the obituary, and came to get me when he needed assistance sending the document. When I went to him, I discovered two issues: first, that he had typed the obituary as a standard e-mail (rather than as a form, which can sometimes allow a person to contact a business electronically even if he doesn't have an e-mail account) and second, that the obituary contained grammatical errors.

With Joe's permission, I corrected the grammatical mistakes. Then, I tried to send it. Sure enough, it asked for the sender's e-mail address.

Joe tried unsuccessfully to call a friend to ask permission to use his e-mail account. Then, thinking quickly, I typed my own work e-mail address. But when I tried to send it, a window that asked for details about the server appeared - questions I could not answer.

Because it was growing ever closer to five o'clock, I told Joe that I would retype the document using my own e-mail address early on Saturday morning. I would send it, print a copy for him, and notify him that it had been sent. I also cautioned him that I couldn't be certain that it would appear in Sunday's edition.

So that's what I did.

Later that morning, I looked up from my computer to see Joe standing before me. I gave him the copy of obituary, now sent (and confirmed, thanks to a question that I had received from the newspaper staff about the billing address. I didn't know, nor was it stated on the paper's website, that obituaries have to be paid for). Joe asked me to type in his address, which I did.

Then he thanked me. And the thank-you was a big thank-you, filled with heartfelt emotion. He told me that, without the service I had given him, he would have driven to the newspaper office himself - and that office is a long drive away.

It was one of those times when I was glad that I was the librarian at the Desk.