There is a line in their first discussion that always strikes me as so spot-on. In talking about what she did to contact her sister, Brigid says, “I shouldn’t have done that, should I?” Spade replies, “It’s not always easy to know what to do.”

His response seems like such an accurate answer for the complexities and challenges of modern life today: It’s certainly never easy to know what to do.

In my live programs and online library service, safety, and security workshops, I’m often given a complex patron behavioral scenario and asked by an anxious staffer, “Did I do the right thing?” My answer is always a positive “yes,” perhaps with a touch of helpful correction added in, because I know we cannot predict human behavior, and we especially can’t predict eccentric, threatening, or potentially violent human behavior. Equally true, it’s mostly impossible to accurately predict the motives for threatening behaviors. We often don’t know the “why” until after scary people have said or done what they planned to do.

And I often get asked what to do about a complex patron behavioral problem by a staff member or during a training group discussion, and my answer is, “It depends.” Being a longtime consultant, it’s a helpful response when I don’t know the best answer and I need a bit more time to think of a useful answer and not a perfect one. And isn’t “It depends” kind of how life choices go? This might work or it might not, depending on the context, past behaviors and our answers to them, and the reaction of the other person.

As such, as I review the vast array of potential responses to a problematic patron, I believe we can boil them down to the six I discuss here. While not perfect (and we already established that there is no perfect way of fixing people), these six can give us a framework that helps. 

#1: Intuition

What does your gut feeling tell you to do? Get help? Back away? Call over the person in charge or a higher-level boss? Push the panic button? Call 9-1-1? Handle it using your work experience and life wisdom? Try your collection of de-escalation and communication tools? Say or do nothing in the hopes that the situation resolves itself after the patron self-calms, runs out of negative energy, satisfies their need to vent, or sees the error of their ways?

Intuition is a valuable tool, says Hollywood security expert Gavin de Becker in his bestselling book, The Gift of Fear and Other Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence, because it’s “knowing what to do without knowing why.” The “little voice” that tells us to talk more, talk less, take action, get help, or move away is built into our DNA. 

#2: Code of Conduct

What do the rules built into our Code of Conduct tell us to do? Is the patron’s behavior a clear violation (like physically assaulting a staffer or another patron), meaning they need to be arrested and/or banned, or is it more about something that can be handled with a verbal warning? 

The Code of Conduct is not the be-all, end-all about library behavior (otherwise it would be 192 pages long), but it’s a useful place to look, especially since it offers us one of the best ways to be firm, fair, consistent, assertive, legal, empathic, patient, and reasonable (otherwise known as my “Essential Eight”).

#3: Library Policy

Every library should have a policies and procedures (P&P) manual that covers the steps directors, managers, supervisors, and employees need to take to handle a host of issues related to patron behaviors. The P&P can be seen as a larger, more thorough, more in-depth version of the Code of Conduct.

#4: State, County, or City Laws

We’re not asking librarians to become lawyers (although some certainly are, working at county and state law libraries), but every state has a collection of law books that address various problematic library behaviors. These include the Penal Code (for crimes that occur in the library, like assault, battery, theft, vandalism, making threats, or possession of child pornography), the Health & Safety Code (often used for drug and alcohol offenses), or the Welfare and Institutions Code (often used to define mental health concerns, like “danger to self or others” or “gravely disabled”). 

Cities and counties have municipal codes that cover actions such as illegal parking at the library, soliciting for money, and overnight sleeping in public places.

The function of all of these law books and codes is to help library leaders and their staffs to enforce consequences for problematic library behaviors that hurt the overall library experience and impact the enjoyment others are seeking when they walk inside the building.

#5: Our Usual Approach

What does the work culture suggest we do? In other words, how have we handled similar patron behavior issues in the past—especially with some of our more chronic “frequent flyers”? This can vary from branch to branch, with geography having a lot to do with how patrons act in certain parts of town being very different than how they act—and how we respond—across the city or county. What has worked in the past may or may not work again, but patterns exist for a reason, and it can help not to make things worse by doing what solves the problem based on the past. 

#6: What’s Reasonable

Lastly, the concept of “reasonableness” is a court-tested theory that has a basis for establishing whether or not we did the right thing. Again, without having to be a lawyer, we can ask ourselves, collectively, as both library leaders and staff, “Did we do the right thing on behalf of the staff and the patrons? Was our response deemed as thoughtful and measured, meaning we didn’t overreact or underreact?” Being reasonable takes into account the previous five elements listed here into a measure of fairness.