Secret Shopper

Going into this assignment, I really wanted to make things as easy as possible for the reference librarian. I picked a time when the library was not busy and tried to prepare a pretty good idea of what I was looking for (a short, "typical" mystery). I expected the interaction to go similarly to how they go at my workplace- asking what the person is looking for, what they like about the genre, examples of similar titles, etc. The actual interaction ended up being very different.

The person I spoke to was very nice, but they did not ask any questions beyond "What kind of stuff do you like?" They admitted they didn't read many mysteries either, but tried to immediately make a recommendation instead of trying to determine what I was looking for. When I told them I'd read their recommendation, they noted that the third book in the series had recently come out but did not move to recommend it. They also asked the person next to them, who suggested checking the Bestseller Express shelf but did not make further suggestions.

During this point, the person helping me was looking through whatshouldireadnext.com, and I noticed that they could find similar titles by clicking the "Mystery & Detectives" or "Mystery & Thrillers" tags. They were saying that they couldn't find any mysteries, so I asked them if there was a tag they could click to check, to which they said there was not. They then found a mystery title (Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey) that appeared to overlap with fantasy. This was not exactly the straightforward mystery I was looking for, and they went to pull it from the shelf instead of asking if that was close to what I had in mind. They offered to pull another specific book for me, but had trouble remembering the title or author. Judging from their synopsis, this book also seemed to stray from what I was looking for, so I declined when they asked if I wanted that one as well. Afterwards, they went back to the desk and the interaction ended.

I really want to give this person the benefit of the doubt, even though things didn't go very well. I think it was easy for them to assume that I'd be open to any mystery, since I said I didn't read a lot of them. I also think I could have spoken up more about my preferences. I was very worried about influencing the conversation and would probably have given unprompted information normally. I could have also influenced their perception of what I was looking for because I had read their first recommendation (although I failed to share that I hadn't enjoyed it). However, even with the best of intentions, this was an unsatisfactory experience by reader's advisory standards. If I was under the same circumstances, I would most likely not seek their advice again. In a normal situation, though, I would be much more comfortable asking for a recommendation (since I could be more specific).