The Westport community in the West Coast has come together in support of their local library following reports of staff facing abuse from patrons upset with contact tracing rules.
Emma Sherie, the Buller District Library manager, said her staff had been facing increased abuse in the past week as Alert Level 2 restrictions continued.
To adhere to Ministry of Health guidelines, she said staff had been encouraging people to scan the Government’s COVID Tracer app QR code or manually sign in.
Ms Sherie said after it was announced Alert Level 2 was going to be extended, “we had quite a few of our customers escalate and become more frustrated”.
“Staff had been experiencing more aggravating comments,” she said.
“One of my staff broke down in tears after being called a ‘maggot’.”
She said patrons were also telling staff “‘this is pathetic, why do we have to do this [sign in for contact tracing purposes]’” and to “piss off”.
Ms Sherie attributed some of the abuse, which came from “a real mixed bag of people”, to “lockdown fatigue”. She said Westport was more “relaxed” as they hadn’t had a local case of Covid-19.
Because the library tended to have patrons who were older or who came from a lower socioeconomic background, she said there was sometimes a bit of hesitation from people to use the Government’s contact tracing app because they were worried about their privacy or mobile data charges. The app can be accessed free of data charges on Spark, Vodafone and Two Degrees networks.
But after sharing her story on social media and with the local newspaper yesterday, Ms Sherie said the library has “been inundated with love” from the community.
People had been dropping off baking and flowers, as well as calling the library to pass on their well-wishes to staff, she said.
Ms Sherie said she was planning to note down every phone call she was receiving so she could pass it on to staff to lift their spirits.
“Staff have also noticed a drop in grumbling.”
She said she was motivated to speak out to take care of her staff’s wellbeing. She urged other libraries and businesses “to not be afraid to send out strong messaging” to remind people their actions had an impact.
“It’s something managers should be thinking about. … We owe it to those front-line staff to take care of their mental health.”
Ms Sherie said she was also looking forward to lockdown restrictions being lifted. Westport’s library had been shutting at 1pm instead of 5pm daily because the limited number of staff needed time to record contact tracing details.
“We can’t currently serve our community like we normally do, which is really hard for us.”
Ms Sherie said getting funding from the Government’s $60 million boost announced in Budget 2020 for libraries would be “game-changing” as it would allow her to employ more staff and open her library full-time.
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