People always want to test you

My last 20 minutes on the reference desk.

A black man leans over and yells at two white men. He told them to be quiet. They kept talking, so the black man yelled at me. He said, "WILL YOU TELL THEM TO SHUT UP?"
I yelled in return, "YOU AREN'T HELPING THE SITUATION BY YELLING!"

At that point, another librarian who wasn't even working reference that hour, stepped to the patron and said, "When you have a complaint, you need to walk to the reference desk and tell the librarian what the problem is. Don't yell at the librarians."

The black man then walks over to the reference desk and asked me to call security. I called security and said, "Can you please send someone upstairs. A patron has requested that security handle this problem."

The security guard arrived and spoke with the black patron and told him that he was being loud and that he needed to sit down.

The patron then asked me to call a manager. I called my supervisor because the floor manager was gone.

My supervisor arrived and told the patron that he had the same problem yesterday. The patron got mad and asked to speak to the head of the library. Well, tonight, the acting chief of the main library is a black woman, and I had a feeling that the patron wouldn't be satisfied with that either.

Throughout all of the mess that the black patron was causing the two white male patron who had been sitting next to him, kept talking at the same low level. We couldn't even hear their conversation at the reference desk and they were sitting not more than 5 feet away.