All in a Day's Work, Part II

On Labor Day, we celebrate workers and the union movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But we're also celebrating the workers of today. So here at Patch, we talked briefly with a small slice of the working population in the neighborhood, including a librarian and a restaurant manager.

Henry Gambill is the acting branch manager at the Donald Bruce Kaufman branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, here in Brentwood. A former teacher who taught at Pepperdine University, he realized he could be of service to a more diverse population working as a librarian in a public library.

"You don't serve a more diverse fabric of people as the city of Los Angeles," he said.

Truly a man who loves his work, he had to think about it when asked what was the best part of his job.

"There's so many good parts," he said. "The best part of my job is helping the people that come in off the street."

Even in this day of e-books and readers, there's still a lot libraries have to offer, he said. For example, he recently taught a man in his mid 40s how to use a computer mouse.

Sometimes patrons can be difficult or disruptive, but the worst part of his work was right before Measure L passed and the library was facing massive cuts.

"We didn't know what would happen," he said.

Thea Pichel is one of the managers at Le Pain Quotidien on San Vicente Boulevard. She's been working for the company for more than a year, but has been at the Brentwood cafe for only a month.

"As a manager, you have to be a part of every piece of the restaurant," she said about her job. "If you have to serve, you have to serve. If you have to bus [dirty dishes from the tables], you have to bus."

The best part of her job, she says, is being able to offer quality dishes.

"I, personally, like being surrounded by good food," she said. "It makes it easy to work when you're surrounded by good product."

The hardest part of her job is dealing with customer complaints, but not because of the diners themselves.

"You don't want people to leave unhappy and you can't always fix things," she said.