Miss Information is getting educated
So, it's about a week away from the end of her first semester at library school and it's time to reflect on what she's learned.
Hm....let's see. A couple of weeks ago she had to teach herself powerpoint so she could do a class presentation. The presentation was actually quite delightfully content free. Miss Information had the content
in her head, but didn't exactly do a very good job of getting it to come out of her mouth and go into the heads of others.
Since she'd done ok on the rest of the course this wasn't going to destroy her life, but she kind of spent a week cursing herself. Then she got the mark for the presentation. She got an A. The professor loved the powerpoint.
So, that's what she's learned. Adorable powerpoint slides make people forget that you have nothing relevant to say.
On to the next semester!
Miss Information is just trying to make to best of it.
See, Miss Information is all about perception. Reality, she’s not that big a fan of. So, even though she is working in the dullest library ever, she still starts out each day with a sense of hope that something bad or at something interesting might happen to break up the monotony of the day. Her co-workers are not amused by this. Most of them just sigh whenever she bounces in full of hope and asks them what’s been going on.
But amazingly, one day something did happen. The branch head, a very nice woman, who clearly pities Miss Information, announced that the branch would be conducting a fire drill. Miss Information always thinks fire drills are kind of stupid, everyone is assigned roles and duties and puts on their coats ahead of time. It’s probably very useful, but Miss Information just knows that during an actual fire no one will be standing around handing out check lists. However, a day with a fire drill is bound to be more interesting than a day without a fire drill.
Miss Information perked up, she may have said something like: hurray or goodie or oh, boy or something. She got all excited. The branch head laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Oh, no, Miss Information,” she said. “It isn’t exciting at all. Remember--this is the Perry Como Memorial Library. It isn’t at all like the Motorhead District Library that you come from.”
As it turned out the branch head was wrong. It
was exciting. The Perry Como Memorial Library in keeping with its mellow image, doesn’t like to bother the fire department by actually setting off the fire alarm. Instead, at the appointed time the branch head tears around the building with an alarm clock, pointing at it and announcing “fire drill, fire drill”.
So it was actually pretty amusing.
Miss Information insists that someone show her the money
Miss Information has been working at the world's most mellow library for almost a month but her pay stub has yet to follow her there. Here's the thing: Miss Information is not spending 7 hours a day working in this "so dull she's thinking about chewing her own leg off to escape" library for the good of her health, you know.
When the first payday came and went with no stub, Miss Information let it slide. Lots of people had been relocated, some details were bound to be missed. However, today marked the second time that Miss Information has gotten an empty stocking and she's out for blood. It doesn't help that she's had too much coffee and is missing the cute shoes she used to wear when she was
sitting at the reference desk and can't wear now that she spends her entire life
standing at the circulation desk waiting, waiting, waiting for something to happen.
She contacted her friend at the payroll department to see if she could shed a little light. The woman got back to her very quickly. Instead of sending her pay stub to the incredibly serene Sun
Kil Moon
library whose branch code abbreviates to
SKM, the payroll people have instead been sending it to the
S'mores,
KitKats and
Macaroons department of the Big Interesting Library whose department code abbreviates to SKM. At first Miss Information laughed at the absurdity. Then she spent the rest of the day depressed that only her pay stub was getting to spend time some place interesting.Miss Information learns that leakiness is not limited to children
Well, it turns out that the frightening normalness of the new branch may have just been a feeble attempt to impress Miss Information. Now that it knows her, it's letting all the crazies out of the woodwork.
Yesterday, an adult man appeared, coughed a little and then horked into the garbage can near the circ desk--conveniently situated next to Miss Information. After years of this sort of behaviour at the old branch, her only response was to glare at the man. "Sorry," he muttered.
Miss Information's new co-workers don't put up with this sort of thing quietly. One of them told the man his behaviour was "gross". Amazingly the man returned a few minutes later for a repeat performance. Miss Information was now farther away from the garbage can, however.
This time two co-workers approached the man. He was told to stop spitting in the garbage can. A debate followed over where he should spit. A staff member suggested the washroom. The man suggested the floor. Another staff member threatened to make him clean up any spit on the floor that had once been in his mouth. The man subsequently repeatedly put on his coat, walked past the circ desk sighing loudly and spit on the ground outside the front door. So, the library staff kind of, sort of won the battle--except for having to avoid the now-frozen spit puddle when they left for the night.
No one got stabbed or punched out or anything and that's how you can tell this is a
civilized library.
Miss Information is annoyed by a patron at the new branch
Yes! Finally! It only took two weeks. Two weeks of mind-numbing civility. Two weeks of well-behaved children. Two weeks of Miss Information
liking people, enjoying their company and remembering that this environment is kind of the one most people think of when they think "library".
But, whew. That's over. Miss Information is still working in the world's most mellow library--it's like the James Taylor of libraries--but she had her first baffling customer encounter.
Here's what went down:
Woman came to the desk. Needs a new library card. She used to have a card, but well, you know. Miss Information suggests making the woman a replacement card. It'll cost a couple of bucks. Is that how the woman wanted to proceed? The woman agrees. They get along great during the making of the new card and during the handing over of the $2 replacement fee. Where it all starts to go wrong is when Miss Information hands her the receipt for payment. The woman scans it over, says hey, wait a minute. Miss Information asks what the problem is. The now incensed woman points to the receipt. It says "lost card fee" or something. The woman protests. She most definitely did not "lose" her card. Miss Information is puzzled. But she wanted a new card? The woman says yes. And she agreed to pay $2 for the new card? The woman says yes. So what's the problem? The problem is the wording on the receipt. It basically accuses her of being irresponsible. She most certainly did not "lose" her card. It's at home...somewhere...but it is definitely not lost and now the receipt has impugned her good name and besmirched her reputation.
Oh.
Ok. Miss Information mentions that "lost card fee" is just library speak for "replacement charge". She also reassures the woman that the library will always think very highly of her and wishes her a good day.
Sigh. At last Miss Information gets to use the skills she spent all those years learning in the punchy,
yelly, M
anhunty library.
(For the record, Miss Information is not typing this during library time or on library equipment. She has the cutest little netbook and they are currently on a wireless and coffee date.)
Miss Information is annoyed by school
People have questioned why Miss Information has kept quiet about school. Surely, they say, she must be annoyed. Well, yeah. But Miss Information's mother always told her to be nice to the people who grade your papers.
However Miss Information got her first paper back. She got a "
bravissimo" and even though she made a couple of mistakes, her professor graded on the totality of effort or something and she ended up with more than 100%. Graduate school is weird.
So, now she's feeling smug and wants to share a little story about her first day of school. She arrived at school early to register. The registrar's e-mail said that she had to: 1) register and 2) pay her student council fees and 3) get a locker. Sounds easy, doesn't it?
She got in a line. When it was her turn she said she needed to register. The clerk checked things out and gave her a couple of forms. She took them to a desk to fill them out. She got back into the line to hand them in. At this point she was required to pay her student council fees. Because they're kind of low tech, they asked if she had exact change and gave her an envelope to put it in. "Just write your name on the outside." They said. Um.
Ok. She did that, then she got back in the line to hand over the money. When she got to the top of the line the third time, the clerk arranged a locker for her.
So to sum it up, in order to do three (3)
itsy-
bitsy tasks, Miss Information had to line up three (3) separate times and deal with the same clerk (who was very nice) three (3) separate times.
Well, she told herself, at least that's over for another year. She then went to her first class--all about effective management. She tried not to laugh out loud when they got to the part about how careful planning can improve efficiency.
Miss Information is annoyed by the lack of annoyances
Ok, so poor fictional Miss Information left her fictional library branch because well, they were tearing it down, or something. And don’t think she’s not taking that personally. She has been reassigned to a branch whose hours conflict with, oh lets just say everything. Also, the assignment seems to focus primarily on children’s services, in which she oh lets just say no background, aptitude or inclination. Hm…children? Are they the short ones who leak fluids constantly? Miss Information thinks she may have seen them around. But seriously, one of her friends laughs hysterically when she recalls leaving her baby with Miss Information. Miss Information read him a chapter from John Grisham's
The Firm and sang him 99 Bottles of Beer. The kid was
fine. Really.
Anyway, it’s her job and she’s making the best of it. The whole children involvement thing isn’t going to kick in right away, giving her time to get to know the branch (20 minutes), relearn circulation (45 minutes) and put her mug away (1 minute). The rest of the day she checked books in and out--only because she hasn’t gotten to know her new coworkers yet and doesn’t feel any guilt over shoving them out of the way to get to the customers first. She did withdraw a 20 year old book on investing in real estate. It was out of date. This would also be true about books on real estate investment written last Tuesday but she didn’t see any of those. The branch also has a book on Windows 95 that Miss Information suspects is not there ironically.
What on earth is she supposed to do in this sleepy little branch? Today she overheard two of her new coworkers saying they can’t figure out why she‘s there either. So they already agree on something! Soon they’ll be great friends, doing each other’s nails, giving each other perms…it would help to kill the time.
Miss Information loves the library, why would you ever think otherwise?
For the record, Miss Information would like to declare that everything contained in this blog is entirely her own totally misguided opinion and does not in any way represent the views of her unnamed employer. Gosh darn it, she loves the library system and would never intentionally besmirch its character with her obviously insane observations, which are probably completely fictional. Yeah, that’s it. Fiction. Good idea. Miss Information probably doesn’t work in a library at all. She’s just making this crap up. Obviously her stories are completely unrealistic. Security guards being beaten up? Yeah, right. Libraries aren't like that.
Of course if she did work for some sort of library, she would never ever do anything to break any of its awesome rules about Internet usage and personal blogging. Because, she loves everything about the library, especially that part in its vision statement that talks about the importance of intellectual freedom.
