Miss Information

Miss Information suspects a patron of weirdness

First a disclaimer. Miss Information was present for the entire incident described below, but she can't quite believe that it happened. In fact there is no absolute proof that her suspicions are correct but based on her knowledge of the library patrons, she thinks they probably are.

Ok, so Miss Information is once again assigned to supervise the operation of circulation desk about which she remains completely clueless. The one and only thing she has retained from last week is that in the morning somebody photocopies and distributes the daily schedule. She set about doing just that. (By the way, she did it all wrong--she copied it before the daily changes were made, she made the wrong number of copies, she forgot to distribute to the other departments and most significantly she didn't tell anyone she had done it, so the person who was actually assigned to the photocopy/distribution job also did it. On a positive note, the other person did everything correctly.)

Anyway, the only thing about this little story that's relevant is that Miss Information went off to do some photocopying. The main floor photocopier was out of order, as it often is--clearly marked with an Out of Order sign. Therefore, Miss Information did what any sane, logical person does when confronted by a non-working copy machine...she looked for a working one--made her copies, went away feeling like she had accomplished something. (The fact that she hadn't actually done anything of value is irrelevant. For one brief shining moment she felt like she had. Some days that's the best she can hope for.)

Next, she went about her business--mainly trying to figure out what the hell the circulation supervisor is supposed to do--when a customer called her over to the photocopier. You know, the out of order photocopier? The woman was annoyed because the copier had stopped working. Miss Information replied that as far as she knew the copier was broken, after all it had a clearly posted Out of Order sign (which was no longer clearly posted) and the service guy hadn't come to fix it in the last two minutes.

The customer responded that she was in a hurry and the copier had produced several copies before conking out.

Miss Information directed her to a working photocopier and wondered whether it was possible that a functional human being had intentionally removed the out of order sign and used a broken photocopier because for some reason they thought this was more efficient?

She really thinks this is what happened. But that's insane, right?

posted by Miss Information @ 3:53 PM