Miss Information is annoyed by a letter
Miss Information was checking her work e-mail today--essay avoidance manoever #7 and noticed that ponytail guy has been banned for another 8-weeks. She isn't losing any sleep over this (sleeping=essay avoidance manoever #3). He's a sociopath.
What kind of irritates her is the letter banning ponytail guy. It goes something like this.
Dear Ponytail Guy,
You broke our rules and the library doesn't want to see you on our property for 8 weeks. If you come back we'll have you arrested.
Yours truly,
The Library
"Dear"? "Yours truly"? Miss Information likes that the library is civilized but surely when you're kicking somebody out you can dispense with the "dear" part of the letter.
No wonder these guys always come back.
Miss Information is annoyed by her fellow coffee drinkers
Miss Information is off work this week and she has a really big essay to write. She is determined to write a really great paper and get a really excellent mark. And so she has spent every waking minute drinking coffee in Starbucks, working out at the gym and watching hockey.
Sigh. Academia is just so
hard.
Anyway, she has a message for the other inhabitants of Starbucks:
Miss Information is not a freaking bus boy. She is sick and tired of having to clear off previously owned cups and plates and stuff before she gets to sit down and enjoy her peaceful coffee. You can not have failed to notice that Starbucks, as lovely as it is, is not a 5 star restaurant and they don't have a lot of wait staff. That is why you have to actually go to the counter and get your own refill. And it's not like those paper cups get washed and reused. See, it isn't actually that hard when you finish drinking to pick up your debris and take it to one of the conveniently situated garbage disposal unit thingies which if you look carefully are located right next to the door. You were going that way anyway, and your cup isn't nearly as heavy as it was before you drank whatever was in it and you managed to carry it all the way over from the counter.
Also, after you have moved your cup you may notice that that table is not quite as
pristine as it was when you arrived. Miss Information would be ever so grateful if you could take a moment and wipe up any spillage that may have occurred. Also crumbs are not that heavy. It takes very little strength to brush them into the very cup that you are about to throw out.
As for you environmentalists who get your coffee* in a "for here" cup. Miss Information admires your commitment. She used to do the same, but she likes her coffee piping hot and those ceramic mugs just don't do the trick when you are spending hours lingering over a cup of coffee in essay avoidance manoever #6. Anyway, you obviously can't throw those out, so your task isn't quite as easy as that of those planet destroying bastards. But still. Obviously you got your coffee* at the counter and you know that those baristas are going to need it back eventually. So just walk it over to them. They aren't scary or anything. It isn't that far. See, because if you don't the next person, probably Miss Information, is just going to have to move it herself. And it really irritates her.
*Substitute whatever fancy ass drink you prefer--except when Miss Information talks about her coffee, she means coffee--not soy based, half sweet, extra foamed anything, just plain coffee or maybe tea.
Miss Information is annoyed by the crazies
The crazies couldn't wait for Friday the Thirteenth and they all showed up one day early.
It was a pretty peaceful week. Oh, sure everyone was cranky, super cranky, but nothing really annoying had happened, even on Wednesday.
Then Thursday all the crazy people showed up. And they brought friends.
Crazy Gorilla Lady came by for a visit. Miss Information likes gorillas; she thinks they’re cool. Crazy Gorilla Lady takes gorilla obsession to a whole new level. Miss Information has some very odd obsessions. Generally she finds these embarrassing and hides them from the world. Not so Crazy Gorilla Lady who regularly visits the library looking for updates on her favourite gorillas around the world.
Crazy Gorilla Lady is not good with computers and to make things even more irritating had forgotten her glasses. Could Miss Information please read the web site to her? Since it wasn’t busy, Miss Information agreed. That is how she learned that Joe the gorilla is on acid reflux medication. She thinks Joe the gorilla give up coffee and stop worrying about his relatives in Rwanda. Maybe take some time off, go on a vacation…
Later, Miss Information spotted a new customer. She has spent years fine-tuning her crazy-dar and she could sense something about him was not quite right. It was subtle and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Perhaps it was the way he was skipping around, talking to himself, gesturing wildly. She offered to help him—not that there was any possibility of help for this guy. She asked if he had a question. He did. Did Miss Information think that an organism that used less than 300 processes was a simple organism? Miss Information had never thought about it. Did he want to look at some biology books? She could show him some books. No. He wanted to chit chat about the digestive system of the pig. Did he want books about pigs or digestive systems? She could show him some books. No. He wanted books about Michael Jordan. Um. Ok. She showed him some books.
Miss Information is annoyed by reality
It’s Wednesday, the day of eternal misery. Well, officially it's Computer Training Day--the day the librarians try to share their vast knowledge of computers with an unsuspecting public. More to the point it is the day that the library has 10 less computers to share with the rest of the public, because of that whole "sharing knowledge" part of the mission statement. To make matters worse, everyone has called in sick today, leaving Miss Information and one of the Mr. Informations pretty much alone at the Reference Desk. Both Miss Information and Mr. Information are feeling particularly hard done by as they are both afflicted with annoying projects, mild colds and severe crankiness.
Fortunately martyrdom is not only a favourite pastime, but is also seasonally appropriate so it’s a fun morning.
At around noonish, Miss Information heads off for lunch. Mr. Information is too much of a martyr to take a break though, so he stays and tries in vain to explain reality to a poor misguided woman. It seems the woman had read and enjoyed a series of novels—mysteries, whose main character was a writer. She’d read them all. Now she wanted more books. Specifically she wanted to read the books written by the fictional character. As curious as she was to see how her colleague would break the news that fictional characters rarely get publishing contracts, Miss Information decided lunch was more important. She ducked her head and walked swiftly towards the staff room. She knows if she had been the one dealing with the patron, she would have just chickened out and told the woman that the library—for some unfathomable reason—had not purchased copies of these non-existent books written by this non-existent person. Go figure. The woman would have gone away with her delusions intact and a very annoying conversation would have been avoided.
Professionalism, like reality, is such a buzzkill.
