Miss Information

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.

posted by Miss Information @ 5:07 PM