Miss Information

Miss Information enjoys a peaceful day at the office

Miss Information’s library is closing in about a week. She has been transferred to a library in a “bad part of town”. She’s actually looking forward to it. It’s closer to home, closer to school and the area is getting a Starbucks, so you know it’s on the verge of gentrification or possibly just caffeinication, either way is good with Miss Information.

Meanwhile her current branch its usual placid self. Due to an unexpected staffing crisis, no reference staff showed up at work this morning. Miss Information started work at 11:30 but by then the adult department was under siege and losing ground quickly. Because it was a school holiday, the children had shown up early and without adult supervision had gone feral.

Miss Information managed to reclaim some of the territory but the children were surprisingly well organized and mounted an effective counterattack. She ended up barricading herself behind the reference desk ducking incoming mortar rounds. Reinforcements showed up later in the afternoon, but the battle for control of the library lasted much of the afternoon.

Around coffee break time, Miss Information spotted a Manhunt game in progress. She was unsuccessful in her efforts to stop it and went to the circ desk looking for the security guard. This put her in an excellent position to witness a fight between John (friend of a library employee) and a bunch of teenage boys (friends of Satan) in the library foyer. Actually, Miss Information thought that John should have stayed out of it. After the shoving and punching stopped, John screamed for awhile that he was a businessman and this was the worst library in the entire world.

“He may have some rage issues,” one staff member commented.

The rest of the evening was one big Manhunt game. At one point the security guard, either sick of trying to control the children or sick of Miss Information asking him to help control the children, kicked everyone under the age of 18 out of the branch. Miss Information never saw him again. She assumed that he’d been eaten—some of the kids are fasting and have clearly gone mad with hunger. Later someone reported that he was merely out in the parking lot protecting his car from children with hockey sticks.

A few hours later police officers showed up.

This kind of day is really helping Miss Information get over her sadness at going to a new branch. In fact, she realized today that she looks forward to leaving the “worst library in the entire world” and going to the library in the “bad part of town”. It’s a change, if nothing else.

posted by Miss Information @ 6:44 PM