Sunday, November 30, 2008

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!

Monday, November 24, 2008

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.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

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.