Miss Information

Miss Information is annoyed by a great many things

First off it is unhumanly cold. "Dress in layers," say the meteorologists. Uh-huh. Miss Information has been dressing in 3 layers since fricking Thanksgiving. How many damn layers is she supposed to wear now?



Of course today is a school day which generally involves a lot of outdoor kind of activity. This sucks! Her first stop at school was the cafeteria. She has learned the annoying and insane reality that the cafeteria sells out of all the "good" food by about 11:50 am. Just try to buy yogurt from these people at 4 pm...can't be done. Anyway, today she was early enough not only to get vanilla yogurt (her favourite), a container of pineapple chunks and her least favourite salad option. Seriously, why are they sold out of salad before noon? Does this make sense? Since she actually wanted the food for later, she popped it into her locker, bought a cup of really tasteless coffee and went to class....where her professor told her that he didn't think her project idea was realistic. He underestimates her.

After that class, she got the food back from her locker got a cup of much improved coffee and went back to the cafeteria to eat...discovering that in the 3 minutes between locker and table both the salad and the pineapple containers had opened and leaked all over her bag. Unfortunately the watery-ness of the lettuce did not combat the sticky-ness of the pineapple. So now everything she owns is sticky. Damn liquid.

And of course, she absolutely cannot figure out the recycling bins at school. She knows those plastic (leaking) containers are recyclable but cannot for the life of her figure out which slot they go in. Sometimes she pretends the recycling bins are invisible or haunted by the ghosts of former students or something and just goes straight to the trash cans.

Then she had a stupid amount of difficulty using the library photocopier. She oriented the paper incorrectly, then for some reason ended up making multiple copies of the same page. She did not ask for this.

So basically she's wondering if maybe she's cut out for higher education. She usually doesn't feel stupid during class but before class and after class she questions her ability on a minute by minute basis.

posted by Miss Information @ 6:09 PM 2 comments

A patron pushes Miss Information's buttons

Pft. Miss Information is still trapped in the world's most civilized library. The customers are, without exception, pleasant and polite. Some of them may actually be idiots, but since they never ask questions it is impossible to tell. They come in, quietly select books and leave without causing a ruckus. They pay their fines promptly and this kills Miss Information, without being asked. Sometimes they even pay other people's fines. No one on staff has more than a passing knowledge of the dialect that the majority of patrons speak. You'd think this at least would lead to some wacky Three's Company style misunderstandings. Nope. Customers are quite happy to act as translators for complete strangers. It is like working in Mayberry except more ethnic! Miss Information is miserable.

Miss Information was briefly delighted on Tuesday by the activities of one customer. The circulation desk is right next to the front door and during snow storms the staff disables the automatic door opener-thingy because otherwise the door stays open and the staff doesn't look good blue. Most people figure it out. If they press the button and nothing happens they just manually open the door. Except for this one girl. She was a teenager, old enough to understand the workings of such things. She tried the button. Nothing. She looked at the sign with the library hours. She pressed the button. Nothing happened. She peeked in the window. Saw signs of life. Pressed the button. Nothing happened. At this point she began pressing the button constantly, because, like maybe you have to press the button 31 times to make the door open.

Miss Information was pleased to see this kind of determination in a young person and yeah, she should have gone to open the door for her, but she was observing the child for science. She thinks the girl would have been there forever except another customer came along, walked up to the door, pulled it open and let the poor girl in.

Miss Information is happy to report that the girl exited the library without difficulty.

posted by Miss Information @ 5:44 PM 3 comments