What Miss Information's been doing these days
Actual conversation
5:10 pm. Friday
Woman: I want a computer for an hour.
Miss Information: The library closes at 6, so you won’t get a full hour.
Woman: What? The library closes at 6?
Miss Information: Yes. On Fridays in the summer the library closes at 6.
Woman: Wait...it’s Friday?
Miss Information: Yes. On Fridays in the summer the library closes at 6.
Woman: The library closes at 6?
Miss Information: Yep.
Woman: But it’s Friday.
Miss Information: That’s right. For the summer the library closes early on Fridays--at 6.
Woman: The library closes at 6? Really?
Miss Information: Uh-huh.
Woman: Oh.
This is the way the entire week has been.
A cautionary tale.
Miss Information has seen pictures before but this was her first encounter with the real thing. Last night she was in line at the grocery store behind a man whose tattoo proudly proclaimed "Scared for Life". Oh sure it could have meant what it said but the fellow did not seem at all the nervous type.
So, this is why everyone should learn to spell.
Miss Information is annoyed by an alarm
The nice-neighbourhood library has its flaws. One of them is the vast array of buzzers and alarms which are forever going off. Miss Information has yet to differentiate between the "
someone's at the staff entrance" buzzer, the "hey the building's on fire" alarm, the "
someone's stealing something" alarm and the "whoops, shouldn't have opened that door" noise.
When she arrived at work today, her branch head told her to expect alarms. Some people were testing one or another of these alert systems. Not to worry, though. Sometime later Alarm Guy announced that his work in the library was done. About an hour later Miss Information heard an alarm. She checked around. No one seemed worried. She went about her business. Suddenly she heard the branch head say, "It's real! Evacuate the building!"
Miss Information tore around the library. She reassured the extremely slow moving patrons that they could come back and watch music videos later but they should definitely get a move on and leave the library.
During this time lots of people asked her questions: what's going on? is this a real fire? should I take my laptop? and Miss Information's favourite: can you show me the books on Italian cooking?
Seriously. The woman wanted reference help. During an evacuation.
All ended well enough. It turned out that someone in the condo above the library had drilled too close to an alarm sensor--third time this month according to the branch head. Miss Information got some fresh air,
ogled some firemen, and found out that if there were ever an actual fire in the library she would die trying to get people to leave.
