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.
15 Comments:
Anonymous Reader finds writing in third-person untenable.
Italian-cooking patron might have been an opportunist, hoping for an open flame to try out a recipe.
Always thought I'd die too trying to get patrons out of our library in the case of a real fire....
You might enjoy reading my true story about an alarm in my library. It was rather absurd when the only person who registered it was me, the library staff member who's hard of hearing!
This blog is why I hate librarians, and never bother asking them for help.
Thank God I finished my PhD, and never had to deal with you precious, snarky dingbats again.
I hope a stack of thickly-bound, 1940s Russian journals falls on you in a manner where you unable to breathe, or yell for help.
8.02 anonymous needs to be asked why he/she even posts here, adn who peed in their cornflakes.
Some times, you just want to leave the patrons to burn.
wonders if Commenter 8:02 used the help of a librarian finishing their crummy PhD. Perhaps Commenter 8:02 is bitter at being turned down flat after asking a librarian out.
Commenter 8.02 is the reason this 'snarky' librarian hates people.
Well, congrats! You know your blog has hit it big when you start to garner comments from trolls. (it's probably the lady with the wet pants issue exacting revenge)
Most of the libraries I've worked in have had the policy that if they won't come when told to, you leave them to burn. :) But idiot members of the public are part of the reason I'm a cataloguer.
We had a tornado come through town last year and had to get all the patrons to the basement (ie "safety") pretty darn quick. It was like herding cats. And the Internet users! How dare they have to give up precious computer time for a mere tornado! (Which never struck the library and, ohhh, the bitterness from the patrons when it became clear we weren't going to die)
Dear Dr. 8:02,
Our sympathies go out to you. It's a shocking revalation to find out that after years of working on a paper no one but you cares about, librarians are sill smarter than you are.
Genius Anonymous at 8:19, that's "revelation" honey. You must be SUPER smart.
Oh, and LULZ@"sill". Hilarious. Two spelling mistakes in one post by a moron claiming to be smarter than someone else.
It's nice that when Anonymous finished his/her Phd we all won.
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