Saturday, May 08, 2010

Miss Information has a close encounter with the law

The man with the Irish accent was angry. He had returned a CD yesterday and it was still on his record. This happens all the time.

"This happens all the time." Miss Information told the man who was gradually turning purple. "Don't worry. We'll take care of it." She went on to blame the useless computers and explain the "claims returned" process.

The man, who was now on the verge of stroking out, was not going for it. It was clear that the library was stealing in his name and he wasn't going to put up with it. He wanted Miss Information to provide him with the name of the thief who had been working at the returns counter yesterday.

Miss Information pointed out first that she wasn't giving out anyone's name. Second, she wanted the man to know that if library staff wanted to steal library materials it would be a whole lot less annoying to check it off the customer record first.

The man got all huffy and told her that if she wouldn't name the evil thief, he would march over to the police station and report the library! Miss Information was clearly conspiring to commit theft and that's a crime! He was coming right back with the police. How did she like that?

Oh. Un-huh. Miss Information replied that she was not willing to name names. Conspirators have to stick together after all. The man, true to his word, marched off to the police station. It seemed however, that the police were busy with other major conspiracies and didn't have the manpower for this one so the man came back alone. Miss Information made herself very busy and let the circulation supervisor deal with it. Subsequently the CD was located on its way back to its owning branch. As Miss Information predicted it was a computer error not the Profumo affair for heaven's sake.

Also, Miss Information wants all the angry people to know that they need to think a bit about wardrobe. This particular angry man was wearing a denim jacket with a Woody Woodpecker decal. It made it awfully hard to take him seriously.

2 Comments:

At 1:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Libraries are perpetually weird places to work, but I'll bet we have NOTHING on working at the Police Station.

(I'll bet even the staff at the Royal Library at Alexandria had to deal with people with their togas in a twist. "I returned that scroll last week!!"... "Sir, you can't carry your olympic torch in here."... "I think someone's looking at erotic urns in the Reference Section..." and so it goes. )

 
At 6:24 PM, Blogger The Old Man said...

Probably used Thrush mufflers or is a fan thereof.

 

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