Sunday, February 21, 2010

Miss Information can't help you with that

Miss Information is super awesome but there are a few things she cannot do. For example, she is not a phone technician so she wasn't much help recently when someone complained bitterly that the payphone was located in an inconvenient location. The woman wanted to phone for a cab. The phone is in the lobby of the building. Miss Information can't imagine a better location. In order to leave the library, the woman would need to walk through the lobby, so her anger about having to walk "all that way" to the phone was sort of unfounded.

Later in the week another patron had a request. He'd gotten a CD-Rom from the library and when he installed it he had just sort of typed in a user name and password. You know, like just randomly. Now he wanted Miss Information to figure out what they were. Unfortunately Miss Information works at a reference desk and not a carnival fortune telling booth. Miss Information looked closely at him but couldn't decide if he was more a "fluffybunny23" or a "superstud103".
The guy was sad. He'd hoped she could help him. Miss Information loaned him a pencil and a piece of paper and suggested he use them the next time he had to pick a user name.

Saturday, February 06, 2010

Miss Information is annoyed by library fine avoidance procedure 17

It's almost closing time and Miss Information is alone on the desk. Of course, now would be an optimal time for an angry guy to show up with a ridiculous complaint. The guy has some overdue books. The guy is not paying the fine. Nuh-huh. No way. Not his problem. Nope. Not only that but he's thinking about filing a class action lawsuit against the library. Oh. He's going to become the library's worst nightmare. Really? Cause there's some competition....has he met the annoying journalist guy or the crazy masturbator? Anyway, this fellow's complaint is that the library didn't notify him until his books were a week overdue. He wants to know the next day. Obviously it's some kind of sneaky library way to make money...and he's mad as hell and he's not going to take this crap lying down. He's got a friend who's a lawyer. Yep. It's class action lawsuit time. The library is in big trouble now.

Miss Information is not a lawyer but she watches Judge Judy. She can't imagine this lawsuit has any merit what so ever. The library provides him with a date due slip that tells him exactly when his books are due. Also, she's guessing that his damages would amount to about 4 dollars, though since he's refusing to pay his fines on principle, he doesn't have any damages that Miss Information can see. Also by the way, library fines are not an income generating stream--they're meant as an incentive to encourage people to return stuff on time. The fines on the man's record wouldn't even pay Miss Information's salary for the time she's spent on this stupid ass conversation.

Miss Information points out that he has the option of getting a printed date due slip. That isn't the man's point! He's an ENGINEER! He has an IQ of 150! Swell. For the record, Miss Information thinks IQ tests are stupid and meaningless. She has also tested in the 150 neighbourhood herself and she can sure as hell read a damn date due slip. An engineer with a 150 IQ probably understands how a calendar works and can make the connection between "due" and "overdue". Do the VISA people phone him when he's a day late? Is he suing them too?

This total idiot completely wrecked Miss Information's day. She's thinking of suing him.