Thursday, August 09, 2012

Miss Information has never been good with numbers herself.

When Miss Information was on the desk this morning she got a call from a woman who couldn't access her library account information online. She'd never had a problem before and she does this all the time. The library website has been playing tricks lately, logging customers in but acting like it hasn't so Miss Information assumes that this is the problem. She asks for the customer's card number, please note that all library cards start with a 2.

Customer: 5980...

Miss Information: Wait, do you mean 25980?

Customer: Oh, there's a 2 here at the beginning of the number but I never use it. Do I need to use it?

Miss Information: Um, yeah. What you need to do is input the entire number on your library card and not just starting in the middle of the number and entering random digits as you feel like it.

Customer: well, I've never needed the 2 before. Is this something new?

Miss Information: Nope. Numbers have worked this way forever. You start at the left side and read all the way to the right side. In the entire history of the world no one has ever asked for a number except for the first digit. That just would never happen. Why don't you try accessing your account again, including the 2 this time?

Customer: That worked. Why did that work? I've never needed the 2 before. You've obviously changed something.

Miss Information: Sigh.

Friday, August 03, 2012

It's summer. Shouldn't people be outside?


But they're in the library instead.  Miss Information doesn't understand it because the library seems to be annoying most of them.  At about 11 am a woman came to the information desk.  The woman was not happy.

"I was here when you first opened this morning and then I went to aquafit," she began.


Miss Information is happy the woman is sharing these details of her life.  It makes her feel included.  


"And when I was here, I was so shocked.  There were people sitting around reading the newspaper, eating breakfast, feeding babies! That's awful!"


Miss Information replied that it was ok for people to be doing all of those things in the library.  Food and drink are mostly permitted.  There are exceptions but Miss Information wasn't going into that.


"But feeding babies!  My word!  That's allowed?"  Then she clutched her pearls.  (Not really.)


It may be a radical stance but Miss Information is coming down on the pro-feeding-babies side of this issue.  Yep.  Hungry babies are screamy babies and screamy babies annoy Miss Information.  So, uh-huh.  Please mothers of the world, feed your babies in the library if that will keep them quiet--and alive because that's important too.


Miss Information has no idea if it was a breastfeeding mother who'd so upset the woman because the incident she complaining about took place 2 hours ago.  Unless the baby was a very slow eater, the crisis has passed and no one died.  It's a bit late for Miss Information to spring into action so she just stared at the woman until she went away.