Thursday, August 05, 2021

Miss Information is annoyed by an antimasker...well it had to happen.

When Miss Information came for her desk shift at 4, her colleague had news. "There's a person in the children's department who isn't wearing a mask. She described him. When I told him about our mask policy, he just ignored me then he bumped me with his little cart thing and said I shouldn't be talking to strangers. Security is speaking to him now. It seems to be cool." Security returned and said the man had an exemption card. It's probably one of those things people can print from the internet but Miss Information likes problems that are solved so she went about the business of restocking displays. When she went to the returns area an intense conversation between a very upset circ clerk and the branch head was happening. The clerk was describing an interaction with the same man. "Oh, [other librarian] had an encounter with him too," Miss Information said and she returned to her display tidying. She saw the branch head walking to the children's department to talk to the man. Soon there was shouting. Branch Head and man came to the checkout area. The man was annoyed. He didn't want anyone on staff to ever talk to him again. Oh, how Miss Information wanted that too. In fact probably all the staff wanted that. He was marching around shouting and then he spotted Miss Information. He pointed at her. "She's an idiot," he said. "I told her to get out of my way and she wouldn't, so I pushed her. What an idiot. She shouldn't be talking to strangers. I'm a psychologist! Strangers can be dangerous! They could follow her home! Idiot!" And now, after the dust has settled Miss Information remembers Dwight from The Office. In a famous sequence he explained his decision making process like this: "Whenever I'm about to do something, I think, 'Would an idiot do that?' And if they would, I do not do that thing." But Miss Information did not remember that at the time and proceeded to do the idiot thing. Though security tried to stop her she stood up and shouted at the angry man, "Hey, that wasn't me! There was a shift change! Stop calling me an idiot!" The man actually said he was sorry and explained he has bad eyesight. After a bit more shouting he left. He was subsequently banned for two months. So basically if you come to the library and don't want staff to talk you, wear a mask. If you have an exemption all you have to say is "exemption". You don't need to go the shouty disruptive route at all.