Miss Information is still waiting, you bastards.
Miss Information has not yet heard from the good people at library school. This has made her frustrated, cranky, emotional and bitter. It is just
so much like dating. They seemed to like her. She thought they had a real connection but they’ve had her number for 2 months now. Why aren’t they calling?
Ok. So Miss Information wasn’t absolutely perfect for them; they’re not such hot stuff themselves. Maybe they shouldn’t be so damn picky, especially with all those happening new online library schools out there. Sometimes you have to settle. Miss Information would be a great library school student. She has an endless capacity for bullshit. She promises she would listen attentively to all their boring stories. She would fake an interest in their hobbies—the history of records management, for example. Miss Information could pretend to be fascinated by that for a semester. No one would ever know the truth.
Miss Information just knows it’s because the admissions committee met an application they liked better—a cuter application, an application with nicer legs. Dammit. Why didn’t Miss Information use Times New Roman instead of Ariel? What the hell was she thinking?
Lately Miss Information has been terrified that the committee is just stringing her along, waiting for her to get bored and run off with a different graduate school or die or something and they aren’t actually going to tell her she’s been rejected.
They are like the worst boyfriend ever.
Miss Information is annoyed with familiarity
Miss Information is happy to report that the hair situation is improving. It must be. Last week a patron looked at her in horror, "Is that your
hair?" she gasped in disbelief. Miss Information tried to look at it as a compliment...and failed.
This morning though two (2) different and unrelated women both said they liked her hair. No room for misinterpretation there.
Her hair may be closer to fabulous this week, but other problems have surfaced. A customer asked for a natural facelift book. "I need exercises to tighten up my face," she said. "See, I have these wrinkles...oh, look...you have the same ones. They're exactly like the wrinkles you have!"
As much as this was intended to be a friendly, womanly bonding experience, Miss Information was not going to play along. Seriously, insulting the nice library lady by pointing out her physical flaws is not going to get you the service you may want.
It does, however get you the service you deserve.
Miss Information meets Miss Direction
Miss Information’s library is the mother branch in the region—when ever someone gets a booboo or the sniffles in another smaller branch, mom dispatches someone to help out. This is great because any really good ideas at those little sibling branches can be borrowed, adapted, sometimes even stolen for the home branch. And don’t go crying to Mom about it, ‘cause she likes us best!
Sometimes though it kind of backfires. Miss Information laughed out loud at a sign that just had to have been stolen from another location. It was sitting at one of the checkouts. “Check Out Closed. Go to Next Service Desk,” it said, including a helpful arrow. The arrow, alas, is pointing in completely the wrong direction. If the customers were to follow these instructions they would need to circumnavigate the globe in order to get to the right place. (Hopefully they’d find another library on the way.) They’d also have to gnaw their way through a cement wall. Miss Information pictures them jammed up against the wall like sheep who have grazed to the corner of the pen, pawing uselessly at the wall. “If it weren’t for this damn wall, I could get my books checked out,” they would whimper pitifully. Miss Information pictures the staff playing dumb. “The sign says you should go that way. Don't question the integrity of the sign! There
must be a desk over there."
The beauty of this sign is that there is not only no way to orient it correctly, but there is no other desk where it could be used and be accurate.
Miss Information is suddenly happy that none of the customers ever read the library signs.
Miss Information is annoyed by pests
Miss Information loves animals. She identifies herself as a cat person, but really anything furry is ok with her. Except raccoons. She hates those bastards. She also really thinks reptiles are cool and has a close personal relationship with the library fish, Dewey 11, so it isn’t just mammals.
Anyway, there’s a problem with annoying vermin in the library. Not the librarians. First there was the bird. A customer brought in a stunned sparrow. It had knocked itself senseless on a nearby window. Miss Information would have constructed a nice outdoor shelter for the little thing, because, well, birds should be outside. However the kind-hearted librarian in charge put the bird in a cardboard box and put that box into the librarians’ workroom, where it (the bird not the box) quickly regained its senses and began flying around, ending up in the rafters thanks to a missing ceiling tile. It was captured by two staff members who took it outside (door held by Miss Information). All of them congratulated themselves on a job well done and returned to the librarian’s workroom for the inevitable sharing of war stories only to find the bird was still flying around. Apparently the bird wasn’t so much captured as not captured, then. Eventually the bird really was captured and released, but not before someone left the workroom door open, allowing the bird to have a good, proper test of its flying around the library skills.
A couple of weeks after that there was a bat in the library. No one quite figured out where that came from but it was released (door held by Miss Information).
Then there was the dog. Not Miss Information’s shift but apparently a local dog wandered in while the door was propped open for the daily delivery. The reference desk staff briefly discussed what to do before deciding chasing dogs out of the library wasn’t in either of their job descriptions. The dog quickly realized he was in hell and left on his own accord.
Just before closing last Saturday, a bunch of teenage girls started screaming. Not so unusual. But the cause for the screaming was a teeny, tiny mouse. Miss Information tried but failed to catch the mouse. She planned to let it go outdoors where it would escape the library mouse poison.
Today she came into the staff room to find the furniture moved and a strange Dr Seussian sculpture where the couch used to be. It consisted of several vases stacked on top of each other. Miss Information thought it was someone getting creative but it was pointed out to her that the bottom vase contained a mouse. She offered to take the mouse outside. Apparently someone had decided that the best course of action was to call the pest control guy and show him the mouse, in the process slowly suffocating the poor bastard (the mouse not the pest control guy).
That this seemed like a good idea to anyone makes Miss Information worry about the people around her. Also the mice.
