Saturday, November 26, 2011

Miss Information is virtually annoyed again

Miss Information was fortunate to be working in online reference this week when the library phone system crashed. With no other way to bother librarians, patrons turned to online reference to fulfill their needs. Most weren't bad. Lots of questions about why the telephone reference service wasn't working, the usual questions about why the website didn't recognize their card number. Then there was this guy. Miss Information decided he was a guy, at least. No way to tell on virtual reference.

Guest: WHY I CAN'T GET JOB? IS ECONOMY BAD?
Miss Information: Your local branch library has a lot of job hunting resources. The Career Information section has books about resume writing, interviewing, and job applications.
Guest: DON'T WANT. NEED JOB. YOU THINK BAD ECONOMY REASON I CAN'T FIND JOB.

Miss Information wants to point out that shouting at her isn't going to help but instead she agrees that the economy is bad. Whether this is the reason Guest can't get a job is uncertain but Miss Information decides to be diplomatic for a change.

Guest: yes, economy bad. me needs job bad. why no job?

Miss Information is pleased to see that he's stopped yelling and sends him the library's job hunter's website.
Apparently he's just accidentally unlocked his caps, though because his next message is back to all caps.

Guest: WHY NO JOBS ON LIBRARY WEBSITE. SEE APPLICATION BUT WHY NO JOBS.
Miss Information: Right now there are no jobs available. You could fill out an application and take it to your local branch. The jobs for pages aren't on the website. Pages shelve books, things like that.
Guest: SHELF BOOKS! WANT GOOD JOB. NO SHELF BOOKS!

Miss Information used to shelve books herself. She mentions that it's a good entry point into the wonderful world of librarianship where one can have a rewarding career chatting to people who don't understand the proper use of the caps lock.

Guest: SAD. NEED JOB. ECONOMY BAD.

The conversation goes on and on. Miss Information begins to think that shelving books is a darned good way to make a living and considers applying for one of those jobs herself.

Fortunately, the gods of technology have finished messing with the library phones and have moved on to the chat system which goes down at exactly the time Miss Information's online reference shift was scheduled to end.

Will Guest get a job? Will the economy improve? Is it possible that Guest was really a LOLcat? Will Miss Information give up the glamorous world of online reference for a page job?
Stay tuned for the answers to these and other questions...

1 Comments:

At 1:42 PM, Blogger jamie said...

If Guest wants to improve his chances of finding a good job, he might want to consider writing in complete, grammatical sentences.

 

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