Oxford fucking Ohio… LMAO!

I was calling reserves today and got a guy on the horn who is either a worker at a zoo or is playing Jumanji as there were all kinds of tropical bird noises and ape noises coming from the background as I was telling the guy that his book arrived. I almost commented on it but with the way my week has been going I thought it best to quit while I was ahead.

Later on, after numerous problems with our Internet computers Cochise and his gimp squeeze stopped to tell me that “she” is insane and that she threatened their lives and that Cochise is said to have a court date in a bordering State but that that doesn’t matter because Cochise isn’t a resident of that State and that means that legal action cannot be taken.

[blink] I have NO idea WTF they were talking about!

… And that she has been institutionalized before and is on multiple medications including Paxil and Zoloft and that they are getting spammed with crazy emails including threats, and they are being called incessantly and that they have changed their email addresses before because of this yet it continues…

At this point I’m numb. I listened to all of this bewildered as it was like I walked into the middle of a conversation that was none of my business yet there I was. I said things like, “that isn’t cool,” and “you should save those emails,” not knowing what they wanted from me and hoping that they would leave quickly so I would no longer have to feign interest. Ultimately I told them to go to the courthouse where the law library is, then I wished them luck.

Now I’m drinking scotch…

A 20 something woman said “fuck you” to me today from across the Library. She was upset about the wait time for our Internet computers and when a PC unexpectedly opened in the Childrens’ Department she stopped and gave me her idea of a going away present on her way to the open PC.

… Not on your best day baby!

There have been many more clueless professors coming in as of late for “special help.” Recently I discovered that Goliath is a certified math teacher. Heaven help us all for Goliath can barely form coherent sentences let alone use a sophisticated piece of technology like a computer. He knows the basics now that I am teaching him… But this is going very slowly as he cannot retain information to save his life. When he first came in I actually thought that we had ourselves a new homeless guy because his appearance is disheveled at best and he is at least as odoriferous.

He constantly refers to his yahoo email account and every independent piece of mail and attachment within as his “page” which is amusing and annoying at the same time. Goliath has come a long way though and is sure to be teaching the children of America math very soon.

In other news, The Clueless Professor has frayed every last nerve that the Reference Staff had left. She uses no fewer than four different flash drives for quintuple redundant backups of her no fewer than 20 resumes and countless cover letters then forgets where she put everything and blames our computers. Aside from her constantly asking the staff for help and then telling us that we’re mistaken or that there is a better way to go about doing whatever it is that she’s asking about, she says things like, “I don’t know why this isn’t working today? It worked here on Tuesday.” Possibly her most grating quality is that she can’t seen to grasp the concept of the PDF which is primarily a read only format that is used to preserve document formatting. Sure, PDFs can be set to accept editing but the vast majority aren’t. So despite our best efforts to show her how she can find the security settings where what is allowed is clearly stated she insists that the other day she was able to type within the PDF, or at another library she was able to type within the PDF, and therefore it must be our computers and not any restrictions placed on the PDF’s themselves. Oy! Around and around we go, and soon this woman will be teaching America’s college students, or maybe not as she told me that her last academic gig was in Guatemala.

[blink]

Our Intern thinks that this woman is just flat-out insane and isn’t a teacher at all and just applies to every college from Hawaii to Haiti. This would probably be the best case scenario as it would keep her away from teaching anything. Sadly, I fear that she and Goliath just represents a growing trend that underscored the sad state of our educational system.

I fear this because they aren’t the only ones. We have another guy who is better with technology but I have my doubts about his ability to effectively communicate ideas to students, and then there is the original Clueless Professor who still comes in from time to time. Clearly there are good teachers out there and every profession has its bindlestiffs and stumblebums but it’s alarming to think that the people I profiled here are either teaching America’s children or will very soon be doing so. It is imperative that our system be overhauled for the 21st Century or America is only going to fall further behind Asia and the rest of the world. We need to act swiftly or we’re not going to be able to keep up in the years to come.

After dealing with the Clueless Professor at length yesterday my colleague commented that working with her is like, “trying to nail jello to the wall,” because she asks for our assistance and then always asserts that we’re either mistaken or that there is a better way to do whatever it is.

This dovetails nicely with another post I’m working on regarding the sad state of our educational system…

A woman wearing a hoodie with black and red skulls on it signed-in to use the Internet today by using her driver’s license. While I was entering her license number I noticed that her photo showed her with a tremendous black eye.

… That’s all I got.

Today we found this among many mildewey books that were donated to the Library:

It amuses me every time that someone finds this blog after visiting BuzzFeed’s “Hipster Librarians” page.

We had a middle-aged guy approach the Reference Desk with what we thought was a question or two. It began with a question about how certain aspects of Google Maps work. The man was taking a test that accompanied a job application. The test that he had in hand must have been at least 20 pages long. It seems the man made it about halfway through and was then totally stymied. So he asked us for help.

Fine.

One question became two questions became three questions, became THREE PAGES of questions! Finally my coworker and I looked at each other and just as I was about to ask the guy how much the job pays, since we were the ones taking the test, the questions veered into a realm of proprietary knowledge that we had absolutely no way of knowing without being very familiar with websites that we never even heard of.

Had the questioning turned around again I was going to point out to the man that we were already over the edge of the ethical boundary. Obviously the company is asking these questions because the applicant needs to know the answers to effectively do the job.

I am not amused.

Today was going along at a really mellow pace, and then all hell broke loose around 12:30. At the same time I’m helping an Irregular print out instructions on how to beat a drug test, his computer decides it will no longer connect to the network printer. Coinciding with this was the copy machine guy who decided to drop by, and the guy from 3M as well who just happened to pop in. They both needed to talk to me about various aspects of our haywire technology.

Ultimately I had to print the guy’s information from the Reference Desk. Our Library Science Student Intern looked on in horror as the man went into great detail about his urinalysis, and serious prostate problems and how he was catheterized for an extended time, etc… while his document on how to beat the piss test was printing.  Needless to say, this was WAY too much info!

Yes Virginia, this is just another day @ the Library.