Jan 28 2009
Frustrations
Is it Monday again? I know it isn’t…but it feels like it should be a Monday.
I am frustrated and annoyed.
For several reasons…
My CanLit class today was awesome - especially one bit of it… and I even have pictures… but I can’t tell you about it or show you the pictures or anything, and that is SO frustrating. You have no idea!
& I am trying to concentrate - to read a scanned pdf of Herbert Croft’s Love and Madness and it is a difficult enough read to begin with, but even moreso when I am already frustrated by other things - and when Ross is snoring LOUDLY on the bed behind me in our motel room.
& I found some GREAT books at the Trent library that would help me a ton with the seminar I am to give in CanLit next Wednesday. Took forever to find them, and I was SO hot and uncomfortable the entire time, and Ross kept getting interested in books I was not interested in and I was HOT and miserable and wanted to leave once I had what I wanted - and then when we got to the checkout desk guess what?! The self-serve checkout machines have been down forever… nothing new there… but the library’s computer system was also down and I was not able to take out a single blessed thing. Because like God FORBID we should ever have to revert to doing things the old way - you know, with a pen & paper… just can’t be done. It had been down for 45 minutes according to the first guy we talked to … or “just a few minutes” according to the second … take your pick …. we could leave them there and try again later, or we could wait - but they didn’t know what was wrong with the computers, or if/when/who might do something about it.
Every time I bother with the Trent library I leave there annoyed…. usually, the books I want are not on the shelf even though the computer insists that they are - and asking the staff for help/anywhere else to look invariably results in a vague gesture towards the shelves that you just came from after having spent ages looking for the book.
Today took the cake though…. would it have killed them to post a sign I might have seen on the way IN so that I wouldn’t have spent so long finding just what I needed only to be told I couldn’t have it? GRRRRRRRRRR!
Thoughtlessness, in many ways, is more irksome than malice. Why work in a library if you couldn’t care less about the people who use it?
Think next time you should check for a suggestion box — and fill it.
Oh wow! That would be so frustrating. Were they willing to at least keep the books on hold for you so that next time you come and the machines are working you’d be able to check them out?
Shishkabobs! We’ve had our computer system go down at my library, but when it happens (once every six months or whatever) we pull out legal pads and write everything on there. It’s a bit of a risk because you don’t know if someone has a $600 fine on their account that they need to pay before they can check something out, but for the most part, it works out pretty well.
I say your library needs to take some lessons on customer service.
Hava