beware of the leopard

Cas is currently

In the long running saga of ways to really ruin the start of your day (evil anonymous comments, random Germans, Clompy, soggy toast), we have a new entry.

The university library telling you that you have a massive fine for a book that is way over due. This is, of course, the book that I took back on time, last week. We won’t go into them taking 3 months to inter library loan a couple of books that I am still waiting for. Or silly maximum numbers of items that mean post-grad students can’t take out more than 10 items at once. Yes, 10 *1*. Which, when you consider an average piece of work for the undergraduate course was expected to have a bibliography of a minimum of 20/25 books, is just a little silly.

But we’re not going into that now. No, we are moaning about the stupidity of the loans clerk who took my book, checked it through the machine, made the point of saying “oh this is an inter library loan book”, and still manages to get me in trouble with the library. I have no proof I gave the book back, just my say so, and the fact I have never in the entire year had another book back late. If I’d known I was going to get in trouble with this book, I’d have kept it a couple of extra days to finish it at my leisure, instead of staying up till about 1 am the night before finishing making notes.

And then I get another email from them, telling me that the inter library loan I requested over a month ago is ready for collection. This bugs me because (due to time pressures), I had to get a copy off the godhead, so had informed the ILL office a good couple of weeks back that I no longer required the item.

On the phone just now, they informed me that, because they don’t staff the ILL desk on Fridays (who did I speak to then, a ghost?), if your book is due back on a Friday, you will automatically get a fine till they can clear the book on Monday. Or when they can be bothered. But they will very kindly wipe the fine in this case. How big of them. And when I, as their own email requested, informed them that I didn’t want to collect my inter library loan that had come through, they got all huffy with me. I’d told them three weeks ago I didn’t want it! And again today, so they didn’t have to waste time emailing me every day to tell me it was ready! So now they have a copy of a paper from ARCHEOLOGIA E CALCOLATORI that they didn’t have before. I am sure that someone else will find a use for it.

Grrrr. I used to work in the public service sector. I was considered very very good at my job *2*. Dealing with the public isn’t hard. So why is it I get the impression that they give you a full frontal lobotomy and remove any shred of common sense you might once have had, if you choose to work for, say, the library? I am sure these people really aren’t that thick. They would not be able to breathe and walk at the same time if they were.

So there you have it, way no 5 to really piss Cas off in the morning. Yes, it’s easy to do, but once again this got me before I’d had my cup of tea. I really should stop checking my email before I’ve drunk it.

But now it is raining, and I have to walk up to the lab to try and wrest the Cute Canadian’s password for the wiki from the dread server, so that’s my hairstyle ruined half an hour after I got out of the shower.

Yes, today is most definitely going to be one of those days.

Endnotes:
*1*It might be 15, but I’m grumpy right now and don’t want to check. Still a silly low number.Back
*2*One ex manager keeps ringing me up, asking when I am going to come back and work with her. Even offered me the assistant managers job if I’d come back. (As the current AM is a friend of mine, this was a little bit awkward).Back