(no subject)

[muckefuck]

I have a lingering sense of disquiet about posting so much petty crap in place of well-composed entries, but it tends to evapourate as soon as I focus on it for more than about two seconds. After all, what is this is not a repository for all the trivialities of which my ho-hum existence is comprised? With that in mind, here's today crème de la stupid:

• Our make-believe librarian. Two minutes before my desk shift, La Vache stops me and asks, "How do you say '30' in Hungarian?" I know exactly what she needs this for: If a title contains a numeral, we have to add a field spelling out the number in the appropriate language for searching purposes. I don't happen to know the word offhand, so I point her to our copy of A manual of European languages for librarians, which exists to answer precisely this sort of question, and leave. Some minutes later, Mr Smith comes out to the information desk and asks me, "What's Hungarian for '30'?" I tell him about leading La Vache to water, but obviously I couldn't make her drink. It takes me about two seconds to look up the answer, but he says, "Let her figure it out herself." Later, I discovered that when he refused to help her, she tried finding a dictionary online--and failed. How, I don't know; if you put "Hungarian dictionary" into Google, the first hit is the Sztaki Szótár online, which has been more adequate for my own needs. She claimed the only dictionaries she could find required download. (I looked up the record just now, and the field is there, but the history shows the record has been modified by Mr Smith, so I wouldn't be surprised to find that he added it. Oh, and couldn't help I fixing all the diacritics she bungled.)
• Closing time. It's summer, there are no classes, so we close the building at 5 p.m. Whereas I used to turn the reins over to a student worker at the end of my shift, now I find myself closing. It was only a matter of time before I crossed paths with some jerk. At quarter to five, an announcement blares telling everyone that we're closing; at 4:55 p.m., the same announcement is repeated. Yet still there were three or four people still on the computers. All but one were working on papers; I gently reminded them that they needed to go. One didn't even realise that the building closed early. He heard the alarms, he told me, but he assumed they applied only to others. (During the term, we allow the general public access only until 5 p.m., but the building remains open for campus patrons for at least another five hours.)
  
  Then there was this guy reading his e-mail or something. I said to him, "The library closes at five. You need to go home." "There's was no need to say that second thing," he replied, "I heard you the first time." Is that so? Then why did I even need to say the first thing? With your-o-so-acute hearing, you must've heard the announcements, so you know that you need to leave. Why should I have to remind you? It's astonishing to me how touchy these kids can be. I can be as calm, polite, and matter-of-fact in my reminders as possible and they will still accuse me of being unnecessarily mean and rude. What are they reacting to? I can't figure out if they're too indulged, so even the blandest admonishment registers as offensive, or if they're too much criticised and decide to take it out on someone with no real power over them. Either way, I wish they'd just grow the hell up.