h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, Mudhooks, if the person with whom the buck SHOULD stop is avoiding it, one would like to hope there is another person around prepared to do emergency buck-halting duty, and I salute you.

I am currently working in a Universtiy Library, and one of the things we have in the photography section is a book of Robert Mapplethorpe pictures. On the understanding that all the students are over eighteen and coming here to be educated etc. which includes being educated about the bizarrer manifestations of human sexuality, the book has always been available on the shelf, with a sticker on the cover saying 'warning, explicit images'. And all this worked fine. A while ago another British university had a bit of a kerfuffle with the law on account of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs, and we held our breath, but no, nobody said anything. Then doom struck. A student came up to me to complain that the book was on the shelf where anyone could get at it. I explained our policy of, basically 'we're all adults here and no one HAS to look at it'. Ah, but he HAD to look at it and he didn't like it. Why? Because his lecturer had said he should. Well, perhaps he should discuss this with his lecturer. Oh no, he couldn' t do that. Why not? I asked, having horrible visions of bizarre harrassment cases. Because (and it took some time to get this out of him) he was doing a Media course on pornography and film, which he had joined because it sounded 'fun' but he hadn't realised they would be expected to do all this stuff about extreme images and alternative sexualities despite the fact the leaflets (he showed us one) went on and on about the divisions between acceptable and unacceptable and how they inform movie culture etc etc. He had hoped to spend a cushy term staring at pictures of naked ladies. So if we didn't have the book he wouldn't have to do the assignment, so could we pretend to not havethe book for a couple of weeks?

Heavens! I've never had someone ask me to pretend we don't have a book! Even a disturbing one...

I do have people who fill out forms to order books in most interesting and creative ways. For example,

Year of publication: 3

is one I have on my desk today. I'm not quite sure what to make of it, to be honest. And yesterday I had several forms from one student who needed journal articles (I think), and had filled in the box labelled 'Book or journal title' and the box labelled 'Article or chapter title' with the same information and neglecting to give me volume numbers or page numbers. Consequently I spent some time trying to decide what on earth she wanted, and decided that wasn't up to me, so I e-mailed her and asked her to clarify.
She probably won't get the material before Christmas now, which makes me feel a little bit mean, but it was the least helpful form-filling I've ever seen.

Hmm.

I know somebody who works in a local lending library, and she was explaining how they get around these things there.

When you stop to think about it, there are grey areas between "legitimate use and access" and "outright drooling unhealthy interest in children". My friend in libraries said that the policy is to be there to provide resources to people in the former category, whilst denying them to people in the latter.

For instance, nursing students want books on physiology, psychology, and ailments of, children. For their legitimate uses, there necessarily have to be depictions of naked children. Social work and psychology students will want textbooks on sexual abuse, which necessarily have to contain explicit descriptions and case-histories, so they know what they're looking for and what harm it causes. Art students need to know how to draw and depict life studies of people of ALL ages and conditions. Obviously there are practical difficulties in having an under-sixteen life model in front of an art class, so art students have to learn this aspect of the craft from photographs or studies of other peoples'drawing.

Policy at the library is based on hard experience - put these things out on the public shelves in full public view and you can be certain it will be "misused". (Reference Mudhooks' recent postings - library staff could concur with this, it's in their experience too!)

Therefore, while the things are referenced and catalogued in the usual way, they are effectively "restricted" by being kept in the basement, away from public view, and are only given to people who can either prove a need, or who look OK. (my library contact says they all get a "sense" for this after a while, and anyway the real weirdos don't know how to work the file indexibng system that tells them where the stuff is or indeed what the library holds)

I do recall a fuss over Mapplethorpe about 10 years ago, but wasn't it about the exhibition of his photographs which toured the UK? I may be wrong.

I went to see the exhibition when it was at the South Bank in London. Fascinating, and not just all shots of sexual acts or genitalia. The most, er... shocking (for want of a better word) pictures, including the famous fisting one, were not hung on the wall, they were shown flat, in a display case right at the end of the exhibition. The way it was set up meant that no-one could spend too long there, the way that you could amble your way around the rest of the exhibit.

As luck would have it, late last night, I got an email from the friend whose reasons for quitting I posted a few days ago. She was updating me on the whereabouts of the manager I mentioned above.

Background:

The manager was on his way upwards after being given the managership of the "flagship" Chapters location (in other words, the largest, most prominent location in the chain. Harbourfront, Toronto). The day that Heather Reisman finally took control of Chapters and Chapters/Indigo came into being, she walked into the Harbourfront location, and told the manager "You are fired, you have 5 mintues to clear your office." I was beside myself with glee because this man, while, I suppose he is a nice person, personally, was a terrible manager and the worst a$$-kissing toadie in the chain. He worked on the principle that "What head-office says, goes, and the employees be damned".

It appears that, since his meteoric rise to the heights of managerial stardom, and his equal but opposite fall from grace, he is now driving an 18-wheeler for a living.

I can't say, honestly, that I am gleeful over this, although I do have a certain sense of satisfaction in knowing that, when it all came out in the wash, I ended up better off and more secure than he did. I wouldn't thumb my nose at him, but I don't feel particularily bad for him.

Were I in the position that he had been in, managing within the corporate structure of Chapters, I would like to think that I would choose doing what was right and fair over towing the company line. I would rather risk getting fired, or simply walk, away knowing I had treated people with dignity, than having risen to the top by tramping all over other people.

I found it quite amusing about the guy on the pornography course complaining about explicit images. Some people just don`t think very far do they.

This all brings to mind a story from my own dim and distant past.

I had a weekend job with a department store. I worked in the stockroom of the Electrical Goods department and occasionally had to help out at the Purchase Assembly Desk - a service offered by the store to customers so they could shop throughout the store and have all their purchases brought to one location for collection.

One Saturday word got around that a very well off customer was making the rounds, but was being rather difficult and confrontational. Because of the store's rep for service, the various Section Managers were alerted and asked to deal with said customer personally. Sure enough, within 20 minutes the customer arrived: a lady of some years, wearing furs, being pushed around in a wheelchair by a man in a Chauffer's uniform. We were amazed.

We were even more amazed by her dismissive, not to say rude, attitude. She was wheeled over to the White Goods - i.e. the freezers, fridges etc etc and in an imperious manner demanded to have various things explained and demonstrated. The section manager - we'll call him Fred - did so. Now, Fred was known for his salesmanship, charm and warmth. He was also known for his patience. Within five minutes we could all see that it was wearing thin and on the point of disintegrating completely. This was an achievement. We'd all tried breaking Fred before and failed. However, the payoff was not long in coming. Having decided that she wouldbuy a fridge, a dishwasher and a washing machine the woman demanded to know when they could be delivered. Fred checked and said that two of the items would need to be ordered and that there was a fourteen day waiting period for said goods.

"Two weeks?" shrieked the harridan "I am not a well woman. I could be dead in two weeks!"
Fred smiled winningly.
"Then I trust madam is paying cash" he said.

We had a lovely, if a bit needy in the self-esteem area, collegue at Chapters. She was the sort that says "Smile! Things can't be that bad!", bought outrageuosly expensive gifts without taking into consideration the person she was buying for, and spent hundreds of dollars of her own money on decorations for the store all in an effort to make people thing well about her. (She also used to squirt people who were "feeling down" with perfume or sprinkle them with sparkles... which didn't go over well. But I digress.)

She also bent over backwards to help the customer, even if the customer treated her like sh!t.

I recall the day that she went running all over the store looking for a particular book that was supposed to be in the store, according to the computer. The woman simply would not accept that this was an error. Likely, it was either that someone stole it, it was on hold, or had been damaged and was awaiting write-off. So, for about 15 minutes, "Cindy" ran about the store looking for the book while the woman tapped her foot and whined.

Finally, "Cindy" located the book in the depths of the basement and, triumphant, handed it to the customer. "I found it!" she gasped.... "Sorry, I'm out of breath. I had to run to the basement to find it."

"Humph.... " said the customer. "Well, you look like you could use the excercise." and walked away.

I might point out that "Cindy" was not a particularily big girl. In fact, I thought she had a nice figure, one that I wouldn't mind owning.

Poor "Cindy". She ran up to the lunchroom and burst into tears.

Had I been there, I'd have given the woman a few choice words. Stupidity you can usually ignore. Rudeness you simply cannot.....

Someone just sent me these....

15 Things to do at Walmart while your wife is taking her sweet time:

1. Get 24 boxes of condoms & randomly put them in people's carts when they aren't looking.

2. Set all the alarm clocks in Housewares to go off at 5 minute intervals.

3. Make a trail of tomato juice on the floor leading from the cutlery department to the nearest restroom.

4. Walk up to an employee and tell him/her in an official tone, "Code 3 in Housewares"... and see what happens.

5. Go to the Service Desk and ask to put a bag of M&M's on layaway.

6. Move a 'CAUTION - WET FLOOR' sign to a carpeted area.

7. Set up a tent in the camping department and tell other shoppers you'll invite them in if they bring pillows from the bedding department.

8. When a clerk asks if they can help you, begin to cry and ask: "Why can't you people just leave me alone?"

9. Look right into the security camera, use it as a mirror and pick your nose.

10. While handling guns in the hunting department, ask the clerk if he knows where the antidepressants are.

11. Dart around the store suspiciously while loudly humming the theme from "Mission Impossible".

12. In the auto department, practice your "Madonna look" using different size funnels.

13. Hide in a clothing rack and when people browse through, say, "PICK ME! PICK ME!"

14. When an announcement comes over the loud speaker, assume the fetal position and scream "NO! NO! It's those voices again!"

15. Go into a fitting room, shut the door and wait a while and then yell loudly "Hey! You're out of toilet paper in here!"

I know it's not retail, but when it comes to customers and idiocy you cannot beat Outsourced I.T. contracting for seeing people at their worst.

These all happened to me:

An engineer freshly returned from the Golan Heights handed back his hideously expensive laptop computer. He told me that the display had gone dull and could hardly see the detailed maps and plans that he needed to work on. He told me to "fix it. Pronto."
After I had given it a quick once-over I found that the dark screen was the result of a thin layer of mud coating the entire screen, the keyboard etc etc. it was a miracle the thing worked at all. I asked the engineer whether anything unusual had happened to the laptop. he thought hard for a few minutes and then happily told me he'd dropped it in a pretty deep puddle.

A manager broughtme his desktop PC, having lugged the thing down serveral floors to findmy hideaway, and told me it wouldn't switch on. He neglected to bring anything else, so I plugged the thing in, hooked up a keyboard etc and switched on. Hey Presto! A working PC. After a bitofpreventative maintenance to make sure nothing odd was happening, I returned it to him and reconnected it, only to find that at his desk it failed to work at all. Confused, I did what anyone would do and went to check the plug on the power cable. This was when I noticed the cable itself was almost half sheered through. I asked him how this might have happened. He gave me a distracted look and then remembered that the previous day the PC had fallen off his desk and hit the cable, but he didn't think that mattered.

A secretary with a deadline to meet called the Helpdesk and explained that her PC had given her a Blue Screen of Death. She was asked to restart the computer and the tech waited on the phoneline to make sure it booted successfully. He was told that it had the same screen again, so off I went to see the problem first hand. On arrival I watched as the secretary switched off the monitor, beliving that to be the computer.

An accountancy person complained that her PC was desperately slow. On investigation, it turned out that the machine had never...ever...been logged off or switched off since she had taken over ownership. The hard drive was clogged with temp and temporary internet files, the result of nearly two years of continual operation.

Whilst manning the helpdesk, I got a phone call from a desperately upset user who prodeeded to swear for almost ten minutes. He swore at Microsoft. He swore at the PC manufacturer. He swore at the IT Director. He never once swore at me, and at the end of his tirade calmly told me that his problem had now fixed itself.

Another frustrated user called to swear at a co-worker of mine. In a rant that lasted some five minutes he termed the Helpdesk "warm blooded answering machines" and insisted that a technical expert be sent around to his desk to fix the fatal error that his PC had generated right there and then. We sent the department head, who returned with a big grin. The error had been"non-system disk in drive A". The fix? Remove the floppy disk from the drive and restart the computer.

While on call I was awakened at 2am by the Network Operations Centre and told to go to the office to restart a server. I duely did so but was unable to find the machine. I called the N.O.C. and asked if they had a location for the offending article. They didn't know where it was supposed to be. I did some more hunting around and still couldn't find the thing. I called them back. They told me that the server was not responding to the nightly connection tests but they had no idea where it was. I asked for a more detailed description of the machine and was given it's formal ID. This allowed me to spend ninety minutes digging through documentation to see which department owned it. Thus equipped I went to said department only to discover that the server(an elderly desktop machine) was a development tool, not on the network and in this particular instance in bits and spread over three desks after its owner had taken it apart to replace some failed hardware. With some glee I updated the N.O.C. on the situation and went home.

In reply to those university library postings, spare a thought for the poor students.

Both my sister and I have attended university. She, being a little mad, has gone back to do another course.

In our time there, we have encounrtered the following problems:

Book I need is on permantent loan to: the lecturer who told be to go and read it.

Journal my sister needs to read was published in: 1975. No copy in library, on e-library and no library in the city can find it.

Book I need not in library, has never been in library but is in book shop. Written by: the lecturer who told me to read it.

Staff imposed fine for not returning book on time. Reason was: due back date was during holiday and library was (for me) 450 miles away.

Book I need is (according to computer) in library and not out on loan. Not on shelf it should be because: It is being used as a monitor stand on one of the Internet PCs.

Not forgetting:

100 students, 1 week to do assignment, 1 copy of vital book in entire library. And it's out.

30 students trying to read the same book at one desk.

Essential books that, just as they reach the conclusion page that explains all the terms and brings together the formula, seem to have had that page ripped out.

And:

Librarians who try disconnecting the fire sirens just before a weekly drill, which sets off the fire alarm anyway.



Some of these probles were lecturers, others were the staff (mostly lecturers actually)

The lecturers are creatures locked away in dark rooms and haven't been outside since 1989, didn't like the look of it and retreated back to their offices.

Universities and library fines:-

I can match that!

The University of East Anglia (Norwich)refused to let me graduate until I settled a debt with them, to wit, 26p in library fines.

The letter came to me on official university letterheaded paper, and in terms of administrative costs must have cost more than the 26p they were trying to recoup.

And for that, they'd have prevented me collecting my degree!

How boneheaded and bureaucratic can an institution get.... if it had been £260, say, there might have been some small logic to it!

"if it had been £260, say, there might have been some small logic to it!"

I agree with you there, so where exactly do you draw the line? Fifty quid, thirty quid, a tenner, a hundred? What's a degree worth? And if the line was drawn at say, £20, how aggrieved would you feel if your fine was £20.05 and they wouldn't let you get away with it? I guess you can make a point for arguing that any fine which costs more to collect than the value of the fine itself should be waived. All others should be collected.

I appreciate the point and I'm not saying I should have been let off the fine (certainly not - in many ways the university was fairer to me than I deserved).

It was the disparity between the size of the debt owed, and the action the university proposed to take about it, that struck me then (and still does now)as rather disproportionate. I mean, what would they have done if I'd owed them a couple of hundred, or (Gods forbid) a couple of thousand?

If they'd worded it something like "this is a reminder to you that you owe the university library 26 pence in overdue book fines. We would appreciate it if you settle the matter at your earliest convenience before leaving the university", then it might not have raised my hackles so much.

But going in with all the big guns blazing right from the off and threatening to with-hold my degree if I didn't settle.... they know how to get people onside, don't they!

I don't think universities can actually withhold your degree for money owing (except possibly tuition fees), but they can prevent you attending the degree ceremony. They (we, I suppose) can threaten and bluster all they like, but they can't stop you getting your qualification.

Just to stand up for University Libraries, the missing books/ one book for 100 students/ book used to prop up PC etc. happen all the time and are NOT, I repeat NOT the Librarians' fault. (The fine when you were at home for the holidays is another matter. Our library would a) not give a book a return date during the holidays unless you were a post-grad, b) if you were and said you couldn't come back in the holidays we'd change the date and c) if none of the above had somehow happened, we'd waive the fine. We're lovely). Books that the computer says are on the shelf, but that can't be found, are usually hidden by students whose cards are full, so they hide it until they've returned something and then they can take it out. Or someone is reading it somewhere (even though really we tell them and tell them to borrow books before reading them to prevent this happening. Or possibly a student has stolen a book by chucking it out the window to avoid the security buzzer on the door. What in hey are the staff supposed to do? There are not enough of us to patrol every room in the library watching every student, and we haven't been given funds for security cameras. As for books propping up PC's, students again. Every librarian I know is slightly (ok, very) obsessive about treating books with respect and would sooner use their own leg. Ditto tearing pages out - we won't necessarily notice this, as the culprit won't tell us on returning the thing, and a lot of students will take out a book, notice a missing page, return it and NOT TELL US. We do not have the time to go through every book on return to check it has all its pages, we rely on students telling us, and then we can order a replacement. As for only one copy of Vital Book being in the Library, this is the fault of the Academic Departments. Libraries only have a budget for replacing books. All new books, or further copies of books, are ordered by the Departments, with their money. If they do not tell us they need more copies as it'll be used on this year's course, we, not being telepathic, will not know and won't order extra copies, and we really really hate being shouted at by upset students when it is their lecturer they should be shouting at. Same applies for book only being in bookshop - put that down to lecturers' extreme vanity and total divorce from the realities of life as experienced by student on small budget, and shout at them. Not us.

In fact, quite a few of your library problems are caused by fellow students (Apart from the fine thing, which I still find incomprehensible. How moo-cow is that, fining someone who was 450 miles away?) or lecturers. Or underfunding. Or in the case of the fire alarm, mild technical incompetence, fair enough. But it's mostly students. Just half-a-dozen selfish or stupid little warts per year, and all the other several hundred get driven wild.

Sorry for ranting. I am ENTIRELY on your side Atlantic Cable, and it is infuriating to be a student trying to use the library, but I have just spent all week being blamed for the fact books have not been returned so blamer can take them out for the holidays, being blamed because there are only two copies of something (and she refused to speak to her lecturer about ordering more copies, so I promised to) and being blamed because library fines were so high (I don't set them and yes I do think you should cough up if you've been sitting about happily on campus with the use of your legs and haven't even managed to get as far as the phone or internet to renew and meanwhile someone else wants said book and is shouting at me beacuse it hasn't been returned yet). So I'm feeling a wee bit grumpy. I shall now make everyone to say sorry.

Regarding the fine...

What would it matter where you are when you got a bill? Do you wear some sort of homing device that the University should check before sending out a bill?

Here in Canada, students come from all over Canada to a particular University. You give the University office a contact address. Whether you are there when the mail comes, is entirely up to you. Many students here go home over Christmas, Thanksgiving, March break. Why would anyone expect the University to do what any other company to whom you owe money to to hold off because you are on holiday? You wouldn't expect the phone company to say "Oh, Susie is on holiday. We'll wait until after the holidays top send them the bill."

Yes, I agree that 28 pence is a rather small amount to send a bill for. I have, however, gotten bills for less.

As for Universities not giving you your diploma or whatever for failing to pay bills, it is a common practice here. Given that some people take the attitude "I have my degree.... Screw them! I'm not paying them the $150 I owe them."

Without having some consequence to not paying outstanding debts, if every student dunned them on outstanding debts they would be broke.

It isn't a charity, it is a business. And it is a business like any other.

The Ontario College of Art tried to hold up my degree because they claimed I hadn't paid a year's tuition. However, as I pointed out to them, they had me listed as enrolled twice..... That took me a year to correct and I kept getting dunning notices from the office. I finally has to go in and demand that they tear up the second file and remove the second "enrollement" from the computer while I watched. I had been repeatedly promised it would be done, and they would forget.

"It isn't a charity, it is a business. And it is a business like any other."

Hmmm.

Maybe that's the essential difference between a British and a North American attitude to higher education. OK, so our Prime Minister is doing his very best to Americanise our higher education system - he's certainly blurring the distinctions - but I don't think it's ever really been viewed as "a business" over here. Maybe in a wholly privatised system with the absolute minimum of government money, it has to run as a business. (Which is what we'd perceive the North American system as being). But even under the most right-wing Tory government ever (Thatcher)the university system was perceived as something other than a business, rather as part of a universal entitlement to state-funded education supported by government fundung.

I graduated from UEA Norwich in the summer of 1988. It's a year I'd really prefer to forget for a lot of reasons - very much the "annus horibillis" of my life - and if I overlooked 26p owing to the university, it was an oversight rather than deliberate intent! There's really no dispute here - they were within their rights to remind me and if you have a bill, you pay it - it was just the peremptory manner of the reminder that got under my skin, particularly for so small an amount.

My student experience is over fifteen years ago now and a lot of things have changed: the way degree courses are funded, for instance. I didn't have particularly affluent parents and certainly had no independent means - I just went to uni at a time when all tuition fees were covered and there were even such things as maintainence grants.

If the current horrendous conditions had applied twenty years ago, I wouldn't even have considered university as an option.

And I can't believe how tamely the National Union of Students allowed this to happen - when Thatcher proposed student loans and tuition charges, I'm proud to say I was one of 150,000 students who went to London, made nuisances of ourselves, and forced the old bitch to do a U-turn. (Which was more than the Labour Party ever managed in opposition)


If we could do that to Thatcher, why couldn't the students who followed us do the same to Blair? and now they've got to live with the consequences of that, alas.

Ah well, I'm ranting. (Just an old f@rt from a previous generation of students. Apologies)

How very interesting...

When we (in England) were discussing what we could do about people who were about to graduate and still owed the library £50 in overdue charges and had 6 books out, we were told that the college was not legally allowed to withhold their degree.

However, it was agreed that not allowing them to attend the degree ceremony is a good threat in many cases, as the parents of the student often fund their lovely sons and daughters for much of the course and *expect* to be able to attend the two hours of applauding that constitute the degree congregation. Particularly given that ours is held in Canterbury cathedral!

Very intrigued to learn that things would be very different on t'other side of the Atlantic.

David