Tuesday, December 02, 2008

In my experience, giving a man a fish will only lead to

him asking you to cook it and plan the rest of the meal while you're at it.

Monday afternoon at 4:30 p.m(I was off the desk at 5 p.m.,) a man approached the desk and asked me for hospital statistics. I removed the American Hosp.ital Statisti.cs handbook off the shelf. I opened the book to the Californ.ia hospit.al statist.ics page. I showed the information to the man. He said, "Oh, I want hospital statistics for A.frica."

I searched to see if we might have a book in our collection with that information. We didn't, so I then searched the internet. I found some statistics for a children's hospital in S.outh Africa. I printed this and showed it to the man. He said, "I want statistics for hospitals in West Africa." I searched a bit more and didn't find anything and told the man so. He then said, "I want statistics on medical schools in Africa."

My search resulted in a list of medical schools in S.outh A.frica. I showed this to the man and he said, "I want to know the costs to build a school in Africa."

This time, I found information on a foundation that provides grants for the building of elementary schools in A.frica. I also found a proposal for the building of an elementary school in S.outh A.frica. The proposal also included the cost of building a dormatory. I gave all of this information to the man and he said, " I want to know the cost of building a medical school in W.est A.frica. My brother wants to build a medical school for the area where I am from. All of the funding will come from A.merica." By this time, I had given the man 25 minutes of my time. I told him that he needed to take the information that I gave him and do further research.

He then said, "What about salaries? I need to know how much it will cost to pay the instructors." I told him that he would have to look at the websites for medical schools in S.outh A.frica and see what they are offering as salary and then make an educated guess." He then realized that I was done with him and said, "Well I guess this will have to do."

4 comments:

Sha Boogie said...

Gurl, bye! lol That would have been the first thing outta my mouth, lol. That was so ignant!

Doret said...

I hate MF like that who come into the bookstore. "I am looking for anything you have on start up companies and business" I don't play that sh*t. I always want to say MF do your own research or get a freakin assistant. My job is to show you where the book is and I barely get paid enough to do that.

Nexgrl said...

@Sha Boogie
I wanted to tell him bye oh so bad, but I was on the desk with one of the floor supervisors. Plus we just had a staff meeting regarding librarian attitude toward the patron at the reference desk.

@Doret
I felt exactly the same way. They way in which he approached me, let me know that he had tried his spiel on the 1st floor and they sent him upstairs to our dept.

Dope Fiend said...

LOL! I'm surpirsed u didnt send him on his way after he made u start looking for statistics in Africa....then ask for WEST africa!


damn, maybe I'm just unkind. lol