J is for Journal

I have a story that took place a couple of weeks ago, and I still find it funny. There was this patron who was causing us a lot of grief. Not only did she not listen to our answers to her questions, she interrupted the answers by trying to answer for us. Sure, it's rude to interupt someone when he or she is trying to help you out, but when you interupt with illogical babble, the situation is made all the more frustrating.

Anyway, in the library I work for we have a floor that carries only bound academic journals, which are journals that are a little bit older and have been bound together into volumes of books. So this patron comes up to the loans desk and says that she can't find the journal she's been looking for, and knows it's in our collection. I tell her that the journals are shelved alphabetically, according to the first letter of the journal. So if the journal is called "American Education", for instance, it would be located under the 'A' section. Sometimes a journal is called something like "Journal of American Education", in which case it would be located under the 'J' section. I explained this system to her, and she went back to the journal floor. She re-emerged with continued confusion, and I sent one of our student employees to accompany her back to the journals. My co-worker informed me later that the woman had been persistent about looking for her journal under 'J' for journal, despite the fact that the title she was searching for did not begin with Journal or with a 'J'. Her logic is that all journals would be classified under 'J' because they are all journals. I wonder how confused she would have been had the floor been called "The 'J' Floor". How would she have gone about locating her journal then?

Imagine someone telling you that he couldn't find a book because it wasn't under 'B' for book. It was the same nonsense here. What's scariest of all is that the patron in this story is working on her master of education degree; kiddies beware!

Next, please.