Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Library machine comedy in action!

This is a true story in which joke week climbs from out of the grave to stumble forth again.

I was working on the automated check in machine and since we were in the general run up to closing I was pretty busy. One of my kind co-workers, walking by, saw a tangle of magazines coming through and so started to help out. She gathered them up and fed them carefully through, but the machine just spit them into the exception bin. There was no reason for the machine to be unable to process them, it just... didn't. Magazines are simply one of those item types that the machine has problems with.

My co-worker may have even tried one more time to get the magazines through, but whether she did or didn't, at some point, she turned to me, exasperated, and said "I don't know what it is, but I just can't get the magazines to go through!"

"Oh, don't worry about it." I said consolingly. "The magazines have issues."




5 comments:

  1. We just got self check out at The Dalles library. This is a good joke.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks. I'm not sure if I agree, but I like the idea that it's a good joke!

      Wow, self cko! Just now? I remember first getting that at my library a long, long, long, long time ago. It wasn't very popular at first partly because it was too new of a concept and partly because it was slow and complicated. Of course times have changed and now, when people come up to me to check out their books for them I'm okay doing it but surprised they are willing to run the gauntlet of my complicated patter, juggling tricks, and library puns when they could have been out of the building in seven seconds otherwise. Well, it takes all kinds!

      Delete
  2. Better than any of the puns I heard from the punning group leader at a Road Scholar program last week...but even so: groan.

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  3. Last summer I visited a library that had a window display dedicated to Joke Week. Got to like a library that will unbend enough to do that.

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    Replies
    1. Okay, if I've got to then I will like that library too!

      I hope they featured the great "life is a fountain" joke in their display.

      Delete

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