Librarian Ire

Symphony of inefficiency

I have noticed that on several levels at my institution, inefficiency runs rampant. Oh, this isn't news to me. I have accepted that my employer by virtue of its size has these problems. But for some reason today it bothered me more than usual.
Inefficiency is everywhere here. Even in organizations and committees that are pledged to stamp it out.
I was in a meeting today that meets to help "reform the work culture" and halfway through the meeting I was wondering where the agenda was. If we had one, which I highly doubt, we wandered so far off its path even a Sherpa guide with GPS and bloodhounds wouldn't have found us.
We spent the better part of an hour talking about how the institution needs to reform and how we could help it do that by picking apart the organizational chart.
In case you were wondering we haven't solved any problems yet. It's been at least six months.
Then at work the MSB shows up. A patron asked ME a question which I answered correctly based on what I knew about him. Then the MSB runs(well trots) out of the office and answers the question AGAIN while the guy was thanking me for the information and actually leaving the desk. If someone answers a question correctly why do you feel the need to repeat the information again? It seems very inefficient to me yet it happens all the time.
Then she made her usual ILL error. She mistook a lending request for a borrowing request. She didn't understand why someone here was asking for it if we already had it. And told me to cancel the request.
I had to tell her it was a lending request. I mean it said so right on the piece of paper.

posted by Nike at 6:18 PM