Miss Communication and her WiFi Blues

If I get another communication challenged patron today that and I'll puke. This lady comes up to me and says, "My son needs the code" My reply: " I'm sorry what code?" Ms Communication replies "You know the code for his laptop" I'm thinking "Huh?" and then with a mental groan I realize she means a code to connect her son's laptop to our non-existent WiFi connection. Ohhhh...yeah....right.....When I tell her we don't have WiFi she looked at me as if I was an escapee from a mental institution. A few minutes later a boy comes up to me and wants to know how he can use the Internet. I tell him he's got to have a library card to use our computers and that if his parent or guardian was here they could get him a library card at the cards and accounts desk for free with their I.D. (I find out later that he's Ms Communications ten year old son) He runs to the cards and accounts desk and tells Ms. Bernie our circulation clerk that he wants a "free pass" to use the computer. Huh? Where did he get free pass from free library card? After much confusion we figure out that they are visiting from out of state and that they are eligible for an extended guest pass. In order to get an extended guest pass I have to see an out of state ID. Ms Communication looks at me and says you mean I have to go all the way over there pointing in the direction of the cards and accounts desk, to get my I.D? At this point I'm freaking' lost...this lady's speaking English like native but not making any sense. With the help of Miss Penelope we finally figure out that she's asking if she has to go back to where she's staying in order to get her ID in order to get the extended guest pass. For which I'm thinking...lady you are in a strange city and you left your ID in what your hotel room are you nuts?

The Digital Age without It's Digits...

Lately I've been wondering why I'm getting all the communicably challenged people. I swear I don't know if it's me or if it's something in the tap water that's making it near impossible for people to communicate. Sometimes it's people's listening and comprehension skills or sometimes it's critical thinking and speaking. For instance a patron wanted help making a reservation for one of our computers and I verbally walk this guy through the process. I do this all the time with a minimum of fuss. All goes well until we get to the part where he needs to enter in his pin. I can only find so many ways to tell him that his pin is the LAST FOUR DIGITS of his freakin' phone number before I begin hyperventilating. I finally ask him if the last part of his library card is the same as his phone number. He looks at me like I'm nuts and says why no of course not. Then I had to ask him why he was using the last four digits of his library card number instead of the last four digits of his phone number. His reply was because I didn't tell him his pin was the last for digits of his phone number. Arghhh. This ended up happening more times than I care to admit during the course of this last month. I've come to the conclusion that many of our patrons don't know the complete definition of the word "digits". It was a bit unsettling.