Hmm, the consultants haven’t received any training whatsoever to handle the situation appropriately in the event of a real disaster or emergency. If I was a consultant, I might not know what to do either other than to run out the door. Uh oh. How many of the consultants even know about the emergency evacutation bag containing the supply of food, water, first aid kits, and crowbar(s)?
“Fun” consultations today: Taught someone how to use ReadIris to convert a scanned page of text into a Word document. Transferred a professor’s 15 MB manuscript from her non-networked laptop to a cluster computer via a USB Compact Flash reader and then uploaded it to her Leland AFS space so that it was web-accessible. Convinced a student that we really don’t have any machines that read Digital Hi-8 tapes, and then helped her find the Firewire port to import her video after she borrowed a Digital Hi-8 camcorder from who-knows-where. Helped an older woman determine that, yes, the machine downstairs doesn’t seem to accept money anymore. Sorry. We’ll call the people who service it.
Hmm… I can’t recall helping a single male user for more than 5 seconds today. (i.e. “Can I checkout a pair of headphones?” “Yes. Here you go.”) Actually, that seems pretty representative of most of my consultations at Meyer. Does that mean that women ask the majority of the technical questions or does it mean that I have less patience for the needy men and/or find those consultations less memorable overall? Hmm, not a very scientific study so far.