It’s hard to be an information specialist when you can’t understand what people are asking you

21Jun08

I moved to New England recently, land of the “R’s” dropped from where they should be and added where they don’t belong. It’s fun, and I do pretty well with the accent. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even hear it as much as I used to, which makes me think sometimes that I may be acquiring it– something I find disturbing and scary. I’ve gotten used to the slang, and when people say things like “Lisar is waiting in the cah.”, I roll with it without snickering (outwardly).

The hard part is when I’m working at the library and someone is asking for information but I have no idea what they’re saying. This is obviously a hazard of the trade when working with children who have a tendancy to speak like their mouths are full or marbles or chocolate. With kids, you can be more vigilant in asking questions, and insisting that they are not making sense i.e. “Use your words, do you mean this, or this? Is it like this? That doesn’t make sense to me, how can you describe it better?” Adults tend to like this less, but are sometimes more reluctant to make themselves clear.

The most frustrating thing for me is when I ask someone to spell something out for me, and they do, but when I finally find what they’re looking for (spelled differently), I can’t decide if they spelled it wrong, or I just couldn’t understand them.

The other day, I was working at the public library and a woman with a baby carriage approached me. She was looking for a book, had the title and author, but I couldn’t understand a damn thing she was saying. I tried looking up the title (she said simon mumble mumble adelaide) and came up with eight pages of results, none of which were it; I tried the author ”Mchfjdlghkfadsg” is what she told me– no results found.

Finally, I asked Amazon, and on page four there was something that appeared to be right– Simon and Adele by Barbara McClintock. I still don’t know what this woman actually said to me, but at least I found it.