Are we really that pathetic?

So, I was in a staff meeting the other day where we were discussing the possibility of putting IT support personnel on the "Help Desk".

One of the points that came up in discussion (apparently a big one) was that the average punter doesn't know the difference between a library enquiry and an IT enquiry. As a result, the IT person will be dealing with library questions and the librarians will be dealing with IT questions, no matter how clearly signed they may be.

Fair enough, some of the library enquiries can seem terribly technological, while some of the IT problems can seem not quite technological enough. I can understand completely that someone who can't figure out why the database isn't giving them the page they want would think it's an IT question.

However, the "problem" with this is not that people will occasionally be confused by confusing things, but that we can't ask them to move to a different queue and wait for another five minutes.

The forgone conclusion was that people would get into the wrong line, and we wouldn't be able to send them to the right line without damaging our good will in some way.

Are we that pathetic, as a people, that we can't accept the fact that we were standing in the wrong queue? Is our time so goram precious that the thought of wasting minutes of it on a mistake, and then having to spend a few more minutes to get what we want is unthinkable?

What is wrong with us? It takes as long as it takes, darn it! And if it happens to take a few minutes longer than we thought it would because we miscalculated, then so be it.

It's no wonder we, as a culture, are so stressed out. If every minor inconvenience is treated as a tragedy (and allowed to be treated thus by all and sundry), then our lives must be full of woe.

We aren't that pathetic, surely? Can't we just take things in our stride and feel better for it?