Friday open thread: last-minute Friday emails

[dolorosa_12]

Today's prompt is brought to you by the postdoc who emailed me today at 4pm asking me to obtain the PDFs of 711 journal articles. Thankfully, I have mechanisms to automate this (bless Endnote's 'Find Full Text' function) for the articles to which my university is subscribed, and he was reasonable about the others, and how long it might take to work through them, but the request still had me laughing in incredulity.

So, the prompt is this: what is the most ridiculous thing you have been asked to do in the final hour of the working day or week?

Comments

[corvidology]

It's happened so many times to me that I'm having difficulty singling one out.

What I've learned in my case is that because I work a condensed schedule most weeks (longer hour 4 day weeks rather than 'normal' hour 5 day weeks) is they're not really expecting me to leap into action so much as they're clearing it off their 'desk' and on to mine so they can cross it off their own to-do lists temporarily. ' I can't do anything else with this until Corvid returns and she doesn't work Fridays.' BTW, they don't stop emailing me requests on Fridays either even though they know I'm not working. Frankly, they're also vying to be first on my list Monday morning.

[dolorosa_12]

they're not really expecting me to leap into action so much as they're clearing it off their 'desk' and on to mine so they can cross it off their own to-do lists temporarily.

Oh yes, this is my impression as well, and I also get a lot of this sort of thing just before the last week of December, during a time when the entire university is closed. It's precisely that sort of crossing items off their to-do list, but then it results in stuff being added to my own to-do list at a point when I can't meaningfully do anything about it until the next week (or new year). I try to be understanding about it.

[corvidology]

I try to be understanding... but if it's a repeat offender I've been known to wait until the last possible moment to send them a 'clarifying question' then it's back on their list. ;D

[dolorosa_12]

That is diabolic — and clever! I might steal that trick!

[tellshannon815]

Tempted to try that one myself now the next time some Last Minute Larry requests something at daft o'clock on Friday that could have been done earlier!

[corvidology]

It took a couple of times for some of them to learn but they did learn! ;D

[author_by_night]

This is too convoluted of a story to get into great detail, but I once had to make several copies of something that had to be copied front to back, manually at the eleventh hour. It wasn't material I could just put through the printer, it had to be manual. The copies looked like crap, but it was a choice between shitty copies and no copies. I ended up getting in trouble for wasting time and paper on bad copies. Unfortunately, not the first nor last time I was asked for last minute copies, but I think it's the most egregious example.

As a side tangent, I don't think people realize how hard it is to make several nice copies manually, especially front-to-back. Especially if you're copying from a book or booklet.

[dolorosa_12]

Ugh, that is the absolute worst! And you're totally right about people's understanding of photocopying.

It used to drive me up the wall when (in my previous job) senior academics would try to get me to do their photocopying (even though there was a public self-service photocopier in the library that everyone was meant to use. I'd say that I would show them how to use the photocopier themselves so that they didn't have to keep asking me, and they'd say stuff like, 'but it's just so much better when you do it!'

[author_by_night]

I'd say that I would show them how to use the photocopier themselves so that they didn't have to keep asking me, and they'd say stuff like, 'but it's just so much better when you do it!'

Yikes, that is so obnoxious!

[lirazel]

SEVEN HUNDRED AND ELEVEN??????

All my last minute stories are from when I worked at the public library and involve people coming into the library ten minutes before we close and making me stay late when I just wanted to go home. :((((

[dolorosa_12]

I know, right? We support a lot of systematic literature reviews in my library, which typically start with a massive, multi-database search (using complex boolean operators; I've literally run searches where the string of search terms fills more than a page of a Word doc ... per database), retrieving thousands or even tens of thousands of journal articles. The reviewer then downloads all these into reference management software, removes the duplicates, and then screens the titles and abstracts against pre-specified criteria (e.g. 'included articles must be be about adult patients in the ICU, and must not be letters to the editor, case reports, or editorials'). This title/abstract screening removes the vast majority of the retrieved articles, but there are always some remaining that can't be screened based on the information in the abstract, and have to be screened by looking at the full text. That's where the 711 articles come in, and sadly that kind of number is typical, although a lot of researchers will make some effort to obtain them via university subscriptions first before handing the whole list to us!

I have a lot of last minute stories like yours, from when I worked in the hospitality industry in high school and university. They'd always come in and walk all over my just-mopped floor!

[lirazel]

Okay, that makes more sense. Thank you for the detailed answer--it's not something I deal with personally so it's fascinating to hear about it! Do y'all get thanked in the acknowledgements when people publish things? Because I feel like you should get some credit for that intense amount of work!

They'd always come in and walk all over my just-mopped floor!

NIGHTMARE!

[dolorosa_12]

It very much depends on the reviewer, but we do get thanked in the acknowledgements a lot. (It's actually a big bone of contention in medical librarianship — huge amounts of mailing list and conference discussions devoted to whether librarian contributions to systematic reviews have been acknowledged in some way.)

Our policy in our library is that if the researcher has asked the librarian to construct and conduct the searches for them (as opposed to searching on their own with library advice about search terms or how to use specific databases), that librarian should be asking for and given a co-author credit, so I am actually the co-author of close to sixty peer-reviewed medical systematic reviews published in academic journals (with currently around another sixty or so ongoing in various stages of completion)! My job is probably about 80 per cent systematic reviews, either advising other people on how to do them, or creating, running, and writing up the searches for them. It's not what people think of when they imagine librarianship (I basically have nothing to do with books or collections), but it's absolutely the bread-and-butter of my library, and of so many like it.

[lirazel]

I love knowing about this so much! Especially about you getting co-author credit on so many articles--that's SO COOL.

(It's actually a big bone of contention in medical librarianship — huge amounts of mailing list and conference discussions devoted to whether librarian contributions to systematic reviews have been acknowledged in some way.)

That makes so much sense.