Useless Signs and When 400 Follows 299

I worked at another branch of the library today. From my desk I could see a large sign that was taped from the ceiling in the children's room. It read:

We now have braille books.

To top it all off, the braille was printed just above it...albeit in very large print.

Later, in order to get a feel for the library, I decided to tour the nonfiction stacks, which were supposedly arranged from 001 to 999. When I arrived at 299, I noticed they were immediately followed by 400. I thought I had entered an alternate universe.

All of the 300s were across the room. To get to them one has to walk through the 800s and 600s. I thought it kind of defeated the purpose of Dewey Decimal Classification. When I mentioned this to a regular employee they just said, "Job security."

From then on I felt obligated to personally escort patrons to the sections with the books they were looking for, because at least I already knew of the labyrinth and the riddles contained within.