Well, he gets an “A” for sheer inventiveness. He should also get a hearing aid. Either that, or he willfully with malice aforethought ignored my directive to put all books in correct order BEFORE matching the cards to them.

A certain clerk is inventorying the trade fiction wall. Or so I think.

At the end of the day, it’s clear that something’s wrong with the cards in the trade fiction drawer. But he’s gone for the day, so the rest of us have to solve the mystery.

My cataloger finally figures it out. “Look at the order the books are in,” he says, pointing to the shelves. We look. The books are NOT in order. The cataloger then says “NOW, look at the order these cards are in!”

Another clerk understands & says “Oh. My. God.”

What happened was, he started inventorying, noticed that the books were in a different order than the cards, believed that the cards were messed up, and matched the card order to the incorrect book order of the shelves.

Solomon the Wise claimed–insisted, actually–that there’s nothing new under the sun. I don’t agree. This beats all six ways to Sunday.

We wondered why he was stuck on that drawer for over an hour.  That kind of ingenious incompetence takes time.