Permanently Linked To The Complaint

(I’m a librarian in a college library. I come in to work to find the coworker I take over from helping a student over the phone. He can’t get in to one of our electronic databases and she is finding articles for him.)

Coworker: “I’ve put all the articles into a folder. Can I just send the folder to him?”

Me: “Er, I don’t know of any way to do that, but you can email him the permalinks. I’m not sure that will help, though, because he’ll still have to log into [Database] to get them.”

Coworker: *blank* “Why?”

Me: *blank* “Because he has to be logged in to [Database] for them to come up.” *no comprehension dawning* “Because… because the permalink just goes to the page. I mean, he can’t just access it.”

Coworker: “But he’s having trouble getting into [Database].”

Me: *utterly at a loss to explain this really, really obvious concept* “Just get his email address; I’ll save the PDFs and email them to him.”

(She got his email address, but then proceeded to spend close to 15 minutes saving four PDFs HERSELF, all the while half complaining about having to stay so late after I had offered repeatedly to do it myself.)