I'll act like I'm surprised

What is the point of Beattie ringing me up from Raccoonville Library with this mindset and such impeccable timing?

"I've been trying to get onto the Internet all day and it won't let me on, it says that I have to work offline."

"Was the PC really, really slow when you booted it up this morning?"

"Yes."

"That's the cause of the problem. Sometimes the network connection gets so slow that the Internet permissions time out. No idea why, it shouldn't happen, nobody's ever explained it to me, but it happens. The only way to sort it out is to close everything down, log off and log back on again."

"I can't be doing that: I've a long queue of people waiting to have their books stamped out."