My Record of Work: The Annoying, the Interesting, and the Just Plain Weird--The Year 2001.

This page should be in frames. If it is not and you want it to be, please click here. If it is and you don't want it to be, click here. Both versions have all the information.

MAY!


5/30/01

Okay, some lady wanted something on china, and I assumed it was the COUNTRY, but because she wanted dishware, she assumed I knew which china she was talking about, and when I pointed out travel guides she attempted to patronize me by saying "No, it's not a TRAVEL guide, what, you don't know what CHINA is?" Well you see, sir, words very often have more than one meaning, and without context, it is not unusual to mistake one meaning for the other. Excuse me, please, I MUST be incompetent for not knowing you meant the "other" one.

Also my boss scheduled himself to be in two places at once today and thus was late opening our store. He tried to blame it on his superiors for not NOTICING that he'd booked himself to open both stores. Dork.


5/27/01

We got mistaken for Borders TWICE today. One by a woman who ordered a book at Borders and came to OUR store to pick it up (and realized it only after I'd spent a bit of time looking for her damn book or any record of it) . . . and the other by a newspaper delivery guy, who even asked me our store number to make sure it matched his list. (When it didn't, he said that we must be the right one 'cause we were the only one on this street, but failed to realize that our store's name didn't match the one on the newspaper delivery slip . . . blah!)

Also had a guy tell me all about how in another life someone put a curse on him so that he currently couldn't use his natural telepathic and clairvoyant powers, and he was learning to meditate to rid himself of the curse. It was interesting.


5/26/01

A kid in the Pokémon League said to another today, "You're so fat, 80 King Kongs could play football in your ass!" Heh.


5/23/01

A lady came up to the register and announced she wanted five hundred dollars' worth of gift certificates. In tens. Then she found it necessary to inform me that that would be fifty gift certificates, in case I was incompetent. Now, we don't HAVE ten-dollar gift certificates, so I told her we'd have to make them, and that I was going to call the manager to get her to get me some of the blank ones, if there were any in the back. I was on the phone to the manager explaining the situation when the lady said, "Never mind!" and began to walk away. When I looked at her, she said, "I'm going to MEDIA PLAY. THEY'LL be more cooperative." And then she left. Uh. I wish I hadn't been on the phone then so I could have asked her exactly WHAT it was about my behavior that was uncooperative, but go figure. Whatever.


5/21/01

One of my managers keeps saying "Burgerchompy." He doesn't know what it means.


5/20/01

Freaks keep coming in! One guy insisted that discount cards are supposed to be FREE since his was free when he got his (I don't know what kind of crack he's been smoking; even if you don't have to pay extra for the card, we explain that it's your discount offsetting the price of the card, not just "it's free"), and another guy came in with some lost keys he'd found and they had a discount card on them, and he asked me to find out by the card's number whose it was. We have no way to do that. He left, and then came back and announced, "I have an idea! You could SCAN the card and then see if it's expired, and you'll see who it belongs to!" That isn't how it works. We can't tell by scanning a card if it's good; it's the date written on it that tells us. And the system isn't computerized. So I had to have an argument with this guy about how advanced OUR technology "must" be. Whatever.


5/16/01

A lady came in asking for YOGA MATS today. What the hell? Why would a bookstore carry yoga mats? [Note from much later: For some reason now we do have some kits that include yoga accessories. What the hell?]


5/15/01

Apparently we had a mystery shopper today and even though our café failed I was the cashier on duty and I apparently passed with flying colors, and now our terrifying district manager wants to take me to lunch next time she comes. Lovely.


5/7/01

We have a thing where we're not supposed to accept business checks without a manager's approval, and a guy tried to write a business check today, so I had to get the manager. While we were waiting for him, the guy seemed to think it was necessary to try to convince ME that his check was okay, by giving me the business card and telling me it's been in business for 20 years or something. Then he took out a brochure for it and gave it to me. It was for a nudist colony and there were naked people all over the brochure. It was funny. (Yes, the check was approved.)

Also, some guy told me today that if he had my job he'd kill himself.


5/5/01

A jerky lady demanded price checks on two items with no tags. The first one was just some toy and I said I'd have to get a manager to find out, and she said to never mind, but then when she asked me how much a certain windchime set was and I didn't happen to know off the top of my head and asked if there was a box for it, she just gave me this stare that seemed to say "oh-my-God I can't believe how incompetent you are, you should really learn your job," shook her head, and walked away from me.


5/4/01

A guy looking for "the spa section" in our store (huh??) felt it was necessary to repeatedly SPELL "spas" when he wanted me to look it up in the computer. What the hell? We really don't have any books on spas.

"Wiccan" boy update: He didn't get to do his ritual the night I was supposed to see the heavy clouds he called . . . because he "forgot" and fell asleep. I'm sure.

A lady barreled into the Customer Service desk by herself very early this morning. I followed her and asked her if I could help her, since she just barged into an employees-only area like she thought it was part of the store. She said yes, and that she was looking for a certain book that was on the school reading list. I glanced over where the school reading list books are held and didn't see it, and told her that we were probably out since they just had a book fair. She looked at me and said, "Do not even try to TELL me that you are out of this book. This is the THIRD time I have gone out looking for it. I talked to someone last night and they said . . ." and she just went on like it was MY fault, when I was just reporting what I saw. I don't have to take that, so I just said, "OHHkay," and walked away. I went to the back room and got the manager and told him what was up, and told him to go out there and talk to her. As we were exiting the back room, there she was, like she was about to walk into another employees-only area. But she was holding her book and brightly said, "Found it!" It had a piece of paper on it with a last name; someone had set it aside for her under a different hold pile. Which she'd neglected to mention when she talked to me. But all of a sudden she was just all smiles, like she'd never been a HUGE ASSHOLE, and even told me I had a really nice singing voice when she heard me singing later, and asked me if I sing at church. Ahem.


5/1/01

Some lady wandered up to Customer Service today and asked me, "Is there anyone who can help me??" I said, "Well, that'd be me." She said, "Okay," and then started walking away. She turned around, glared at me, and said, "Well, come over here!" Hehe. She wanted me to follow her to the card section and find a card for her since her eyes were bad.

Anyway, "Wiccan" kid came back today, oblivious to the fact that it was Beltane, announcing that his ritual worked but that the white dragon he summoned wouldn't give him all the power immediately because it might kill him. He wanted me to put some symbol under my mattress tonight so he could "try something," and when I refused, he thought I was afraid of what he might do. He also said the clouds were going to be thick tonight because he was going to call them. It was clear out at night, by the way. Then he tried to do tricks on his skateboard in the parking lot to impress me, and the poor little adept mage kept falling off. Awww.


On to June!


Backlinks:
MAIN PAGE
WRITING PAGE
JOURNALS PAGE
WORK LOG PAGE