My Record of Work: The Annoying, the Interesting, and the Just Plain Weird--The Year 2002.

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AUGUST!


8/31/02

A twenty-something guy came up asking for biographies on a certain football coach. I looked in the computer to see if we had any that would come up under the coach's name, but there were none, so I told him that and then said that if by chance we did carry a book and the coach's name was nowhere in the title, then it would be in the biography section under the coach's last name. (Our biographies are organized by who they're about.) After I told him this, his response was to walk up and down the biography section something like twelve times, back and forth, back and forth, not really stopping long enough to really even look. It looked like he was pacing. That was odd to me, because not only had I told him EXACTLY where to look; he also would never find a book if he didn't STOP and look at the damn titles. Grr.


8/30/02

I had a lady insisting with all her heart and soul that our journals used to be in the Hallmark section. If that's true, it was more than two years ago, because while I've worked there we've always had a journal table up front. It was funny, though, because this lady was using "they used to be over THERE!" as like an excuse for not being able to find them, like she thought I'd think she was ridiculous if she'd somehow missed this huge table if she didn't have a reason to not look there. Well, I wouldn't have thought she was silly, but then she made herself look silly when she started trying to tell me something I'd never heard of was true of the store I've worked in day in and day out for over two years.

Our district manager was here today. She is kind of a notoriously picky and strict manager, which she openly admits, but today she was being really odd. I was in the back room on my break when she was eating chicken, and she kept saying really strange things. One of them was, "I like to think of myself as the monkey from Donkey Kong. I'm the one who jumps up and down on your head." Also, upon finding out I'm a vegetarian, she said, "I was a vegetarian once too, for years. I grew up on a dairy farm. It just seemed the natural response when I found out what was happening to the cows they told me not to name." That explains soooo much. Hehe. She also said she had long hair once too, and I asked if that was WHILE she was a vegetarian. She said actually it was, so I countered with, "HIPPIE!" (This is ironic since I'm a long-haired vegetarian myself.) One of our other managers reported herself as an "unrepentant hippie," and then had to scurry off to answer a phone call. Our district manager complained that we were no fun today because all we were doing was working. I told her we would stop if she wanted. Hehe.


8/28/02

I was covering the register for the normal cashier's break, and was set up at the first register. Every other register had merchandise stacked at it so that customers would know to go to the right place, but some people are determined to be walking problems, and this lady was one of those. She came up, looked at me, and walked to the next register. Then she moved aside a bunch of stuff so she could set her stuff down, then looked at me, and said, "Ex-CUSE me?" like I was supposed to come there. I pretended not to understand and just said, "Sorry?" Then she came to me, I guess realizing that my counter was the only one open. Then when I told her the total, she gave me a different amount, and I repeated the total but she just pointed to the register display, which was displaying the amount of one of her books, and for some reason she thought that was the total. (It really bugs me when people do that. I mean, it should really be obvious that your total is not going to be the exact price of ONE of your books, but this happens fairly often. People don't listen to what you SAY and just do what they think is right, which just isn't often right.)


8/27/02

It started raining late in the afternoon today. Usually if I ask people if they want a bag, they say they want one and add that it is raining. One guy did this, and then asked for another bag, saying, "Could I please have another sack? I want to put it over my head." That was funny, but what was even funnier is that he did indeed put the plastic bag over his head and run to his car. As I was leaving, I pointed him out to the cashier, and she said, "More of our customers should do that. Except they should leave the bag on longer." Hehehe.


8/26/02

So today, the café guy came up to me and said as his opening line, "What did you DO?" I had no idea what he meant, so he clarified: "There was a lady wanting customer service, and she came up to me and said, 'YOU have to help me, because I don't want to ask THAT lady over there!'" (I was at the register.) I said I had no idea which customer that was and hadn't been rude to anyone, especially not to the point where they shouldn't want me to help them. Not to mention that I can't help anyway if I'm at the register, but hey. So I found out from my manager, who ended up helping her, that the lady was really weird and wanted these evangelical devotional things or something, at which point I postulated that she might have been freaked by my pentacle necklace, which of course signifies that I have sex with Satan. What's especially ironic about the whole thing is that if that was her problem, she didn't avoid the devil's minions that day, because my manager is as Pagan as I am; she just doesn't wear a necklace to advertise it. Too bad! Your devotionals are fouled by filthy heathen hands! Have a good day!

A lady and I were discussing the expiration of her discount card; apparently the date had rubbed off on her small keychain card, but she still had the big wallet card and was looking for it to find the date. We found it, found it had expired, and she decided not to renew. She started writing out her check, and somehow the conversation stumbled across some little thing where I needed to know the date on her card to complete the sentence. (I forgot what we were talking about, but for my sentence to make sense I needed to know that.) So, I asked her. She wasn't listening and replied with the amount of her total, the number I'd just given her. Um, lady, I know how much your stuff costs, I just told you. Why would I need to know that? Oh well. It was just funny.


8/24/02

When asked if he had a discount card, a jerk at the register replied, "No, but give me a discount anyway." I laughed since it sounded like a joke, but he didn't smile or laugh. Then when I told him the total, he replied, "Well, how about you give me a discount, or I go to the competition next time?" I shrugged, said that was his choice, and that our discount cards were five dollars for ten percent off for a year. He just grumbled, paid me, and left. Then the customer behind him came up to check out, and he was like, "You handled that BEAUTIFULLY" and said that he would have wrung the guy's neck. Don't people understand that I really don't care if they shop at my store? I'll be nice to them and I'll do what I can to help them, but if you're gonna threaten me and demand things that aren't in our policies, damn, go ahead and shop elsewhere, it's not much of a loss to us.


8/19/02

At the register today, a lady asked if I'd run her credit card through yet because she wanted to put it away if I was done with it. The crappy thing about this is that she could see I was *still ringing her stuff up*. Our registers can't even take payment until they're on the final screen, which requires me to be, you know, finished scanning items. Yeah.

A man and his wife checked out at my register. The guy was very funny and amusing. He apparently had on pants with more pockets than he was used to, and couldn't find the pocket containing whatever he was searching for. He told me he had sixteen pockets (or something like that), and he said, "I'll show you . . . NO, I'm not gonna take my pants off!" His wife explained to me that he didn't really have sixteen pockets. Just more than he was used to having. Then I asked if they wanted a bag and the guy said, "Well, I saw an armed guard on my way in, so I'd better get one." It was funny, but then the wife said, "Just remember to deactivate the label." Okay. First off, the books don't have magic "I'm being stolen" labels; maybe in some places everything has them, but our store's security sucks ass, and there is no special label that needs to be deactivated. Don't get me wrong, I didn't expect her to know that. What did bother me is that if she thought there was such a thing, she felt she needed to tell me to deactivate it! Kinda weird.


8/18/02

The jackass award for today goes to the guy who would NOT stop describing his book. There's this joke in all bookstores about people who come up and say they're looking for a book and they think it was blue, or whatever. But this guy was just adamant that he describe this book not once, but over and over again. Apparently he had been in the day before and decided not to get it, but changed his mind and wanted it today, and could not remember where it had been found, where he'd put it down, or what it was called. He just remembered that he THOUGHT it was put out by one of those magazines that do collections, and that it had something to do with September 11th. So, then the description began. He told me it was not really a hardback but not really a softcover either, and kept picking up books and telling me whether it was smaller or larger than each of them, or how he thought its binding looked, or again, how it was not really a paperback but didn't have a hard cover. Okay, okay, guy. That would be helpful if you already knew what book you were looking for and we knew where to START. Since he said it was about September 11th I took him to the current events section, but he refused to look for it, just continued to pull books off the shelf, explaining to me how the book looked in comparison with this book or that book. I told him several times that telling me what it *looked* like was not helping. (I was a little rude about it starting maybe the third time he launched into a description. I had to endure about seven descriptions. I didn't mean to be rude but it was just SO frustrating.) About halfway through the encounter he suggested I "look it up." I asked him what exactly he wanted me to type into the computer if he had no title and no author. He didn't give me a suggestion, but he did explain to me how the book looked again.


8/17/02

Oh, great. I just had a PLETHORA of Assholes today! Yes, this was all TODAY! Now that the summer reading people have shut up about trying to find their books late in audio and Cliff's Notes versions, we have the college jerks who think we carry their textbooks. How I love the fall.

One of my managers and I were sharing the Customer Service desk during a busy time. After helping another customer, he went to wait on a woman with a stack of books. She just looked at him, standing in front of the stack of books she had sitting on the counter. Just kept sort of giving him this annoyed look. He said, "Can I help you?" when she didn't say anything for too long, and she just pushed the stack of books at him, glaring, and said in this very precisely articulated voice as if she thought she was talking to someone VERY incompetent: "I-would-like-to-PAY-you-for-these . . . ?" He said, "Okay, then go ahead and take them up to the checkout."

A guy wanted a book we were out of, which isn't unusual. I offered to call the other store for him, and he accepted. And so I picked up the phone and dialed the number, and the guy started talking! What the hell? You think you can just make conversation with me while I'm trying to inquire about a book for you? I mean, I started talking to the person on the other side of the line and he only belatedly realized maybe that wasn't the best time to talk. Anyway, the other store DID have a copy and he wanted it held, and we took care of it. But then he wouldn't stop repeating himself asking me for directions! I told him how to go, which is VERY simple directions (I should know, I'm directionally challenged), and he wouldn't stop asking me how far down 13th Street the other store was. Damn! I mean I must have told him at least three times that I didn't know.

A lady on the phone was annoying. She wanted to know how to get to our store, and then gave a rather complicated (to me) estimation of where she was. I told her her directions didn't help me but I could tell her where we were in relation to some landmarks. She just said, "Oh, this is pointless, I think I'll just call the other store, or is there anyone else who would know," stuff like that. I just ignored her and told her where we were (which is easy considering we are neighbors with a very big mall right off the interstate), and she figured it out easily once I told her that.

I kept finding drinks and napkins left on endcaps and on top of books all day today. I found at least six abandoned cups. People are so disgusting.

Some lady on the phone asked me for Cliff's Notes for A Tale of Two Cities today. She emphasized, "Do you have the C-LIFF . . . NoTeS-uh . . . for. . . ." Lady, I know what Cliff's Notes are. Then she turned out to be as ridiculous as she apparently thought I was. We gave each other the run-around in a pointless conversation after I told her we didn't have any. "Do you know if the other store carries them?" "What, Cliff's Notes in general?" "Yeah, since you don't have them." "We carry Cliff's Notes. We just don't have that one." "Oh, so you're out of it?" "Yes. . . ." "Oh. Well can you tell me if you ever had it?" "I don't know." "Well would the other store?" "Maybe, you can call them and see if they have any left. . . ." "But would they have it?" "I don't know, you'd have to ask them if they have that particular one. . . ." "But WOULD they have it?" "Maybe. . . ." GAHHHHHHH!!!!!

A lady on the phone called and asked me for a book. I told her I'd check and see if we carried it, and pulled it up on the computer. As I was waiting for it to come up on the screen, I guess I sighed or made some kind of noise, because the girl on the phone responded to that. "Oh, I bet I know . . . it was JUST there and now it's gone, huh?" Considering the computer hasn't even told me if we carry the book yet at that point, I was a bit perplexed and just said, "What?" She explained that the little sigh I made indicated that I was disappointed that we were out of it, and she wanted to know if she had just missed it. I couldn't restrain myself and told her that books generally don't leave a scent, so I had no way of knowing if it had just been there. People are odd.

I had a problem with people refusing to be specific today. People opening sentences with "Well is it . . ." and then trailing off as if I'd know the answer. One unspecific man asked where we'd have books on electricity. That's a pretty far cry from what he actually wanted (once I got it out of him): Books on do-it-yourself wiring. This guy was also kind of a jerk to me later, when he found out the Science Fiction section was getting redone. Our paperback specialist is integrating sci-fi with fantasy for some reason, and he asked me where the rest of sci-fi went. I hadn't had a look at the section at the time to see that it was missing, so I told him I'd go see if I could figure it out while he took his kid to the bathroom. When we met each other again, he said, "Did you find out?" and I told him it was being integrated into fantasy. He said, "So where is it?" and I repeated that it was getting integrated into the fantasy section. "So in other words," he said, "you don't know." I had to explain to him that no, I did know, and that the answer was that part of it was already mixed into fantasy. But he wasn't listening, being too busy saying, "Why the HELL would you integrate science fiction and fantasy anyway?" I said it was being done because a lot of the authors write in both genres, but he didn't care. (A LOT of bookstores have a "Sci-fi/Fantasy" section, anyway!)

So anyway, I was helping like a ton of people at Customer Service, and after helping a lady on the phone (knowing there were people waiting at the desk), a lady stopped me and asked me about a magazine. I showed her where it was and she asked for another magazine. I showed her that one too and another customer interrupted me, asking me for a sports magazine. I told him I'd help him when I was done helping the lady, who in the meantime decided to ask me about ANOTHER magazine. So the guy very closely followed us around until he was sure he'd have my attention. When I was done, he repeated his question and I asked for sort of a description of his sports news thing, which it turns out we don't carry--it's kind of a newspaper and I'd never seen it come in with newspapers. So he started lecturing me that we should carry it, and then started asking me my opinions about sports. "Who's your favorite team? Who do you think's gonna win this year?" I have no clue even what sport we're talking about, and tell him that I have no interest in sports and do not follow. And he keeps on! "So who's your favorite player? How do you think Spurrier will do?" At this point I'm wondering how many people are waiting at Customer Service craning their necks and squinting up their little eyes in frustration that nobody's helping them, so I got rude. I told him I already said I didn't have any opinions about sports and that that was ENOUGH. He called after me, "Ahh, I busted a brain circuit, huh?" Yeah.

While I was covering register for the cashier's break, I waited on some ladies who exclaimed over the cuteness of our "Snap Watches." I told them they came in three sizes (since most people don't notice), and this prompted them to open the packages and try them on. It is beyond me why they felt the need to try on THREE of the small size to be quite sure it didn't fit. (Besides, other rude people have already opened a bunch of them and hung them back on the pegs without the wrapping.) It is also beyond me why they thought it was okay to just leave the opened watches all over the checkout counter after they were done destroying the wrappings.


8/14/02

I had a line at the checkout, and apparently one woman thought she was a shrewd shopper. The woman in front of her bought a discount card, so she got to hear the whole spiel about how the card gives you ten percent off everything for a year, blah blah. Now Shrewd Shopper gets up to the front and she checks her stuff out, and asks how much she'll get off. I tell her the card takes ten percent off. She said, "Now wait just a second. I thought I just heard you tell her that you get TEN percent off EVERYTHING." I told her that was what I just told her. She refused to explain to me what she thought I'd said.

A very strange guy came in buying audio books. He asked me, "The discount card gives you ten percent off, right?" I said yes. Then he said, "Well, can I get fifteen?" That was a little odd. I told him, "No." Then I proceeded to ring up his books, and he said, "So, what's the policy on these things? I can listen to them and bring them back, right?" What is this, attempted Jedi Mind Tricks? I said, "Noooo . . . if they're opened, they can't be returned." He told me he was surprised we didn't do an "exchange" program where you listen to them and then trade them in for other audio books. Er . . . we're not Cracker Barrel or the library, believe it or not. But he said that they did this program at a competitor's store. Why a retail store would do an audio book exchange library is beyond me, but I certainly haven't heard of it. I haven't called them and asked about it, either. (Note added later: Someone who works at the other bookstore wrote me e-mail and said they've never heard of such a thing either. Yay!)


8/13/02

I got a couple kids at the register who expected the Yu-Gi-Oh! cards to be $1.99. Seeing as how the cards are $3.49 at our store and everywhere else, I wanted to know what gave them that idea, so I asked. They said, "That man at the counter told us." It turned out the man at the counter was one of my co-workers who just made it up because he didn't feel like checking, I guess. You don't know so you make shit up? Jeez. And it wasn't like it was some strange item that the computers won't scan. . . . Weirdo.


8/12/02

Argh. I hate it when people act like this. A lady on the phone, upon finding out we didn't have a certain book in our store, asked me to put her on hold and then call the other store for her. Obviously she is at a phone, why couldn't she free up both my time and my phone line and call them herself? I think that's inconsiderate. I mean, yeah, I'm working customer service, but I had lots of other things to do, such as helping the two people who were waiting at the desk. It bothers me when people don't realize they're not the center of the world.


8/11/02

The Army guy (see yesterday's entry) did indeed come back today and present me with my very own vegetarian MRE. :)

One of my managers had a customer go apeshit on him today and yesterday. The story is, yesterday he had to deal with the lady throwing a shit fit because the book she wanted had never been published in paperback. She was freaking out because she didn't want to pay that high of a price, and acting like my manager wanted to trick her into buying the hardback because on TV she had seen the author holding a paperback. He explained to her that sometimes "Advance Reading" copies are produced in paperback, for purposes of getting reviews before their debut, or whatever. She was annoyed that she couldn't get her hands on such a copy, and kept going on about how it makes no sense that the author would be SHOWING the paperback on TV and not make it available to the public. Whatever. Eventually she just bought the hardback and left. Well, the next day (today), our local newspaper included a copy of our book newspaper, BookPage. We have them in our store and they had a month's worth of coupons on the backs of them, the first coupon for one deal good only the first week of August, the second coupon with a different deal good only the second week, and so on. Well, a lot of people had freaked out over the fact that we didn't want to honor the first coupon (whose week was already up), because "why would you send out this paper with expired coupons?" and stuff. They failed to see that we'd always had the paper available in our store and it's not our fault the Sun didn't distribute the papers in accordance with our various sales. Well, this lady was one of those people and she was furious. Finding out that she "could have" used this coupon the day she bought it, she came back in and demanded that she be allowed to have the coupon honored past its date, and demanded to know why my manager hadn't told her about it because "You KNEW I didn't want to pay this much for this book!" and yadda yadda, "You should tell your customers these things!" None of us really knew about it. We get in trouble for reading on the job, so we tend not to pick up that stuff and to not study our company's materials on our time off. It's not our fault the corporate headquarters didn't let us know they were sending out such coupons, but whatever, he just didn't happen to know. But of course, she thought he deliberately cheated her out of money, and went away thinking that he was a sneak. I daresay the five bucks or so she saved was probably spent in gas to get there and energy devoted to screaming at him.


8/10/02

A lady asked me if there was a paperback out for a book that just came out in hardcover less than a month ago. Usually I cut people some slack on this one; not everyone knows that it takes about a year (except in special cases) for books to come out in paperback, even though I knew that before I started working in the book business. I explained this to her gently, saying we couldn't expect a paperback for about another year . . . BUT THEN she asked me to check if another book was out in paperback, and it had also only been out in hardcover about a month! I wonder sometimes if people just tune me out when I don't give them the answers they expect/want.

A very friendly guy who is in the military wanted me to answer some questions about websites for him, since I volunteered the info that I make them while we were looking for books about Front Page for him. He was very nice and kept saying he was going to give me coffee and presents for helping him. Then he actually did try to give me a present. He made his daughter run out to the car and get these weird military meal things you can bring with you in the Army and stuff. Of course, one was meat loaf and the other was spaghetti with meat sauce, so being a vegetarian I couldn't exactly accept them. He said he'd be back sometime bringing a vegetarian one. I wonder if he will?

A lady was a bit weird on the phone today. She seemed to think "ISBN" was part of the identifcation number of the book she wanted, first of all. That was kinda funny. But her ISBN started with 2, and that is unusual. I was unsurprised that the book didn't come up in the computer, and I asked for the title and that didn't bring anything up either. As if the lady knew this would be the problem, she informed me that karaoke was spelled "k-a-r . . ." I stopped her before she could go any farther, and told her I knew how to spell karaoke. Then I realized that sounded a bit rude and volunteered the information that I like to sing karaoke, blah blah. I know she doesn't know that I'm an excellent speller, but I feel a little weird, seeing as how I am an EDITOR and people still think they need to spell very simple words for me. Then when I told her that the number starting with 2 usually indicated that it wasn't a book that got the usual distribution, she informed me that the number didn't start with 2; it started with I. For ISBN. Yeah.

A lady wanted to know if we were open tomorrow. I told her we were, so she asked for our hours. I told her we're open 9 to 9. She said, in a slightly condescending voice, "Honey, tomorrow's Sunday," as if there was no chance in hell that those could be our hours for Sunday. I told her I knew what day it was and those were indeed our hours. She was QUITE surprised.


8/7/02

Another old man asked our cashier out. She is getting upset.

Our hiring manager was looking for a new receiver, and settled on calling a certain applicant. The only problem was, he couldn't read the name. He went around asking us what we thought it said, and I suggested a possibility, considering I have some experience reading first-grade writing, and I thought it looked like it said "Aaron Hale," but he didn't believe my suggestion. He kept insisting that the writing made it look like the guy's name was "Arm Hole." So when he called, he said, "Hi, I'm calling for Arm . . . Hole? Aaron Hole? What's the name?" Pause. "Oh. Well, this is the bookstore," blah blah blah. A couple days later the guy called back and I answered the phone, and I had read his name right. So ha.


8/6/02

I started my morning with this charming gentleman.

In a condescending voice that he probably reserves for people paid to wait on him, this old guy asked me, "So is that ALL you do here? Take that stuff outta them boxes?" I informed him that no, in fact, that was not all I did; I was in charge of the children's department . . . and conveniently at that point the phone rang, and I said, "And I answer the phone!" and I grabbed it. It was a short call, over which he said, half mumbling, "Well, go get me my book." I figured maybe he was kidding around, so I didn't respond to that, finished the call, and asked him what book he wanted. (He was wrapped up in his own universe for a moment so he had to be prompted again.) "You've got a book on hold for me," he said, "under 'Randy.'" So, I went to look on the shelf and see if there were any books held for Randy, but there were none. When I turned to face him again, obviously empty-handed, he said, "Now, they called me and said it was in!" as if I just must not understand that, and I said, "Well, what is your last name again?" just in case I hadn't heard right. But all of a sudden now I am being told to look under "Griffin." When I found the book there, he GLOATED and said to me (again condescendingly), "See, I even had to tell you where to find it," with this head-shaking business that told me he thought he was infinitely superior to me and that he thought I had no idea how to do my job. This I don't take. I replied, "All I *needed* was your last name." And his response? "Well, it was under 'Randy' last time!" Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. He goes down as customer #1 who thinks I don't know how to do my job despite more than two years of it under my belt. (On his way out he asked our cashier for a date, which appalled her.)

Now a phone call. "Hi, are your audio books on sale?" 'Scuse me? "Um, ALL OF THEM?" was my response. So I'm not sure why the lady's next sentence involved defining audio books for me: "You know, audio books, books you listen to, books on tape." What made her think I didn't know what an audio book was is beyond me, but I repeated my question: "Are you asking me if my entire audio book section is on sale?" She clarified that she just wanted to know if the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings ones were. I said I'd have to check, but for some reason she found that a satisfactory answer, asked me how long we'd be open, and hung up. Customer #2 who thinks they have to help me do my job.

A guy wanted architecture software that helps you draw the lines and stuff. I explained that we do not sell software unless it is part of a book. He kind of shook his head in disbelief and re-described for me what he wanted, so I had to tell him again that we do not sell software. Leaning on the counter in a condescending sort of way, he explained to me that if that was true, then we were the first one of our stores he's been to that didn't, since when he's back home that's where he always goes to get his software. He walked away shaking his head. (He probably asked someone he dubbed more competent before leaving, but that I don't know.) I asked one of my managers who came from another state if to his knowledge any of our stores carry software. He said we most certainly did not. But, of course, the answer must be that I've worked in the store for two years and somehow missed the software section all that time. Because the customer is always right. Yes, customer #3 who thinks they know more than me about my store.

Now a rather nice but clueless lady asked me about a shrink-wrapped set of books she was looking for, one of which was the Good Faeries, Bad Faeries book by Froud. I am familiar with his books and was able to take her to the Art section, but all we had was his Encyclopedia of Faeries or something. I explained to her that usually we carry that one but we were out, and that I'd never seen it shrink-wrapped with anything else but I could check and see.

Then she started being weird, and said that the faerie books wouldn't be in the art section, but she couldn't remember what section they would be in. "What's that one section? The one with all the groovy stuff!" I asked if she meant New Age, since that's the only place I've ever seen anything with faeries other than the art books, and she was like no, no . . . and eventually we figured out she meant the Occult section (which is a sub-section of New Age). (Yeah, that's the one with all the "groovy stuff.") I reminded her that Brian Froud's books are shelved in Art, not in Occult, and that I'd seen it there before. Well, she told me her friend got it at our store in Tampa. This gives me warning bells since there IS no branch of our store in Tampa as of this writing. I guess she was thinking of another store. I could not find any Froud books in the computer that said they were part of a set that was shrink-wrapped, but she said it was probably a discount package thing and that she would look on our sale tables and check somewhere else.

I still think it was kind of weird to be told how the store works (customer #4 to do so), but at least she was cool about it.


8/5/02

A lady called this morning and had the opposite problem most people have: She had TOO MUCH information about her book. And she insisted on giving me all of it. Not just the title and author, but the publisher, price, date, and all that . . . and when she started to recite to me the PUBLISHER'S ADDRESS in such a way that I realized she thought I was writing all this down, I had to stop her and say the title was just fine. I wasn't able to get the book though.


8/4/02

Oh, great. School starts soon, so the jerks who didn't do their summer reading are starting to come in with one of three lines: 1) Do you have it in audio? 2) Do you have the Cliff Notes? (Everyone seems to say Cliff Notes even though they say "Cliff's" on them.) or 3) WHY ARE YOU OUT OF IT? OH MY GOD! I HAVE TO HAVE IT READ BY NEXT WEEK! WHY DON'T YOU KEEP A GIANT PILE OF THIS? EVERYONE HAS TO READ IT! EVERYONE'S OUT, WHAT AM I GONNA DO? How about this? Think about the fact that they give you the summer reading list at the BEGINNING OF THE SUMMER for a REASON.

My manager and I got into a scuffle at the register today. The register requires a manager's password if I'm to give back change from a gift card, and a while back a manager had told me I can give back change from a gift card if the amount left on it was under five dollars. This manager had not heard that and didn't think it was right, and said I couldn't do that. This wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't said something really annoying: "Well THAT'S why your register's always off!" Excuse me? Since when is my register off more than anyone else's, first of all, and secondly giving back change from a gift card doesn't make the register be "off." (I think he was thinking I was leaving money on the card AND giving change, but that wasn't what I was doing.) I asked him to check on it and he couldn't find anything on the subject at all, but when he came back I had the time to lay into him like I'd wanted to before, and ended up making him admit it was a mistake to say my register would be off because of it or that my register was ever off more than it should be. Incidentally, it turns out we were both wrong; you can give change back from a gift card if it's under a dollar left. Whoever told me it was under five dollars was wrong.


8/3/02

I had a customer waiting at the desk for me, but the elderly gentleman I was helping would not shut up. He was going on and on about coins and how we didn't have such and such a folder (he told me that about eight times) and just would not stop! Later I found out from the cashier that he did the same thing to her when he got up there!

A little kid with a tear-stained face came up with a large hardback book and set it on the counter. "I'd like to get this book," he said shakily, "But . . ." he unfolded his fist and revealed a few dollar bills, "it's not much, but it's all I have." At that point his dad (I guess) found him and explained to him that he'd already told him he could not have that book and could not make a deal with the saleslady to bring the price of the book down. He was visibly upset by that as they took the book away. ::sigh::

Another kid thing: A boy who'd gotten my attention from across the store was pointing at the collector's case and obviously mouthing something like I was supposed to understand but no sound was coming out of his mouth. I mouthed gibberish back at him and he laughed and asked me normally if I could unlock the collector's case for him. Kids are weird.


On to September!


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