12/30/02
Some guy approached the Customer Service desk, mission unclear. The problem rose from the fact that the customer apparently thought I already knew the story behind his problem somehow; he was saying that he was checking on the status of an order that was supposed to be shipped from us to some woman he knows, several weeks ago. So, I asked for the phone number it would have been ordered under. The search returned no results. I asked for the woman's name. Her name also returned no results, even though I had to ask him six times to spell her name because it turned out he was saying a different thing than he was spelling (i.e., part of her name and not all of it, thinking I already understood that part). Finally he grabbed the phone and called the lady, and it turned out she got her books two weeks ago. Two weeks ago the order was filled, and somehow this guy got it into his head that he needed to come into the bookstore and needle us to send them. Go fig.
TWICE today, someone pointed to a price tag and said, "And is this the price?" or "Is this how much it is?" I think perhaps they think because there are clearance signs up for the Christmas merchandise, our store is going out of business and selling shitloads of stuff for less than is marked. Not so, bud, but sorry.
Here's a doozy: A lady called me today saying she'd bought a book as a gift and the pages were bound out of order, and she wanted to know what she could do about it. I told her that happens once in a while and that we can replace it with the exact same item no charge. When I asked her for the title, she replied, "Webster's Dictionary," which of course is SO specific, but then she began giving me more information and whatnot. I told her it wouldn't really help me because so many dictionaries are so close to each other, but if she would give me the ISBN I could locate it. Well, she did so, and to make a long story short, I figured out from the fact that we don't CARRY that book that she must have gotten it off the sale table (whose books aren't in our computer system). She admitted that she had and that the big red hardback dictionary was only $6.97 or something. So, I found another copy of it on the sale table . . . and THAT one had the same binding error!
So, I told the lady that was the only one and there didn't seem to be any other similarly priced sale dictionaries around that were hardcover, and here's where she started to be weird. She started acting like we'd purposely marked down those dictionaries KNOWING that they had the error and trying to cheat customers into buying them. She was like, "It wasn't advertised as a DAMAGED book, if it was I wouldn't have bought it," so I told her we didn't have anything to do with marking down sale books, that they just came to us from a book company and most are marked down because there are newer editions or they're outdated or the paperback is selling too well for the hardcover to make any money. But she didn't care; she thought that because of the error we should give her a dictionary from our regular-priced section, of a comparable type. I told her that that might not be possible, but that I would let her talk to the manager about it. When I put her on hold and briefly spoke to the manager, she told me that all we could do was refund the lady's $6.97 or let her use it toward the purchase of a more expensive book. She wouldn't talk to the customer and made me do it, so I got on the phone again and told the customer what the manager said. She replied, "I don't like that answer." I told her I figured she'd say that, but that was what they said. Finally she made a quick exit and hung up. I bet she bad-mouths us, as if we purposely stuck the binding error in there just to cheat her or something. But hell, if I got a piece of chocolate cake at a restaurant and didn't know that there were nuts in it (which I don't like), I wouldn't expect them to therefore give me a whole regular chocolate cake, all right?
Some lady on the phone wanted to know whether we did engraving on bibles. I told her we didn't, and when she asked where they DID do it, I didn't know any places. So she got upset, saying that when she asked someone or another, they said bookstores would do it, or that we would know where she could get it done. She acted like this was a violation of some promise we'd made her, but I'm afraid it's just not our fault if someone else made a guarantee about our company without consulting us. She began to rant about how it's just not hard to get the engraving machine and if we did it we'd make some money, and she started to repeat herself about "it's just not hard, it's just this little machine," blah blah, so I just waited for her to run out of steam, keeping silent and wishing I could tell her that if it was so damn easy and practical, she should buy the machine. Finally she stopped talking and I was like, "Ohhkay," and she "thanked" me (meaning said thank you in a very sarcastic way), and hung up. Yaaay.
12/29/02
I got called to the Customer Service desk, but sometimes when that happens I cannot come right away because I am helping someone already, and that was the case in this instance. On my way to the desk, I saw a woman with a daughter about four years old. Now, the woman was totally nice and later on I had a cool conversation with her about editing and writing children's books. But I think her daughter has already started her training to become an adult customer of the sort that ends up displayed here. As I was on my way there, the little girl left her mother's side, peeked around the side of the desk, and started calling, "Hel-LOOOOOO!" Ahh, yes, little one. You will one day join your companions as a champion consumer.
I helped a lady who was apparently Japanese and speaking English as an additional language. She spoke English very well and without much of an accent, but it resulted in something very funny. She told me that she was looking for a particular kind of children's activity book that usually had craft materials and a book attached, and then after a moment's thought said, "I think they are called Krutz. K-R-U-T-Z." After a beat I realized she meant Klutz, the Klutz series of activity books. I was surprised she spelled it out with an R because that's usually just a pronunciation thing! I found her a Cat's Cradle book and she was happy.
12/28/02
My day opened with a phone call from a woman who was convinced she'd been cheated by our company. We have a lot of items on half-off discounts for members, and she was claiming we hadn't given her half off. I asked her if she had a discount card and she said she did, and that one of the items she bought wasn't a special discounted item and THAT was the only item she got her discount on. Okay. Now, to understand why this is absurd, you have to understand how our register works. See, you scan in a customer's discount card, and then it AUTOMATICALLY takes ten percent off of every item. It can't do otherwise, and it can't pick and choose which items to put the discount on. So I asked her to describe to me why she thought she wasn't getting the discount. And she told me that she worked out what prices she should have received after she took off the percentages. "I did the arithmetic myself," she said, several thousand times. She was complaining that the receipt showed only forty-five percent off (which it said: Discount, -45%, on each item that was a special discount).
So I explained the math concept to her. This is not something everyone understands so I was not cross with her for needing it explained; the being cross part came later when my logic still didn't match up to what she thought we owed her. Anyway, the concept goes something like this: If you have an item and it's a dollar, you scan the discount card for 10% off and suddenly it's ninety cents. Now if you have a dollar item that's marked "50% off with discount card," the math has to be figured differently. We want it to be a total of half off, not half off and then another ten percent off that price (which would be a total of 55% off the original price). So what we do is we discount the half-off items at 45% off for regular sales. When you take 45% off a dollar, you have fifty-five cents left, and then if you take the club card discount of 10% off that, you end up with about five cents off, ending in a total discount of 50%. (The sticker on the discounted items, by the way, does say 45% off, 50% with discount card, it's not some misleading retail trick.)
I explained that to her, just making it a simple matter of saying that discounting an already-discounted item results in the full fifty percent discount, but this did not make sense to her because nowhere on her receipt did it say "-50%," it only said "-%45" and then the 10% off her total sale at the end. Since the problem obviously lay in the fact that I couldn't comprehend that, the lady began reading to me how her receipt read, from the bottom, which is where I discovered that Pat had been the person to ring her up. Pat is a manager and a very good one. When we went 'round in circles for another few minutes, her refusing to believe that she hadn't been cheated about 45˘ on all of her items, I told her that if she was still confused she could bring the receipt in and talk to Pat, who was the one who rang her up. I told her Pat was a manager, which was supposed to be an assurance that therefore she would have the authority to fix any problem (real or imagined), but the lady misinterpreted me, and said, "Oh, so since she's a manager, we assume she couldn't make a mistake?" Heh. I just told her that from the way she'd itemized the receipt to me, Pat had rung her up exactly as she was supposed to, and if it didn't match up to the arithmetic that she'd so painstakingly done herself (which MUST be more accurate than, say, a computer), then the computer wasn't calculating discounts correctly. She said she'd have to mull over it some more, and said she'd bring it in if it still didn't compute. I think she got off the phone still thinking that she was owed 60% off, though, instead of a total of 50% done in two different discounts, so it would be no surprise if she continued to come up with the wrong amount.
Some dude at the register was there with his son buying Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. The kid asked if he'd be allowed to use a coupon on a pack of cards from a series other than the one the coupon asked for. The problem was, he was expecting to just buy three packs of cards and use the 50% off coupons on all of them, when the coupons said "Limit one coupon per customer per day." I told him we couldn't do that, and then of course Daddy stepped in to defend the poor kid from the cashier who was trying to rip him off, since it's my job to try and deny people their rightful discounts. He said, "Well, then I'M a customer, he's getting one and I'm getting one," and I said that would be fine and dandy and I could ring it up as two separate transactions. He seemed to accept this, until I did it. I rang up the kid's card pack, took off the discount and put away the coupon, and told him his total. He seemed to think I was incompetent and tried to push the other card pack and a magazine he wanted at me, "No, add these too," and I explained again that if he wanted to use two coupons, I needed two transactions. "You're going to make me put $1.96 on my credit card??" he asked. I said that if that was how he was paying, then yeah, that was what I was going to do. I reminded him of how I'd told him before that for two coupons I needed two transactions; the limit one per customer per day did not allow for two discounted Yu-Gi-Oh packs on the same transaction. He was like, "Well YEAH, but you can't subtotal it or anything?" I just decided he didn't understand the overall concept of "the rules," and just accepted that no matter what I told him, he was going to go away feeling harassed and cheated, so I didn't bother to try to pound it through his head anymore and just ran his credit card, then rang up his other stuff and rang the credit card again. Boo-hoo.
A fatherly figure was watching over two children who were playing with the train set. One of the children seemed disturbed by the fact that there were duplicates of a couple of the trains, and he shrieked, "WHY do they have TWO HAROLDS??" The dad said calmly, "Sometimes you need two Harolds." It was spoken in such a way that it seemed the logic was flawless, as if this was a concept that could be generalized to all walks of life. I lost it. This was funny to me. I can imagine seeing it in an inspirational quotes collection: "Sometimes you need two Harolds."
This lady was funny. She was taking up a lot of my time to help look for a box for her Hallmark ornament, but I wasn't busy and didn't mind at all. What was funny about this was that she kept saying sort of odd things, unrelated to anything. As we were searching through the collection of Hallmark ornament boxes, she informed me that she'd felt nauseous this morning and then she ate something to make it go away, and that worked for a while but now it was coming back. I hoped she wouldn't suddenly puke on the floor. She went on to tell me that she wasn't pregnant because she was too old for that, even though she knew that was what I was thinking. (I hadn't been.) Then she said matter-of-factly, "Ooh, I feel like I gotta go pee-pee." Hehe. Thank you for updating me on the status of your elimination procedures, lady.
So. I got a phone call from a guy who didn't speak English very well. This was absurd because of the kind of question he was asking. Once I had him rephrase his question three times until I could extrapolate its meaning, I found out he wanted to know how much money he should charge to proofread other people's writing. This was amusing in itself, but then it just got annoying, because it quickly became apparent that this guy was not calling to find a book; he was calling for information, expecting that I would be able to do some quick research for him and actually quote him a figure. He failed to realize that, well, he's calling a retail store.
So when I asked him if he had a book he wanted me to look for, he said he didn't, but wanted to know where to find his information, please. I told him that maybe he could find something in the Writer's Market. I happen to know that book has that information, considering *I* do proofreading and I set my rates according to information I found in that book. But I was not going to quote this guy a figure, considering I didn't know what situations he was planning to do proofreading in. So he's like, "What's Writer's Market?" So I told him it has information on all sorts of things concerning the literary world, and he was like, "Well how do I find out what I want to find out?" and I told him he could either buy a copy of the book or he could find it at the library. "The library's closed today!" he told me, sounding like he was getting upset. Putting aside my urge to ask him how that's my problem, I just said, "Okay," and then he started demanding that I tell him WHY the library was closed today. I told him I didn't work there, so I didn't know.
Then he asked if his information would be on the internet. I said he might be able to find it (like I carry around in my head a set of facts and figures about WHAT YOU CAN FIND ON THE INTERNET) and he was like, "Well, can you find it?" and it THEN became apparent that he thought I would look for it for him. I told him I have no internet access, and then tried to end this conversation by explaining that unless he had any questions about whether we had books, I couldn't help him any more. Finally I got rid of him. Grr.
12/24/02
Count of customers who wished me "Merry Christmas": 28. (This does not include people who wished me a good holiday or whatever.) Yes, they mean well. But damn, do I want to start wishing every customer a happy Beltane come May 1, and see what THEY think when they're specifically wished a happy some-holiday-they-don't-celebrate.
Being the last day before Christmas, I have had it up to my eyeballs with assholes. So I've gotten a bit snippity at certain points. For instance, take this guy.
He walked up to the register, looked at me, and said, "Ian Fleming!"
I do not know who Ian Fleming is. Maybe I should, but I don't. A guy comes up to the register and says a random name, and I don't know what he wants. Perhaps Fleming is an author and he wants books by him. Perhaps Fleming is a celebrity and he wants books on him. Or perhaps he is Ian Fleming, and he wants the book he put on hold. So, when he came up to me and said, "Ian Fleming!" I just repeated it back to him, and when he continued to just look at me, I added, "Did you have a question with that?"
I'm not a computer, you guys. I don't operate by keyword. Try opening with a civil sentence, or at least give me some indication of what you want. I sent him to Customer Service for them to deal with.
Some guy at the register didn't seem to be in my universe. My problem was, I had called my manager to get more one-dollar bills because I was out, and he kept not coming to deliver them to me, so there I was standing there with a customer, unable to give him his change.
This was annoying in itself. But what made it more annoying is that the man began to dig change out of his pocket and kept trying to offer it to me as a way to solve the problem. No, sir, giving me the extra change will just make me owe you more ones, which I DO NOT HAVE right now. But he kept trying to give it to me, saying, "I've got change, here, here," and I just said, "Sir, I don't understand how change is going to help here, I am out of ONES." I think he finally caught the problem at that point and started grumbling about how he was only trying to help. Finally I said I'd be glad to give him the change in quarters (which came out to a dollar-fifty), and he said he'd take it and I gave it to him. Just a few moments after he left, I heard a tap on the out door, and there he was again. I opened the out door to see what he wanted, and he was complaining that I'd given him the wrong change. I had to clear that up too, though he still went away giving me a look like I'd done something shady. Yup, my goal in life is to steal fourteen cents from you out of loyalty to my company. . . .
A husband and wife at my register got annoyed at me for ringing up purchases they'd put on my counter that they didn't want. The husband was like, "NO, we only want THIS pile," and when I said, "Oh, sorry, no one told me some of this stuff was going back," the guy snottily said, "Well, I told HER," pointing to his wife.
Ahem. If no one told the cashier, how does it justify it that you told your wife? This I just don't get. Fantastic.
12/23/02
A lady came to Customer Service and wanted astrology books, so my coworker who was standing with me immediately told her that those books were in the New Age section. At this point the lady made some kind of face between confusion and annoyance, and explained that what she wanted shouldn't be in New Age, all she wanted was books on constellations. Oh, sorry, we thought you actually meant what you said. We didn't know you thought astronomy was astrology. We're sorry we didn't anticipate your confusion.
12/22/02
My general manager fell asleep during the big conference call. HAHA!
A lady at the register had just arrived there and wanted to know if I was finished using her credit card yet. That is silly, because she could see I wasn't even ringing the books through yet. But that has happened before. Now here's what floored me. I finished ringing her books. I put her credit card through. I gave her the slip to sign. Packed her books up in a bag. Asked her where she wanted her receipt and put it in her bag as asked. Handed it to her and told her to have a good day. And then . . . "Oh, and are you finished with my card?"
I need something to bang my head on. Excuse me.
A subject of much discussion at the register is my Etch-A-Sketch pen. We sell these cool pens that have various games on the end, and one day when someone tore open the package to this one, I marked it down damaged and began to use it as my main register pen. I've been using it for several weeks now, and sometimes when I put it down next to a credit card receipt people don't realize it's a pen and I have to point it out to them. But this is the first time THIS has happened. My customer took a look at the Etch-A-Sketch screen and said, "I have to sign on that? On that tiny little thing?" HA . . . she thought it was like one of those electronic ones that you sign on, when it was just a keychain-sized Etch-A-Sketch on the end of my pen. ::giggle::
At the end of my shift today, a woman came in with a return. The receipt was REALLY old; we got new register systems in the summer and her receipt was printed on one of the machines we had before that. I took one look at it and told her the manager might not return it because it was from . . . my God, February . . . but she just wanted to see what he'd say. When he came up he looked at it and said, "No, that's from too long ago, we can't do a return from that long ago." She started giggling. That was the weird thing, she was giggling, like this nervous giggle. "But I called," she said, "and asked if I could return it and they said you accept returns with the receipt." I asked if she'd mentioned that it was that long ago and she said no, she just said she'd had it a while. He repeated that she couldn't return something that old, at which point, still giggling, she insisted that since she called then she really should get to do it, but he replied that she'd bought it almost a year ago. I noticed that it was from the other store and suggested she try her luck over there, maybe since it was their inventory she'd have more luck, but still. She went away. Giggling.
12/21/02
Worst Customer of the Day Award: Some lady was in the other cashier's line, and I wasn't at the register at this point. Apparently she was about fourth in line and was agitated about that, so she yelled at the cashier, "HEY, how long is it gonna be before you call someone else to help us?" She agreed to call for backup, which was me--she called for me to come to register one. The lady demanded to know which register was register one, and immediately slipped out of her place in line to claim the front spot at what would be my register when I got there. The cashier told her, "Ma'am, you need to keep your place in line," and the lady freaked out and said, "YOU can't tell me where to stand! I'll go elsewhere!" and just left her shit on the counter. I heard the tail end of this as she stomped out, and just calmly took her purchases down and asked for the next person in line. I bet that lady thinks she sure taught us a lesson, making us lose a sale for expecting her to behave like a civil person. Guess what? She was buying chapstick and two magazines, and the line of people waiting to check out was pretty much proof that we were not hurting for business. Surprise! All she earned was a spot on my jerks page.
Heh, one of the other cashiers got a Yu-Gi-Oh kid trying to use his special coupons for Yu-Gi-Oh cards. They're 50% off coupons, see. The cashier rang the kid's cards up and took off the discount, but then what the kid handed him was another coupon. He thought that if he had TWO coupons, he could therefore get the pack for free. Genius, eh? Too bad the thing says "One coupon per customer per day."
A man was discussing something with me, I forget what, while I was trying to activate the gift certificate he was buying. It was being difficult because the magnetic strip on the card was busted and it wouldn't activate properly, so it was taking me a few tries to try and go around the system to get what I wanted. The guy seemed to think that whatever we were discussing was distracting me from the purpose, and finally he said, "Just ring that up, please." I had to explain to him that I was trying to, the machine was just giving me a hard time. As if I'd just stall or yap when the line was a mile long behind him. Yeah, I love shooting myself in the foot!
A guy buying Gator Bait newspaper wouldn't hand it to me; just leaned over the counter, looked at me sort of condescendingly, and pointed to the price printed on its corner. Dude. I know where the price is. I've probably rung up a lot more Gator Baits than you've bought in your whole life. I still need to ring it up.
Lovely. A lady wanted to know "how much?" before I'd even picked up her items to run them under the register. Yes, lady, I specialize in computing the price before I ring the items. Sadly this has happened before.
A lady was rude at the register (surprise), getting snotty about how inefficient it was that we didn't have a way to look up discount cards that weren't bought at our store. Guess what? If we're just too inefficient for you, perhaps you should consider bringing your goddamn card next time, and then we wouldn't have to do you the favor of trying to find you in the computer so you can get your discount even though you couldn't be bothered to bring your membership card. Anyway, she was buying two of the same item, so I took them and rang it up once, then paused to indicate to the computer that there were two of them. For some reason she thought that was my signal that I thought the sale was over, and she reminded me, "NO, and these too!" with the rest of her purchase. Calm down, I know what I'm doing. Dammit.
Oh yeah! This is FUNNY. This random guy was wandering around our store preaching the word of God to everyone, except in really strange obsessive-compulsive bits of accusation. First he started off normally by asking me and my coworker a question about a book, except the question was ridiculous: "This book here, is the author the same one who wrote all those other books?" I couldn't resist. "Yeah, he wrote all those other books." Hehe. Turned out he meant the Left Behind series, and my coworker pointed it out to him and he said, "Yeah, you've got it filed right, Christian Fiction, it IS fiction you know," and I agreed that it sure was and that if you wanted to read the story in a much cheaper and less time-consuming way you could just read the Book of Revelations. But then somehow he managed to end up in a rant, culminating in the accusation that having a credit card is a form idolatry. Sure, racking up debt doth draw worship from God, so sayeth the Lord, Amen Amen Amen. Later he wandered by the kids playing Yu-Gi-Oh!, and thought one of them said "fuck" when he was actually calling the name of his friend Puck, and gave them a lecture, reminding them that the eye on the Yu-Gi-Oh! cards was an evil symbol and that they were all going straight to Hell. Yeah.
12/18/02
A lady wanted to know why her total was so high, and claimed it was because I'd made a mistake and charged her full price on her Nora Roberts book. Problem is, the book did cost what I rang it up for. It was like a twenty-three-dollar book. She replied that no, it was supposed to cost $7.97. I asked her why she got that price for it, and she replied that it was on a display of books that were all $7.97. This is horseshit, of course, but I asked her to show me where it was because I need to know what the misconception is based on before I can correct it. So she showed me a display. The display was all Nora Roberts books of varying prices, most of them full price but some on the sides having special discount stickers proclaiming "$7.97." I told her it wasn't a $7.97 endcap, it was just a bunch of Nora Roberts books, there wasn't anything that said they were all the same price. So she said, as if this made some kind of sense, "Well I just assumed that since those ones were on sale, they all were." When have you ever gone to a store that discounts anything that happens to be close to another discounted item? Argh.
A lady was being rude at the register, acting snooty that our system doesn't allow us to look up forgotten discount cards that were bought at other stores. ::sigh:: But this is routine. It was what happened next that let her transaction make this list. She suddenly asked if I had paper towels or tissues, and I said I didn't, and she started with that "Well don't you have ANYTHING?" when I didn't even know what she wanted it for, and she asked if I even had a piece of paper, and I gave her a little slip from the register tape, at which point she replied, "My baby spit up on your floor. I'll just put this piece of paper over it so no one slips in it. You might want to get something to take care of that." Then she picked up her daughter and left. I cannot comprehend allowing my child to throw up in front of a register and then just rudely telling the checkout girl she'd better get her ass in gear to clean it up. Oh my God. Yes, the holiday spirit is firmly in her thoughts.
Two guys at my register were buying these pen things. They said "$9.95" on them and weren't on any discount racks, so these guys had come to the register fully prepared to pay ten bucks for the slightly fancy pens. But when the register made a mistake and for some reason rang the pens up at $5.95, they both started arguing with me about how I was ripping them off when I changed it to the correct price. Hello! Computer error! I am not ripping you off, it SAYS on it that it costs $9.95 and you have no reason to believe it is otherwise, so how am I "ripping you off" when I charge you the right price? ::sigh::
Heh, now here's a silly one. Two kids parked in strollers by the register while their parents were checking out began to imitate each other. One kid started picking his nose and the other followed suit, until both had their fingers firmly lodged in their noses, picking their boogies with gusto. Their parents found it amusing but embarrassing.
12/17/02
A lady came up to the register wanting to return a gift card. Yes, this is possible, but you have to wonder . . . now WHY would someone want to RETURN a gift card? Anyway, since I have to put a reason on the return form, I asked the lady why she was returning it. "Because it's black," she said. At my startled look, she explained that she just didn't like how ugly it was, and that if it wasn't black she'd have no problem but come on, she didn't want to give that to anyone! When I asked her why she'd bothered buying it and then bringing it back, she said that she'd been in too much of a rush at the time to notice how, well, black it was. Okay. Folks, I could understand returning something because it is of a color you don't much like. But a gift card? Something you don't even keep? Something that is just a token that allows you to get something you want? How does its color matter? I ASK YOU!! But no, this black gift card is just unacceptable, and she had to make a special trip to the store to return the damn thing. My God, I wish I had that kind of time.
A guy at the register held his discount card out to me, and asked, "Is this expired?" I told him I'd be glad to tell him that if he'd take his thumb off the expiration date. Heh.
Heh, a lady with a box of boxed Christmas cards clearly marked "30% off" gave me the box and tapped its cover, and said, "I think that's on sale." Oh, glad you mentioned it. I don't know how to do my job and I can't see bright red sale stickers.
People are getting really snotty at the register. I told a lady I needed her ID in order for her to write a check, and she basically rolled her eyes and said, "It's ON there." No, ma'am, I'm afraid your driver's license expiration date is not on your check, and my computer asks for that--yeah, second guessing me doesn't work, now, does it.
Also I asked some guy if he had a discount card, and since he said no, as per usual I said my short speech, which is actually not what I'm supposed to say because I find it annoying to attempt to sell the discount card when they aren't going to buy it. I just said, "Okay, well if you ever want one it's five dollars for ten percent off for a year." But in the middle of my saying so he just said "NO" again. I hate that. I am required by my job to at least let you know what it is, even if I refuse on principle to bug you to get one, but jeez, I hate dealing with rudeness.
12/16/02
A weird old man approached me, clinging to his shopping list like it was a lifeline. He explained to me, studying the list as if translating hieroglyphics, that he was told to get Bob the Builder and Clifford the Big Red Dog. That's easy, I thought, and took him to the Favorite Characters section of Kids'. I pointed out the two shelves full of Bob the Builder books and the three shelves full of Clifford merchandise. But for some reason he kept on asking me where they were, after I showed him. I think he thought that he had been given an assignment to get two specific books, not understanding that what was on his list there was characters. I explained to him that there was not one single book called "Bob the Builder," and that all the books in this section were about Bob. He looked at them and wanted to know which he should get, then, and asked if they were all the same price. Yeah, sure, guy.
A man walked up and asked me where a certain section was, but he mumbled a little bit and I wasn't sure if I'd heard him right, but it had sounded like he wanted the "equestrian section." I asked him to repeat himself and he just said, "Where's your horse books?" That annoyed me. Because I know what "equestrian" is, and because I wasn't sure I'd heard him he probably just assumed I didn't know the term. Grr.
I got annoyed today when one of my managers reprimanded me for not having prices on Leap Frog merchandise. This pisses me off, because I am not in charge of Leap Frog merchandise, and I can't help it that sometimes it doesn't come in with stickers. There is this belief throughout the store that because I am Kids' specialist, I am somehow responsible for all the junky toys. Yes, I have a Leap Frog section in my area, but when I put it there, I made sure all the items were priced. If someone has found one that has no price it is not something I put out. ::sigh:: I explained this to my manager but she told me she knew it wasn't my fault, yet she still commented, "We've got to get YOU a price list and you'd better use it." Uh-huh.
Hehe, funny one. A lady asked if she could point out something amusing. I told her to go ahead. She said she thought it was amusing that our Politics section is right next to the True Crime section. I agreed that that was pretty silly.
12/15/02
Early in the morning, we'd just opened and we find this elderly lady standing at the out door, looking forlornly inside as if waiting to be let in. That should have been our first clue that we were in for a treat. My manager let her in and she just immediately attacked him with her question, "Do you have baby books?" I think I've mentioned this before, but you ask three different people what "baby books" are and you may get three different answers. "Baby books" are books FOR babies; "baby books" are books ABOUT babies; "baby books" are memory books or photo books that preserve little scrapbooky things about babies. Turned out option three was what she wanted, so being that I was on register, my manager went to help her. When next I saw her, she had chosen one without looking at its price, and when she saw the register display she said, "Oh, I hope that's not right!" Unfortunately for her it was. She paid me with this totally bewildered look on her face, as if the concept of having to spend twenty-five dollars on a specially bound specialty book with a decorated cover and silver-lined pages was just mind-blowing. Then the manager came up and told me he'd wanted to punch her while they were interacting. Apparently he wasn't quite sure where in my section the baby books were, and as he was looking for it she kept getting really close to him, looking at what he was looking at, and repeatedly saying, "NO, that's not what I want! That's not what I want either!" and explaining over and over what she did want. He told her again and again that he understood what she wanted and was looking for it, but she continued with her conception that she'd been misinterpreted. ::sigh::
Things have been tough at the register because this time of year everyone wants gift certificates, and we ran out sometime yesterday. So a lady came up and asked to buy one, and I had to tell her we ran out. Her reaction was ridiculous.
"I don't believe it!" she said. And continued, "WOW. I mean, WOW. You are KIDDING me! Oh my GOSH!" I told her that someone probably just didn't anticipate how many people would want one, but she just continued with this tirade: "I didn't WANT to go to the OTHER bookstore," she said, because you know, you have to make sure the cashier knows it's her fault you're going to the competitor. As she walked away she said, "Wow. SHOCK!" Shock? Shock? Shock is when something minor like this blows your mind. She said, "Well, THANKS. . . ." in that "thanks for nothing" voice, and left, probably shaking her head in SHOCK all the way to her car.
A guy was buying a Douglas Adams book and we were talking about the books. Then his change was forty-two cents. HAHA! (You kinda have to read the books to know why that's funny.)
A card rack collapsed and my coworker who self-identifies as a "man-ho" was attempting to clean it up when customers approached him wanting help. In order to deal with this, he asked one of our other coworkers, a fairly new girl, to find out what they wanted, and she did so even though she was actually not on the clock at the time. It turned out they wanted to know prices on these books, but by the time he got finished with the cards, she hadn't been able to locate the books at all; the titles and authors were not coming up in the computer. When he walked up asking for the price on behalf of the customers, she replied that she hadn't managed to find the books yet. He looked at the customers and said, right in front of her, "That's why *I* do customer service and not *her*." She told him that if he ever did that to her in front of a customer again she would slit his throat. Somehow I doubt that it would have come up with something else if HE had typed it in. Not to mention that she DOES do customer service, and I might add she doesn't always need me to spell things for her like he does.
12/14/02
Christmas is busy. Everyone knows that every store is mobbed around this time. So it really just floors me whenever I hear snotty things like this from customers: "Oh, I'm glad you came to the desk. I was about to call that 800 number to make them send someone to help me!" Setting aside the fact that there is no 800 number you can call that can somehow make the local store send someone to the desk, she had to have seen that the store was full of people, and it's very likely that in that situation, many of the employees are engaged helping other customers (as I was at the time). The sheer volume of customers causes waiting times to be lengthened. This is not rocket science.
A lady came up to the register at a slow moment and asked, "Can I pay here?" What gave you that idea, the big red "Checkout" sign above me? Hmm. But then she stepped to the SIDE of the register for some reason, and also told me that she thought an item was discounted. (I wonder what gave her that idea? Oh, maybe the big "20% discount" sticker, just as red as the checkout sign above me.)
A woman wanted to get a discount card, but she apparently didn't want it right then because she wanted me to give her the application and said she would bring it back next time. But since she was waiting for her friend, she filled it out while waiting, and then she said she wanted to leave it with me. I told her that if she wanted to get it now, she could leave it with me and give me the five dollars, or she could give it to the cashier whenever she was ready to pay the five dollars. This puzzled her. She didn't understand why I wouldn't take her application but let her get it next time. I think we stumped each other.
A guy was buying a stack of magazines. The register is famous for ringing up magazines incorrectly, so when I ring them up I always check the printed price against the register's display. On about the third magazine, the customer stopped me and demanded in this strange annoyed voice, "What do you keep looking at?" What, is it a problem if I want your stuff to ring up right? Lemme do my job, man.
Someone informed us that the Bible tells you everything today. Good to know.
We have a display Leap Pad toy so that parents can play with it and see if they want it for their kid. On my way to my break, I walked past a maybe late teens maybe twenty-something guy trying to play with it. He was touching pictures on it with the magnetic pen, with a perplexed look on his face, wondering why it wasn't doing anything. I pushed the "on" button for him as I went by. But then he kept touching the pen to the pages wondering why the voice kept repeating, "Touch the green 'go' circle with your pen. . . ." I came back and showed him where that elusive green "go" circle was. Dude, this thing was designed for children who can't even read yet. It just isn't that complex.
My self-admitted man-ho coworker was working on the register next to me today, so I overheard him say something totally inappropriate to a customer. A woman about my mother's age stopped at the counter and decided to write a check, which involves of course giving a license. While getting the information, he stole a look at her birthdate and said, "Ma'am, can I tell you something?" When given the go-ahead, he replied, "You're looking GOOD." Huh? I suppose she probably gave him a shocked look, since a kid who could be her son was telling her she looked good. He went on from there, explaining that she was older than his mother, but looked much younger. Jeez, what a compliment. I wonder what this lady went home thinking? I don't think I'd be particularly pleased that some wannabe-gigolo cashier told me I looked even younger than his mom.
12/11/02
I got more lessons on how to do my job today, taught by customers. Yippee skippy! They sure know a lot about being a bookstore employee!
This guy came up to my desk and asked me for books on employee benefits. I thought that was a bit of a weird question because generally every company has its own set of benefits, specific only to the company. I had no idea how they would write a book on that, but I told him I could take him to the career section and that was about the best I could do. When we got over there the guy took one look at the section and said, "Well isn't there something you could look up?" I told him that anything we'd have in the store would be shelved here, and if I pulled it up on the computer it would just say "go to this section and look," so I'd skipped the step. He replied that we'd better go check on the computer, because (and I quote), "I think your computer might do a better job."
A few title-searches later, we were coming up with only books that would either have to be ordered or were out of print. He kept suggesting ideas for what I could type in, but we were coming up with pure crap. It was only then that he said, "Maybe I should just go over there and see if I find anything just browsing." He thanked me and left, very polite for being condescending. Guess what? You just cost us both three minutes, dude. But at least I know how to properly do my job now, huh?
A lady on the phone asked if we had any Yu-Gi-Oh! starter sets left. We had sold out of them a couple days before and had received no new shipments, so I told her that the kids bought them all. Her response?
"But I just need one. . . ."
That's one more than I have, lady. "All out" doesn't mean "I've got two or three left but it's just so close to none that I figured I wouldn't mention it."
12/10/02
Today something really annoying happened. I was standing in the Cooking section helping a guy when this lady, also shopping for cookbooks, began to get really close to us, and at a choice point in our banter she inserted herself into our conversation. See, I was explaining to the guy that if we didn't have the cookbook he wanted, I could call the other store and see if they had it because we carry the same books. This is when the lady butts in and informs me that we could also check a different company's store because we are in fact the same company.
I told her we weren't the same company, but she replied, "Well that's sure what they told me." At this point I was already wondering why she gave a rat's ass about whether our store is the same as another store, but this lady seemed determined to start something with me, it was really weird. I hazarded that maybe she got that idea because sometimes we order from the same warehouse, but she cut me off again and said, "NO, your stores share inventory and everything, you can order books from each other, I know because they did it for me!" When I was about to ask for some sort of clarification on that she kept going, "Yes, their store ordered a book to your other store for me and I picked it up there!" So I just said, "Okay, right," and turned back to the guy I was actually trying to help.
We went back to the service counter so I could call the other store and he was like, "That lady was really pushy with you, wasn't she." I replied that I had no idea why she was so determined to prove to me that we are another store, but after two and a half years of working at this store and having absolutely nothing to do with that other store's inventory, I'd have to say it comes as quite a shock that we're technically the same store. (Reminds me of the guy who claimed he always got software at our bookstore BEFORE, which made me wonder who he thought he was fooling--I mean, after two and a half years, how have I managed to not notice the software section?) Anyway, they didn't have his book. I still would like to know what actually happened to make that lady think we're all one big happy bookstore family with B&N, but misinterpretations happen all the time; perhaps their computer has powers over the warehouse that ours doesn't and they can order to our stores, or maybe someone from B&N actually picked up the phone and asked the other store to order a book for this customer. But no, no, I'm wrong. I'm a Barnes and Noble employee really. (Does this mean I can have their health care package? Ours sucks.)
I was on register when a guy on a cell phone came up wanting me to check him out. I hate that, first off, but he was holding his keychain with the little discount card on it, and from the way he was talking like he was trying to end the conversation I thought he was waiting until he was off the phone so he could be polite, manage a greeting, and begin the transaction, starting with the freaking discount card. But no. When I waited too long to begin (in his opinion--he wasn't realizing I was waiting for HIM to give me his card), he looked at me expectantly and wordlessly gestured at his books like "go ahead already." So I figured, screw this, and just pointed at his damn keychain. He finally gave it to me, and proceeded to ignore me for the rest of the transaction while he spoke to whoever. Yup, I'm just letting the computer, I mean, the salesgirl ring up my stuff. . . .
12/9/02
This rather frazzled and quite clueless lady came in asking for the boxed Christmas cards. I showed her where one of our displays of boxed cards was, but she wanted a specific kind that allowed you to put a photo in. I told her I didn't know offhand if any of our boxed cards were that type, but probably. Thing is, then she was asking, "Well, where would they be?" I couldn't get it through her head that this display that we were standing in front of was boxed Christmas cards like she'd asked for, and that there wasn't like a special "section" for cards that could have photos inserted into them. We have half a billion boxes of boxed cards and they're piled on tables all over the store; somehow I doubt they're organized by type (not to mention that if they WERE, they would not be anymore in a matter of hours, thanks to the customers' creative rearranging of everything). When I explained this to the lady for the eighth time, her reply was ridiculous: "Well, you should at least be able to clarify where cards like that might be." I was like, look lady, THIS is boxed cards, and you are free to look through them all you want. They're not organized in any way beyond them all being boxed cards, and I don't know where photo holder ones are any better than you do. Finally what she did was go through all of our tables, pick out one of every style of photo holder card, buy them all, and then call back the next day asking if she could return them because they decided they didn't like any of them. Uh-huh.
12/8/02
A guy at the register informed me that the concept of the discount card stressed him out. He'd had one and it had expired, and it had bothered him to try to make it to the store before it expired--it just "wasn't worth it," he said. But the stuff he was buying totaled over sixty dollars, which would mean that at saving ten percent and buying a card for five dollars, he would save about six-fifty. I told him that he could have the card for free and save a buck and a half, but he refused, and I couldn't help making a little jibe at him: "Okay, it's fine with me if you want to pay an extra dollar fifty for your stuff today." He replied that it would save him a dollar fifty but cause him ten dollars' worth of worry.
I had trouble imagining how anyone could get so stressed out by a free discount card that they would rather pay extra money to keep it away. . . .
An older couple came up to my checkout line, and they had the most adorable, vapid apple-cheeked grins on their faces, both of them! They looked like they were blissed on something, so amused were they by . . . well, whatever. They came up and told me that they'd bought gift cards at our store, and couldn't figure out how to put the card in the envelope.
Now what you have to understand is that our envelope actually is kind of goofy. It has this slit in the back that is supposed to be used to close the envelope, but almost everyone seems to think it is part of what holds the card in and attempts to stick the side of the gift card in the seal. This results in the gift card poking out the back of its envelope. No good. Anyway.
We actually had happened to run out of gift card envelopes, so I could not show them how to put a gift card in one. I asked if they had theirs with them. They said no.
They said no!
And they revealed that they'd made this special trip to come see us to learn to put the envelope together, and they didn't even bring one! Er, what the hell?? So I kind of just tried to go with the flow and drew them a diagram of what they were supposed to do. They seemed to vaguely understand and the man was like, "I think after I saw that I might be able to get it this time." I wonder how much of their lives they wasted on that?
More jackassery:
"Do you need a bag for that?"
"No, not unless you're going to stop me on the way out."
Um, yeah. I'm going to personally ring something up for you and let you out without a bag, but then as you attempt to go out the door right next to the register, I'll get in front of you and accuse you of theft and demand to see your reciept. Because, ya know, no bag. JEEZ! Yes, I'm going to fucking tackle you on your way out the door because you refused a bag. GRRRR!
12/7/02
A lady didn't know the title of her book but knew it was a special version of Alice in Wonderland. She said she thought it sounded like "Animated" or something, but that she didn't even know what the word meant. Finally we figured out that she meant The Annotated Alice, and I explained to her what "annotated" means. Then I found the book for her and she asked for "the box it came in," as if there was no question that all books came in one. She seemed shocked when I said it did not come in some box.
This weird eccentric lady on the phone was bound and determined to explain to me the whole reason behind wanting to get a book that was out of print. I wasn't able to help her because no copies were available, but she felt compelled to explain that she used to have one, but when she moved it mysteriously disappeared. Also, she said, her drinking glasses never made it to her new house. "Where did they go?" she wanted to know. How did her drinking glasses and her book suddenly disappear? I have no idea. I promise.
Oh man. EVIL evil lady.
She was one of those dime-a-dozen people who comes up to the desk with no clue of the author or title of the book, but a somewhat vague idea of "what it's about." When you see as many books as I do, yes, what some of them are about does end up sticking, but not all of it. I don't have a "what it's about" search; I have to have some keyword. This lady told me that it was about the nine miners who were in the accident earlier this year, and she told me to try "coal miners" in my computer. I got a bunch of books on like the history of coal mining, nothing recent.
Well, I have to tell you. I have seen a billion customers do this: When they've hit what seems to be a dead end, they begin repeating themselves. They ALWAYS do this, and I could see this lady was no exception because she started back where she'd begun, saying, "Well, I don't know anything else about it, but it is about the miners--" and at the same time as she had begun to repeat herself in the endless parrot cycle, I was asking her if she had any suggestions for other keywords to plug in. Apparently it pushed her berserk button that I didn't stop talking when she started (even though she was repeating herself), so she raised her voice and continued, saying, "And it's about the miners, if you'd JUST LET ME FINISH, THANK YOU." I'm not sure how to describe the sound I made, but it was a wordless indignant squawk that basically said "How rude." I was quite uncool with being treated that way, but regardless of that (and the fact that she was now looking slightly abashed), I civilly told her that there were two books in the Social Science/Current Events section, either one of which could be the one she wanted since they were both on the subject. I took her over there, and then she made her apology: "I'm sorry I was grumpy back there, it's been a long day." I didn't say it was okay. Because it wasn't. There's no excuse for treating me like crap just because you're frustrated that you didn't bring enough information to make finding your book easy. I don't know why it bothered me so much, but I felt like my hair was on fire for like the next two hours. I don't think anyone but Mr. Wise has ever been quite that openly rude to me.
This one guy wanted an inspirational/devotional book, which always makes me groan because they are so hard to find in our store. No one takes care of the inspiration books, probably because people just shove them anywhere anyway, so they're not in any order at all. Before we got to the section, I warned my customer that they weren't in order so we were going to have to pick through it, and he just replied, "So . . . are they in alphabetical order?"
That should have been my first clue.
So we started looking, and he was immediately floored by the ridiculous idea of looking for a book in a disorganized section, so he asked me how many copies I was supposed to have. I sure wish our store was at LEAST in the nineties because then I might have been able to answer that question, but we don't have perpetual inventory, and I had to tell him that there was no guarantee that we even had one copy, just the indication that we carried the book and that if we had any left it'd be here in this section. "Oh," he said, and wandered to the other side of the shelf, presumably to look.
I promptly found out that was not the case. When I rounded the corner he was not there anymore, so I looked on that side for the book and didn't see it. Finally I found him. He was just browsing some other section, just waiting for me to find it without bothering to help. Well, poop. I hope it was there and I missed it, just for that!
And a very helpful (hah!) gentleman pulled me aside on this super-busy day not to ask me a question, but to inform me that our shelves are not properly built to hold the large art books, and he informed me that this section and this shelf were disorganized. (Oh really, I couldn't tell; sorry, sir, we run through the store at night and turn into werewolves and knock shit down. What the fuck do you think happened? Customers!) As he began to inform me that our sale tables should also have more order to them, I just excused myself and went to help a customer who actually wanted something. Word to the wise: If you have suggestions for changing the organization and building materials for a store, it's completely a waste of your time (and the employees') if you whine about it to some random store associate. I promise you there is nothing we can do about it.
12/4/02
We were out of gift card envelopes, which sucks. This lady was buying three of the cards and wanted to know if I had some nice little envelope to put them in, and I informed her that usually we do but we were all out. She asked what she should do then, and I told her that the best thing I could say is just put it in a card or a plain envelope. Her response was a frustrated, "Oh, COME ON!" as she hit the counter. I assured her that if I HAD envelopes I would GIVE her one but I couldn't do anything about the fact that I frigging had nothing to give her. She decided it would satisfy her frustration if she took it out on me some more, and replied in a condescending voice, "You know, usually you go someplace and get gift certificates and they come in a nice little envelope, with like 'To:' and 'From:' on it and you can write the amount . . . and I'm getting THIS??" She indicated the little gift card receipt that displayed how much the things were worth. I just shrugged and asked what exactly she wanted me to do about it. For some reason she changed her tune and asked if they'd have any at the other store. I told her it was a possibility and said if she went there and told them her story it was possible they'd have some to give her. Yay.
Today a woman confused the hell out of no less than two employees. See, she opened by asking if we had a box to give her to ship her book in for a gift. We didn't, but I suggested I wrap it in shippable corrugated cardboard for her.
She wanted to know if she could wrap the gift first. This is where it got confusing. I informed her that to do that, she'd need to buy the paper and the book first, since after I put it in the cardboard, we wouldn't be able to ring it up. She got confused there because she thought I was saying she had to pay for the corrugated cardboard or wrapping fees or something, when I just meant she needed to purchase the silly thing before we packed them to ship. It all led back to the fact that she kept calling both the wrapping paper and the shippable corrugated cardboard "the paper." They were both "the paper," so of course whenever I said "the paper" meaning wrapping paper, she was thinking I meant the cardboard. Anyway, after she picked out paper, she went up to the register and told the substitute cashier that she wanted to get the book wrapped and shipped. We do this sort of thing, but usually it's what we call "jail mail"--something someone buys and has sent to a prison through our store. The cashier thought she was requesting to have it sent from our store, hence including shipping costs in her purchase price. I happened to walk by and ended up straightening everything out, and the lady was apologizing for "not making herself clear" while the cashier was apologizing for being an apparent source of confusion. (Later I explained to the cashier what had happened at the desk and how she was just very confused overall, and she commented, "Good, now I don't feel as stupid, thank you!") Because I didn't want any more delays or confusions, I just took the price tag off her book, wrapped it for her, and packaged it. She was quite happy. Her husband was a weirdo, though--he asked us if we had the bestselling book "Chicken Soup for Dummies." Obviously nothing like that exists, considering there's "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books and "For Dummies" books but the two don't exactly go together. At least it was an intended joke. Some people really are that goofy.
Here's a doozy: A college student came in and, instead of asking us for a particular book, chose to give us the exact details of the assignment for her class. She explained that she was assigned to read a book (oh my GOD) and then act it out for the class, playing the characters and not telling the story but really presenting it. So, we asked if there was a book she had in mind. She replied, "No. Just any book."
At this point we wondered why the hell she came to us for help finding "just any book." There were books all over the store, after all; apparently what she wanted was for us, in the space of a few seconds, to pull the perfect book for her assignment out, thus solving that annoying problem of thinking for her. This always annoys me, when students expect us to find books for them when finding the books and choosing them is part of the assignment. Anyway, it turned out the assignment was due on Tuesday (a week from today) and so she wanted "a short book." We asked for SOME sort of direction as to what she WANTED to act out, and she said, "Maybe something Christmas?" So, we just took her to the Christmas tables and left her there. I saw her at the register purchasing a children's book about candy canes. Yup, that'll be just fine.
12/3/02
I was ordering a book for a lady at Customer Service, and she asked whether her discount card was applicable to the purchase. I said that when it came in she could buy it using her discount, but I didn't need the card now. But somehow in our little conversation about nothing (I have a lot of those while I'm waiting for the computer to process orders), she managed to inform me TWICE that the cards expire once a year. The first time she said that, I thought she was just acknowledging it or thinking out loud or something. But then she said it again at a different point, and she said it very pointedly as if it was something I did not know. I replied, "Oh, I know, I've sold enough of them." She seemed flustered after that, honestly having thought that I didn't know our own policy or something.
A lady at Customer Service was languidly pointing out things on my apron--we were waiting for a manager to come process her purchase order, so she was making small talk with me. "Ooh, let's see, you've got a Pokémon pin, and that says 'Brand New Reader,' and American Girls, and oh, a pentangle." I said, "A what?" She said, "A pentangle, your necklace." I just couldn't shut myself up and replied, "Oh, you mean my pentacle necklace." She replied, "Yeah, that's what I said!" I couldn't believe it. So I replied, "No, actually you said 'pentangle.'" She changed the subject. Hehe. Oh well.
This one was confusing. A lady wandered up and said, "Where is your holiday joke book section?" I was a bit confused by that as I am not even aware of one holiday joke book, much less an entire section devoted to such things, but I figured there might be a little joke book somewhere and offered to show her the Christmas tables. As I led her around to them, I told her that I didn't know of a particular holiday joke book, and was about to ask her if she was looking for a particular one when she replied, "No, I said JOKE books." I got confused and said, "Yeah, like I said I don't know of any particular book, I haven't actually seen a holiday joke book yet--" "NO," she replied, "NO, I said JOKE. Like bah, humbug. Joke books!" This was weird. I replied, "YEAH, I'm saying I haven't seen any joke books--" "JOKE books, honey!" I still have no idea what she thought I was saying, but when I repeated it one more time she laughed and said, "Oh, I thought you were misunderstanding me this whole time!" Ohhhkay, lady. Too much eggnog?
More fun with dotty ladies! A lady came to the Customer Service counter and replied to my "Can I help you?" by slamming a lot of books on the counter and just looking at me. I asked her if she was trying to check out, and she crabbily told me yes, at which point I told her we can't check books out there and pointed to where she could (under that really huge sign that says "checkout"). She actually slammed her hand down on my counter, ROLLED HER EYES, scooped up her stuff, and walked away. Happy holidays to you too, beeyatch!
I didn't handle this lovely lady, but my coworker and I cracked up over it. A woman on the phone gave us this line: "Yes, I don't know what it is or who it's by. I saw it on TV this morning, though. Don't know what show. Don't know what it's about. But it was on TV!" Yyyyeah.
I had an annoyingly confused lady while breaking the checkout again today. (There are a lot of these, aren't there?) Here's her list of sins.
He wanted a Mitford box set that was the first four books. Unfortunately we had a box set of all six, and then two smaller box sets--one of the first three and one of the second three. He was annoyed that the six-book set was soooo much more money than his price quote (which turned out to be from our website anyway, jeeeez), and was considering buying a box set of three and then the fourth book individually. After we'd already been through all the mess with checking the prices (like, you know, he WATCHED me pick them up and look at their stickers and report the price), he just put his hand on an individual book and looked at me, and said, "Well how much are these?" I couldn't help it; I just stared back at him, thinking he was just maybe thinking out loud and was about to answer his own question by, oh, taking the book off the shelf and looking. But oh, no! He just kept LOOKING at me! So I said, "Well, you can look," at which point he did, unoffended by my suggestion. What I wonder, though, is how the hell he thinks I just randomly know the prices of any random book . . . I mean, cool if I do, but if you're standing there with your hand on the book and have no reason to believe it's not marked with a price, why the hell would you ask for information a glance would easily get you without making you look like a total dingus? Anyway.
In other news, I found out today that behind my back, my manager referred to me as a know-it-all. That's both annoying and justified. Because I do know everything, dammit.
12/2/02
Our magazine specialist left on his break and then fell asleep in his car for four hours. He was gone for a couple of hours before anyone really noticed he hadn't come back. For a good part of the day it was this big mystery: "Where's Neil?" A manager and our back room guy checked his car and he wasn't there at one point, but half an hour or so later he was back in the store working. Later I found out that he'd been asleep in his car all that time but when he woke up and realized what he'd done, he figured, "Eh, I'm screwed anyway, might as well get breakfast." D'oh! (Sad thing is, our manager seemed to totally not mind since he stayed to make the time up. He's done this before too, just usually he'll fall asleep IN the store where one of us ends up waking his ass up. Yet our manager DOES mind if our cashier takes an extra fifteen minutes for lunch or asks twenty-four hours in advance if she can leave an hour early to do something important before the banks close or whatever. We think this is because Neil is drinking buddies with our manager, not that it's my business.)
12/1/02
A husband and wife checked out in my line today. (WOW, huh?) Actually, that's not the unusual part. Toward the end of our transaction, the guy asked if my necklace was a Star of David. I said that it wasn't because Stars of David have six points, and mine had five. So he said, "So it's a pentagram?" I didn't correct him and say it was a pentacle because I didn't feel like trying to explain that being inside a circle changed the design's name and its symbolism. Anyway, they left, but came back later because the guy had found some CDs he wanted to buy for some state organization, of which he was a representative. He asked if I would honor his tax-exempt number even though he didn't have his card with him, and since he had some papers with it stamped on there, I did it. Then, just as if it was a normal part of conversation, the guy said, "SO, you don't sacrifice cats to Satan, do ya?" Believe it or not it did not enter my brain that this was a comment related to our earlier discussion of my "pentagram," probably because I totally do not relate anything I believe with Satan. So I told him I certainly didn't, and asked him what brought that up. "Well, the pentagram," was offered as his response, as if that made perfect sense. I informed him that the pentacle's symbolism depicted the elements and the spirit in a closed and interacting relationship, and he was impressed by that, I suppose, and made a silly joke about cats that I don't remember. Anyway, then he complimented me on my friendliness and said it was "very good public relations" to have someone like me up at the front. I thanked him and his wife, and then after they left I bent down behind the counter and laughed until it was difficult to breathe. (Incidentally, when I shared this with one of my managers who is Pagan, she replied, "When I get that question, I usually say, 'Satan who?'")
This next lady was not rude, but her overwhelming confusion over a simple concept just annoyed me. See, it's not that hard to tell a discount card is expired, because, well, when the card says "expires 9/2/02" and the date is, oh, TODAY, you can see that it is solidly three or so months overdue for an update. However, the lady was adamant that she DID have an in-date card, though she couldn't remember renewing it recently. I asked if she would have done it at our store, as we have records of those who have. She said yes, she did, because she didn't even know there WAS another store in town. So I looked her name up, and promptly found one card under her name: That same expired one.
I told her that the only explanation for this is either it was bought at another store or it was older than a year (or under a different name). This did not satisfy her and she decided to go to Customer Service to have THEIR magical computer look. (I had told her their database was more complete, being that it includes cards from every store, but though this did not balance against her earlier statement that she bought it at our store, off she went.) Finally, she came back clutching a slip of paper. It had a number written on it. She said, "Back there they said it was expired, but that if I gave you this number you might be able to do something." Errr? Since our customer service people would obviously never say such a thing, I imagine she was as oblivious with them as she was being with me, or maybe they said that so she'd hush, and so I just accepted the number and typed it into the computer, saying, "let's see" like there was a possibility THIS of all things would work. Then I just shook my head and said, "Nope, this is definitely the number of the expired card, the only thing under your name." She finally accepted that and renewed the card. Some people!
Next on our list is another woman. See, she'd gotten a discount card with us but didn't have it with her, and when I looked it up I couldn't find her. Actually it turned out to be a mistake on SOMEONE'S part . . . her name had been incorrectly typed into the computer. I told her that I found it, but that the difficulty had risen from a typo in the computer. She became concerned about this, wanting to know if I could fix it. I told her I just had read-only access to the database; I couldn't go in and change anything except for putting in new entries. For some reason this really upset her, and I found out that she thought all the time we were talking about it that the typo meant she couldn't get her discount! I calmed her down by explaining that she was getting the discount already; it was just that it thought her name was something else. But this was unacceptable! I must be able to change it! What should she do? Well, I explained that the only way it was going to get changed is the next time she renewed . . . in this case it was annoying but as long as she knew that her name was mistyped and what the typo was, she could get the discount. Of course this whole mess could have been bypassed if she'd, ya know, HAD the card she was supposed to have, since looking up is a freaking courtesy.
Then it just escalated into more silliness. See, the lady had given me her credit card instead of spelling her name, which a lot of people do because it is less effort on their part. So when I was looking up her discount card, I typed in her name, copied from the credit card. I then placed the card back on the counter because if I don't do that it can accidentally get lost under books or end up on the magnet, which would demagnetize the strip. But when it came time to pay for the purchases, the lady seemed confused as to why I was just telling her the total and then expecting her to do something. It turned out that somehow she thought I'd "put it through already." Her rationale? "Well, honey, you DID give it back to me!" No, I explained to her, I had put it on the counter because I didn't want it near this magnet. This made her understand. But what *I* don't understand is how I could have put her credit card through when at the time I "gave it back" I had not yet rung up her purchases. Sigh, sigh, sigh. . . .
Another minorly annoying lady: She asked for my help finding a book at the register. I told her I can't provide that service at the checkout because my computer can't look books up and I can't leave my post, so I told her I'd have someone help her at Customer Service. She went away and eventually came back holding the book she'd been asking for, but then AGAIN . . . "Can you help me find blah blah blah blah. . . ." I was a bit incredulous this time, reminding her that I couldn't do those kinds of things at the register. Her response was that she'd already BEEN over there once and then remembered something else she wanted but by THAT time there was a LINE at that desk and the girl was busy helping someone else. So, instead of waiting at the desk until she was available again, you come to the girl at the register who already told you once that she *cannot* help you? Blah. But wait, it's not over. She also treated me to the "What? It's not expired!" treatment when I was standing there looking at the "expires 8/02" note on her discount card. . . . Why, God?
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