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

11/25/02

Today I was talking to a woman about some book-related subject when suddenly she pointed at my chest area and said, "Where'd you get THAT?" Now, examine please this picture.

Finally, to make my point, I looked down at my apron and started quickly pointing to each pin, saying, "You mean THIS or THIS or THIS or. . . ." This time she actually touched what she meant, and it wasn't a pin at all. It was my pentacle necklace. Oh, of course. So then I told her where I got it and she said, "Moon Goddess? You don't mean Mother Earth, do you?" Moon Goddess is a Craft shop. Mother Earth is a health food store. I find it difficult to get them confused. :) It was just a very weird confusing conversation.

Also, I had a guy ask me where "fencing books" were. I told him we probably didn't have any as fencing wasn't all that popular a sport, but I said I'd look it up. It did turn out that we were supposed to have one in our Sports section (with a bunch of others we could order if he wanted), and I offered to take him there. He said okay without complaint and followed me. We started looking for the book, and finally he said, "Um, I didn't mean fencing the sport. I meant, like fencing. Like you fence your backyard." I told him that would be the Home Building and Repair section and started taking him there, and inquired WHY he hadn't said anything since I kept mentioning the Sports section, called fencing a sport, et cetera. He said, "Well, I was confused, but I figured I'd just go with it." Yeah. This reminds me of the time 5/30/01 when some lady wanted books on "china" and when I tried to take her to the Travel section she was like, "No, not TRAVEL books, I want books on collector's dishes, what you don't know what CHINA is?" ::sigh:: People are so silly.

A guy came up to the Customer Service desk enthusiastically describing his book. He told me what it was about and told me that it was on the Times bestseller list or whatever, and I just kind of stared at him hoping he was about to volunteer a title. When he didn't, I prompted him and he didn't have one. I told him that if it was new it might still be on our New Arrivals shelf, and we could check there and the History section since it was about a war. But then on the way to the New Arrivals shelf he was like, "BOY, I came in with all this good information, I thought surely you'd be able to find it!" I almost thought he was kidding. Truthfully. Do you go into a bookstore assuming that every bookstore worker has heard of every new book and can identify it by describing the book's content? I may be biased, but I think "good information" equals the TITLE.

11/23/02

My morning opened with a woman coming up to me and uttering this sentence: "The Gainesville Sun and the USA Today, are they . . . ?" Then she just stopped. I have noticed lately that people have this annoying habit of expecting me to finish their sentences even when they're not being clear about what they want. Some people just keep talking, thinking I'll interrupt them when they say something helpful, but I tend to be the polite sort who actually lets people finish what they're saying. So when this lady just said "are they . . . ?" and looked pointedly at me, I finished, "Are they WHAT?" She gave me a bewildered look and asked, "Are they in the STORE, do you carry them?" I told her we did indeed and where, and that was the end of that. But "are they . . . ?" could have meant anything, I didn't understand why she couldn't just finish her sentence.

Today a kid came up to the register and asked me some questions about Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, and then as he was going away he asked me what time it was. I didn't know because I wasn't wearing a watch, and I told him I didn't know what time it was. He got this very descriptive look on his face like, "OhMyGodYou'reIncompetent," and said, "You don't KNOW?" He pointed to my register. "Doesn't your COMPUTER tell you?" I informed him that no, in fact it did not have a time display. For some reason, even though the time will print on the receipt, there is no clock on that computer. For some reason it really bothered me that he thought I was too oblivious to look at the screen.

Also some jerky little kid was complaining about our trading card prices, claiming that $3.99 was too much for Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. (That's the retail price, not some money-making scheme we made up.) He said he could get them right down the street for two bucks or something, then immediately said, "I'll take two." Then he said snidely, "YOU guys gotta LOWER your prices." No, maybe you just need to find a hobby that doesn't require you to shell out your precious allowance every week. And as if complaining to me would help anything anyway.

I had a guy get confused about his total today too. He bought one item that was $14.99 and some other item too, no discount card. When I gave him the total on his purchases, he seemed a little perplexed, and said, "Oh, so was the $14.99 just the price it would have been if I had a discount card?" I guess he was unable to understand that both the addition of tax and the addition of another item tend to make a purchase total more than the bald price of one item you bought. Anyway I was annoyed because then he said, "Well, anyway, YOU need to take all the stuff off of it because it's for a birthday party." I imagined he wanted me to take price tags off for him, but I didn't much appreciate being TOLD that way that I "needed" to do something for him, so I just repeated to him, "I need to take the 'stuff' off?" and looked at him blankly. He didn't reply, but did it himself. It seems that a lot of the time people have no idea how rude they've just sounded.

In other news, our back room guy had to physically pick up one of the disruptive Yu-Gi-Oh! kids today and put him outside. He was mouthing off and cussing and refusing to be nice, refusing to leave unless his friends did, so his friends were also asked to leave . . . so of course the friends went out there and screamed at him, and they all came back in with the bad kid apologizing and promising to behave. Hehe.

11/22/02

I didn't work today, but I got this fantastic story from my coworkers.

Some kid was trying to steal the hell out of the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards today. They told me he actually got away with a lot of stuff and just kept coming back to try to steal more! They were onto him with a vengeance, and he put TWO BOXES of trading cards in a plastic bag and tried to make it out the door, but when he saw people following him he just dropped the bag on the floor and kept going, as if that freed him from being accused of stealing. They caught up with him and our magazine guy started interrogating him (because our manager was too much of a wimp to do it), and asked him if he was trying to steal, and he wouldn't admit to it. The magazine guy threatened to search him, which is illegal for us to do, but the receiving guy called him off and the kid left, just leaving the bag he'd been carrying on the floor. But then later on he was BACK, and our receiving guy just went out there and decided to take matters into his own hands. He came up behind the kid, said, "HEY!" and when the kid turned around, out came the Polaroid camera, and flash. Our back room guy took the kid's picture. "What'd you do that for?" he asked. Our hero replied, "You're my favorite customer. I want a record of you." Of course, both knew why he'd done it. It should be a good deterrent. (It's now hanging above the receiving desk, having been captioned "My favorite customer! Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan #1!")

11/20/02

Today I had a funny customer who came up and told me she didn't know the book's name or author but thought she knew some of the words that might be in the title. Thing was, she opened by telling me it was a "weird question" and wrapped it up by explaining that she knew it was goofy to come in with such little information. I told her, "You wouldn't BELIEVE the sorts of things people ask me thinking that's enough to find it." And I started telling her about how customers can know exactly what a book looks like, and describe it to me in great detail, but not have the faintest clue even what the subject is, much less useful information like title or author. She thought that was hilarious, and told me how appalling it was that we didn't group the store by color (kidding of course). After we couldn't find a book that fit her description (even after looking in a related section), she said she was going to go look in the blue section. Hehehe.

A lady was trying her damnedest to get one of my coworkers to help her find "a tractor book." Apparently she had a thirteen-year-old son who was too old for the silly baby tractor books we had, but they both couldn't afford and didn't want a big adult hardcover book that showcased different tractors. The problem was, not only did this lady want something in between, but she was adamant that it existed, because she had found two other books that were on other vehicles (one on airplanes and one on rescue vehicles), so there must be one also written on tractors. Her reasoning was that since that company made those two AND there was a sticker book of tractors put out by that company, the "Big Book of Tractors" MUST exist, and we needed to find it for her. (I started helping my coworker because I'm the Kids' expert and the other two books were in my section.) We tried looking up the author who wrote those two, and what we assume the title would have been, but we came up with zilch. Never before have I seen a customer so adamant about a book existing when she had just made a GUESS that it might based on other weird factors!

11/19/02

A lady came up to Customer Service and asked me to show her where we had "new age and cult." I imagined she meant "occult," or perhaps that she had said "occult" and it sounded like "cult" to me. I asked if there was something in particular she was looking for, and she said she'd better not say. When I got her to the section and pointed out the occult section, she told me in this sort of half-proud/half-embarrassed voice, "I do spells," and told me she was really good at it. She seemed to think I'd be shocked, until I held up my pentacle necklace and said, "Surprise." Then of course she started telling me all about what she was looking for.

Turns out she wants a book that will help her curse people. She was pretty pissed off. She said she just wished these people's heads would fall off, because they were stealing her money or something--I wasn't incredibly clear about what the whole story was, because in between telling me what she wanted, she informed me that she cursed a policeman who later got his head run over, and that she uses black candles to curse people and that she sometimes reads minds. Let's just say I wasn't impressed by the way she "revealed" these supposed secrets of hers to a stranger, and the whole thing about cursing people just kind of put me off. I gently suggested perhaps she should try a binding instead of trying to CURSE them, and she began very aggressively trying to get me to tell her step by step what she should do to put these people in the cooler. I gave her some suggestions but told her I'd need to consult a certain book (one we didn't carry) to tell her what herb to use in this one part, and she said she'd call me at work soon once I'd looked it up for her at home. (Hmmm.) Then I excused myself because it was time for my lunch break, and she tried to get me to let her buy me lunch, but I already had a lunch and didn't really want to get locked into talking to her about this because I really don't agree with her approaches. But anyway, yay for my encounter with a bad witch.

11/18/02

Our manager saw the Batman emblem today. (See yesterday's entry for how this started.) He freaked out, erased it, and replaced it with a Superman emblem, ranting about the jerk who did it. I agreed with him wholeheartedly, saying, "YEAH, what bastard would do something like that?" And then I high-fived the other manager once his back was turned. Hehehe. We spent about forty-five minutes watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force in the back room today, before our store manager got there. :)

Some evil lady asked me for "preschool books" but she wanted them to be very cheap and on certain subjects. I asked her for examples and was able to narrow down some baby books about counting and shapes for her. When I handed her the first one, she looked at it, deemed it appropriate, and then looked at the price tag. "NONONO!" she said, "I need it less than this, less less less!" And then she threw the book, like it was burning her hand, onto the top of the row of books, and started moving on. She started talking about how she wanted cheap stuff again, but her ridiculously childish actions there made me feel she did not deserve my assistance in picking anything out, so I grabbed the book she'd thrown, made a point of placing it back where it went, and just walked away without saying anything else to her. She didn't approach me again, but later she figured out that she needed to be looking on the sale tables if she wanted books THAT cheap.

11/17/02

Our manager has an obsession with Superman, and is always arguing with one of our other employees who thinks Batman is better. So today when I came in I noticed that there was a Superman emblem drawn on the dry-erase board in the office, and I thought it'd be amusing if we erased it and put a Batman one there instead. With the aid of another manager who was somehow able to draw the Batman symbol quite well when I couldn't remember what it looked like, we set off to piss him off. Yaaay.

Fern Michaels has some oblivious fans! Now this is the SECOND time this EXACT thing has happened with a customer asking about this author! (The last time was just yesterday!) This one lady was mystified by us not having any Fern Michaels in the romance section, but this lady didn't even notice that Romance ended at H; she just seemed to think that you find books by walking up and down the aisle and waiting to just spot them. I find that systems, like, oh, ALPHABETICAL BY AUTHOR'S LAST NAME, tend to work better. So I pointed out how the alphabet actually continues to the other side of the shelf, also labeled Romance, and found Fern Michaels for her. But this went even farther. She wanted a book that we didn't have there, and seemed resigned to getting the hardback after she couldn't find paperback, but asked if I could try to find the paperback. I took her up front to the Fiction section and helped her search, and on the way she said, "I would THINK it should be out in paperback by now. It came out in hardcover back in October!" I kinda stopped in my mental tracks there, and said, "October of THIS year?" She told me that was the case, and reiterated that since it was LAST MONTH that they'd put out the hardcover, it seemed that SURELY the paperback would be out BY NOW. I couldn't help sounding a little surprised when I informed her that books take around a YEAR to come out in paperback unless it's some special deal. Well, she said her husband had seen it in paperback already and just hadn't bought it because it was too much money, so I looked on my computer to see for sure; I mean hell, I could be wrong. But no, it's just out in hardcover and audio formats.

Interestingly enough, one of my managers with whom I swap some of these stories had his own similar one today. He said that he helped someone in Fiction who claimed the entire section was totally out of order. Fiction books have never been one of our problem sections, so he asked how it was out of order. First the person just pointed out what was supposed to be an obvious example: "LOOK, see there's a C right in the middle of the D's!" First off, one book out of place is no reason to insist a whole section is trashed, but even that wasn't out of place; my manager looked at it and informed the customer that the supposed C belonged to the title: David Copperfield. Which is by Dickens, who by all rights belongs in the D's. Anyway, this customer also informed my manager that the bookshelves "skipped" a lot, and of course this misconception was based on the assumption that the alphabet starts at the left and just goes clear across the entire row, instead of hitting the end of one shelf and then dropping to the next shelf downward, continuing that way. No wonder it looks like we have no authors whose last names start with E; you're the one skipping, weirdo, not the books.

A lady on the phone wanted to know some information about Christian books that we didn't carry, and she wanted to know if there was a Christian bookstore in Gainesville. "Would they know?" she asked me. I said I didn't know what they would know. Then she asked me what the name of the Christian bookstore in Gainesville is. If we have one I don't know of it, so I also said I didn't know about that either. Now here's the kicker: She explained to me, like she thought she was talking to an incompetent employee, that cities generally have a Christian bookstore and that she'd like to know its name, please. Does that make sense? "Is there a Christian bookstore in town?" "I don't know." "What's its name?" "I don't know." "Well, there is one. Now tell me its name." Telling me you know it exists doesn't make its name appear in my brain any more than telling me you *KNOW* we have a book makes it appear from the magical back room.

There was a really cute kid in the Kids' section today. It was a little girl playing with two unfamiliar boys, and she began to tell outrageous lies to impress them. Among the silly things she said were these lovely statements: "I have fifty-nine HUNDRED brothers." (When one of the kids denied that she did, she continued. . . .) "Yes-huh! Because three of them are twins. And I have ninety-nine sisters." "I play football, and take karate, and play soccer, and tennis, and golf, AND I'm a tomboy!" "I would rather sleep outside with my DOG than inside with my baby brothers. Because they STINK!" Hehehe.

Some ass on the phone thought I didn't know what a globe was. I tend to let people finish their sentences before I reply, but I've found that some people don't like to finish their sentences, and they'll assume that you don't know what the hell they mean unless they keep expounding and clarifying. So I get, "Yes, I'm looking for globes, you know, a big circular model of the Earth, usually it spins, it has detailed maps, it's a globe. . . ." I just let him run out of steam, and he did so confusedly, probably still thinking I didn't know what globes were. Finally he said, "Do you have anything like that?" I told him we don't carry globes and that was it. (I think we have some weird interactive game globes, but nothing that I know of that's a plain old one.)

As mentioned, yesterday we had a One Day Sale. For that we mail out announcements to let everyone know it's happening and what the deal is. So it kinda surprised (and bothered) me when a guy came in this morning, asking about the flyer we'd sent out and asking if he can get that deal today too. I told him that no, the sale was yesterday and that's it, and he was like, "But the postcard SPECIFICALLY SAYS on it that I can take advantage of the savings if I talk to a manager, if the postcard arrived late." I asked when he got it and he said, "Yesterday." Umm, if you got it the day of the sale, that's not "late." That's still enough time to use it. So he insisted that he should be able to get the savings and went out to get it to SHOW me that it says he can get the savings if he talks to a manager, and indeed he did come in and show me the small print. It specifically said "if the postcard arrives after the date of the sale." I pointed that out to him and said I could let him talk to the manager but that if he was trying to invoke a technicality loophole on the card, that same statement denied his right to a discount. I told him it was up to the manager but for some reason he felt he had to prove it to ME too, and kept repeating the part about "taking advantage of the savings." While we were waiting for the manager and he was still talking to me, saying that part over and over, I reminded him that it DID say if it arrives after the date of the sale, and that since today was Sunday and he had it, there was no possible way he received that card after the date of the sale. But for whatever reason, my manager let him have the discount; I'm glad I wasn't the cashier at that point because he probably would have continued to talk about it and probably would have tried to rub it in my face that he WAS entitled to the discount, but I told him from the start it was a manager's decision. If it had been up to me, I wouldn't have let him have it, though, just by virtue of his attitude. (Incidentally, I talked to the cashier who had to ring him up, and she said he mentioned to her that he got it yesterday but just didn't want to come out in the rain. Yeah. The rain sure didn't stop the other hundreds of customers.)

11/16/02

Oh yay! One Day Sale FUN! Thinking you're getting a bargain really brings out the BEST in people. Well, if the best is dickhead behavior that gets you on this website. Read on.

"Do you have this book?" "Let me check." A few clicks later: "Sorry, but we'd have to order that book from our warehouse. We don't carry it in the store." [Blank look, and a pause, and then. . . .] "Are you SURE?" I made a point of looking at her a moment, then looking back at the screen, and saying, "Yeah, I'm sure. That's what it says here." Maybe she thought if I looked at it again the computer would change its mind, or I'd say, "Naw, I'm just kidding, HERE it is!" and pull it out from where I was hiding it between my asscheeks. Yummy.

Since it was the One Day Sale, there was more business than usual, earlier than usual, and of course the managing experts decided to schedule only two people until noon. (Nonono guys, when people think they're getting a bargain, they come out EARLIER, so they can get better deals than the later people on assloads of crap we sell.) So, as you might imagine I was running around helping people a lot, and believe it or not I was actually in a pretty good mood. But when I returned to the desk from helping someone, a crowd of three people, all in the same family, were crowded around our desk telephone, and the woman had the receiver in her hand, puzzling over it. When I came up with a confused expression as to why they were attempting to use my telephone, the man pointed and said, "OH, there's someone!" The lady laughed and explained to me that she was TRYING to use the phone to "get one of you guys," but she just couldn't figure out how it was used to page us or make a "get your butt over here" signal. Ummmmmmmmm . . . no, it's a phone. And it's not for you! MINEMINEMINE!! Haha. (By the way, this bothered me also because they'd come to an empty desk and could not have been waiting more than thirty seconds--I'd JUST been there--and were already trying to take drastic measures to summon someone. Argh! WAIT! We're busy, you can seeeee!)

Okay, a new breed of jackass. I helped a man, and took him to the section where the book he wanted was supposed to be. But I didn't see it, so I said I'd call the other store for him if he wanted, and he wanted. I asked if he was going to come up to the desk or if he wanted me to find him there in the section, and he said he'd just come up to the desk when he was done browsing. So, I called the other store, found out promptly they were out of it too, and still there was no sign of my customer. So I went back to American History to tell him the news . . . and he was gone from THERE too. So I thought, uh-oh, maybe I missed him and he's at the desk now waiting. So I went back up . . . and nope, no guy. So then someone else needed help, and as I was helping her I saw the guy stroll by in some totally different section. He caught sight of me, signaled me, and hollered, "Did they have it?" I told him they didn't, and asked him where he'd been hiding because I couldn't find him to tell him. He replied, "Oh, I was just wandering around the store." Jeez, and you think that's okay? Watch out folks, English has been changed and "I'll meet you at the desk" now means "I'll just wander around the store until I happen to run into you." Why did this bother me so much? Because I was specifically taking time--while I was really busy--to go out of my way to help him out, and then he couldn't even be there to get my answer, as if he didn't really care one way or another but he might as well "have me do it" if I'd suggested it. Blarghles! I hate feeling disrespected, even if I am a lowly bookstore clerk.

Today I had another one of those geniuses who likes to get uppity about discounts they think they deserve when they haven't bothered to read the sign that gives them the idea. A lady at the register was insisting that some little books that were already $1.97 should be 30% off because she saw a sign. I had her show me the sign, and it said "Up to 30% off: {thrillers}," and though it was quite near the sale books she mentioned, it was applying to the thriller display right below it, with the books the discount applied to bearing 30% off stickers. She admitted to me that she didn't really read the sign, just saw the big 30% and assumed it applied to the sale books; apparently at the time someone had actually put this sign right on top of the little sale books she wanted. She was nice about it, though, after I told her the situation.

I had a lady asking for Fern Michaels romance books, but when she asked me about it she said she'd already looked and found none. She showed me where she'd been looking and pointed out, with a "see, I'm right!" expression, that the romance books suddenly stopped at the H's. At this point she looked at me pointedly, as if I am supposed to be as mystified and surprised as she is that half of the alphabet is not in the Romance section. To her surprise, I did something her brain couldn't quite grasp: I went around to the other side of the bookshelf, also labeled "Romance" on the sign, and showed her how the alphabet actually . . . gasp . . . CONTINUED! Would you believe we found about a shelf and a half of Fern Michaels, and that there were some other romance authors starting with M all around her? Wow.

11/15/02

Yes, this is my day off, so the two following stories came from fellow employees who know I love to hear this crap.

Apparently some woman came in and harassed one of the cashiers, demanding that we do something about the fact that her magazine subscription hadn't come yet. Now, how do we have anything at all to do with the subscriptions of some random magazine we happen to sell? Grr.

The other one was just a guy who came up to the checkout and said, "Y'all don't sell cigarettes here?" Hah.

11/13/02

Here's something I hate: When a customer asks an unspecific question when they want something very specific. Example: A woman at Customer Service today. "Where's your Hobbies section?" But she wanted books on how to learn photography. Photography isn't anywhere near Hobbies in our store, so it probably would have been beneficial for her if she had just asked, "Where can I find books on photography?" Instead, she found it necessary to assume she knew how it would be organized, then got to the section, stared blankly at the shelves for around ten minutes, and then returned perplexed, saying she'd picked through that ENTIRE section and she just could not believe we did not have even ONE book on photography! ::sigh::

Today a guy came in to pick up a book he'd put on hold, and when I asked him for his last name, he gave the last name of the author. Of course, I didn't know the difference, and it caused some confusion that could have easily been averted if, say, the guy had LISTENED to me asking, "What's YOUR last name?"

Here's an interesting customer. First off the lady wanted Cliff's Notes on a really obscure book. They don't make them for that. Then I found out it was for a short story besides that. Argh. She began telling me that the "other notes" are better than Cliff's, and she kept saying "I don't know what they're called, but they're the red and black ones." I told her a few times they were Max Notes, but she didn't seem to hear me and just kept assuming I didn't know what she meant. Then finally she got off that track and asked me for donations. Huh? She said that she needed door prizes for some club she's in and would we give her some donations. I was like, "Like what?" She said, "BOOKS!" Ummm . . . well, besides the fact that I've never heard of walking into a bookstore, saying, "Hi, I'm in a club and we need prizes for free, gimme some," and actually getting stuff . . . her club wasn't even book-related. She seemed actually VERY SURPRISED that there was nothing I could give her. It's kind of like those yokels who come into the bookstore with stapled sheets of paper between laminated covers, saying they have a "published book" and how do they get us to sell it now? I feel bad for them because they really do think they got published just because they paid someone to make sleek copies of their "book," but at the same time they should have done their homework. This lady probably should have done hers. (I ended up giving her the number for our corporate headquarters. I hope they didn't laugh at her.)

It was busy at Customer Service so the customer service person called for additional assistance. I wasn't in the middle of something so I came up, and announced that I would help the next person. Well, the next person stepped forward, approached my counter . . . and then, quite amazingly, just stared at me. I looked back for a moment, then kinda looked away, wiggled my computer's mouse, indicated my willingness to help. Still she just stood there LOOKING at me with a paper in her hand. Finally I asked her if she knew what she needed, and she was like, "Oh, are you here to help me?" Hence the whole calling to Customer Service, me appearing and announcing my willingness to help, me standing there at a computer obviously doing nothing at all and looking at you. Yup, I'm too busy to help you.

Another fun thing: Customers blaming me for books not existing. See, apparently someone is planning on releasing a book about a queen of an African country somewhere, and this customer was disturbed that it still wasn't out. So he started demanding other books on that queen, and started grumbling about how RIDICULOUS it is that no one has written anything and how she's FAMOUS and there SHOULD be books on her, and he just kept saying the same thing over and over like there was anything anyone could do about it.

I had yet another one of those people who does everything possible to keep from being a satisfied customer. I mean, he just kept doing and saying things to make things as difficult as possible. I think this probably would have been a lot easier if the guy had SHUT UP AND LISTENED TO ME instead of interjecting pessimistic expectations of our ability to serve him. Observe.

First, he called and reached me at Customer Service, and announced that he needed to talk to the person who could help him find a book. I told him I was that person, and asked which book he wanted. He replied, "Well, I need the PERSON who can help me FIND a BOOK," as if I hadn't said anything about helping him yet. I repeated the exact same words, and he goes, "Oh, YOU can do it?" So I have to tell him a third time that yes, I can look up a book. This shouldn't be the difficult part. Anyway.

He had no title or author, just a kind of vague subject idea. The problem was, he wouldn't tell me WHAT SUBJECT. He just kept asking if I could look by subjects. I told him I couldn't really, but if he would just tell me what he needed I would go from there. Finally, after about three MORE frustrating exchanges, we discovered that he wanted books on low-calorie sauces.

First you have to understand that there are probably very few (if any) books entirely and exclusively containing recipes for low-calorie sauces. I told him that and explained that I would do my best to find out if there were any books on that, but that I couldn't promise anything. His response: "You can't do that?" I explained again that I was going to do what I could, just trying to get it across to him that I was trying, but his response was, "Okay, so what's my next step?" At this point I wanted to tear my hair out (or his), because he just kept trying to prompt me or something when if he had just told me what he wanted and left it to me to find it we'd be done by now, one way or the other. But anyway, I told him the only books that were coming up were unavailable books and that I would just go to the light cooking section in my store to see what was there.

Well, there wasn't really anything, so I came back and told him it seemed the only information on that subject would be in the way of chapters IN low-cal books or whatever. He explained to me that I could check under "light," "lite," and "low-calorie." I sighed, because we were way past the point where any of that would have helped. The point is, sauces are not popular subject matter for entire books. I reiterated that, and he asked me if every other bookstore would tell him the same thing. ARRRRRGH. Anyway he said he'd come in and look at what we had. The end.

11/11/02

Today being Veteran's Day, it was inevitable that folks would be calling all day uttering the same sentence: "Are you open today?" That we expected. However, what we did NOT expect is that no fewer than SIX PEOPLE called asking that question in the forty-five minutes before the store opened, then continued trying to ask us to find books for them. Now, normally we don't start getting calls until well after the store opens (at nine), and occasionally we'll get one or maybe two calls where the people don't know we're not open yet. (Answering the phone with a "security" message instead of the usual greeting does not deter them from saying, "Yes, I was wondering if you had the new John Grisham book. . . .") What freaked me out is that on this day when we're less likely than usual to be open, SO MANY PEOPLE called before our operating hours started and plowed ahead asking about books. Strangely enough, when our manager told them to call back after nine, only maybe one of them did. Okay.

An older lady clutching an audio book catalog wanted some help today. First off she started her interaction with me by claiming she couldn't figure out how to find anything in our Audio section, which always means "you must have no rhyme or reason to the organization of this section" and never means "I'm too lazy to figure it out." (Several of our sections are in BAD shape, but Audio Books has never been one of them, and it always shocks me how few people can comprehend the concept of "alphabetical by author's last name.") Anyway, I thought all right, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and maybe her eyes are bad or something, and just try to help her. We decided to look the books up on the computer, and she kept rattling off titles. We must have gone through ten or fifteen, until finally three or four of them were things we didn't have to order and might be in the section. I wrote them down and we went to the section, and again she claimed that she had been in the section for fifteen minutes (imagine that said very pointedly) and hadn't seen any of these. Errr. Well, I found ALL of them on the list. The first one was an unabridged fiction book on ten cassettes and it cost like thirty bucks. When the lady saw that she looked confused, held up her catalog, and said, "It didn't cost that in HERE!" I explained to her that an audio book catalog through some random club does not sell at retail prices. She told me about how ordering through this company was not secure (whatever the hell that means) and that was why she was shopping at our store to get the books in their catalog, but it bothered her that we charged more for the books. ::sigh::

My friend Mike came to visit me at my store today, and I got off work before he was done shopping, so this interesting story comes from him. Apparently the lady in front of him at the checkout counter was a total ass. She took a long time at the register because there was some sort of problem that required getting the manager, and she kept badgering the cashier that there ought to be a chair to sit in at the register. Mike said she must have said so three times. "There should be a CHAIR to sit in while you wait, the books you're carrying are so heavy, you should have a place for us to sit down!" Ummm. First off, there's a reason that NO CHECKOUT IN THE WORLD DOES THAT: Namely, a CHAIR would kind of be in the WAY of a damn line, not to mention if you have a physical condition that prevents you from standing in a line for a few minutes we do have a store wheelchair for your convenience and shopping carts if your poor arms can't handle the bounty you must take home. I somehow doubt that putting chairs for customers at checkout is a good idea, especially since the whole point is to get you in and out once you've made your choices, not to make you comfortable. God, how ridiculous.

11/10/02

This guy at the register wasn't all-out rude, but he was kind of a jackass and kind of gruff. (For instance, even though he didn't have the discount card he at one point said, "Well, gimme a discount!"--after his credit card had gone through and he then remembered his wife MIGHT have one.) Anyway, this would not have really been noteworthy if his two-and-a-half-year-old son hadn't chosen that moment to grab a display pencil and begin gnawing on its butterfly-shaped eraser.

Dad snatched the pencil from his kid and gave him a disapproving look. "Now you know better than that!" he said, and I thought, wow, he's actually stopping his child from destroying merchandise, that's something new. But the next words out of his mouth floored me. "Don't you know that's for GIRLS? Butterflies are GIRL things!" Oh my gawd. I imagine he wouldn't have had a problem if the kid had been gnawing on the one with the big baseball eraser. What the HELL?

11/6/02

I got an exceedingly weird phone call today. A lady told me she was doing a presentation on Chopin and wanted to know if we had any large pictures or posters of him lying around. I thought surely she meant maybe in a book, so I told her perhaps there'd be an illustration in some book of composers, but she stressed that she just wanted to buy a photograph or a poster, not a book. I informed her that we carry books, not posters and photographs, and she thanked me and hung up. Well, I hope she finds what she wants, but since she was pronouncing his name "sho-pin" and expected to find a plethora of photos--in a bookstore, no less--of some guy born in 1810, she kind of has more to worry about than her presentation.

I also had a lady ask me about collectible books today, so I took her to the section. She immediately grabbed a book, opened it to a page in the middle, stuck her face in it, and breathed really deep. When I looked surprised she explained that she loves the smell of these things. Uh-huh.

And here's an annoying one. I had a lady who seemed a bit out of it, and she asked me if we carried a certain book that was new. I looked it up, determined that we were supposed to carry it, and took her to the section. She followed me, and informed me she'd already looked there and hadn't found it. So I told her that since it was new it was likely to be with the new books in the front. But when I went that way she didn't follow me, so I stopped and came back and told her where I was going. She didn't seem to want to make any move to follow me, so intent was she on staring at where she wanted the book to appear, so I just went to the front, determined that it wasn't there either, and returned. She'd gone away. I looped around the area looking for her and she had disappeared, so I was like, all right, fine, be that way. I went back to the desk and helped someone else, and suddenly she appeared. She came up to the desk and informed me in a bewildered tone that I'd "run off" and she couldn't find me, and I told her I'd just gone up to the new book section, like I'd said I would, and hadn't found it there either. So, being that I'm the incompetent retail worker and she's the genius consumer, she suggested a very bright idea: "Well, why don't you check your computer?"

Grrrr.

11/5/02

No customer annoyance today! Just a little lighthearted weirdness.

A package I received had included little freshener packets (I guess) that were clearly labeled "Do Not Eat." I went around showing them to my coworkers, claiming that the company had sent me this cool new snack called Do Not Eat. Yum.

11/3/02

A man came up at the register, about 9:03 (we open at nine) and said to me with a confused and worried look on his face, "You've already sold out of the New York Times?" That confused me, since I'd been there all of three minutes and no one had bought ANYTHING yet, so I told him if none were there they probably just hadn't been put out yet.

"OH," said the guy, "well last week the same thing happened and I didn't think to ask a question about it. I just figured you were out. Now how can I tell the difference between when you're out and when they aren't out yet?"

I told him that it was a pretty safe bet to believe we haven't got them on the shelf yet if we haven't even been open for five minutes. Contrary to his apparent beliefs, people do not line up outside waiting to be let in to buy the New York Times. Unless it's September 12, 2001.

I was on the telephone at the register, which is unusual. I had had a personal call transfered to me during a non-busy time. As I was talking, a man wandered up and looked pointedly at me. He was not carrying any books so I didn't know why he was at the register, but I excused myself from my phone conversation and gave the guy my attention. I asked him if he had a question for me. "Yeah . . ." was his reply, in this really snotty tone, and when he began to ask about a book I was only too happy to send him to Customer Service. The reason I put him on here was that he just looked so confused that I would be confused at his asking a question at the register.

Now I have a jerkoff who's going on my top twenty worst customers list. First offense: Coming in with a paperback book and saying he has no receipt but he wants to return it. And it is in a B. Dalton's bag. Turns out, though, that it was not an entirely unreasonable request; the book was misprinted, repeating a section toward the end instead of printing all the pages it was supposed to. The man seemed really befuddled by this and I could tell he thought he was the only person this had ever happened to, but I told him I see it all the time and that since there was no receipt I would check with the manager to see if we would be allowed to replace it. He told me he wanted to look around and shop while I waited for the permission, so off he went.

I got a manager's permission to exchange for the same book, since we can do that and send back damaged books for a full refund to our store. But when B. Dalton's man came back, he had acquired two books that were not replacements for the damaged one.

I told him that we could only replace it with the same book, and the man threw a hissy for some reason. "Is THAT what he said?" Jeez, no actually he said that he was the one that personally fucked up your book and as a result you're free to eat in our café for free for a year, and have all the free books you want. What do you think he said? "In that case," he said snootily, "I will take my business elsewhere." He said this as he pulled out his discount card and credit card and paid for the new books he was buying.

This situation had me confused as to whether I should laugh or punch the guy's smug face. First off, you can't say you're taking your business elsewhere when returning a book is not business anyone particularly wants. We were going to do him a favor by replacing a damaged copy of a book he might not have (and probably hadn't) gotten at our store. Secondly, what the hell did he want? He DIDN'T want the fucked up book replaced? What was he hoping for? And lastly, you can't threaten someone that you're going to take your business elsewhere when YOU ALREADY DID, as evidenced by the damn B. Dalton's bag you came in holding.

I must say that when the man accidentally left his discount card on the counter and walked out, I felt no urge to chase him down and remind him that he'd lost his card. Cool, now I gots an extra one.

Here's another one. A lady wanted me to look up a book for her, which cannot be done at the register. When she asked, "Can you look up a book for me?" and I said no, she interrupted my explanation with "Don't y'all do that here?" Sorry, no, we have no way of finding books, you just have to wander 'til you find it. Or you could go to the desk labeled Customer Service instead of the one labeled Checkout, just a suggestion.

A guy wrote "thirtyteen" instead of "thirteen" on his check today. Hehe, thirtyteen.

Also a wild bird got stuck in our store and was flying around. As many as three employees at a time were attempting to catch the bird (though I did not participate). Two of them were attempting to do so by holding up large cardboard boxes, hoping to trap the bird inside. I came back from lunch and was walking through the store, and above the shelves I just saw two pairs of arms holding up boxes, marching around the store. It struck me as so funny that I just started laughing really hard. My manager got all sullen about me thinking it was so funny. Also apparently a kid was dispensing useless advice on how to catch the bird ("Throw the box at it!"), and then later was walking around holding two fingers out calling "HERE birdie birdie!" like the bird was gonna come down and sit on his fingers. Can you say "It's not a parakeet"?

11/2/02

I don't even know what to say about this one. But I'll try, for you, the people.

A woman called with no specific title, saying she wanted the kids' book on art concoctions. Being the Kids' department head, I happened to know at least three books that actually had the phrase "art concoctions" in their titles. I told her I would get them and tell her what they were, and did so.

Well, being that she didn't know the title, she didn't know which of the books it was, or if it was indeed the one she saw on television since none of them were red and white as matching her description. She repeated again that it was "the one on TV," though this would probably help me only if I had seen the same program, and then she said, "Well go ahead and open them up, look through them and tell me which one would be appropriate for a nine-year-old." At this point I inform her that that is a judgment call, and that besides that all of the books I had were about the same level. So she rephrased her question, telling me again to glance through the books' content. I told her I already had.

Then the horrible part began. She told me that she once worked at one of our stores and seemed to recall that we had a policy allowing customers to check books out like a library. Hmm, nice try. I told her we didn't, and she said that she was sure we used to. I told her that policy was and is only for employees, but she told me she was sure we used to allow customers to check books out, use them, and bring them back. Well, sure, people do that all the time when they intended to just buy the book and copy the page they need and "return" it pretending they changed their minds, but there is no book check-out policy for customers. Finally she got the message, asked what time we closed, and hung up. ::sigh::

A lady came in and said that Stephen King wrote a book about a rising storm or something, saying that she'd recognize the title if she heard it. I didn't know offhand what the title was so I typed in her suggestion. The closest thing I got was a book called Red Storm Rising, which I mentioned to the lady, but before I could inform her that that was in fact by Tom Clancy, she jumped and said "THAT'S IT!" When I told her it wasn't a King book, she changed her mind. So much for title recognition. Tee-hee!

I found out that the green cake I brought in for a Halloween treat managed to upset and disturb our magazine specialist. He feared its greenness mightily. (Even though the note inviting everyone to eat it specifically said "green cake," he thought it wasn't supposed to be that way and was afraid to eat it, so he waited for others to eat it and continue to live before he took a bite. All I can say is it damn well better be green after I put a teaspoon full of green food coloring in it.)

A woman asked me if there was a new Harry Potter book yet. I told her there wasn't, and then because I couldn't help myself, I added, "That's funny." She asked what was funny, and I said it was amusing because there was not even a release date scheduled for the next book yet. She bent toward me as if she needed to explain something very basic to me, and then said, "Well, it's overdue." Nodding to herself, she began to remove herself from my presence. Oh my. Like I didn't notice that the entire time I've worked at the store (two and a half years and then some), there has been no new HP book.

A confused customer created some glee on my part today. She was interested in A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is cool. But she was disturbed that she couldn't find any paperbacks. This is one of those series that DOES actually get printed in paperback, but currently isn't available through retail stores, only through the catalog of the company, usually distributed exclusively through schools. I explained that to the lady, and she disappointedly said, "Oh, so you can only get them in paperback here if you buy the whole boxed set, huh?" This, of course, confused me since I have no boxed set (or otherwise) of this series in paperback. I told her that the boxed sets were also hardback, and showed her. She told me that she didn't mean those ones; she saw the paperback boxed set up front. I was a bit amused by that news and asked her to show me. But apparently she'd mistaken them for the Narnia books. It always blows me away how SURE people are when they're totally wrong. But this lady also wasn't that annoying; she just made a silly mistake.

Today a lady wanting Maeve Binchy books insisted that we only had two of her titles. When I looked up the ones she wanted, it showed we carried them all except one, so I took her back there again to double-check. She reiterated that only two were there, kind of being nice about it but insinuating that this was going to be a waste of time since she'd already seen all there was to see. Turned out she just saw the two titles that were sitting on the top shelf; on the section right before it, the bottom shelf was full of Binchy books. I didn't think this lady was a jackass for making that mistake, but it makes me wonder why, if it was so surprising to her that we only had two titles, she didn't naturally think to look there, since as far as I know bookshelves tend to continue the alphabet at the top of the next shelf once it runs out of room on the bottom.