9/30/02
A woman wanted a book for a pharmacy test. She didn't know any book titles, so I asked her if she could tell me the name of the test itself, since any book on a pharmacy test would doubtless include the name of the test. Her response? "Yeah, okay." Wait. "What's the name of the test?" "Yeah, okay." I repeated my question and she still had no idea what I was talking about. So I took her to the medical reference section and showed her the one book we had that said anything on pharmacy; the other test guides were for a nursing test, the NCLEX. But then she asked me, "Well what's the difference between the two tests?" Excuse me? Now I know the material on medical tests? Jeezus. I really hope she wasn't shopping for the book for herself, because I don't want her mixing my medicine.
A lady came in wanting a book, and she preceded her information with, "I looked it up on y'all's website and it said you had it. So I hope you still do." Before I even looked it up, I explained to her that A) The website is for the stock of the warehouse, not the store, so they tend to have pretty much everything you can find on there, and B) It does not make sense to expect the website for the entire chain to be able to tell you the stock in one of its stores--especially since these people KNOW they didn't put in a zip code or anything telling the website which store they wanted to shop at and it sure didn't auto-detect it. It always amazes me that people think the website will just know where they're shopping.
And here's some funny coworker antics:
One of my coworkers noticed me having trouble with a roller cart full of children's books. I'd had some issues getting it out of the back room because it was like one of those badly aligned grocery carts: It had its own ideas of where it wanted to go. I think one of the wheels was stuck or something. Anyway, I thought it'd be funny if he saw he was going to have the same problems I was, so I let him help me. I explained the problem to him as he got behind the cart, and he started pushing. He got it around the corner without issue, and said in this sort of almost-condescending voice, "It steers perfectly." As if I was just imagining the whole thing, or didn't know how to do something like steer a cart (after two years of doing so? Hardly!). So you can imagine I found it very funny when the cart immediately started drifting and then he rammed it into another cart of books. He kind of had to admit it had a problem then. I rest my case.
9/28/02
A woman wanted books on slow cookers and crockpots. I took her to the appliances section in cooking, and she began to browse, quickly centering on Pressure Cookers for Dummies or something. A guy that was with her joined her at that point, and she pointed out the book she was holding, but said, "It should be called 'Pressure Cookers for Men.'" All right, male-bashing!
9/26/02
A nice father had a funny conversation with his daughter in my hearing range. When they came in, I heard his daughter say, "Oooh, look Daddy, I want this!" several times before they made it deep enough in the store to be out of my earshot (from the register), but then when they came up and checked out, she was still doing it: "Daddy! Look, I want this!" On the way out, he kiddingly grabbed her and said, "You want EVERYTHING! 'Oh, look, a buffalo! I want that!'" Hehehehe.
9/23/02
I was on the early shift this morning (6 AM to 2 PM) to do special projects, so generally even when the store opens I don't put on my apron because I'm not supposed to be acting as one of the regular staff. Regardless, I still get stopped by customers often enough, and I try to help them when I can. So I was finishing up my shift, about to box up what I had and walk out the door, when I hear some lady wandering around the store yelling, "HELLO???? HELLO????" I'm thinking, either she really can't hear the person on her cell phone, or she needs help. So when she came by me, she asked me, "DO YOU WORK HERE??" and I said, "Sometimes." (That's become my stock answer, since quite a bit of my time I don't work there.) She asked how you get someone to help you at Customer Service, and I told her you just ask anyone in the store, and that I would be glad to help her. So she just wanted to pick up a book on hold for her. She told me her last name and I pulled out a book that matched, but she told me that wasn't the right one. Turned out there were two unrelated people with her last name, but she got really snotty with me about how I'd tried to give her the wrong book! She was like, "Every time I come in here to pick something up y'all try to give me that other one!" as if it's some kind of ploy to make her buy something she doesn't want, or as if we have any control over how many people have the same last name, or any way to figure out which one she is. ::sigh::
9/22/02
Oh my. A girl (maybe late teenage) approached me today and said, "Do you know where the authors are?"
What could that question POSSIBLY mean?
I just said, "Authors . . . ?" and moved my hand in a coaxing manner, to indicate she had asked a question I had no hope of answering without more information.
She explained, in rapid-fire speech, some wild story about how she didn't have all the information she needed to find some book. It was still unclear what she wanted me to do about it. But apparently the gist of her question was whether I could help her figure out which author wrote what book. When I explained that we could go to Customer Service and figure it out, she was like, "Oh, okay, thanks," and took off for the desk. Ohhkay.
A guy tried to pay for his paper at Customer Service today. I was busy helping someone on the phone, and he kept trying to shove the paper and money at me. Being that I was occupied I could not explain to him that Customer Service does not take money. He just seemed to think that he wasn't getting my attention right. Finally when I put the person on hold to go check for the book, I explained it to him, and he just gave me the blankest look and stated, "I thought this was where you paid." Obviously! And obviously you weren't right! Hehe. Weirdly, some other lady pulled the same garbage while I was on the phone another time, just acting like I was ignoring her and acting impatient that I wasn't giving her my attention when I was on the phone. She only wanted something really quick (her books that we were holding), and seemed to think that justified her trying to flag me down with hand-waving and finger-tapping and gesturing at what she wanted while I was obviously busy with someone else. Grrrrr.
Today one of my coworkers had a friend visit him at the bookstore. When I walked by he introduced me to his friend and I shook his hand. Later, my coworker asked if I was "flirting" with the guy. Considering I've pretty much told him the long version of my lack of interest in All Things Relationship, I found this a preposterous question, and treated it as so, asking why in the world he'd think that. He informed me that I'd gotten more "giggly" than usual and that meant I was trying to mack or something. I asked him, "Didn't we already talk about why I wouldn't be doing that?" and he said yes, and so I asked if that's so, then why did he ask that question? His response? "Well, I know you said all that, but it doesn't stop me from trying to set you up with my friends." I quite literally threatened to beat his ass after he said that, at which he seemed a bit shocked, but I was pretty mad. Then again, this is the same guy who keeps trying to offer me some of his food whenever he's eating chicken or something, when I've told him repeatedly that I'm vegetarian. Such is life.
9/21/02
At Customer Service, a guy wanted his book that he'd ordered, claiming it had been three weeks. I asked him if we ever called and he said we never had, and so I asked what name it was ordered under. He spelled it for me: "Y-U." So I checked the Y shelf. Nothing. So I looked him up by his phone number and found . . . some order under the name "Xin Xin." For the same book he wanted. When I gave it to him and explained that it appeared to have been ordered under Xin Xin, he seemed unsurprised and told me that that was indeed the name he'd ordered under. (Er, then where'd "Y-U" come from?) Turned out they'd called him and just gotten no answer, and no one had tried again.
I got a question about whether we had an "African Authors" section. I told the guy that we had an African-American Nonfiction section, but that the stuff that would be considered African-American Fiction was integrated into the regular fiction. He seemed disappointed, and I asked what he was looking for. He skirted the question and asked to see the nonfiction. I took him there and it took him about three seconds to peruse the entire eight bookshelves and declare that we didn't have what he wanted. I asked again what he wanted, and he just WOULD NOT TELL ME. I explained that authors like, say, Omar Tyree would be just under T in the fiction section, and that if he wanted FICTION he needed to go there. He still didn't seem to get me. Oh well.
I had a lady at the register today who said she only wanted to get this Bible if the Bible cover she wanted wasn't too expensive, but she had no idea how much the cover was. She wanted me to magically find out even though there was nothing to scan and no price tag, so I told her that I had as much idea as she did and would be glad to call a manager to price it. But then she was like, "Don't bother, I'll get it at SAM'S, they have better prices" (huh? you don't even know what this one costs yet . . .), but then she said she'd just get the magazine she'd brought up, and here comes the best part. After I rang her up for just the magazine, I asked if she wanted a bag and she said yes. But then when I started to put the magazine in a small bag, she was like, "Oh, a bag for just a magazine? No, I don't need that." But you weren't getting anything else! You knew you'd told me you weren't getting anything else! So why does it surprise you so much that you're just getting a magazine? Weird.
About an hour before I was about to go home, one of the managers decided to put the Gator football game over the intercom so the whole store had to listen to it. I think this is in extremely poor taste, as bookstores aren't exactly sports bars and a lot of people go to the bookstore to get away from such things, but that wasn't my decision, so whatever. It'd only been on a couple minutes before a woman came up and started getting kind of ugly in my face: "Who made the decision to put the Gator game on?" and all this crap. Well, I told her that I didn't know and they'd never done this before and I wasn't exactly in favor of it myself, so she insisted I find out and try to get it turned off. Well, I called in the back and my manager told me, "Well, we're listening to the game today, so tough." I told him I was getting complaints, and he told me tough again, and then told me to tell her it was "a tradition." Considering this has NEVER happened the entire time I've worked there (over 2 years), I'd have to say this is not a tradition, plus I'd already told her I'd never seen it happen before, so I told him that wasn't going to work. He basically gave me an "oh well," so I went back there and explained the situation. His response was just to basically shrug, turn his back a lot, and ignore me. It really bugged me that I had an irate customer and he wouldn't handle it. Finally he walked out of the back room and went back to some task, and the woman, waiting outside, jumped him and started yelling at him about how she came here to get some peace and quiet and why does every place have to be obsessed with the Gator game blah blah blah, and he just offered that it was "tradition," and she told him that if that was the case she was going elsewhere. ::sigh:: Football sure is important.
Another funny thing happened in conjunction with this: The lady, while looking for someone to complain to, happened upon one of the Yu-Gi-Oh kids who looks very old for his age. (He's very tall, and he was wearing a tie. He always wears a tie with his T-shirts for some reason; it's his personal style.) She thought he was the manager! So she asked if he was, and he joked, "Why yes I am," and she started going off to him! So he had to tell her the truth. Hehe. Later he told me the story, when he and his friends asked why I looked so pissed. Incidentally, less than ten minutes later, they saw me again and they were surprised I wasn't "bad mood looking" anymore. I told them I generally don't carry around a bad mood like a cloud, and that I just don't really get the kind of mad that lasts, and one of the kids thought that would suck. I told him that it probably is a side effect of not being entirely human. They thought I was strange.
9/16/02
A man was looking for an automotive service manual of some kind. Since the most popular brand is Chilton, I asked if he wanted a Chilton, and he said hell no, Chilton guides were pieces of crap. He began to tell me about all of Chilton guides' faults, and then made lots of unhelpful suggestions to try to help me find what he wanted (e.g., when I didn't find one for the make and model of his car, he suggested with a knowing look that I should type in "service manual." Sure, that'll bring it right up). Anyway, this was no different than the usual humdrum war at the Customer Service desk, but then when I found a guide by a company called Haynes, he started dissing them too, and gave me a list of their faults, ending by saying that Haynes should have stuck to making underwear. I got a chuckle out of that even though it isn't spelled the same.
A lady who wanted books by a certain author asked where his books would be. As I wasn't familiar with the author, I went ahead and looked him up. It turned out we carried three books by the man, but each was in a different section. I explained patiently to the lady that one was in the Regional section, one was in Nature, and one was in Wildlife. I asked which she was interested in and offered to help her find one. But her response baffled me.
"So you don't have ANY?"
"Um, Ma'am, I just told you which ones we're supposed to have." I explained again that we were supposed to have these three, and said that any others we'd have to order.
"Well that's just strange, for you not to have ANY."
Um?
I reminded her that I hadn't ever said we didn't have any. I told her more slowly and carefully that the great majority of this author's books would have to be ordered, but we DID have a record showing we carried three of his books. I managed to get her to understand that we could go search for them now, and took her with me to Wildlife, where we actually found one. But then she asked if that was the only one. After explaining again that one was probably nearby in Nature, she thanked me and told me it was strange that we only had that ONE book. I think steam was rising from my head. You'd never think customers would be so determined to not find what they want.
I overheard a man being rude to our daytime cashier, but I couldn't tell exactly what he was doing--just that he was loudly saying he shouldn't be expected to walk to the Customer Service counter where they were supposedly holding his book. So after the customer had gone away, I dug up the story on that guy from the cashier herself and the manager who had dealt with him.
Back up to this morning. He called and got my manager as his customer service helper, and proceeded to be belligerent on the phone, to the point where my manager thought he might even be kidding around. He asked about the book he wanted, and whined about the price, seeming shocked that any book could cost over thirty dollars. After being asked if he wanted to have it held, he said he had to think about it, and hung up, saying he'd call back with further instructions once he'd decided whether he wanted it.
And then, without ever calling the store back or anything else, he waited in the cashier's line and then approached her with "where's my book?"
Keep in mind the cashier didn't ever once speak to this man when he was trying to get his book.
When she told him that any books that were put on hold would be at Customer Service, he got loud (which was why it attracted my attention across the store), and explained exasperatedly that he could not be expected to walk over there to get his book when he'd already waited in this line. When she told him the only way to get it without going over there was to call C/S and ask for the manager to bring it, he agreed that that was what he wanted to do.
Unfortunately, being with another customer stalled the manager, and when he finally was free to deal with the situation, he looked under the man's last name and found a book, but it wasn't the one the man wanted. When he relayed the title to the manager through the cashier over the phone, the manager realized that he was talking to the man who'd called that morning. The one who hadn't asked to put the book aside and was now demanding it, acting annoyed that no one had put it aside for him.
So, the manager came up to deal with the customer, as he had sensed by now that he was giving the cashier a hard time. He explained to the man why there was no book on hold for him and said he would have to go to the shelf and find the book. The man's response was to yell at him for wasting his time explaining, and told him to "just go get my book!" At this point, the man has been so ridiculously rude that my manager had lost any interest in providing good customer service to him, so he went and got the book, rung it up, and finished his transaction without saying anything else to him.
Was that the end? No.
The man then chose to lecture my manager again about what a hassle he'd been through and why it was wrong of him to try to explain what was wrong instead of trying to fix the situation. My manager was physically walking away with his back to the customer WHILE he was hollering his tirade. I'm glad I wasn't involved in that one.
I mean, can you imagine being that poor customer? You call a bookstore and complain that the book is too much money, and although you don't call them back to let them know you have decided in favor of buying it anyway, they haven't even bothered to learn your last name by divination and put it on hold for you at the register! And then they have the nerve to try and tell you it's your fault that you never informed them you wanted the book! They should be keeping tabs on your every move, and should have known from the start to put your name on that book and serve it to you on a silver platter with a smile.
I think I'm going to elect that guy president of the Society of People with Misleading Names. (His last name was Wise. Why didn't we know that?)
9/15/02
I was on register for only two hours today, but I still got Assholes. Here's one.
I asked a guy if he had a discount card. He looked at me with just the most confused and confounded expression I'd ever seen. I figured maybe he didn't know what I meant, so I repeated the question. He raised his hands helplessly and had this very specific look of confusion where you can tell HE thinks I've just asked him something incredibly ridiculous that he couldn't possibly be expected to know the answer to. He kind of shook his head to himself as if he just couldn't believe he was expected to answer *questions* about *discount cards* when he was just trying to buy a *book*. (It would have been different if he was foreign or something, but he wasn't.)
While covering a break on the register today, I got a rather long line, but it moved fast because I can check people out pretty quickly. Then a woman made it to the front of the line. And all she had was her discount card and a ten-dollar bill. Her opening line?
"Yes, I called for Animal Farm."
Okay, what makes these people assume the register is where you pick books up? Do you see any shelves or storage space behind me? No, you see a blank wall. Okay, fine if you just made a mistake or didn't think; that's fine, this is not a test. But if, when I explain that your book is not up here and that you will in fact have to travel to Customer Service to retrieve it, it is bad bad bad to say to me:
"So you're saying I have to go over there and then wait in this line again?"
It ain't my fault you went to the wrong place, lady.
But anyway, no biggie, I told her if I could get a hold of the customer service girl, I'd ask her to grab it and bring it up, but I said I'd have to keep ringing the people behind her until the book was delivered anyway. I asked if she'd specifically had one pulled and held, because people are forever coming in, asking "do ya have it?" and then assuming it will still be there when they get there, not asking to have it put on hold. This is especially short-sighted to do if it is a school reading list item. But people do it all the time, we can't seem to stop them.
To her credit, the lady realized that expecting to stand there backing up the line while we all waited for the C/S girl to bring her book over was a bit jerky. She broke out of line and went over there like she was supposed to. And all was good in the land.
This next lady wasn't really a bad customer. But somehow she pretty much hit every pet peeve of mine that she possibly could in her search for customer service.
First off, she'd remembered the name of her book wrong, and I figured it out from vague clues since it was a kids' book. Since it wasn't the exact title she'd misremembered, she began asking for confirmations, wanting to know whether the book was about such and such, as if I would know. (But I happened to; I'd read that one.) She still wasn't sure it was the book her son wanted despite it matching every clue she had, so she asked to use the phone. Again, pet peeve: She followed me very closely, and when I tried to walk behind the desk she tried to come with me. No no, you go around, you is customer. So I pushed the phone within her reach. And another favorite gripe: "Do you have to dial nine?" They always, always ask if you have to dial nine. Sometimes they just assume you have to and end up having to dial several times. But I'd think that if there was a special code you had to dial to get out, I would have told you. No, no nine. After confirming with her son that it was indeed the book he'd asked for, she asked to pay at Customer Service. Afraid not, you're going to the cashier. Also, she turned it over, looked at the price tag, and while looking at the price tag, asked me how much the book cost. I specifically didn't answer, just pretending I hadn't heard, because the damn thing is MARKED with a FATASS STICKER. Argh.
9/14/02
A woman came to Customer Service asking about certain books. When I showed her where to look, she started whining that the other store had their books organized in such a way that she couldn't find anything, and said she liked our setup better. Okay, fine. But then she started going on about how they were wrong to categorize such and such with such and such, and then I just had to laugh at her when, in the midst of her criticizing others for their lack of in-depth knowledge of her interests, she mispronounced the word "Celtic" by saying it like the basketball team. "I can't believe they have all of their Seltic books in THAT section. . . ." I had to leave abruptly to go laugh.
9/7/02
A lady comparing prices between two dictionaries was extremely bad at math. She took a long time trying to figure out if she wanted the dictionary that had more words and was made by a trusted name, or the one that would be more appealing to her child because of the many colorful illustrations. I tried to help her decide and pointed out other differences between them, and asked if she'd looked at the prices yet since that always figures in too. One was $19.00 and the other was $19.95. I pointed out that the price didn't really matter since they were so close in price, and she studied them for a moment and then said, "Yeah, I'm really not worried about a measly five dollars." She then continued to compare and contrast the dictionaries. I was a bit flabbergasted since I had no idea how a difference of ninety-five cents could in any way be interpreted as a difference of five dollars. But I don't really care. She can have her little world.
9/4/02
A man came up asking for "Orchard Blue." I knew of a book called Orchid Blue by Woods, so when he mentioned Woods's name I assumed I had the right title and punched it up. Then I realized that from the way he was saying the title, I couldn't tell if he was misremembering the name of the book as "Orchard Blue" or if he was simply pronouncing "Orchid" very, very wrong. I couldn't help but giggle when he proclaimed himself and his wife to be rabid Stuart Woods fans who follow the release of every book; they might be big fans, but they don't know what his books are called.
9/3/02
A lady came up to the Customer Service desk where I was working and expected me to already know all kinds of stuff that she hadn't told me. For some reason she expected me to know that she was coming to me because she wanted me to call the other bookstore and have them hold a book for her. I was supposed to know which book and who she was and everything, and since I wasn't on the phone when she got there, she just opened with "Did they have it?" Considering that was my first contact with this woman, I had to ask what the HELL she was talking about. Turned out she'd already asked her question at the cash register, and the cashier said that would be a job for Customer Service to handle, so over the intercom she called me to the desk. The lady SAW her do all this, but somehow while she was walking between that desk and my desk, I was supposed to have absorbed the information from radio waves in the air and have taken care of what she wanted before she told me. Yes, we employees have a mental transference system set up to relay specific information, and once you tell one employee something, we all know. . . .
I also dealt with a phone call from someone who wanted "Dante's Inferno" but didn't know who it was by. Um . . . could it be . . . Dante? I think she thought "Dante's" was part of the title of the book. Hehehe.
9/2/02
"Excuse me, where are your bridge tallies?"
I explained that at one point we had had little score pads but didn't have them anymore. I was met with an impatient and almost wounded response: "But you carry cards! It only makes sense that you should carry BRIDGE TALLIES too!"
Well, I explained that we really don't carry cards very often and that the cards she had--two little Hallmark gift packs with cards in them--were probably the only ones in the store because it's not an item we really stock. So, her response was to go to my manager and ask her where they were. (Since "we don't have any" isn't an answer you can trust. Not from a young employee!)
My manager is a funny lady. She is only my mother's age, but walks around talking about how old she is all the time. This lady (and her husband) were older than her, and when my manager told her that she didn't know people played bridge anymore, the older couple said, "I guess it's just us old people that play now." My manager said, "I haven't even heard of old people still playing bridge! That game has gone the way of the dodo." Hehehe. So much for the expectation that any store carrying the odd pack of cards would be sure to have bridge tallies.
Now this one's funny.
A lady came in looking for books on snakes. She claimed she'd already been to the other store and they didn't have any. That is a bit surprising. So I began to take her to the Wildlife section, where we have several books on snakes and lots more on reptiles in general containing sections on snakes. But on the way there, she said, "Yeah, at that other store, they tried to send me to the ANIMAL section. Why would they do that? A snake isn't an animal." This kind of stopped me in my verbal tracks, but I managed to say, "Well, the animal section is where we're going in this store too. That's where the snake books go." Her response? "Well, explain this to me. How is a SNAKE an ANIMAL?"
This caused me to go into a scientific spiel about how anything in the "Animal" kingdom is an animal, and snakes as well as bugs and pretty much anything that's not single-celled or plant life falls into that category. But she insisted that a snake was not an animal, but a REPTILE. I told her that reptiles are all animals, but she didn't seem to like that answer and was happy enough when I left her alone to browse.
9/1/02
I was at the register today. It was a slow morning and I was reading Watership Down at the register--which is against the rules, but no one seems to care much. Anyway, I was just leaning on my elbows reading it, and this guy comes up, slams his magazine down on the counter, and goes, "WAKE UP!"
I looked up and he had this annoyed/amused look on his face, and he said, "YOU were SLEEPING!"
I informed him that I hadn't been sleeping; I had been reading the book that was right there on the counter. His response? "Oh YEAH? Then WHAT'S IT SAY??" When I gave him a blank look, wondering if he expected me to recite back a memorized passage, he replied, "I THOUGHT so! See, you WERE sleeping!" And he didn't seem to be joking. He seemed to really think he had caught me sleeping and had proved it. I just reiterated that I hadn't been sleeping, rang up the rest of his shit, and spoke to him as little as possible until he got the fuck out of my store.
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