3/31/03
In the back room, our receiving specialist has taken an Eminem photo and posted it in the office, having written on it with a magic marker as if it is autographed to my boss. "To Stephen--Your so beautiful, I'll always remember last night. Your pookie, Em." HAHHAHA!
Today this guy makes my list. He came up to me saying there was a book he'd been looking for for quite some time, and told me the title. I remembered that he'd asked me for that a very long time ago, and apparently he still hadn't found it.
I will not repeat the book's title here, for reasons I will explain in a moment. Just suffice it to say that it was a book about winning arguments with liberals. Well, he informed me that he'd been checking for weeks and it's never in the store, and I told him we were probably just out, if it was so popular. But that wasn't his reasoning. See, he's figured us out.
"You know why it is, don't you? It's because this is a liberal bookstore."
I've dealt with this philosophy before: Oh, if you don't have it, it's because someone at the top in your company is trying to HIDE IT FROM ME. I've got your number now, liberal scum. So I told him straight out what the truth is.
"No, their only agenda is making money."
As he was walking away from me he was saying some other junk about how we were definitely a liberal bookstore and maybe it didn't seem like it but that's how the media is.
I looked up the book on my computer after he'd walked away. It didn't even hit as a title, much less as something we carried. Oops, he must be right. So when I got home, I looked his title up on Amazon.com. Err, Amazon has never heard of it. I Googled it and tried a couple other search engines. I got nothing, though I did find some funny articles.
Now, I didn't want to reveal the title on this page because if that guy gets desperate enough to search for references to it online, it's likely my page will be the only one that comes up, and it would really kind of suck for him to find this page, given what sort of things I'm about to say next.
Oh yeah! We don't have it 'cause we're a liberal bookstore! Holy Christ on a stick! If we're a liberal bookstore, why do we carry Bias? Why do we carry The Terrible Truth About Liberals? And why in the name of Republicans' right testicles do we carry Savage Nation if we're such a damn liberal bookstore? Oh wait! Amazon's never heard of it either! Maybe the whole Internet is liberal now! That's it! If they don't carry it, they're from ~the dark side~.
Or, maybe he's got the title wrong.
Nah, couldn't be. Gotta be that the entire world is full of filthy liberals who don't want him to get the truth. He's sitting around cooking up these elaborate conspiracy theories about our whole company having a political agenda because his title isn't available. Hey, maybe someone told him to look for it as a joke. He really wants that extra help winning arguments with liberals! (One of the websites I found suggests that you talk louder and faster to avoid letting the liberal say anything, and warns you to make moral accusations and point out flaws and mistakes rather than citing any facts to support your beliefs.) In any case, maybe he doesn't think the joke is funny . . . but I sure am laughing.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
See?
Also I was feverishly trying to get my books out and someone else was assigned to the service desk, but I guess they weren't there or in sight at the time because two ladies came up and after a moment one of them started knocking on the desk. I'm sure it was directed at me because they could probably see me from where they were standing. I had way too much crap to do and was way too annoyed to be taking that kind of shit from people who really ought to learn the phrase "excuse me" instead of knocking, so I just immediately dropped what I was doing and walked away from my books. I went and hid in the back room and told my manager what happened, and she sympathized, saying she hated it when people whistled or snapped their fingers like we're some dogs. Fuck you and your tappy little fingers. I don't care if that wasn't good customer service. I was just not in the mood for bullshit.
3/30/03
A girl came up to me and asked if she could ask a question. I told her she could, but she kind of started backing up, looking at me, and then stopped in puzzlement. I must say I was a bit puzzled too, because usually when people want to ask you a question, they ask it. I discovered her intent when she began hesitantly making odd gestures in the direction of the desk, indicating that she thought before she asked the question we ought to enlist the services of the computer. Well, maybe these aren't great odds, but something like 40% of the time a customer thinks I won't know the answer to a question without a computer, when in fact they are either asking a non-specific question that doesn't require a computer or else they are asking for a book that is quite popular. So I asked what her question was and she said, "Well, won't you need to look it up on the computer?" I told her that I might just know it offhand and she should just tell me what she wants. (Pretty tough stuff, I know.) So it turned out she was in that other percentage where I needed to use the computer to look up her title, and after I did and found we didn't carry it, she said nothing else. No acknowledgment, no nod, no thank you. She turned around and walked away.
Weird girl.
Um, you're welcome.
3/29/03
This morning we had a meeting, and it didn't last very long so I was left with some time to kill before my actual shift started. I killed the time by attempting to sleep on one of the carts, to the amusement of the back room guy and the manager. (A normal-sized person could never be comfortable in such a small space, but hell, sometimes it pays come in pixie size.) I was awoken from the sleep when I heard the damn phone ring just before 8:30 (we open at 9). I overheard the boss's conversation with the person on the other line, and then he filled in the gaps for me upon my request. Apparently some yodel called and was surprised we weren't open yet. "I thought you guys were 24-hour," he said. Yeah, a 24-hour bookstore, sure. (I have yet to hear of one.) When the boss said we opened at 9, the guy said, "I must be thinking of your other store." "No," said Boss-Man, "they open at 9 also." "Oh," said Dingus. "Well, y'all used to be 24-hour." Sure we did. If I may be so bold, I suggest you're probably thinking of Wal-Mart.
Some lady came up to me and said, "I remember I asked you this before. Where are the CDs at?" First off I didn't understand why she would ask me if she'd asked me before, secondly I didn't understand why she would figure the fact that she asked me before would matter, and thirdly, I don't remember her at all, so I don't think she DID ask me before. But anyway, I said, "What kind of CDs?" She said music, and I told her we didn't carry music CDs. She replied, "Oh, well I know I asked you that before." What the hell? Umm, if you asked me before in some other universe, I'm sure I still said no, because we don't have them. Go fig.
A dude wanted some Shakespeare book. I pointed out where Shakespeare's books were--actually right behind him in the Literature section in front of the desk--but he didn't seem to want to turn around so I told him I'd show him. I came around the desk, and suddenly he wasn't there. I looked around and I saw him, he was practically halfway across the store already in the wrong direction. He skidded to a stop when he saw that I was standing two feet from where he had just been, and came hurrying back. What the hell made him decide he knew where he was going when a) I had pointed at my destination and b) he'd had to ask me, after all, so why would he just choose a direction like he already knew, anyway? So after I picked up the right copy for him, he followed me back to the desk, and I asked him if he needed anything else but he didn't, and so I went back to my work of looking up a book's category so I could put it away. I had to go to the other computer for something and he came around the other side of the desk and just kind of kept looking at me. Well, he'd said he didn't need anything else so I just didn't respond to that, and when I went back to the first computer he did it again, followed me. So finally I was like, "Um, WAS there something else you needed?" "No," was the response, and then that telltale putting down of the book on the counter, shoving it toward me. Oh, he thought he could pay me for it at Customer Service. Umm, I think if that was part of what I was supposed to do for you, I would have done it, not dismissed you and went back to my old shit. I directed him to Checkout. ::sigh::
3/26/03
Some lady would not release me today. She wanted two books: a travel guide for a certain city and a certain book for her eighth grader. Turned out getting a book for the eighth grader wasn't so simple. She decided to deliberate, out loud, between nearly every book she laid eyes on, about whether it was good for him. "Is this good?" she kept asking, "How 'bout this one?" Why did she think I'd read every freaking book? Anyway, I was still standing there because I needed to show her the next thing she'd asked for, but she just kept talking and deliberating and not being able to choose. Considering she'd specifically asked for a certain book and I'd given it to her, it shouldn't have been so hard. But then when I finally got to show her the travel books, she did the same thing there! "Oh, well which is best? Hmm, that one's got a lot of maps, hmm, I want something I can read on the plane. What do you think? How about this one?" I told her the Fodor's is something that's often purchased, thinking just giving her an opinion would be enough because she didn't seem to want to draw her own opinion of what would best suit her needs, but that didn't seem to help. She didn't feel like she was doing her job unless she picked up every book about the city and asked me what I thought and then compared and contrasted it. Why she couldn't do this shit WITHOUT me is beyond me. So I just told her if she needed anything else she could let me know, and extricated myself from the situation pretty much mid-sentence. I had even mentioned at one point that I needed to check the desk to see if anyone was waiting in line, and she completely either didn't care or didn't hear. So fuck that.
I remembered this from a while back today. See, this goofy thing is something a bunch of people keep doing. We have these specials on buy two get one free sale books, and people keep having this misconception that EVEN THOUGH IT SAYS OTHERWISE ON THE SIGN AND THE STICKER, they should somehow be able to buy two books for $1.97 and then get the $39.97 one free. It says "Free book must be of equal or lesser value," and that's a VERY common occurrence in retail. But no. I get some guy saying, "NOO, I want that one to be my free one!" and I have to explain to the whiner that it doesn't work that way and that he is not allowed to stop reading the sign once he's finished the part he likes. Argh! Grr!
This lady wasn't exceedingly annoying or anything, but she came up to me and pointed out the 50% off sticker on an item, then pointed out that the price tag said $24.00 and asked, "So does that mean it costs $12?" Yeah, in this universe and many others, mathematics does dictate that 12 is half of 24. I understand that she was just asking me if that was the old price or the sale price, but at the same time, who would price a stuffed animal at TWICE 24 bucks? I wouldn't pay $48 for a Buster doll no matter how cool it is. I just thought it was funny how she said it.
A lady on the phone opened her conversation with me by asking if we had a certain Thomas the Tank Engine item. I asked her if it was a type of track set or if it was one of the actual trains. She just replied, "Well, it's Thomas the Tank." Well, we've established that, lady! Did you listen to my question? Apparently not, because when I repeated the exact same question, she answered it. I think maybe we should have "how to listen" classes as required curriculum in school, because people don't know how to do it even if they can do long division.
A lady asked me if we had any books on buying a house. I took her to the Real Estate section, and since most of that section is actually devoted to books for real estate professionals rather than the layman, I started pointing out books that fit her needs. But all through it, she just kept not saying anything and not picking up the books or taking them when I tried to hand them to her. She just kept kind of nodding or sometimes saying "Okay" and not looking at the selections, just kind of blankly staring at the shelf. When I got sick of that lack of response and just told her that should be fine to start her out and she could browse if she wanted more, she came back to life and said, "OH, but isn't there one you can recommend?" Umm, I have been. When I told her that she replied in this vague way that told me what she really wanted was for me to pick "the best one" out for her and put it in her hand. "Isn't there like just one best one?" she wanted to know. Well, let's see, lady, why don't we read the descriptions and see if one is identified as "the book that's best." Yeah. I hate when people want me to do their shopping for them. (I ended up recommending The Idiot's Guide to Buying a House or something, incidentally.)
A lady came up and wanted a particular kind of travel book. Of course, she had no title, but thought it might be put out by this particular publisher, or maybe not. I tried to help her, typing in accurate keywords, but once we found a few that might be it, looking at them on the shelf proved that they were not the ones she wanted. She began describing the book, and I asked her where she'd seen it. "Oh," she said, "well I have my library copy out in the car, and I wanted to get one of my own because it's so good."
Hold the phone! We've been puzzling over the title and trying to go through reams of books and computer files attempting to find what book it is, and you've got the damn thing in your car already?? We could have saved a lot of time and effort if you'd just gone and gotten the damn thing and brought it in, or at least bothered to write the title down before you went in the store without a clue of what to ask for. Waaaah!
I had to cover a break at the register, and during that window of time a woman came up with three books. Warning bells went off in my head when she put them on the counter and I saw our three current coupons, one stuck in each book like a bookmark. I figured she hadn't read the entire coupon (as most people are wont to do) and had not realized she could not use more than one coupon in the same day; you know how people love to fight for their right to the deal they want. So, when I informed her that only one coupon could be used on this transaction, she slapped the counter and said, "Oh, come on! I just knew you were gonna do that to me." Yeah, most people would have known it by reading the coupon and therefore not expecting it. And then, on top of that, two of the three books she'd picked out didn't fit the deal. The deal is a percentage off a regular-priced hardback, and both of the books she was trying to use coupons on were already discounted hardbacks. So I told her the only one she could use anyway was the discount of five dollars off of any purchase over $25. She decided to spend just enough to make it over 25 bucks so she could use that coupon, rejecting one of the books 'cause it wasn't a good enough deal, and went on her merry way. At least she didn't argue with me after I established "the rules."
3/25/03
A gentleman who looked more like a hairball rolled in lint came to my line today, gruffly unsatisfied with his experience at Customer Service. I asked him if he found everything okay and he told me he hadn't, and when I asked what he was missing he said, "I wanted a Griswold book, but that lady back there said you didn't have any." And then he started mumbling about her, "You all tryin' ta tell me you got a million books in this store and she knows right off the top of her head that she don't have it?" I started snickering, because of course he was talking about our manager Pat. Now most of you reading this don't know Pat, but the truth is that Pat seriously does know everything. She has the management position entitled "Co-Manager: Books" and it is well-deserved; she has been with the company longer than I have and she knows like every damn book in the store. So it's pretty easy to ask her if we carry a particular series of antiquing books and be fairly certain that she's right when she says, "Nope, we don't carry it." But customers are not very accepting of the idea that there is a very competent manager in our midst, and so I just replied that she had recently organized that section (partly true; she did it a couple months ago) and knew what we had there.
Well, that wasn't good enough. As I rang up his purchases, he added, "Well she couldn't look it up for me and say how much it is in case I wanted to order it?" I said, "Well, did you ask her to?" He hadn't. But dammit, she should have known! Haha. Also, during the transaction I had the urge to whip out a hairbrush and brush back his furry beard to see what his damn face looked like under there. Hehe.
I went through a normal transaction with a lady today and at the end, after signing her credit card slip, she looked at the receipt and said, "And that was with the discount?" Okay. I do this a couple hundred times a day if I run the register. If you do not have a discount card, I am supposed to try to sell you one. If you do have a discount card, I scan it before I ring your purchase, and because you have personally dug it out of your wallet for me, you probably saw me run it under the scanner and give it back to you. So you know I applied the discount. Is it just that you think it doesn't do anything and then I give you back change after charging the full price? What the hell? Yes it's with the discount, ya tosser!
Mmm, manager hell. Another girl was running register and she made a mistake ringing up a lady's books. (Well, it wasn't totally her fault, but the computer hadn't correctly rung up certain books that had discount stickers on them, and it needed to be fixed.) So, the cashier girl called me, because I can fix such things, being all pseudo-managerial and all. I pointed out that out of the three books the lady was disputing, only two had been rung incorrectly. I could see discount stickers on two, which proved that being rung for regular price was wrong, but a third had no discount stickers and was on no special that I could think of. The lady insisted that it had been under a sign that said it was 30% off plus 10% with the discount card. I asked her where and she told me it was on bestsellers. Looking at the book, I couldn't believe it was on the top ten (which is what the 30+10 discount applies to), so I called her on it.
I have to say here that because I was called to handle a problem for a cashier, I therefore already had more authority than usual. If I'm just the cashier, I am assumed to not know what I am talking about when dealing with an unruly customer. However, if I have been called to settle a dispute or fix a problem, I automatically look like I'm the person in the position to settle or fix it. So I totally milked that and became a bit more stern. The lady's book had actually come from the #13 slot (quite a few shy of the top ten), and so after checking I told her #11 and below don't get that discount. When she asked why it was under a sign that said 30 + 10, I replied that on that same sign she was talking about, it said "TOP TEN BESTSELLERS, 30 + 10." She asked again why it would be under a sign advertising that discount if the books underneath didn't apply. I said that since it was the bestseller area, it was common for signs to advertise the best deal we had available, and since it said RIGHT ON THE SIGN what it applied to, it couldn't be taken as misleading. I was quite diplomatic about it though, and this lady wasn't rude; she just honestly thought I was trying to cheat her so she was asserting her "rights." I told her there was no way I could apply a discount that wasn't advertised, and she backed down and decided to forgo getting that book. The rest went smoothly; I undid her previous overcharged transaction (and even apologized, not putting it on the cashier but on the lack of correct discount lists in the computer), and re-rang her purchase. She seemed fine walking out of the store, and I was quite pleased with myself.
3/24/03
Whee! Doing returns is fun!
I had a guy come in the day after he purchased two books and had decided to return them. No problem. I told him I'd just charge it back to the credit card. "You can't give me cash?" he protested. I said no, however you paid, that's how we give you the money. He replied, "Are you sure you aren't ripping me off? I've had other people pull this on me." I assured him I wasn't ripping him off. Yeah, dude, I have something to gain by making you not get your money. So then the receipts printed and I told him he needed to sign twice--once for the credit card slip and once for the return form. He signed the credit card slip, and then he took the return form and tried to sign it more than once. What, you sign it in triplicate to make it official? It's the same piece of paper! And the two lines under customer signature say "cashier signature" and "manager signature," not "please sign three times one after the other." I think some people just get in name-signing dazes or something. Maybe he signs a lot of autographs. Heh.
Early in the morning, a man came up, visibly disturbed, and complained of a "lewd drawing" that was on the wall of the men's room. He refused to describe in any detail what was drawn there and was adamant that I locate someone to paint over it immediately. Hehe. Too bad we only had three women working at the time, and a lack of paint sitting on hand ready to paint over magic marker penises.
I had a woman who came up buying a Dr. Phil book and said, "And his books are on sale, right?" I started to answer that they were, but then I said, "Actually, only his newest hardback is on sale, I'll just check this," and scanned it. As I suspected (since I know my shit AND there was no sticker on it), it rang up full price. So I told her so and she argued, saying that it had been under a sign that said "Dr. Phil, 30% off." I know for a fact that there is NO sign that says everything on a subject is 30% off. Our signs ALWAYS say "up to." But as I've said again and again, reading the whole sign does not seem to occur to most of my customers, much to my chagrin. So I took her over there and let her indignantly point out the sign and read it to me (leaving out the part that says "up to," of course), and I read it right back to her with the entire sign in the sentence. She decided to get it anyway, and I checked her out mentally shrugging my shoulders at yet another day dealing with the usual.
I had a lady buying a bunch of Hallmark cards, and she put them on the counter. I asked her if she had a discount card. She put her hand on her purchases, slid them a minute distance toward me, and said, "These, please." Oh jeezus. Would you please listen to me? Oh, please please please? Come up to the counter ready to interact. There's a person on the other side and she just asked you a question. I hate this business of totally tuning me out and then when I don't immediately begin scanning because I have a QUESTION, they just somehow think I don't know they want to check out and push the items slightly toward me again as if I haven't seen them or can't begin until they've cued me. This seems to happen a lot lately, by the way, this mini-sliding thing. Grrr, I am convinced there's something in the water.
Okay, here's an obnoxious kid story. Maybe he's the younger brother of Wiccan Boy (see entries from 4/23/01 and on up). He did kinda look like him and sound like him. Who knows? Anyway, first he came up wanting to know how he can sign up for Yu-Gi-Oh! League. I said, "Come on Saturday at 2 and the guy will sign you up." He asked some annoying questions about it ("What do you win? Do you get free stuff? How do you get the passport?") and I just told him to come at 2 and he could find out anything he wanted to know from the Yu-Gi-Oh! guy. So he walked away, and then came back up wanting to know where he can find "books on Wicca and like wizardry and stuff." I bit my tongue on that one, wanting to direct him to the Harry Potter books and the fantasy section for "wizardry" if that's what he wants. But anyway, then soon he was BACK, more questions about Yu-Gi-Oh!, except this time I had a customer and he came right up beside us trying to break in and interrupt with questions while I or the customer was talking. I just ignored him until I was done with the person who was actually buying stuff, then answered his questions. How much is a pack? $3.99. He said, "I'll take one pack," but then when I started to ring it up he told me to wait because he needed to get his mom so he could get money for it. You don't come up and say you'll "take" a pack when you don't have any fucking money. Then I had a customer and again he came up and did his interrupting trick. When the customer was gone he said, "Can I just sign up for the Yu-Gi-Oh! League now?" NO, KID! COME ON SATURDAY! And leave me alone while you're at it, dammit!
Here's something you don't see every day: Someone offered to let me kick her out. I was picking up some Thomas the Tank trains that had been knocked down, and nearby three or four rugrats were playing amongst a crowd of chatting parents. This happens often enough and everyone present was being responsible, or at least it seemed so; too often parents just let the train set "babysit" their children while they shop, which results in massive destruction. Anyway, one of the moms spotted me cleaning up, and apparently thought that their (somewhat loud but acceptable) presence was disturbing to the store's atmosphere. She said, "Oh, are you about ready to kick us out?"
Surprised, I answered no, she was fine. She replied, "Okay, just let us know." Huh? I can't imagine just walking up to people and saying, "Excuse me, I'm gonna have to ask you to leave now, you've been here too long and you're not using your inside voices." "Okay! Come on kids, we're getting thrown out now." In my dreams! Ya-hah!
3/23/03
As a notable, er, NOTE, I'd like to mention that Leap of Faith by Queen Noor of Jordan came out a couple days ago. Not that I know anything about it or care. It's just that on 11/15/02 a customer was in my face demanding this book and getting all shirty that it wasn't available because "she's famous, you know." Guess even being famous doesn't make your book come out four months before it's scheduled to. Ha, ha.
A family (well, a mother and two teenage daughters) was walking around the store, all three members carrying calendars they'd picked up at the front. I watched them. It was fascinating. Every few minutes, one of them would look at a calendar and make one of several negative-emotion faces, and then just take it out of the stack in their arms and put it on the closest convenient shelf. As they made their way around the store, you could see this TRAIL of calendars following everywhere they went! On endcaps, on shelves, on the floor, balanced against walls, you name it! They were shedding calendars! And the worst part about it was, on the way to the register you have to pass the calendar display! Even just dumping them in a chunk near that would have been better, but no, they had to walk around grazing, chewing their cuds, and excreting calendars. Joy!
Had a funny phone call today. By the sounds of it, from a young boy. He asked if I had basketball cards at my store. I told him we used to, but after we got rid of our collector's case we got rid of everything except the most popular cards. The kid found it necessary at that point to point out that we did used to have them. Well, I had just told him that. So I said, "I just said that." He said, "Oh." And then I heard what was probably a brother mumbling incoherently in the background, and the kid on the phone unsuccessfully covered the mouthpiece to talk in a garbled fashion. Then he got back on and said to me, "Well do you know anywhere that would sell them?" I said that I didn't think many places would but that maybe Mega Comics would since they carry so many cards. The kid said, "Well they usually carry like gaming cards and fantasy cards and weird stuff like that." And at that point the brother in the background became understandable with a shout of, "I don't want no fucking Magic cards!" The kid on the phone started chuckling at his brother's rudeness, and I said, "What is it?" as if I didn't know. "Oh, nothin'," he replied. After ascertaining one more time that we indeed did not have any information leading to basketball cards, he hung up. Yay.
Oh man, this qualifies as my worst interaction today. See, early on in the day, a woman came in and asked for the book held under her name. I didn't find one under her name and asked if she'd been called about her order, at which point she said it wasn't ordered but rather called in from the other store. We do that all the time, hold books for each other's customers, so I went to have another look, this time trying under her first name also just in case. So then I said there wasn't anything and told her I'd ask Pat about it since she'd been answering the phone today, but she said, "Oh, well it was put on hold a week ago." At that point I'd solved the mystery, and informed her that we hold books for two days if they're called in, longer only if specifically asked. "But they told me it'd be there through Monday!" she protested. Well, if you only asked for "Monday," I imagine they probably thought you meant "tomorrow," since a week ago was also a Sunday, like today. But no.
I'm not blaming the lady here, but then when I asked her what the book was called she had no damn clue. I can understand how it happened; the other store called us about a book they'd dug up on the subject but didn't have on the shelf, and we had it so we pulled it, but she hadn't taken note of what it was called because it would have been waiting for her, she didn't need the information. But it still bugged me that she had no idea what we should search for, no inkling at all. All she knew was that it was a book on decorating a baby's room and that she needed it for her shower toooo-day. So I said I didn't know how I could help her with no information, and she said, "Could you just take me to where you have books on decorating babies' rooms?" Of course I could do that, it sounded like a great idea.
Except that then every book I pulled out on the subject wasn't it. For someone with no idea what she wanted, she sure knew what she didn't want. At this point she started getting pushy with me because I hadn't checked the computer for titles. She said, "Well, at the other store, they were very helpful" and "At the other store they searched on the computer and found titles for me, there's no way you could do that like they did?" I had to stop her there and said, "Okay. Here's how it works. If you're not looking for a particular title, just a subject, then you type in keywords and then it sends you to the right section. In other words, if I did that, it would just say, 'look in interior design.' Since I already know where books would be on that subject, I could skip looking it up." But being competent has its price. Since I hadn't "looked it up," of course I was probably just being lazy. I tell you what, I'd already devoted fifteen minutes of my time to this and I bet you anything that if looking it up in the computer made her get out of my hair faster, I would have done it. But that isn't how it works. Still, she had to mention it again, that I should check on the computer. So I said, "If finding titles that should be in the section is what you want me to do, I can do that," and she said, "Please do."
Well, I found three we were supposed to have, but one was on decorations that were cross-stitched or something and was in the needlecrafting section. I asked her if that was what she wanted but it wasn't, so again we're doing exactly what I thought to do in the first place: Looking in Interior Design. We did have a title listed in the computer that didn't seem to be there, but when she pointed out that we hadn't found that one, I said just because it's in the computer doesn't mean we must have it; we don't keep a running inventory. At that point I guess she got frustrated with my extreme incompetence and unwillingness to help and said she would probably just have to go to a different bookstore. I wonder what she ended up telling them? "I have no idea what book I want, but it has to be the right one!" ::sigh::
Had an amusing conversation on the phone today. It set off warning bells when the lady wanted Haley's Hints . . . and then felt she needed to spell it for me, which she did incorrectly. "It's H-A-I. . . ." Well, we in the bookstore world know Haley's Hints quite well, and I told her we had it on display. She asked for its price and I told her what it was, and she said there was another book--something about cleaning hints. I said indeed there was and we sold it in a package for a cheaper price if you buy both. I gave her the prices of the books individually, then I ended up confusing her by saying that buying them separately would cost her like 49 bucks but buying them together for the package price would be like 35. She asked me to repeat every price at least three times, but it wasn't a normal request; it was like on Jeopardy!, she was phrasing statements in the forms of questions. "And then by itself the book costs 35 dollars?" "But then buying them together is 49 dollars?" No. Maybe I shouldn't have confused her with a price that doesn't apply (meaning the price of both the books if she bought them separately). It was just . . . auggh, too many numbers!
I was cleaning Kids' today (after a long weekend), and it was pretty trashed. We have this sort of gift set thing for Bear in the Big Blue House, and it has a three-piece set that fits together to form the big bear, but his head is a cup and apparently the other two sections of his body can be used as plates. I found the two body plates laying out on a shelf, separate from their usual box, so I was searching for the head when I noticed a man roaming around with a stack of books in his hand. He calmly went up to his apparently four-year-old son and asked the kid, "Where did you get these ones?"
Oh, shit.
Why the hell would you ask your four-year-old where they pulled a mess of books from? They don't fucking know. Adults don't know where they got a book thirty seconds after they've pulled it from the shelf! Forget alphabetical order. The kid just thought for a second and pointed, "Um, there," and obviously that didn't work too well because they were kind of from all over the Kids' section. I sighed as I watched the man attempt to find places for the books, thinking, Well, at least he's trying to put them up.
I found Bear's head and went to my cart where I'd left the rest of his body. It was then that I noticed the cart had some new additions. Yup, the "helpful" man had just given up and laid his stack on my cart. Thanks, guy, you rule. Actually, you'd rule a lot more if you'd WATCH your kid and make sure he doesn't pull all the crap off the shelves while you're shopping! Dick. Anyway, then I just rolled my eyes, went to get the box to put Bear in, and opened it to find someone had jam-packed the box full of packages of stickers from the nearby rack.
I love my job, and I don't want to kill anyone. REALLY.
3/17/03
Stormi came in again today (see 1/29 if you don't remember who she is). She has actually been back several times to be silly and talk to me, but today she came in and watched me finishing up a void scan in the Military History section. She asked me why books about Hitler were in the Nazi section. I told her it was because this was the World War II section, and Hitler was involved in World War II by being the leader of the Nazi Party. She looked surprised and said, "I didn't know Hitler was a Nazi!" Hehehe! I wonder when you learn that in school? (Turned out she thought "Nazi" was just a modern term for a certain kind of skinhead; she wasn't sure what their beliefs were or where they came from.)
3/16/03
Here's my first customer today. (I had to be on the register because there was no one to run the café--again--so they took our register guy to do that and made me do register.) You'll love this customer and want to take him home with you!
First thing: he had been looking for help in the store, and as mentioned we were shorthanded so he hadn't been able to find anyone. He came up with this *I'm shocked, appalled, and dismayed by my bad shopping experience!* attitude and informed me that he had been all over this store and there is no one to help him. I told him I knew about that, and I was going to tell him how we'd ended up shortstaffed but he was quick to say, "Well is that how this store is run?" I figured this ass was going to feel self-righteous about his lack of customer service no matter what I did, so I just said, matter-of-factly, "Nope." Then I told him the story with our café person not showing up, which caused us to be short a person and we had yet to have anyone come in who could run the desk. So, I started the transaction and asked if he had a discount card, and he said that he did but that he might as well get rid of it because one of our competitors is so much better. Heh, I love it when they invoke other stores' names in an attempt to shame me, especially when THERE'S NOTHING I COULD HAVE DONE ABOUT IT, it's not my damn fault no one showed up for café today. I asked him if the other store's discount card is still twenty-five dollars. He said, "Well, I'd rather pay more for a card and go there, because there I can get the thing." I love how specific he was: "the thing." Boy am I verbally outclassed here. He went on for a bit about how it's "so much better" over there, and then he paid for his stuff and left.
See? Don't you just want this cuddly guy to live with YOU?
Okay, this guy was kidding, but it was still funny. As I was shift-swapping with the lady at the register, a customer walked up and said, "Hey, how much are books??" I started laughing really hard. I couldn't help it. The guy said, kind of sulkily, "That lady's laughing at me." HAHAHA!
A guy's discount card was expired today, so I told him he should renew it. (The math made sense: He would have to pay five dollars for a new one, and immediately save twelve dollars on this purchase, so overall it'd end up saving him seven dollars.) When I explained that to him he was like, "What? You have to PAY for a renewal?" and acted like he wasn't going to get it because it was so appalling that he would have to PAY. He was saying how it was just wrong to charge for a renewal. I was thinking, jeez, if it didn't cost anything to renew, we'd just make them good forever and ever and ever! Why bother writing a date on them if it's just more trouble for us, unless there's a monetary reason? Anyway come to find out the guy thinks that originally his discount card was free when he first got it, and that it's some kind of marketing ploy that suddenly we're going to start charging for the discount he previously got for free. I explained that discount cards were never, ever, in any circumstance free, but that if someone had told him it was, chances are he'd bought one in the same situation he was getting a renewal today; saving five dollars or more with a card that costs five dollars to get is essentially a "free" card. Perhaps no one explained it right. ::sigh::
3/15/03
We were having our Yu-Gi-Oh! League as we do every Saturday, and invariably every week several people ask me what the hell is going on with all these children you have to wade through. Today at the register, covering a break, I got one of those people: A lady who said, "Where'd all these children come from?"
Without missing a beat and without laughing, I replied, "Mommas."
She seemed confused. I wonder why.
I had a lady buying crap that said on the stickers that they were $13.99, and then smaller than that it said "With discount card, $14.43 without discount card." The lady tried to give me hell when her discount card didn't entitle her to ten percent off of the already-discounted price. I explained that the original price was $14.43 and that with a discount card it becomes $13.99. Which is exactly how it was written on her receipt. She was polite, but she insisted that it didn't say anything about that on the sticker. I just had to point to the words.
By the way, I'm tired of kids coming up and wanting to buy a whole box of Yu-Gi-Oh! booster packs. The thing is, they think they'll get some kind of huge discount if they buy in bulk, or that the box is something besides boosters. When I tell them it's like a hundred and thirty dollars (since it's exactly the same as buying 36 booster packs alone), they back up in a hurry. Grr.
A lady came up to my register wanting to use "the coupons." Since we have four coupons in circulation at this point and none of them can be used at the same time as each other, I asked her which one. She was like, "Well . . . THE coupons?" I repeated that I wanted to know which one, and she said, "The coupons you all have! What, you don't even KNOW about them?" I had to explain to her that I knew full well about them, but that her purchase could only have one applied to it (which it said on each coupon, pretty plainly, but not everyone reads circumstances; they just look at and remember the bits they like). At that point, she said, "Oh, well then I'll just put the rest of these on hold and keep coming back every day until I used all four of them." Fine and dandy, lady. I said I could hold them back at Customer Service but she'd have to give me a name. She was like, "Well yeah I'll give you a name," as if there was just some level on which we were not connecting. I told her I just wanted her to know I'd be holding them back there because we can't just leave books up at the register for several days or else they will get reshelved. She said she understood that and acted like it was annoying that I was giving her all this information, so I just decided, whatever, I'm not going to talk to her anymore. Then on her way out, she was like, "OH, and where are they going to be when I come back tomorrow?" ::sigh:: If you hadn't been so busy trying to act like I was harassing you by trying to give you all the information, you wouldn't have had to ask that, now would you.
3/12/03
A lady came up to Customer Service and said, "I'm looking for . . . books about . . . soup? Oh, I don't know, they're . . . different books?" When I just kind of looked at her and had no idea what she meant, she replied, "Like, kitchen soup? Soup kitchen? Oh, I don't know. . . ." I asked her if maybe she meant Chicken Soup for the Soul. It turned out that she wasn't even sure that was it when I took her to the section, but it wasn't a soup cookbook; we knew that much.
My manager told me today about an incident that happened to him about a month ago. He said he had been repeatedly asked for a school reading list book, and so of course after he'd been asked a couple times he already knew we were out of it. Then some woman called and asked him for it again, so he was able to answer immediately, "No, we don't." She replied, "You know, you could just pause for a second so people actually think you checked. BYE." No, lady, it's not possible that there are a hundred and nineteen other high school kids that are trying to get this book and maybe a few of them have already called us. No, the manager's just lying to you to avoid having to do any work. What a rag.
A terribly behaved family was in my store today also. I had just cleaned Kids' and then I found a literal TRAIL of books and toys on the floor leading to two young children. Their mother, pushing yet another child in a stroller, was talking to them in a foreign language that I couldn't identify and definitely couldn't understand. And the foreign kids ran around while their mother seated herself in the Activity section and browsed, wreaking havoc and shrieking. I thought maybe the mother would come out and see what the kids did and at least pick it up, but mostly she just ignored it; occasionally she took a book away from them or picked up a pile they'd obviously left and just stuck it on the nearest shelf in a stack. The children pulled out the little hobbyhorses and rode them around then dropped them wherever they felt like, and I picked them up six different times. I began to stalk them so that I could be obvious about the fact that I was picking up after them, so that maybe they would realize that they were behaving rudely. It was almost amusing, and would have been funny if it wasn't so terrible. Then I came out of the back room with a huge rolling cart of books stacked way over my head, and I was pushing it and the family just stood in my way. They saw me coming and just didn't do anything, just stood there and let me push the cart right up to them, and didn't bother to move. I didn't know how to say "Excuse me" in whatever their language was, so I just made a rather large show of pushing around them. Perhaps they were all also blind, which would be weird since they pulled only the brightly colored and visually attractive books off the shelves to leave in the aisle (along with tons of stickers and toys). I just made it a point to walk right up and clean and straighten wherever they were, but I figure it probably only reinforced their obvious belief that "they have people to do that." The woman was also pregnant. God, she's making another one.
3/10/03
Guess what? NO customer Assholes today. And guess what else? I didn't have to work on Customer Service or the register today. I just did an inventory scan. You think it's a coincidence and maybe people just weren't jackasses today? Nah. I think there's a very high possibility that I have no customer Assholes today because I didn't deal with customers, period. Funny how that works.
3/9/03
I was covering a break for one of our new employees on the register. There was a short time when both of us had open registers, because I had come up to cover him but he hadn't actually left yet. So as we were both waiting on customers, I got a woman whose discount card had expired. I asked her if she had a more updated one but she said she knew she updated it, just that she did it at the other store and left the new card in her other wallet. So I did what I'm supposed to: I called Customer Service and asked for the lady's name to be looked up. It turned out that her last renewal had been that same expired card, and that she'd had a card before that that expired in 2001. But those were her only renewals on file. In the meantime, while I was on the phone with Customer Service, the other employee got a woman with the same situation and his response was, "That's okay, I'll just give it to you." My customer heard that.
Well, since I was on the phone, I only got the general gist of what was happening, but the lady was apparently pretty pissed, perceiving that others were getting discounts she wasn't, and didn't realize that the new guy just probably didn't quite know what he was supposed to do in situations like that. I caught something she said about how she was going to Borders instead, and she said, "And in the meantime he just gives it to her." She had a right to be annoyed, but then she started being pretty snippity to me even though I was doing my job right. (According to the computer at Customer Service, they also found there was no card in her name more recent than the one that had expired in May last year.) When I asked her if she needed a bag she was like, "Well yeah," as if no one ever leaves without a bag and I just should have known, and then she asked where she could complain about the whole deal. I sent her to Customer Service where they had forms to fill out about your shopping experience. I hope she didn't think that she got stiffed on the discount because she was black or anything (since the other customer was white, the new cashier and I were also white). This lady wasn't a jerk to me (except maybe for the bag thing), but I'm wondering what sort of slant she put on it when she complained. I didn't know if she would whine that someone else got the discount or if I was going to be the target of her annoyance since I wouldn't give it to her with an expired card and no record of a renewed card.
Someone came up and asked for "song books for children." I asked her what she meant by a song book, because if you think about it, I mean what exactly is a "song book"? Is that a book with just a bunch of lyrics or poetry or whatever, or is that sheet music, or is it a collection of particular songs with a CD attached, or what? But when I asked the lady for clarification, she replied, "You know, just song books." If I don't know what you mean by "song books" the first time, repeating yourself isn't helping. After a couple more shots the lady still couldn't explain what she meant by a "song book," so I showed her where I have nursery rhymes and then the Audio section and left it at that.
A guy came up and asked me, "Do you have in your hand a Green Guide?" I had no idea what he meant by "in my hand," but I just jokingly put out my hands and showed them to him. He gave me more information about what he wanted and I was just about to look it up on the computer to find it for him when my manager walked up, pulled a book off the "customer holds" shelf, took a rubber-banded piece of paper with a name on it off of the book, and handed it to the customer. He replied, "Oh, I guess I asked the wrong person!" Turned out he called and had it reserved under his name. That information probably would have helped me find the damn thing. But no, when you call a bookstore the person on the phone just walks around holding the book "in their hand" until you get there. I told the manager later that he'd given me no indication that the book had been put on hold for him, and she replied, "Oh, yeah, that guy's a jerk. He doesn't listen and he doesn't care about anything that doesn't have to do with himself."
A guy came up and asked me, "Is there a place where you have like books on plays, and skits and stuff?" I told him we had a Performing Arts section and started to take him over there and he followed me, and added, "You know, plays, skits, Easter stuff." I kind of stopped right there and asked him, "Okay, now we're looking for Easter stuff?" Apparently he had some weird misconception that there would be a wealth of information on Easter-oriented plays he could do, and that he would be able to find them by asking for the Play section. It always amazes me when people with a very specific intent give the employees such general clues with which to help them.
Today I got a customer at the register who asked me, "Where can I find books about money?" I just asked for more information because "books about money" could mean coin collecting books or personal finance books or whatever. The response, of course, was, "You know, books about money." ::sigh:: I love when they just repeat the question. If you'd given me enough information the first time, I wouldn't bother to ask for more. This should probably indicate to you that you are not being specific. Asking me where books on "china" are (as did the lady from 5/30/01) may yield a trip to the Travel section or the Collectibles section, depending on whether you give me some sort of context. (Incidentally, this guy wanted books on collecting old money.)
3/8/03
Since today was Saturday, we had to put up with a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card freak kids. We have a new series of cards that came out only last week, and a couple of kids had heard a rumor that the packs with special holographic cards in them weighed more, so they brought in their hand-held gram scale (retail value: About $40) and proceeded to try to weigh the various wrapped packages of cards. Two of them were very amusing; one was weighing the packs while the other kept other kids away so they couldn't see what was happening. I told the "guarding" kid that he was being territorial about the area and if he peed anywhere to mark his territory I would kill him. Anyway, it turned out that even weighing them didn't make a difference, so I found it amusing when some kid came up, wanting to pick his own packs out, and began trying to judge their weight with his hands. When his friend came up and yelled at him saying he didn't have magical powers, the kid replied, "I know! It's just I can tell which ones are heavier." The hell you can, if a gram counter can't.
Here's the supreme evil of today. In extreme enthusiasm for the new Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, a bunch of kids (I think about three of them) ran right up behind the register (where we keep the cards because they are currently the most often stolen item in the store) and began looking at what we had at close range. Then a woman I assume was their mother came up behind them--yes, also behind the register, and just began looking also. I was ringing up a customer at the time so I just called over to them something like "Hey, y'all, you're behind the counter," but I couldn't do anything about it until after my customer was finished. I completed the transaction and then went over to the family and said, "Excuse me, I'm not supposed to have you back behind the counter," and the woman just GLARED at me (I swear, it was the evillest look) and said, "I know, they are just LOOKING," and I replied, "I know, but they were crowded up behind the counter, and--" She cut me off, shepherding her kids out from behind the register and replied, "They weren't crowding up, they were JUST LOOKING!" She kept glaring at me so I just repeated that I'm not allowed to have people behind the counter and then I ignored her and went on with my line. I was pretty cheerful about the whole thing, but that really bugged me. She and her kids were the ones in the wrong, and they were making no move to correct themselves after I told them the first time. If she "knew" they weren't supposed to be there, she needed to get them out, and not after they've finished looking either. They can look from the other side of the counter. Later I mentioned the incident to one of my managers, and she responded by moving the display even farther behind the counter, so that they'd have to go right behind the cashier's back to get to the cards if they were going to do that.
Here's a kid (early teenage) who has apparently already received some great training in how to be an annoying customer when he grows up. First he came up to the register and said he wanted "packs." I asked him, packs of what? He said, "Yu-Gi-Oh!" Even if you don't play Yu-Gi-Oh! (like I don't), you generally know that there are many different kinds of "packs," so as a fan he was sure to know that. Apparently he didn't think about that. So I asked him what kind and he finally responded that he wanted "the purple" and specified that he wanted two. So I went over to get them, and came back, and before I'd even rung them up he's like "Annnd . . . how much is it?" waving his money around. I told him I would tell him when I RANG IT UP. It's not like a cashier needs to be prompted by a customer in order to complete a transaction. Believe me, we know how. We only do it several thousand times a week.
I had a lady at Customer Service who asked for a book, so I looked it up. It turned out there were like thirty-three versions of it (hey, it WAS a Bible, they do that), and I told her we didn't carry any of that particular kind of Open Bible in the store and would have to order it. Her response? "Well, it's called the Open Bible." Oh really? That wouldn't be the thing I just looked up and gave you the availability of, would it? It's amazing how people seem to think that if the answer is something they don't like, it's only because you misunderstood them.
By the way, I hate people who mistreat pens when they think they are out of ink. Our thermal paper at the register sucks when you put it on a regular hard surface (like our counter) and try to sign your name. People respond to this by doing everything from bopping the pens (yeah, that always works, when they're out of ink you bop it and it works fine) to yelling "Hel-LO!" at them. Usually they just say, "Uh-oh, your pen died!" or "It's out of ink!" I inform them that the pen works fine, and as soon as I put something under their paper it works.
Urgh. I was cleaning the Kids' section today and I heard a family wandering around near me, lamenting their inability to find a book. I heard the mother asking the daughter if she knew the author and the kid said no, and then they wandered around some more. My God. You have no idea what sort of book you're looking for or who wrote it, but you're just going to wander around hoping it will jump out and bite you on the nose. That behavior I don't understand, unless you just like browsing, but they seemed in a bit of a hurry. Finally the mom found me and asked me where the book was and I knew automatically (of course, being awesome like I am), and I told her it was in the Chapter Book section but she just said, "OH, okay, thank you," and proceeded to start searching in Intermediate Series. I don't know what made her think Intermediate Series = Chapter Books, but I stopped her and showed her where the section was. Then later she and her like five daughters stopped by Customer Service and the lady seemed to think she was asking for a rare, unheard-of item when she asked if we sell Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. Weird. Strangely enough, the apparently oldest daughter displayed amazing customer courtesy: She stopped one of her siblings from touching fragile things in Hallmark and said to the kid, "No, don't touch, they're not ours." If only everyone had that sort of thought process.
I had a man buying Yu-Gi-Oh! boosters for his son, and was shocked to find we charge full retail price for them: $3.99. He complained, "Right next door at Mega Comics they're two bucks!" I told him $3.99 was the retail, said so right on the box, and that Mega Comics was probably doing a promotion on theirs while we didn't have any promotion. (Hey, they're a comic book store and we're not, and we're also not independently owned, so we can't just decide, hey, this is on sale now.) I asked the guy if he'd rather me take the cards off his bill so he could get them there instead, but he replied, "No, I'll get them here because my son wants them. But after this, I am NEVER shopping here again." Way to go. If you try to shame the cashier, she'll give you a discount. Or not. In this case, the cashier just smiled, nodded, and wrote about you on her website. Happy?
A lady was in my checkout line and when she got up to me she complained that she needed to ask a question but there was no one at Customer Service. (Surprise! We were shortstaffed because there had been no café schedule made, so no one came in to work there and we ended up having to cover their asses with one of our people. The manager was working Customer Service.) I explained the situation to the lady, and told her I would call someone to meet her at the desk. She just stood there, looked a little disappointed for some reason, and then said, "But I just wanted to ask about a book." I told her she was welcome to it, and that I was calling someone to the desk for her. Finally after another hesitation she left. I think she thought I could somehow help her, or that I was just being a rules stickler or something because I wouldn't let her ask for help at the register. Sorry, ma'am, registers can't look up books. If you "just want to ask about a book," Customer Service is your best bet.
3/5/03
Some lady wanted a certain kind of stuffed animal. Apparently a whole bunch of them had been put aside for her but she needed one more of a certain kind. I looked at the ones she already had and I hadn't ever seen them before, so I told her if they weren't in the Kids' section in the baskets then I didn't know. I would have gone over to look on the toy tables or in Hallmark (on the off chance that they might be there) if I hadn't already been helping someone else, but since I was busy, I just suggested that she check those places. The lady's response was to ask me to get her "someone who knows the inventory." I hate being treated as incompetent. One person cannot be expected to know every item in the store. But beyond that, I know more than most, and I hadn't ever seen those toys before. I strongly suspect they were some kind of very short-lived Hallmark promotion, and she probably got the last of them. But no, I'm sure it's just that I don't know the inventory.
3/4/03
A guy was looking for cards that were blank inside and had no assigned purpose. After going around the section a few times and finding very few that fit his needs, he thanked me and told me he preferred "the cards with the gay little pictures." I told him that was a weird way of phrasing that.
Here's one that happened to one of my coworkers. A solicitor called our store and didn't seem to understand that she had called a business. She was somehow involved with health insurance and my coworker kept saying, "Well this is a business," but then the lady started trying to get her to answer the questions for herself personally, insisting that she wasn't selling anything. Whatever. Don't call someone at work and solicit them, dammit.
3/3/03
One of my coworkers answered the phone with the usual short spiel, but stopped suddenly and made a face. Then she said "hold on" and put the customer on hold, then told me what had happened. Apparently in the middle of her saying the spiel the customer just interrupted with a snide "Yeah, could you look up a book for me?" Dude, you are NOT talking to a computer. We as human beings do not enjoy being interrupted, even if it's just the opening spiel.
3/2/03
Today, I was visited by customers who populate alternate universes! Read on.
"I need stuff about the twin towers," said a lady. I asked for clarification on what sort of "stuff" she meant. Get this. It turned out that she wanted bookmarks and other random merchandise relating to the second Lord of the Rings movie. She was calling it "the twin towers" even though its title was The Two Towers, and seemed puzzled that I didn't know what she was talking about. We eventually figured it out, but in my universe, usually that means you want something about the September 11th disaster. Go figure.
I was walking in the store talking on the portable phone to a customer. I passed a man who apparently wanted my help, and he raised his hand exactly as you might see in a restaurant when a customer wants assistance. Well, being that I was mid-sentence with a customer on the phone and needed to be at the computer to answer his question, I went on to the desk (right near the hand-raise man) and began proceeding with helping him. The guy came to the desk and waited for me, looking at me pointedly. When I was off, the guy said, even more pointedly, "I raised my hand." Uh, 'scuse me? Even in elementary school they know that raising your hand doesn't necessarily guarantee you attention. I told him I'd been helping another customer, but he didn't care to listen and plowed ahead with his question. We didn't have what he wanted, and when I told him that he said, "Well, can you get it?" We couldn't. He just expressed his disgust in a dismissive hand wave and walked away.
You're welcome.
Rude is the standard in his universe.
Here's a fun one. We were dealing with a woman and her three daughters (or so it seemed), two of whom were very young and one of whom was apparently a teenager or very close to it. The entire family seemed to suffer from inability to read, though that is common in toddlers so I don't blame them, just the older two. The woman was holding three regular-priced books and wanted to know if it was true that they were buy two get one free. I asked her why she thought that and she pointed out a sign. Well, I pointed to the same sign and called her attention to the fact that it clearly showed a sale book sticker on there, saying the special was on anything with that type of sticker. That was the end of that. And then the older girl walked by the cart I was working with and picked up my pen. My pen is a Bop-It pen and I had accidentally left it on top of the papers I was checking off, and she just grabbed it and started exclaiming over how cool it was, so I informed her that we sold those in the store and showed her my Etch-A-Sketch pen too. I showed her where the other pens were, and somewhere in the process she managed to give my pen to one of the toddler daughters, who promptly went God-knows-where with it. This disturbed me because she just grabbed MY pen and let the frigging kid walk off with it. Excuse me? But anyway, she started browsing the pens and found a Boggle pen. "Ooh, it's BOOGLE!" she said. Boogle? Wow, someone Hooked on Phonics didn't work for. She took that pen off the rack and showed it to Mom, exclaiming, "Look, Mom, it's Boogle!" The mom didn't notice and repeated "Boogle" somewhere in the sentence. This is just wrong. In their universe they apparently don't learn to read too well.
Anyway I decided while I had the mother there that I ought to mention my pen, so I asked them to please make sure that before they left I got my pen back. The mom wanted to know who had it and the teen daughter told her, but then neither of them made any move to get my pen! What the hell? MY PEN DAMMIT!!! I kind of followed them around for a bit, then gave up and figured I'd just catch them at the register. Then I got busy, and finally when I went up to the register they were there and the lady was acting all confused that she hadn't been able to find me. What I didn't understand was why she hadn't just gotten it from her child before they were on their way out the damn door. Grr.
A lady came up and asked for "Sunset books." I asked her point blank, "What's that?" She said "Oh you know, there's a 'Sunset book' on cooking, one on gardening, you know--where would those be?" I replied that such things wouldn't be together if they're on a variety of different subjects, and asked her if she knew any of their titles. In a sort of offhanded "forget you!" way, she just waved her hand at me and said, "Oh, YOU don't know," and walked off. If only people had some idea of how vague they're being when they're talking to someone who handles a couple thousand books a day. But in her universe, every bookseller would automatically be aware of a possibly obscure series of books on various subjects.
A guy came up to me and wanted me to show him where the "linears" are. I asked him what a linear was. He informed me that linears are books that have the English translation of a Hebrew or Greek text opposite of the actual original text. I said we don't have a section for such things but asked whether he was looking for something for which he could name a title. He said a couple more things that clued me in that he was looking for the Bible laid out that way. But then when I called it a Bible in my next question, he told me that it wasn't a Bible. But then when I asked him exactly what book was being displayed with Greek or Hebrew on one side and English on the other, he replied, "Oh, well, the Bible." Um, I think that classifies as a Bible, ya know, if it's the Bible. But maybe not. Remember, we are being visited by inhabitants from another universe; perhaps Bibles are only Bibles sometimes where he's from.
I overheard a customer asking my manager whether The King of Torts came in paperback. That's the newest Grisham book to date, and just came out earlier this week or something. When my manager informed him of this and the fact that books don't come in paperback until six months to a year later, he replied, "Well, I mean where's the softcover?" Um. Apparently in this guy's universe a softcover isn't the same thing as a paperback.
And you'll love this one.
First off, I was in the Kids' section and I was accosted by two girls who could have been around twelve or maybe early teens. One wanted to know where the "adventure books" were. I asked her to be more specific since we have no "adventure books" section. The other girl chimed in, "Adventure books, it's a genre." Ooh, big word, dunno if my slow retail brain can process that one, kid. I told them again that we didn't HAVE an "adventure books" section and asked what in particular they were looking for. It was then that they began to ignore me because they thought they saw what they wanted without my help, and proceeded to just walk away and go through the series books. I overheard one of them say to the other, "Here they are! Oh no wait, this is the Mystery section." Incidentally, there is no "Mystery section" in Kids' either.
So then I was helping a mother and daughter in the Kids' section. Ordinarily when I help people with the computer, they come to the desk with me, but in this case they were staying and browsing while I was finding out some information. Unfortunately this made me look available when I was busy, since no one was at the desk. A woman came up to me briskly and wanted me to help her find a couple of books. I told her I was already helping someone and I could look them up in just a sec, but she just seemed impatient and rattled off their titles, asking me to just point her. I didn't happen to know either offhand, and told her I could type them in and find out where they were and even help her locate them if she would just wait for a second because these other people have been waiting for my help too. She said in an annoyed voice, "Well is there anyone ELSE I can get to help me?" I assured her I'd be done in just a second, thinking that if she'd withheld all her whining I would have been finished helping the other customers already. So I went over to give the mother and daughter the news that their book would have to be ordered, and when I came back to the desk the woman was gone.
So I looked up another book the mother and daughter wanted, and THAT had to be ordered too, so I told them, and then when I came back to the desk the rushed lady was walking up as well, seeming annoyed. (I figure she had probably been sprinting around the store trying to find an employee who could help her that instant.) When she saw me at the desk she just fired off, "Could you just help me please??" I assured her that now I was finished helping the other people and was free to help her now. I looked up her books, but she didn't want me to help her find them; she just wanted me to point her. So I told her where they were supposed to be. When she came back, having been unable to find them (oh that cursed alpha-by-author system), she demanded to know whether the computer said we had any. I informed her that the computer doesn't tell me that; it doesn't have the inventory of the store (and yes that sucks, but it wasn't as if I'd told her YES WE HAVE IT, because I'm always really specific about this because I hate when people misunderstand what the computer does). She just rolled her eyes about this point, then walked away (no "thank you" of course), and began calling for a daughter, saying, "Come on, we're leaving" (oh no, must get out of the evil store that did not satisfy me in thirty seconds or less), and it turned out she was with the girls who'd clued me in to the inside information that adventure books were a genre. Shoulda known. On the way out I heard one of them complaining that it wasn't her fault we didn't have any sports books. Well, I'd be willing to bet that if you'd ask the employee for what you actually want instead of trying to categorize the store by yourself, maybe you'd be more successful in locating it. Well, have fun in the other universe's bookstore, where the genre of adventure books is labeled in neon lights.
3/1/03
Some lady called on the phone and apparently she had bought a sale book in the store, paid for postage and the book at the register, and had it sent to her son in prison, but he had never received it. Once it became apparent that it had not been ordered through the computer system but had just been bought in the store, I told her there was nothing I could do to track the order and that the manager who personally mails the "jail mail" (as we call it) was not in the store at the moment. This lady seemed to think that translated to "I haven't given her enough information." So she began to read her receipt to me. She told me it said the person who rang her up was Kelly, and that it had been such and such a date in January, and she was in the middle of reading the transaction number to me when I had to interrupt her and reiterate that nothing she was telling me was helping me find out why her son hadn't received the book yet. Her response to THAT was to become vocally puzzled over the fact that the book on the receipt didn't seem to be the same book she'd actually bought. (That does happen on occasion with sale books; they might have the wrong sticker, and no one really notices because sale books are not stickered by us; they're stickered by some random warehouse at Book$mart.) It was a book on chess, but she was also one of those evil people who insist on calling it "chest." It's like when people who say Stephen Hawking's name are unable to resist putting an S on the end of it. I want to kill them all. In any case we got her phone number to ring her back about the problem, and when we tried, the number didn't work. Go figure.
A guy called asking if we had "computer books." I asked him to be more specific and he just repeated his question as to whether there were "computer books" in our store. I mean shit, are you asking for the contraption Penny carried on Inspector Gadget, or do you want a book ABOUT something in the computer world? Turns out he had an ISBN for a very specific type of "computer book"; it's called the MCSA MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit. I'd say that's pretty specific, and if I'd said "yes" or "no" to "do you have computer books?" he'd still have had no idea whether we had that one. I hate when people are vague when they have the option of being exceedingly specific. The guy had the book's social security number for Pete's sake!
I was on the phone today and some woman wouldn't stop trying to attract my attention and calling, "Ma'am! Ma'am! Ma'am!" I don't get it. You're wasting your energy, lady, I cannot help you. When I got off the phone and got to her, her urgent request was for me to help her find a book. I guess she assumed I must be on a personal call talking about whether taking birth control pills makes your breasts bigger. But I was on the phone with another customer. What a sin, eh?
Today, being Saturday, was the Day of Yu-Gi-Oh! League. This usually means parents and kids calling constantly asking about the League; when it starts, ends, what they do there, does it cost money, et cetera. Well, today, I had a woman ask all those questions. In three separate phone calls. She just kept calling back, having thought of more shit to ask. Bizarre.
We get shipments of new stuff on Sundays. So I was pretty surprised when a customer, having been unable to find what he wanted, approached me and informed me that the magazine he wanted was probably in the stack of new stuff he saw sitting there waiting to go out. I asked what he meant, knowing full well we'd had no new mags for a week and wouldn't have them 'til tomorrow morning, and he informed me that there were scads of boxes sitting unopened by the back of the store, which to him translated to "what I want is in there." I went back to see what he meant. A bunch of said boxes were voided titles from the rest of the store. The rest were indeed magazines. Old ones from the week before, labeled and set to go out with the arrival of the truck the next day. Yup, dude, you figured it out. No, actually . . . let us do it. :) Thanks! (Note: He wasn't rude or anything; I just thought it was funny that he thought he had our system figured out and he wasn't even close.)
Our manager had a lunch date and both the manager and the date were wandering around the store trying to find each other. Finally she got pissed off and announced over the intercom for him to come to the front, and added, "Your mother is waiting." I thought it was funny and burst out laughing. Some other employee in the store who knew the situation started laughing too. It was cool.
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