My Record of Work: The Annoying, the Interesting, and the Just Plain Weird--The Year 2003.

5/29/03

Aah, the joy of inventory. I don't usually work on Thursdays, but there I was to help with the immense task of fielding price checks. So, early in the morning, a woman handling the inventory in the Bible section called out to ask a question, and I went to help her. She had found a map wedged in with the Bibles, and told me it obviously didn't belong there and asked if I could just put it where the maps go, if they hadn't already been counted. So, I went over to do just that, but unfortunately the maps had been counted already, so she was going to have to put it in with her counts--no big deal. But she argued with me and said she didn't know what key it was. I told her it was "Key 4"; that is the category for all our hardback books, large softcover books, and maps. "No," the lady told me, "Key 4 is religious books." Okay, lady, is this your store? Nopey. You're the inventory specialist, I'm the damn book specialist, and you're asking ME so you'd better trust my answer. Not to mention that when you get to the rest of the store you'll find out Key 4 is a LOT more than just Bibles. If you know what you're doing so well, don't ask anyone any questions, huh?

Other than that I just dealt with a lot of jerkitude: The inventory folks asking me for prices or keys when both were right on the sticker. I even had one lady tell me to find her a price on this title when only the top one was missing its sticker, the others had really BIG price tags on them and she hadn't even checked them, just assuming that all the books that were the same must not have a price on them. If "accuracy is [your] prime concern," I shudder to think.

5/28/03

Some lady called and I was busy doing a return so the cashier picked up my phone for me. She relayed this to me afterwards, but I picked up most of it just listening to her side of the conversation. Apparently this lady was all miffed that she'd looked on the Internet and found that the prices of the books she'd just bought at our store were cheaper on our website. Yes, lady, we're just trying to trick you. Oh wait, no. Retail stores sell at retail value, while online stores generally can sell for cheaper because they run out of a warehouse. That means lower operations costs and lower employment costs. Plus they know you have to pay shipping so they want to offer it for less so they can compete. No, we won't price match with our online site. That's just goofy. ALL websites are like that.

A guy came up and asked me for books on astrology. I repeated it back to him because I wanted to make sure I'd heard him say "astrology" and not "astronomy." I guess he took that to mean that I didn't know what astrology was, but apparently he was the one who didn't know, because he added, "You know, looking at the stars?" I said, "Oh, astronomy?" and he confirmed himself a mixer-upper. Yes, the Science section is a little different than the New Age section.

Wahaha! I had to do a little time on the register today because our cashier got sick and just couldn't stand up there anymore, so that gave me much more contact with Assholes. Here we go.

I kinda felt bad for this lady, and I honestly (really!!) don't think she's a jerk, but she had a brainfart while trying to remember her address. I waited patiently until finally she managed to get it out, but she had problems with all the parts: House numbers, street number, zip code. After it was all in there for her discount card application, I said something I probably shouldn't have: "Sorry 'bout that pop quiz." Heh. Then I felt like maybe she'd take it wrong so I just started blabbering about how sometimes I forget my phone number because I don't exactly call myself. Oh well.

I had a guy tell me he needed "some of those books for fourth grade." Everyone and their momma's coming in for their school reading, so I figured he was talking about that, and asked which books. He replied, "The ones for fourth grade." I told him I had no way of knowing what those books were, and he added, "You know, like math, reading, English." I figured he must be talking about workbooks to help your kid get extra practice or whatever, so I confirmed that with him and took him to the section. I showed him how it was organized and he seemed satisfied, but then he just picked up a workbook, looked at it, and asked, "Now how do you tell how much these things cost?" I told him, "Well, you look at the price sticker on the back." Yeah, that's revolutionary. . . .

When I was on the phone I said something goofy. The customer said, "I was wondering if you have a couple books." I told her we had more than a couple, and she laughed. She said, "Well I guess that's a stupid way to ask a question, isn't it?" I told her people do it all the time and to just go ahead and ask. But then she did ask a ridiculous question. When I looked up her titles and we'd have to order them, she replied, "So you don't have them?" Ding-ding, pet peeve. I wouldn't say I had to ORDER them if there was a possibility that we might HAVE them, would I???

When the cashiers were changing out, I overheard the night cashier talking about a woman who'd accused her of stealing her credit card at the register. She'd never taken it out of her wallet, but she kept saying she'd given it to the cashier already, and that she KNEW she had it somewhere, and really getting ugly about it. Finally after the cashier requested that she PLEASE just check her wallet to see if it was there, it ended, because . . . well, it was there. She'd probably confused it with her discount card, but Jeeeee-zus. By all means, lady, before you explore any options that might be YOUR fault, accuse the cashier of stealing your credit card! I have to say that is one of the worst strategies for credit card theft I've ever heard.

Back at Customer Service I had to take a phone call and this asshole of a man had called at an unfortunate time when I was pretty busy. I was already in the process of checking a price up at the register when he called, so I had to put him on hold to get back to the desk to look up his ISBNs. When I got back there and asked him if he was still holding, first he acted all confused, and said, "Well, I'm waiting for the girl," and so I said, "Well, I'm here," and he replied, "I need to have someone look up my ISBN numbers!" So I told him I was READY for them (my hand had kind of been poised over the keypad since I'd gotten to the computer, so grr), and finally he started reciting them. Well, I got the status on one of them and then the other line started ringing. So I told him I had another call and I'd be right back, and then he became frustrated and said something that sounded like "You deal with me!" I said, "Excuse me?" and he said, "You put them on hold and then you deal with me." I replied, "Well that was the plan, that's generally how I handle these situations, I'll be right back." I didn't wait for him to say anything else and just put him on hold. But my lord, that was just over the line. As if I need to be TOLD how I should deal with customers, or like it's some revolutionary concept that customer service people should deal with customers in the order they asked for help. Hello! I know what to do.

Here's my rudey of the day. She was asking me for books by Clark Howard, and I thought she might be talking about the author of the popular Get Clark Smart, but I wasn't sure if that was his last name, because usually people know the book's name and not his name. So I tried to confirm this with her, but she suddenly became incredibly hard of hearing when I tried to get any information out of her. I asked her if she was looking for Get Clark Smart and she was all, "What? I don't know what you're saying, honey," and then finally, "JUST look up Clark Howard!" I sighed and complied with her wishes, and found that Get Clark Smart popped up, among other things. So I said the title again and she still didn't comprehend, so she just demanded that I take her to wherever his books are. So, I came around to take her to Personal Finance, and while we were walking over there I tried to warn her that we might be out because people had been asking for it a lot lately. She didn't hear that either, but when we got to the section and started looking for it and I repeated that it was possible we'd be out, suddenly she was hearing really well. "Now there is NO way you should be out," she barked, giving me the evil eye, "Clark Howard was HERE and you shouldn't be out. Let me speak to your manager." Ooh, she wants to speak to my MANAGER. I decided not to try to explain to her that I hadn't SAID we were out--I was just preparing her for the possibility--and figured Pat would have a lot of fun playing with this one. (She has even less tolerance for rude people than I do.)

So, the lady asked me where my manager was, and since I'd just heard her get called to the register, I said, "The register, right now," and she replied, "And what is HIS name?" Smirking, I replied, "Pat." Hehe. So off she went to take her officious little butt up to my MANAGER, who was sure to be able to fix this terrible situation of us being OUT of a book when Clark Howard was HERE. Whatever "HERE" means. I sure was doubting he'd made an appearance at my store, so I didn't know what she thought made it so unlikely that the book would be sold out. So, soon enough Pat came storming back to Customer Service, picked up the phone, and started calling the other store, asking if they had any copies of one of Clark Howard's other books. Apparently Pat already knew we were out, and while she was on the phone the in-store line rang, and it was the cashier telling me to let Pat know that her customer standing at the register had just left in a huff, complaining that she would not wait.

When I told Pat, I thought she'd explode. We had a nice little conversation (while she was on hold with the other store), in which I told her that the lady had been really rude to me, and Pat replied, "Oh, she was a bitch!" I told her about the lady saying, "Clark Howard was HERE," and asked what the hell she meant by "here." Pat didn't know--apparently he'd made an appearance somewhere--and she started to go off on how that lady didn't understand retail. Oh yes, of course, a celebrity comes into town and every store in the area makes sure to fully stock his book; we keep our eyes on the pulse for ANY possible attraction and order massive quantities, or else look incompetent. Wait, no. If the guy wants to sell his book in town, he probably brings a bunch to his appearance, and maybe he has his people contact US and let us know to get more copies. We're a chain of over 200 stores and I somehow doubt that our company, based in Alabama, is going to notice the local appearance of one celebrity and ship us a bunch of books, just to one area.

The other store's employee came back on the line and Pat told them the customer had left in a snit, and then we continued our chat. Pat ranted on, "I work in retail. I don't have a life. I don't go around to see celebrity appearances. And I can't control what the store carries and how fast it sells. The only thing I can control is my own bodily functions, and sometimes NOT EVEN THAT."

5/27/03

This wasn't really jerky per se--well, maybe it was--but this lady came up and asked me for books that were "specifically on smoking." Well, I'm thinking, what the hell does that mean, books specifically on smoking? What's there to write about smoking? Are you talking about books on how to quit? Humor books about smoking? I have no clue. But then, when I'm trying to figure out how the hell to answer her, she says, "You know, smoking. Smoking meat?" Huh? Oh, you mean like books on how to do that particular food technique. Think you could possibly be a bit more vague? Again, this goes in a category with the guy who wanted "books about money" and the lady who got pissed when I directed her to Travel when she wanted "books on china." Will the world never grasp the concept of multiple word meanings?

5/26/03

A lady with a vague disposition approached the Customer Service desk and asked me if her special 20% off coupon applied to just one item or her whole order. I explained that it was indeed 20% off the whole transaction, and she started pondering whether to get a certain expensive book she'd encountered. The way she started describing it to me then, it sounded like she wanted me to look it up, so I tried, but it was a book we didn't carry. But she didn't want me to look it up anyway because she'd already seen it. (Actually it weirdly turned out that it had mistakenly been ordered for a customer and never sent back, and was sitting on the shelf with no store sticker or anything, and that was why it was on our shelf without us having a record of it. But anyway.) Then it got all bizarre because she said it was a $125 book, and was saying maybe it'd be worth it to get it because she'd get thirty percent off. Wait a second.

I told her no, she'd get twenty, and then she said "But no, with the coupon plus my discount card." I told her the coupon was to give members 20% instead of the usual 10% and was to be presented with the card, but she just kept saying, "Well yeah, but then plus the discount card." I finally got her to understand that it would be a total of 20%. And then she started being vocal about her wondering what 20% off of $125 would be. You have to be joking. I thought she was, until she asked me for my pen to work it out. Uh-huh.

In my normal cleaning of the Kids' section, I found several books missing from their usual spots, and though that sometimes means they were bought, usually it just means I'll soon find them on a sale table, somewhere behind something, or in a stack in another section. This time it was none of the above, and I wondered where they were. I know my section really well and can tell if there's a missing book, by the way--I'm kind of amazing that way. So then imagine my surprise when I started putting out my new books for the week and I found all those missing books in with the new books? Oh, it's because my co-workers got lazy last night, found them all over the floor, and decided they didn't want to bother finding the right places, so they just put them in my boxes as if they were new shipment. Sorry guys, I noticed. :)

A mother and daughter asked me if I carry a certain kids' series, and I had heard of it once before but we don't carry it. So I told them so. But then when I said that, their response was, "Okay, well I guess we'll walk around the store a little and see if we can find it then." What the hell? It's so impossible that I know off the top of my head that we DON'T have something that it must just translate to "Oh, she doesn't know"? Grrrr.

A lady wanted to know where we'd have books on "knights in shining armor." I asked her for some clarification, since that could be like historical fiction or stuff about ancient armor or medieval history, whatever. She didn't seem to be able to do anything except say that same sentence again, so I asked, "So you just want stuff about knights?" And she added, " . . . In shining armor!" Ummkay. Well, I told her that I knew of a few books in the Kids' section but I wasn't sure they'd serve her purpose. "Well they're FIVE-year-olds," she said, as if I was supposed to know that, and she told me it was for a theme party. So I told her maybe there was something that would fit after all, maybe some books with knights, and she finished my sentence up with " . . . In shining armor," again. Yes, I know that your party's theme is "Knights in shining armor" now, and just because that's on the invitation does not mean I have to say the whole phrase whenever we talk about it. ::sigh:: After she was done looking, she left all the books on knights in a pile on the floor. Thanks for your help, I think she was trying to say.

Okay, so I know toilet training is a weird subject, right? And that there would probably be pictures of kids successfully using the potty on their covers. Usually that's not so bad, as in these cases.

5/25/03

I don't remember when this was, sometime last week, but I never wrote it down, so here it is. Some goofy lady was asking me for "Love stories? Love poetry?" and didn't seem to even be very clear on what she wanted. I took her to the Poetry section and pointed out that there were several love poem books, and she picked one up and was like, "Oh, so are these for sale?" Are these for sale. In a bookstore, are the books for sale. What the FUCK do you think??? Hahah! She decided later that what she actually wanted was romance novels. Go figure.

A guy was asking me for a certain magazine and apparently there are a few with the same name. The first one I encountered wasn't the right one, and so after I was unsuccessful once, he said, "Is the guy there?" I imagined "the guy" is the dude in charge of the magazines. I said he was working today, then asked him if the one he wanted was more like a newspaper than a magazine. He replied, "Well is the guy there??" It'd really be nice if maybe you'd answer my question instead of demanding "the guy." Turned out that WAS what he wanted, and he said, "Can you put it at the front?" Since we don't save things "at the front," I asked him if he could give me a name so I could hold it at Customer Service, but then he just said, "Are you at the front?" I said that no, I was actually standing in front of the magazines because you asked me to go there and find your magazine. Finally I got a name out of him and got off the phone. Goddamn.

So, some guy I've had many issues with before came back again. He had a coupon that said he could use it this weekend plus Monday, and he wanted to know if he would be allowed to apply the discount to his purchase today and then receive the coupon back so he could use it again. I told him no, it's a coupon, one use. So he accepted that and told me he just didn't have time to shop today and went away, but knowing he's been a dork before, I went to the cashier and warned him ahead of time that if that guy asks for his coupon back he CAN'T HAVE IT. And would you believe it! He asked the cashier if he could have his coupon back, are you surprised? And he apparently had had time to shop because he found three books. It just REALLY bugs me that he just turned around and asked someone else after I already told him I don't THINK so.

A guy wanted me to check on the status of his order, which he had just placed last week and he hadn't been called. That's annoying right there; we get shipments once a week, Sunday, and if you placed it after Sunday last week, you're not going to get it until it comes off our truck, so me looking your account up to see what's going on is kinda pointless. But anyway, that's just normal shit I deal with every day. The reason I point this guy out is that when he asked me to check on his account and I told him all that shit, he asked me to do it anyway and then pointed to my computer, just kind of signaling at it. It'd probably help me if you'd do something like give me your name. :)

5/24/03

I had a lady at Customer Service waving at me, so I went up there and she said, "Can you help me here??" I asked her what she was looking for, and she said, "I'm purchasing BOOKS!" I pointed to the checkout and told her that was where she could pay, and she was like OH and went away. The wrong way. In just a moment I heard her wander into the café (which is in the complete opposite corner from where I pointed) and was confusedly asking the guy at the counter, "Can I pay here???" The café guy was like, "You can pay here if you want, and there's also the register over there." I didn't hear anything else, but I was just like . . . Lord, if pointing in the exact direction of a giant red sign is not good enough to give directions, that lady should just not be in the world on her own.

Future asshole customer alert!

Actually, he's already in a category by himself, but this is a kid we're talking about, so I'll be a little softer on him. Not by much, though. Because he was being a little jackass.

First I get a call from a kid on the phone. He wants to know when we start our Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament. I told him we start at 2, and he pauses and says, "Well I thought you start earlier?" Yes this is a statement, but with a question mark at the end. I told him that no, we don't start earlier; the duels start at 2 and yes kids show up way beforehand but nothing official starts through the bookstore until 2 o'-freaking-clock. And then he pauses again and says, "Well don't they start at like eleven?" Kid, if you had such a sure idea of what you wanted to believe in your fantasy Yu-Gi-Oh! universe, why the fuck did you call me to find out? So anyway, I told him again that sometimes parents drop their kids off or they come over here earlier, but the store does nothing until 2. He hangs up and that SHOULD have been the end of it.

Not so! Now, he comes to the store! He'd called to find out when and still came whenever the hell he felt like it, probably telling a parent that it started when he thought it did. So he asks me the SAME QUESTION. "When does Yu-Gi-Oh! start?" It's now about 11 in the morning, by the way. I told him the exact same words, and he argued with me, AGAIN, in the same way. "Well I thought they started at 11? They did last week." I told him that we have NEVER started Yu-Gi-Oh! at 11, not last week or any other week, and that if he saw kids playing they were doing it on their own time and he was free to go find someone to play with if anyone was here yet. But he chose instead to wander around the store, periodically find me, and ask more crap questions. Here they are!

First: "Do you have a book called The Bad Beginning?" What do we look like, a bookstore? Yes of course we have the first book in the most popular series besides Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Of course this question was presented to me as if I wouldn't know what the hell it was, when in fact not only have I read the whole series but I've made a freakin' website about it. This wouldn't have been bad at all, actually (him asking about the book), but then he was like, "You're out of the second one??" when I showed him the display. No, we're not out of the second one. Someone just bought the last one from this display. But you asked for the FIRST one so I didn't think it would be an ISSUE. So I got him the second one but then he wants to know where the third one is. Right next to the second one, usually. And THAT'S the one he was in the middle of reading. ::sigh:: Take notes, y'all: If you want something specific, you should really ask for that thing, not just things that are like it.

Onward! More crappier! The kid wanted to know where the videos of the series are. The answer is: DING! NO ONE EVER MADE A VIDEO. There are rumors of a movie in the distant freaking future. But no, his friend said there are videos. I'd be interested to know about the videos, man. Too bad your friend was mistaken, or probably given your track record, you remembered wrong. When he wanted to know where our copies of the fifth Harry Potter book were, I think I almost choked him. I sure as hell HOPE that all the copies of Harry Potter 5 are locked up where this kid can't get them, because we've got most of a month to wait before it comes out. I began to get curious if I should follow him around and squeeze the little pecker for more stories, but I figured this page isn't big enough.

5/20/03

What color is this?

At the register a lady made me find out some deal about teddy bears, and after I told her what it was she just left them stuck in register displays. I just don't find that cool. But it's not as uncool as when people do it at the grocery store, with products that spoil. They can ruin a product to the point of it being unsellable, but they seem to think that isn't the same thing as stealing. It is to us!

Two girls and a guy--teenagers or thereabouts--were walking up near the register, and the guy made a foul comment (LOUDLY) about shoving a book up one of the girls' asses. Yeah. Then he found the Father's Day gift table and noticed the mini pool sets, and said, "OH LOOK HAHA I CAN PLAY POCKET POOL." Then when they walked up a tiny bit further the guy saw me and collapsed in embarrassment, "OH MY GOD I didn't know she was standing there," and they all ran out of the store and started leaning against the handrails outside laughing and laughing and laughing. Oh yes, "pocket pool" is such an offensive idea and I'm so shocked and you looked like an ass in front of an adult. You're just not that funny, kids, grow up.

Had a lady start wandering around the store looking for someone to help her when she wanted help in the café. She kind of glanced over there and saw no one so she just started dazedly wandering around and finally found me, saying, "Is there anyone working in that café??" Maybe if you'd go over there and stand where they can see you, they'd stop washing the dishes and come help you or whatever. People have this weird conception that they can "watch" a position to see if any employees come by there and then claim they've been waiting for however long. If you haven't gone up and stood in the position for service, chances are the employees don't know that anyone is waiting. We don't just wander up to the position in front of a computer or register and stand there with our thumbs up our butts until someone wants our help. We do projects and clean and stuff until someone makes it obvious that our assistance is required. Just browsing Hallmark cards while you wait for someone to show up at the desk just makes us think you're browsing Hallmark cards and don't need assistance. So, it's your own damn fault, nyah.

5/19/03

I was disturbed to hear the familiar sound of books slowly falling while I was in my section, and I figured maybe I hadn't straightened a shelf right in my cleaning and the books were falling over. I peeked around and that was not the case. It was some woman standing in front of my display of young adult books, knocking shit off of it. She'd upset their balance and they fell on the floor, and she didn't even ATTEMPT to set it right. She just stood there and kept looking at the books she wanted to see, and then she went on, leaving a bunch of the books crooked or on the floor. What the hell is that??? Yeah, I just randomly bump into shit at the grocery store and if it falls I just let someone else clean it up because it's someone's job. NOT! What the hell is wrong with you?

I had a lady ask me where the "ruins" are. I was like, "Uh, ruins?" and she said, "Ruins, yeah, I'm not sure if I'm saying it right . . ." and said a few more things that made it sound like she was talking about runes. So I confirmed that with her--she was looking for information on runes. I took her to New Age and asked her if she was just looking for a book on runes or if she needed a kit with the stones in it too. She said, "No, I want the one with the ruins in it." Well, first off I already told you how to say it and you're already calling it "ruins" again, and secondly it's not like there's a single "the one." But we found one she liked and she went on her way. Grr.

While I was in the Kids' section I helped a lady find books to keep kids entertained while traveling, and she started to describe a rude guy who'd been in the Travel section, where she'd just been. She said he'd been sitting right in the middle of where she needed to look, and when she came up and said, "Excuse me," he just waved her by, like he thought she needed to get by him but was being polite. "But I wanted to stand there," she was saying, "I should have hit him with my cane." I thought that would have been hilarious. Get up out of the floor, asshole! This lady's trying to look here! You earn a caning!

Had one of those ordinary silent customers who comes to Customer Service and hands me her purchase, and expects me to ring her up when she's nowhere near the register. Got to love that.

We have a little field trip group of adults with intellectual disabilities who come to our bookstore sometimes, and one of them seems a little more verbal than the others, and he frequently tries to talk to me. He is frequently kind of. Today I had people waiting for me at the desk and I passed the guy, and he goes, "HEY!" and I just waved at him and hurried back toward the desk, and the guy yelled after me, "HEY, COME HERE!" in this demanding voice. I said I wasn't coming there and I was busy, and he left me alone. I was glad it wasn't one of those days where his supervisor has to come and make him leave me alone. Once he tried to grab books out of my hand to "help" me put them away. I won't even let my co-workers put my books away, much less some random untrained guy on a field trip. Hehe.

I'm getting annoyed at this one lady at the other store. She called me and asked me to check my shelf for a certain book and she said, "It should be in Alternative Health." I asked her for the title again but she seemed foggy on that AND the author, communicating with the customer between talking to me. I was like, um, why are you calling me if you haven't already found the book on the computer, found out for sure it's something we're supposed to have, and then found that you are out? So I type this into the computer and I can't find a record of this book, and I hear her say to the customer, "She can't find it in her computer either." So basically, there's no record of this book existing but they're still calling me to see if I have it. That's just goofy. So I listen to her tell the customer this and then there's this long pause where she appears to be listening to the customer talk, probably giving more information that doesn't help find the book, as customers are wont to do. Finally I asked if she needed to ask me anything else, since she was just sitting there eating up my time when she hadn't had enough information to call me in the first place. Then she sounded annoyed with me and was like, "Well I'm sorry I wasted your time" or whatever. Yeah . . . come on and think, guys.

So. Ready for me to rant? Ahh, I thought so.

I got a complaint from a customer today. She actually stood in line for some time (we were busy at Customer Service) just to tell me this: "YOU need to get a manager to look at those bathrooms. They are the MOST DISGUSTING THING I've EVER SEEN." I asked her what happened in them and she told me it was "just disgusting" and that some of the doors are shut so you can't get in and one of them doesn't even have a door.

Guess what? I'm aware of that.

Two of our bathrooms are broken. Oops. Sorry, must've been me who shoved too much toilet paper in them, made the chains weak, or broke the flusher on those two. So, since they don't work, we shut the doors. Which causes people to tug on them with blank expressions and other people to KICK THE DOORS IN so they can pee or shit in a toilet that doesn't flush on top of a mess that's been there for days. And yes, we've had the plumbers in. Nothing they can do about it if the part hasn't come in yet.

One of our bathrooms has the door ripped off. I guess it's our fault that Stormi and her little friend decided to dick around in our bathroom and rip it off the hinges. And I guess it's our fault that people didn't listen to the sign that was on it (reading "THIS DOOR IS BROKEN, DO NOT TOUCH") and tried to touch it anyway, resulting in it falling on the ground again.

And then, in the two operational stalls, I guess it's my fault that people could not be bothered to flush their own bodily waste away with the touch of a button, and I guess that makes our bathrooms "the most disgusting thing [she's] ever seen." You don't get out much, do ya lady? I went in the bathroom to see what was supposedly SO disgusting that this lady would stand in line to complain about it, and I found a sheet of unused toilet paper on the floor and two unflushed toilets. That sure is disgusting. It isn't like someone jizzed on the seat or crapped in the sink, like has happened before. It was unflushed toilets, one with some pee and one with some poo. Sorry, but you carry urine and feces inside your body all the time, touching your insides, and you expel at least one and sometimes both every day. I somehow doubt that being forced to go into a stall and push a button to flush someone else's crap away is so utterly disgusting that you can't even dump your own waste in the same hole after you push a button--it's a fact of life that we piss and shit, so grow up. A very large percentage of the world's population defecates in the damn bushes, and you don't see them complaining that that's the most disgusting thing ever seen, though it's sure to be grosser than a ceramic, hygenic bathroom with paper to wipe yourself and flush away, cleaned every single night with germ-killing agents. Just get over yourself and take a crap if you must, but do NOT get in my face about a bathroom being disgusting because a toilet is unflushed.

I pushed two buttons and made it alllll better for the babies.

Incidentally, when I went in there to see what was so foul, some other lady came in there and greeted me warmly while she locked herself in one of the stalls, and she started going "Oh, I had tea, and I don't usually have tea, but I drank tea and now I REALLY have to go to the bathroom!" You don't say.

Oh yeah, and I proved how bad of an employee I really am today. I heard some lady walk up and crabbily ask some random man if he worked there, to which he replied, "No." My response?

I hid behind a bookshelf.

Fuck that. I don't wanna help you.

It really is nice sometimes to be so short you can't be seen over the shelves.

5/18/03

I had a customer today who wanted a certain book but we were out, so I told him if he wanted to he could either have it ordered or we could call the other store. He asked me to call the other store for him first, so I did, and they had his book. I went to tell him, and he said, "Oh, well . . . I don't know when I'll be over there. Why don't I just order it?" Huh? Why the hell did you bother having me call in the first place if I just hit the best case scenario and you're still not going to go get it? Why did you just waste everyone's time, including your own?

5/17/03

The cashier called me to Customer Service, and as I was on my way to the desk the guy he'd called me for spotted me and began to frantically try to flag me down: "Ma'am!" So I gave him my attention but kept going to the desk, where he had been told to meet me. "Ma'am! Ma'am! I need your help!" So I out and out said, "I know, I need to go to the desk to look up whatever you want," and made a motion to get him to come meet me. Ahh yes, so he did. So, I asked him if he had a title for me. He said, "Uhhh . . . well wait a second, let me get my friend." His friend came over when summoned, and he said, "Dude, so what's the title?" Friend began saying, "Uhhhhh," and scratching his head. Finally he came up with a title and told me, so I typed it in. The first guy said that they'd seen the big hardbacks of these books up front but they want paperback. Hmmm. Chances are you've been looking in the HARDBACKS SECTION, did ya think of that? It didn't strike you to wonder why every book there was hardback? Ooh, maybe there's a paperback section in this bookstore. Yup. So anyway, ignoring the crappiness, I asked them if they knew the author, because their title had brought up a couple different books. One of them reported the author's name, but when I scrolled through none of the books matched. One, however, was written by two authors, and the secondary author had the same last name as the author Friend had mentioned. I reported this to them, and told them the full names of both authors. They shook their heads at that. I asked if it was part of a certain series, since this book was. They said it was part of that series. Assuming I'd found the right book, I was all set to take them to the section, explaining that the authors were these two women, but the guy just shook his head again and thanked me, then they left. I took a look at the cover of the book as it came up and almost choked. It had the women's names on it, but their first names were small and their last names were large, and they were set next to each other so it almost looked like their last names were the first and last name of one person. The first author's last name was a little bit similar to the first name of the fictional author my customer had been insisting the book was by. Heh, now it's one thing if authors do this on purpose (like the Red Dwarf books, Grant Naylor is actually two people), but their names were plain as day on the front of this book. Give me a damn break.

Covering a register break, I had to try to hear some customer's question over the noise of the children playing Yu-Gi-Oh! very loudly in my store. The guy was saying something that sounded like "Do you have any cheap pads?" I was like, huh, what the fuck?? I asked the guy to repeat himself and this time it sounded like he definitely said he wanted pads that were cheaper than these sitting here. He sounded annoyed, so I told him, "I'm sorry, these kids are really loud up here, it's hard to hear what you're saying." (It would have helped if he'd, ya know, not tried to yell his question at me from across the aisle.) So then the guy just burst out with "PADS, NOTEBOOKS!" gesturing like I'm incompetent. So I just answered an abrupt "No." When he just looked at me like he was sure I was withholding crap from him, I explained that we don't carry school supplies and any little notepads he saw sitting there were all the blank paper we had. He just walked away without saying anything. Ahh . . . for future reference, everyone, it's best not to try to scream across the store at a cashier when there are a hundred kids using outside voices, and then act like she's the one in the wrong.

I had a lady on the phone, and honestly she wasn't too bad, but she kept doing shit that pissed me off. First off, one of my pet peeves: She wanted to know about two books, and after giving me the first one, she asked, "And are you ready for the second one?" Now, what am I gonna do with two book titles at once? I haven't even found the first one on my computer yet, so what would be the point of rattling off the next title right after the first? Anyway. I found a listing for her first book, but the second book I was having trouble finding. She gave me what was apparently the title, but when I typed that into my keyword box (after coming up with NOTHING in titles), I started getting hits in authors. So I asked if he was an author, and she said no. But then as I began to do serious detective work to figure it out, she began saying things like, "Well there are a few by him." So basically, after going on this way for some time, we figured out that she believed the person who wrote the book isn't necessarily the author. Ummmm. See, he's not an AUTHOR, he's a horse trainer, so it's not like he's actually an AUTHOR. But . . . lady, he wrote the book. So he's the author! What the hell. I think that was the most frustrating part of the conversation. We had one of the books but the other we were out of, and she said, "So there's no chance your other store would have it either, right?" What's with that attitude? I thought we might have it until I scanned my shelf, so what rules out the other store? I explained to her that actually there was a good chance the other store would have it, so she then asked me to call the other store for her and call her back. Umm . . . see, that's really not so bad, but I wondered why she wouldn't have called them herself. ::sigh::

5/14/03

A guy came to Customer Service to pick up his book, and then seconds later another guy came asking for a book that turned out to be related to the first guy's picked-up book. So the first guy was like, "Oh, that's going to be tough to find" and started to talk about stuff related to that subject. I found the book in my computer as something we could order, but they were just continuing to yak, but finally the second guy was able to interrupt himself long enough to ask me whether I had it. I said I didn't have it in the store, and I was going to tell him the details of what he could do to order it when he just started talking to the other guy again. And I'm thinking, uh, am I just supposed to stand here and wait until these guys are finished having a nice conversation? So I just walked away. They didn't ask for anything else.

I had some lady tell me the title of her book about eight times. She didn't know the author and there was more than one book called that, but when I told her that information she just told me, "Oh, well I don't know the author, but the title is" blah blah blah. And then when I told her I didn't know which it was in that case, she was like, "Oh. Well, I don't know anything about it, but it's called. . . ."

A lady told me that I needed to find a particular book for her, and I found it, down to the right edition. But then she wanted me to check the jacket credits to see if the dog on the cover was indeed a particular dog that she wanted. I was thinking that was a little weird. It's not like there's gonna be a second edition but despite the fact that they're all the same edition there's gonna be a bunch of different dogs on the cover. Hrmm.

5/13/03

I answered the phone with my usual "Thanks for calling blah bookstore, blah blah blah, may I help you?" The customer replied, "Oh, fine thanks." Nowhere in the spiel did I ask how he was. But it's nice to know he's fine thanks.

A lady came in with a reading list for her high school kid, and I helped her find what she wanted. But she didn't remember what was on the middle school child's list or something, so she wanted me to look that up. I told her I didn't have any way of looking up what her kid needs to read, and she was surprised we don't have the lists on file. She asked me in a sort of (um, you should have thought of this) voice whether I couldn't just look up the lists on their websites, since they were online. Sorry lady. I don't have Internet access in my store. And it's a good thing too because if we did our back room guy would have made sure our caches were full of porn. She then proceeded to give me her copy of the high school reading list, figuring it might be useful to someone. ::sigh:: Okay, nice gesture guys . . . but I prefer to just expect people to come in knowing what frigging book they want. Baby people and they'll act like babies. (Then again, in my experience they act like babies no matter what, so perhaps this is just easier for us too. Waaaah!)

A lady on the phone asked me if we had a certain book and it turned out we usually carried it but we were out. I told her, "We usually carry it, but we're out right now." She asked me if we were going to be getting any in, in that case. Huh? I just repeated that we usually carry the book, and she said, "I KNOW that, but are you going to be getting any IN??"

What part of "we usually carry it" do you not get? I mean it's not like I expect everyone to know how my store works, I really don't expect much out of you for that, but what do you think, we're going to list a book in our computer as something we carry and yet we'll order it once and then NEVER HAVE IT AGAIN HAHAHA! No! You missed your chance to EVER get that book from us! Those two copies, well that was it! Jeez. Of course we'll get more. ::sigh::

Okay, this might come across a little nasty, but I am really getting sick of these summer job scroungers. Almost all of them come in wanting part-time work that fits neatly around their summer classes, and generally they also intend to hightail it once fall comes around again. Now, I understand the concept of "summer job" for someplace like Busch Gardens or a resort or something where they're more popular in the summer, but at a bookstore in a college town, our business is going to drop like a rock, and believe me, we don't need another café rat right now. I'm also tired of people who think they're go-getters because they read a job-hunting book that told them to be forceful about getting an interview. So eight or nine times a day now I'm getting a call from someone who wants to speak to a manager because they put in an application last week and haven't heard anything. Could it be because a) We don't have any positions and b) You put that you can work from 3 to 6 every day and that doesn't fit any of our shifts? Hmm. To be fair, some businesses will reward such behavior, but when you are applying for a shitty no-skills retail job that is probably overrun with applications from a hundred other people like you, it just doesn't help to call and ask for the status on your application.

So I had one girl waiting at Customer Service while I was helping someone at the desk, and then she got a cell phone call so she talked to whoever it was and it seemed like it was going to be a while, so I left the desk and went back to my work. She was on the phone for the better part of ten minutes, and I listened to her talking because I figured she'd want help with whatever once she was done. I ended up overhearing her telling whoever was on the phone all this stuff about how she has to get temporary work and how she's out of here in mid-June or whatever, and then as soon as she hung up she started being all "Ma'am? Ma'am?" at me as if she'd been waiting all that time just standing there. Wouldn't you know it, she wants to know if jobs are available. Honey, it would take you a month to even be properly trained here, and you think you can just get a job for a month? I told her there aren't any jobs available for people who aren't going to be staying long-term (though I iced that cake by pretending I was talking about all those school kids who try to ditch us once their classes start again). She said never mind and left. Yay.

We were out of a certain book, so I offered to call our other store for my customer. The other store had the book, so I asked the man if he wanted them to hold it for him. And he was like, "No, no, that's okay," and went away. Huh? Why the FUCK would you make me call the other store and find out if they have one if you're not going to go over there and get it? Kinda pissed me off. I mean, ya just cost me and the other store a bunch of time looking for the damn thing and then it turns out you don't really even care if they have it. Grr.

This was just all-around annoying at pretty much every step, even though the lady was nice. First of all she had no idea what she was looking for because she was shopping for someone else: Bonus! Someone's requests had been e-mailed to her. Four books. No authors. Most of them were okay (even though two of the books that I found she had the titles either misspelled--"steel" was written as "steal"--or with the words in the title mixed up), and I was able to find them despite the setbacks. But one was just called The Gift. If you don't understand why this is annoying, try going to Amazon.com sometime and typing in "the gift" to see how many titles come up, and then imagine being me (get on your knees if you have to, to simulate the correct world perspective) facing a customer who says, "I don't know the author, but I need four copies." Yes, this was another one of the problems: She needed four copies of these books. On one of them, we found one copy and then she goes, "Well I need three more." I told her that was all we were gonna have, and she says, "Well, do you know if you have any more in the back?"

Pause here. You gave me a title and I typed it into the computer, obviously unfamiliar with it because I wasn't even sure we carried it. Then I took you to the section and we had one copy. And then you ask me if I happen to know offhand if there's more copies of this in the back.

Ahh, "the back." This mythical place that is just like an extension of the store in that it is perfectly organized and also connected directly into a special inventory in all of the employees' heads. We are constantly aware of what books are "in the back" and even though I've had to use the computer to try to find out if this book is even something we carry, I do happen to know we have three more copies in the back.

Oh, would you laugh if you saw our back room. Plastic boxes full of books, stacked about twice as tall as I stand, row upon row labeled with only their category, waiting to be put out. Lady, the only time we're going to know if something is in our back room is if we're unloading it from the boxes to put it on the shelves. I don't think there are many questions more annoying than "Well do you have it in the back?" But we don't carry four copies of random, non-featured books normally anyway. So, buh-bye.

So, a lady called me and told me that she'd put a book on hold yesterday but had forgotten to come get it. She wanted to know if we still had it. It was safe to assume so, since we generally hold called-in book requests for forty-eight hours, but I checked and found her book was still there. After I gave her the good news, she replied, "OH, PRAISE GOD!" in this weird whispery tone. Praise God? Well, first off, praise our book-holding policy, there's nothing miraculous about us holding the book. And secondly, it's not like your son fell out of the window and landed in the wagon of some guy selling inner tubes. Ooh, your book is still on hold. Must be divine providence. HAHA. Reminds me of the time 8/13/01 some guy over-wrote his check amount and I told him he wrote fifty instead of fifteen by accident, and he voided it and wrote me a new one, repeating over and over, "Thank you Jesus! Thank you JESUS!" Um, how about thanking SwankiVY. Her eagle editor's eye caught your mistake, not a sacrificial lamb with a beard from 2000 years ago. Unless, of course, Jesus did it THROUGH me, as is the way of all things. Yup. (In which case, why the hell didn't he stop you from writing it in the first place?)

I had a guy come in to pick up his ordered book and it wasn't on the shelf. I looked his account up and it said the book had been ordered and received in the first week of March. Though he said that he'd received the call ". . . Last week? This week?" Well, the computer didn't say anything about it being an order that took two months to come in, so my guess is it arrived in March, we called the guy in March, and it got sent back . . . you guessed it, in March (we hold books for about two weeks). How it ended up that he said he was called last week is beyond me, but I just re-ordered the book for him.

There's this woman that works at the Burger King or something and she's obsessed with Harry Potter. She's nice but a little dotty, and today she was reading the third book in the series and came up to "show me something." Apparently one of the pages had been slightly torn. It looked like a tear caused by a printing press or something; all the words were still there but a piece of the paper right in the middle was torn, so it had this weird thumb-sized flap. The lady was telling me that she discovered this tear while reading it in the café and she just wanted to let me know. I was like OKAY . . . and she said, "Now I've only got about two dollars on me," and I asked her why she thought there was any reason she should have to buy the book. She looked confused and told me how she "cares about things" and wanted to let me know that someone had done it and point out the travesty. I said it didn't really look to me as if anyone had done it; it could have easily just torn in printing. Well, she gave me a lecture on how she's watched people mutilate textbooks before, and gave me this mini-explanation about how exactly someone probably committed this foul deed. I said I can't think of any reason why someone would mutilate one page of a Harry Potter book. And so she just starts going on about how it's sad and just LOOK at that, and what do I do in situations like that. I told her if the book is damaged but sellable, we try to sell it. If it's damaged to the point that it isn't sellable, we send it to damages and the warehouse replaces it. She kinda hinted that maybe it should be made fifty percent off and then she could buy it. I told her we can't do that even if the cover's ripped right in half. So she told me about how she only has two dollars on her again and has to wait until payday, and I again said, "Look, why do you think you have to buy it because of this little tear?" "I know I didn't do it, but I care about things," she said again. Well, nice of you, but this is not a case of starving children, animal mutilation, or genocide. This is a tear in a copy of The Prisoner of Azkaban, and furthermore it is a tear that didn't even remove any words. Finally I told her I didn't know why she was showing me. She just wanted me to know, she said. And by the way, in between all this conversation, she kept interrupting either herself or me to point out that she liked various things like my buttons and my Hogwarts shirt. (Trust me to be wearing my Harry Potter shirt while dealing with her, eh?) I think I may explode. Lady, if you feel it's your responsibility to take in every damaged book you come across, may you never work here.

Here's a fun one (no, literally!). The café girl has a weird dad. The guy called to talk to his daughter, but got me first and when I answered the phone he replied with, "Whooo, you sound soooo young, like you're no more than sixteen!" Sensing a playful party, I replied, "Just guess how old I am." He said he guessed I was nineteen, and I said, "You're off by SIX YEARS." "Six years . . . up??" he asked incredulously. No, dude, they let thirteen-year-olds run Customer Service now. "I'm twenty-five," I told him. Finally he told me he was the café chick's dad and that he wanted to speak to her, so I tried to see if she was there but I couldn't see from where I was. "I'm gonna go over there and see if she's there," I told him, "I'm too short to see it from where I am." And he was like, "Ohh, so you sound young AND you're tiny?" I told him that was about the size of it. "I bet you get carded all the time!" he said, and I told him I just generally don't do a lot of things that require being carded, actually. Finally I saw that the girl was there and told him I'd give him to her, and he told me I could tell her she had a weird dad. I agreed with him and he was still all playing around, saying, "Oh, you're saying I'm WEIRD??" "Hey, you suggested it." "But then you agreed with me!" "That's because I'm allowed to." I put him on hold and told the café girl her weirdass dad was on the phone. Later she came up to me and told me her dad had said I sounded "cute." Woo.

5/12/03

On most computers there's an option to save any graphic as your wallpaper automatically, and even though our computers have been limited by upper management so we can have as little fun as possible, we're still able to do that. So we've been looking up the covers of very disturbing books and making them our wallpaper. Today, the Customer Service computers displayed these two backgrounds.

Heh, today a guy came up to me and said, "We're still mad at you at our house." I figured that had to be a joke; good thing it turned out that it was or I'd have had to beat him up and make his family really mad. Apparently this guy and his whole family are addicted to Lemony Snicket books and I was the one who recommended them. Then later in the day a woman came in and was asking me whether the tenth book in that series was out soon, and we talked about that and it turned out I was the one that got HER hooked on those too. Where's my fat check, Mr. Snicket?

5/11/03

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'd have to order that."
"So, you don't have it?"

This gets on my nerves. I got this phenomenon again today. Yes, right, I always say I have to order something if I have it right here. I figure, that is just unforgivably pointless. So I just repeated what I said this time.

"I'd have to order that."

Guess what she said?

"So . . . you don't have it?"

Some people are just brazen in their obliviousness.

A woman with apparent issues came through the cashier's line today. I happened to be up there beside him because we were attempting to join forces to cause havoc (see description below), so I happened to overhear this conversation. This woman came in looking spacey, asking us to explain to her where the store Mother Earth was. It's just down the street from us, but since the cashier didn't know I tried to explain, and driving directions don't happen to be my forte since I don't know how to freakin' drive. Turns out she didn't want the one that was in walking distance of us; she wanted the one that was clear across town. For no apparent reason. So we tried to explain, but then (with a line of about three people shifting their feet behind her) she started to explain to us WHY she wanted to go to Mother Earth; apparently they had some kind of herbs she wanted, because she hurt her back. And see, when she hurt her back she lost her memory.

Well, the cash register guy was trying to get her out of the line while not being a jackass, and he wished her luck in finding the place. So she began to give us a story about the sort of luck she'd been having. Which involved falling off a ladder while attempting to pick flowers and being rescued by her German Shepherd. Yup, you heard me right folks. The lady gave us a detailed description of how the dog came up to her and she asked it to take her in the house, and when she grabbed onto its collar it obediently took her in the house and went to its bed, and she was able to call 911. So at this point I stopped trying to kill the other computer and opened it so I could take care of the bewildered line of customers that had backed up behind this lady who wasn't even buying anything. My first customers were frightened at the idea of the woman driving and suggested maybe we should call the police to take her into custody, since she was not really in a condition to be by herself, let alone driving. This story was a little bit funny because it was so bizarre, but overall it was partly sad and partly frightening.

On to our l33t hacking. The cashier and I were messing with the secondary register; I got the wild hair to try to confuse people by making a bitmap copy of the active register screen and then applying it as a background to the desktop, so it would look like the register was up when it wasn't. He improved greatly upon my methods by finding a way to hide all the icons (instead of our earlier solution of trying to make them look like buttons), so basically we just had this blank screen, nothing but a picture, and it looked exactly like the register screen except that its cursor wasn't blinking. He even managed to hide the REAL minimized register screen by elongating it and placing it across the top of the screen, so that it looked like the window's top bar instead of a minimized program. HAHAHA! We got a couple people with it. Yaay.

A guy shopping for his kindergarten daughter wanted to know if we had a section that had books she could read. When I asked him to clarify, he was like, "Ya know, don't you have a section for, like, books that they can read themselves?" It would really help if you'd give me some idea of her reading level, dude, because most books are designed to be read by their intended audience. When I asked him for some more information that might help me nail down what sort of books she might be able to read herself, he just reiterated that she was in kindergarten, and asked if I had a section maybe for girls in kindergarten. Hopeless. Finally I made him happy with the First Readers section.

5/10/03

A lady was going through the usual annoying motions of trying to find enough silver and copper money to make her change something unobjectionable. It wasn't so bad except then when she finished, she had given me one penny and some change, which would require me to return to her three pennies. I told her I wasn't sure I understood why she was giving me this change, and she said, "You owe me a nickel," and sounded really crabby like I was being dense. I looked at her receipt and disagreed with her, but then she started disagreeing with me over what the total actually WAS, and it turned into a big mess (with a mob waiting in line behind her, of course). Turned out she thought she'd given me three pennies, which would have indeed returned her a nickel, but when searching for other coins she'd accidentally dropped them back in her change purse and assumed that meant she'd already given me them. She relayed this to me in this annoyed voice like I should have known that was what happened, and then she was all gruff to me through the rest of the interaction and left without responding to anything I said. Grr.

We had two registers open and for some reason after I finished a customer none of the other customers were coming to me. I tried to get their attention but they were just too busy yelling at their kids, examining impulse buys, or picking their butts. Then finally one guy broke out of the line and came to my register, looking confused as if he wasn't sure I was open. I said to him, "Hello!" and he rolled his eyes and picked up his stuff and started backing away, then just kind of standing there looking at me. I was a bit confused by that and said, "Uh, I said hello?" to him, and he goes, "I know, I heard you, you said 'No.'" I repeated a third time that I'd said "HELLO," and he was like, "OH, I thought you said NO, that the register wasn't open." Yeah, that's right, you just come to a register and the chick tells you she's not open by just saying "NO" to you and then looking at you pleasantly. Anyway.

A kid came up to me, looked around like he wasn't sure what store he was in, what day it was, or what planet he was on, and then said to me, "Do you have any, like, CARDS?" Well, kid, do you know how many fucking things in this store can be described by the word "card"? I assumed that since he was hanging around with his Yu-Gi-Oh! buddies, he must mean Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, but those were sitting a few inches from his face so I was a bit confused as to how he wouldn't see them. I asked him to clarify and it turned out he meant Mother's Day cards. Well. So he picked one out and came up to buy it, but told me his dad had a discount card. I looked his dad up and there was no card under his name, and that was when all his buddies came up and started crowding around the register, and when they overheard his situation, they started attacking me! The one kid who'd whined that I should give him a discount "since he's in here all the time" back on 4/26/03 was the most vocal, saying, "Well you let us use our friends' cards, why wouldn't you let us use our parents'?" I told the brat that he would be fine to use his parents' card if his parents' card was either in the computer or in his hand. And he's like, "Well just use Vijay's card! Vijay has a card, he lets me use it all the time." I asked where Vijay was, and apparently he wasn't here yet, nor did anyone know his last name to enable me to look it up. "I don't know," said the snotty kid, "but he's Indian. Can't you look it up by his first name? I dunno, it's something Indian." After assuring him that typing "I dunno, but he's Indian" into the computer would not bring up Vijay's discount card, they left me alone, and the kid started sulking that he wouldn't be able to get the Mother's Day card now; he was very adamant that he get his 25˘ off of it for no apparent reason. Weirdly enough, he then came back later and bought Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. Hmmm.

A lady wanted me to look up her discount card, but her elementary-age daughter was apparently requiring too much of her attention to properly attend to any other tasks. The lady had a screwy name and when I typed it in the first time I wasn't sure I got the spelling right, so I spelled back to her what I'd written and she confirmed that that was the correct spelling, in between various bits of conversation with her daughter. It got her attention when I told her there was nothing under that name. She insisted that her husband had used it last week and we'd found it in the computer, so I suggested she spell her name again, and this time it was slightly different than what I'd gotten the first time. I told her I found it, and that the first time I hadn't been sure I'd spelled it right but that when I spelled it back to her she'd told me I had it right. She just ignored me on that, and told me she wanted to get a gift certificate too. I asked how much, and she turned to her daughter and asked her if she wanted to do it for fifteen dollars. The daughter didn't answer with anything definite, just some hemming and hawing about whether that was a good amount. I searched around for a fifteen-dollar card and when I found one I asked her how much she'd decided on. "I said I want it for fifteen," she said, and obviously my being such an incompetent cashier was wearing on her nerves. I'd probably be better at my job if the customers would give their instructions to ME, not their children.

So, this one lady came up to do a return. First off, I just want to go on the record as saying that I very much doubt she bought the book at one of our stores, because she said it came with some special bookmark and ever since I've worked there there's been no book promotion like that, but since we do carry the book in our store we decided to take it (or rather, my manager did, after I checked with her). She had no receipt so she wanted store credit, and was very vague about whether she wanted to shop first and do the exchange all at once or if she wanted me to just give her the credit on a store card. Finally I said, "You want me to just put the money on this card and you can decide later?" She opted for that, so I asked her some questions about the purchase, including the date it was made. She couldn't remember, so I just asked her for a ballpark because the only reason we care is that if it was before the first of the year there's been a tax change to compensate for. Well, that got her hemming and hawing too, "Did I get it for Christmas? Or was it my birthday?" I'm thinking, What? Christmas? She decided it must have been her birthday, and then said, "So that would make it the middle of last July." WHAT?? That was like a year ago! Too bad we'd already said yes or we totally should have denied that return. But I went ahead with it and gave her her store credit. She immediately (within the same ten minutes) came back and used the credit, which bothered me because we could have done it all at once.

Then came the fun part. She couldn't find the discount card I'd just used on her return transaction. She dug through her wallet, making all these confused statements, and asked me if I'd ever given it back to her. I looked around and didn't see any accidentally hidden cards, and assured her that it didn't seem to be here. I joked with her that it's one of those things that happens where it falls out of your shoe two months later. She was too deep into digging through her purse to appreciate it. I told her she could find it later and just put her discount on there, since we had the record from her return in the computer, but even after it was all taken care of, I'd used her credit, and she had the receipt, she kept digging, coming up with handfuls of discarded receipts and junk and all this crap. And a line was tapping its feet behind her as she just stood there looking. "Can you re-issue me my discount card?" she asked. No, we can't do that. But you can sit down and look through your pocketbook on your own time and find it, since I know you JUST HAD IT. Anyway, she beat it, and then maybe twenty minutes later she was back, having sat in the café digging through her purse for the better part of a half hour, and she asked me if I was SURE I'd given it back to her. I told her there's nowhere for it to be hiding up here and that I wasn't interested in hoarding discount cards. She asked me again if I can just issue her a new one. I told her we can't do that; the number on the card indicates how old it is and there's no way for us to make a card replace the value of an older one. Finally she asked if she could leave her name and number if we find the freakin' thing and call her, and I just said the info was on her receipt paper if we find it. Somehow I doubt we'll find it, though. It's irretrievably lost in her purse's black hole.

And one happy happy thing! One of my customers was wearing a Pom-Pom shirt! (Pom-Pom as in the character from Homestar.) I got all excited by that and told him I wished I could talk in bubbles like Pom-Pom, and then he showed me his Trogdor temporary tattoo. HOW COOL IS THAT SHIT.

5/7/03

Had yet another person stress the words, "In the evening??" when our cashier told her we were open until 11. This is the third in about a month. What is wrong with people?

I don't remember when this happened, but I never wrote it down because I figured there'd be a follow-up and there never was. Some lady phoned me saying we'd charged her for a discount card but hadn't included the discount on the purchase like we'd said we would. I told her there was no way for us to do that, it isn't something we can forget since there are two modes: Discounted and non-discounted, and non-discounted CANNOT (read: ABSOLUTELY TOTALLY CAN NOT) be applied to someone who's purchasing the card, as it's totally automatic. I asked her to explain to me why she thought the discount hadn't been applied. So the lady argued with me that the regular price of one of her books was $17.95 and then it said right next to it that she paid $17.95. I asked if there was another price anywhere on there, and she said no, that every item was charged the full price and then "Club Membership: $5.00" was applied to the receipt as well. What she had to be looking at there was the subtotal of that item, where the price in the second column is only different from the price of the item in the first column if there's a quantity of more than one. I asked if at the bottom it told her her Membership Savings, and she said it didn't; that it just said "Do you have your discount card?" and then a club savings figure, but even though that's just a slogan that prints on every receipt, she was adamant that it wouldn't be there if we'd applied the discount like we were supposed to. Finally, I accepted that without being in person I could not make sure that she was reading her receipt right, and told her that if the discount card cost was applied to her receipt but her books were normally priced, it had to be a bug, because there was normally no way that could happen. I requested she bring the receipt in so we could take a look at what went wrong, and hung up with her. Then I went around and mentioned to all the cashiers and managers that I wanted to know if that lady came in, so I could see her receipt with my own eyes and see how obvious it was that she was wrong. I wonder if she ever thought maybe she should look at the price tags of the items, and see if maybe she was paying $17.95 for a book that was supposed to be over $19?

5/6/03

I had a lady who didn't know the name of the book she wanted, but it was some kind of special book for kids that came with a kit--something about bugs or something. I showed her the bug section in Kids', but told her there was nothing I could think of anything like what she described. So. Her solution? Describe it to me again. And then again. Over and over. Because see, if she describes it correctly so that I can see in my mind exactly what she wants, well then maybe, just maybe, another section of Kids' Nature will magically open out of my ass, and that book will be in there. Why is it that when a customer comes unprepared, they think giving you the same useless info over and over is going to do anything?

Today we had a big freaking visit from our upper management. Right up to the vice president of the company. (I shook his hand, and all I could think about was, "Wow, this is the guy who can't spell worth a crap in any of his e-mails!" I swear, the man will write a fragmented sentence, all in CAPS, with shit missing and the meaning entirely unclear, and expect us to do something with that. Anyway.) Turned out they pretty much just criticized the store overall, with very little good to say. But my manager told me later that pretty much the only compliment they received was that the Kids' section is well-run and looks good. (Score!!!) They wanted a couple of things to be moved, though; my Leap Frog spinner was in the aisle, and they wanted it put into Kids', so my boss told me to figure out where I wanted it and he'd help me move it there.

I told him moving it would be a lot easier than finding a place for it, and insisted that I would be able to move it myself. He looked dubious. Well, long story short, I moved it where I wanted it, and then went to find him to ask his opinion. He came over, expecting to just have to approve the location and then help the poor tiny girl move the big heavy display, but he was surprised to see it sitting in its proposed new spot, and he blurted, "Oh, you DID move it." I just asked him if he liked where it was and he was cool with it, but he started to look sort of upset. I asked him what was wrong, and he said, "Um, well when we first got this thing, it took three of us to move it. So I'm feeling pretty crappy right now." Maybe I should refrain from using my special powers at work from now on. Someone could get suspicious.

5/5/03

A man who must have had a bowl of soup for a brain came in to ask me for a book today, and was full of shock that it wasn't in the same place he'd seen it two weeks ago. Guess where it was displayed when he saw it? You got it. Paperback bestsellers. Contrary to popular belief, those books actually change EVERY SINGLE WEEK, and if they didn't it would defeat the purpose of "bestsellers" entirely. This guy kept ranting about how "It was right there on the BESTSELLERS two weeks ago!"

5/4/03

No more assholes, I am full.

Had a lady at Customer Service who had already asked for help at the cash register, and they sent her to me. "I'm looking for a book," she said, and yes, that is something you are likely to do in a bookstore. Amazing how many people open their sentences with this phrase. And it continues! "It was just on television. It's new. I can't remember the title. It has the word 'seniors' in it." Ahh yes, that new book with the word "seniors" in it. When I told her the computer would be no help in that situation, I offered to take her to the section I had on eldercare and whatnot, and she glanced at the section with me but it wasn't what she wanted, and she was like, "Well up at the front they said you might be able to help me . . . I guess not," and walked away; she didn't say it in a snotty way but I kind of got that she thought I was remiss in my book clerk duties for not knowing this book, so I said, "I'm sure I'll be able to help you if you can come back with the title." :)

I had helped a lady in the bookstore, and then I had to run up to the register and cover a break. So when this lady got to the register, she recognized me and asked me if she could just ask me about one more book. Now, being at the register, I had no way to either look up a book OR help her find it, since I was chained to the spot by my duty to the checkout. (Figuratively, people!) Anyway, so when she said, "Can I just ask you about one more book?" I told her I couldn't help her with that, but as I was talking, she just ran me over and started telling me which book she wanted as if she just hadn't heard me at all. I repeated what I'd said, and added that if she wanted to go to Customer Service I could call someone. She said, "There isn't anyone OVER there." Which is why I offered to CALL someone. She started to look sour, so I said, "You can ask me on the off chance that I'll know and be able to point you, but beyond that I'll have to call someone to Customer Service for you." She told me what she wanted and I said the books in that series are usually in the Business section, but then she just started being a child and whined, "Well I've already been to that section and those books are all jumbled up. I am not digging through that mess." Ahh, so you want to stand there uselessly as an associate digs through them for you. Yes ma'am, you are correct, there is no order to that section, because people like you have messed it up and we are too understaffed at this moment to set it right, not that it's either of our faults. On her way out I heard her whining to the guy who was with her about how now they'd have to stop at the OTHER bookstore. Pardon me for saying so, but the OTHER bookstore, wherever it may be, is a little further away than our Customer Service desk, which you could have gone to and been helped with one little phone call, but no, why should you have to listen and think? You're a CUSTOMER.

A lady at Customer Service picked up an ordered book and told me she has a letter on file for her to get 21% off her purchase. Well, I don't know about any letter, but generally we give that discount to teachers; there's nothing I can do about it at Customer Service, so I told her it would be fine, just when she checked out be sure to mention it to the cashier and if he had any problem with it he'd call the manager. Well, apparently our manager didn't know anything about any letter, and it's doubtful the letter actually even got taken to anywhere since our policy is basically "automatic teacher discount with teacher ID," and wow did this lady get huffy about it. I can understand getting annoyed if you were under the impression that you would get a hassle-free discount (and I'd be willing to bet whatever actually happened was our general manager's fault for assuring her the 21% with a "letter"), but she apparently got pretty snotty with the cashier and also mentioned that "the little girl that helped her" was rude about the whole thing. I'm still trying to review the scene in my head and see where exactly anything I said or did could qualify as RUDE, but apparently since she mentioned the situation to me and I didn't (read: couldn't) do anything to assure her the discount, that makes me rude. Oh well. Perhaps I should actually start BEING rude; then at least I could get some enjoyment out of it if they're going to think that about me anyway.

Ohhh yeah. This guy rings my bell for today; he is undisputed winner of the Oldest Child Alive award. The man was probably in his sixties or so, and first of all he pushed one of my pet peeve buttons by coming up with a return and not asking if it's okay to return it--just plunking it down with the receipt and saying, "I'm returning this." Hell you are, if I don't say you can. So I called for management approval and got it, and then he just started to seriously suck. Because he hadn't bought it with a discount card, we didn't have any info on him, so I had to take it all: Name, address, and phone number. Not used for anything unless we start getting repeated returns from certain folks. So I got his name off of the credit card he had handed me (to charge the book back to), but then when I asked for his phone number he just ignored me. So I asked again, and he disgustedly spat out his number as fast as he could, apparently trying to say it so I couldn't keep up. Too bad I'm known in typing circles as Quicky McFast. (No, not REALLY.) So then I asked for his address and he exasperatedly repeated his PHONE NUMBER again. (I guess his brain was already in the mood to bitch that I had to ask for it more than once, and it couldn't process the idea that I'd gotten it that fast.) So I said, "No, your ADDRESS." "It's on there!" he said. "On where?" I asked. "On that card there." I picked up his credit card incredulously, since there had never been a credit card printed with an address that I knew of, and sure enough, nothing. I said, "Where on the card?" "It's ON THERE!" he practically yelled. I put the credit card down on the counter in front of him and said, "Well then where is it? Could you show me?" Of course, he couldn't, and just disgustedly mumbled his street address into his shoulder so I couldn't hear it. I had to ask for a repetition and he did that almost-yelling thing again. Why it was such a big shit to give me some information is beyond me, but who cares. So I went on. Asked him if it was in Gainesville. He ignored me. Again. So I just assumed it was Gainesville and typed Gainesville, FL, and then asked for his zip code. I received it in another bratty tone of voice. Boy, I sure am a bitch, forcing him to go through all this horrible red tape. So I didn't say anything else to him until it was time to sign the credit paper. I gave it to him and he just stood there with the pen in his hand looking at it, studying it like it was a trick question. And then of course he acted like freakin' Job from the Bible when I told him he had to sign this OTHER slip of paper too. I gave him his copies, and as he left, I wished to God it wasn't our policy to refrain from popping customers in the backs of their heads.

A guy realized he had the wrong book when he got to Checkout, so he asked if we had the right one. I told him to go to Customer Service and he said, "There's nobody back there," with this sort of laugh in his voice as if it was so ridiculous for me to send him to an empty desk. Well, I happened to know our manager Pat had been standing at the desk for quite some time calling customer orders, so I assured him she was back there and he seemed all dubious so I said I'd call her. I called her, indeed, and told her I was sending someone to the desk. So guess what. She tried to chew ME out. "I'm *here*. I've BEEN here for the last twenty minutes!" I said I know, I know, but this guy insisted no one was there, so I figured I'd call, and she gave me more of that "you're totally incompetent" attitude and hung up. I love this place.

Here's a lady who can't read signs, so I don't know how she's gonna read that book she was buying. Arguing that an unstickered book should be 20% off (plus 10% with the discount card) because a sign said so, this customer caused a bit of a confusion up at Checkout. Our cashier told her that the signs say "UP TO 20% off," and that that discount doesn't apply to every book, so the lady went over to the sign to see what it said. When she came back up, she agreed that it did indeed say "UP TO." And then . . . "But I have the card, so that means I get the 10% too?" "Um, yes, you get 10% with your card no matter what." "And then the 20%, right?" What? You just made a special trip to the sign so you could see it prove you wrong, and you come back with your mind unchanged about discounts you deserve? She was being nice and kind of flighty about it--she wasn't arguing meanly--but just this complete lack of understanding why the 20% didn't apply to every book (even after multiple explanations) was really aggravating.

Here's another fun one from the trenches, I mean the cash register. A lady came up, seeming sort of in a hurry, and gruffly asked what sort of special store-credit gift cards we had for graduation presents. Well, she wanted a twenty-dollar one, and the ones we have with amounts already programmed into them are $15 and $25, so she got to have one of the blank ones, with just our store's name on it. First she complained that it didn't say anything about graduation on it (the cashier just suggested she write "Happy Graduation!" on the provided envelope or whatever), but then she started acting like she was going to throw a priggish little shit fit when the card didn't print the amount on there. "How are they going to know how much it's worth??" she demanded, and again, he suggested she just write it on the envelope. At that point she just started huffing and "Oh my GOD"-ing, and acting like this was the biggest rhino-sized shit in the world, and muttered that she KNEW she shoulda gone to one of our competitors down the street, and stuff like that. Tell you what. I wish I had such a perfect life that my biggest problem was that the gift card didn't have the number of its amount painted on it and didn't come with the correct congratulations message printed on it already. God forbid you have to actually write a message yourself.

Oh, and I think I have a stalker. I called a lady and told her her book had come in, and she thanked me profusely, told me I had a nice name and a lovely voice, and then proceeded to ask me when I was working next. I told her I work in the daytime except for Thursday and Friday, and she was like, "Oh, well when do you usually leave? About twelve?" and I said no, in fact I was opening shift, 9 to 5 usually, and she was like, "Oh, well that's a nice schedule, well I'm looking forward to seeing you, I'll be in sometime in the morning on one of those days to pick it up, you have a wonderful day!" and stuff. Freaky.

I had to call the other store for a woman, because we were out of a book we usually carried. When I call the other store, usually I give them the location where the book is supposed to be, the title of the book, and the author's last name. My customer seemed to think that she needed to prompt me for all this bullshit. When I told the girl at the other store that it should be in the Family section, so she could start going in the right direction, my customer jumped in saying, "It's with the SPECIAL NEEDS books" and stuff, and I KNOW that because it's something I'm very familiar with in my Kids' section, but the girl on the other side was not ready for that information yet. I gave her the title, and the author's last name, and there's the lady again, saying the author's first name, again as if to prompt me, and clarifying that it's not some other author with the same last name. Okay. I do not need your help to ask my other store if they have a book. I know what I need to tell them, and they don't need a lecture on every aspect of the book in order to find it. Did I mention I REALLY dislike getting prompted by customers? I know what I'm doing dammit.

A lady asked me about a particular cookbook, and I looked it up on the computer to see which section we'd have it in. While I was looking it up, she said she already looked for it and it wasn't there, and I indeed came up with the information that it was supposed to be in the store. So I asked her WHERE she looked, since more often than not they've looked in the wrong section in Cooking or something like that. She pointed behind her, and I asked her for clarification, and she said, "Right THERE, Fiction and Literature." I couldn't help but say, "Um, but it's a cookbook," and she didn't seem to see my point. So, anyway, I took her to the Cooking section, got her the book, and then it turned out she had ANOTHER one to ask about. That's a little pet peeve of mine; if you're going to ask about more than one book, ask while the computer is in front of the person helping you, since then they can look up everything you want and then go do the walking-around-looking thing. So, anyway, she wants this biography, and I type it up and we're supposed to have it, so as soon as those words leave my mouth, she's turned around and started to go toward the Fiction section again, mumbling the author's name under her breath. I had to steer her over to Biography. Does she think every book in the whole store is in those two rows?

5/3/03

Sent to all the managers in the company through the company Intranet: A notice about a strict on-sale date. Part of that paragraph said, verbatim, "It is highly imperative that this book stays in the Receiving Area until its On Sale Date of May 13, 2003. We are not able to reveal the name of the title via email, but the book will begin shipping out of the warehouse today. Be on the lookout." First of all: This is a pointless stunt. Ooh, secret book with a secret title. I hate publicity stunts where they think revealing (or not revealing) the NAME of the dang thing will have anything to do with its sales or popularity. Anyway. Be on the lookout for this book with no name. Strangely enough, in the EXACT SAME PARAGRAPH, the e-mail mentioned three things: The book's name, the book's author, and the book's ISBN (which is 0743227123). Waiiiiiit . . . I thought you said you couldn't reveal the title by e-mail, but then you did. Like, in the sentence right before you said you couldn't reveal it. I punched up the ISBN on our store Intranet, and then later at home I pulled it up on Amazon.com . Observe.