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

11/30/03

We got a weirdo in the store today: a strange religious freak lady. She wasn't your usual religious freak though; first off, she was Jewish, and secondly, she wasn't interested in converting people or anything; I think she just wanted to talk. I also think she was probably on some sort of very screwy drug. Anyway, the woman was looking for children's activity books on Chanukah, and I showed her what we had; she said that what she was really looking for was something that maybe had blond Jewish kids shown in the book as well as dark-haired ones, because she and her daughter or whatever are blond and that is so rare among Jews.

You know what happened next, don't you? Unaware that she was a weirdo at this point, I dropped the info that I have Jewish ancestry myself and have nevertheless turned out entirely blond. This piece of information seemed to make her think that therefore I would be in agreement with anything she said, would understand where she was coming from, and wanted to hear scads of fucked up stuff from the Old Testament.

Among other strange things that I can't remember, these are some gems she dropped on me:

• God is setting stuff on fire in California.
• She used to hate the Arabs (pronounced "AY-rabs") because God kicked their sorry behinds out of "our" land. But now that God has shown her the right passages in a particular version of the Bible, she now realizes that the Arabs are sort of related to us, and therefore are also a type of God's people. She's reformed now. Now she only hates Christians.
• She hates Christians because "They KILLED us. And they took our stuff!"
• Christians have it all wrong with "turn the other cheek." In the Old Testament, God said "thou shalt curse thine enemies to the death." And that's exactly what she's going to do. ("I'm mean," she said, almost apologetically.)
• She had a vision just last week about the Ark being found. When she woke up she wrote some strange stuff down and now she doesn't know what it means really. Somehow the fact that she WOKE UP after having the "vision" did not clue her in to the fact that she was DREAMING, not having a vision.
• I need to read special editions of the Bible with all the Maccabee stories in them. I'll learn about my heritage.
• God is gonna kill everyone pretty soon. "It's happening," she said.
• Someone once kicked her teeth out when she was in modeling school. No, I don't know how that fits in.

I was rather fascinated by this woman and listened raptly to everything she said, but especially when she voiced rather violent statements (while standing in the Kids' section, no less), I really kind of wished that I was observing her from on the other side of a thick wall of glass. Eventually I got summoned to the register and had to leave my new friend, only to find out that my coworkers were trying to "rescue" me from her. They had themselves been victims earlier that day; this lady had descended upon our cashier and begun to rant about the Kabbalah. We got a live one, folks!

And in other news, my JACKASS called back AGAIN! This man has now been rude to me FOUR separate times: Today, 10/6/03, 9/17/03, and 9/1/03. I said my usual spiel on the phone, and he replied, "I didn't understand anything you just said, but what store is this?" Oh God, I said in my head, not YOU again! But it was. I assured him that he was in fact calling the right store, and he wanted to know whether we carried Peter and the Wolf on audio. When I got to the computer to look it up I wasn't sure whether he had just said "audio" or if he had specified CD, so I asked him, to clarify: "On CD?" "That's what I said," he snapped. Great. I started thinking, now how can I get out of this phone call without him hanging up on me? I knew it, I knew he would hang up in the middle of me talking the second he started to suspect I wasn't going to give him what he wanted. So I decided, hey, I'll just speak as succinctly and clearly as possible, so that whatever it is it isn't my fault. I found that there were no available versions of this CD (considering it's mainly a MUSICAL piece, not a book, so that is not surprising), so I told him, "No, I don't have it." "Now what does that mean?" he demanded. "Be more specific, does that mean you don't have it there in the STORE, or can you GET it?" ::sigh:: I'm sure that if I HAD been more specific, he would have demanded that I stop talking so fast and gotten all shirty acting like I was giving him too much information. So, in response to his last question, "Can you get it?" . . . I just replied, "No." He hung up.

I can recognize this man's voice and style immediately now. I swear to God. If he calls me again, I am going to say something that will require him to begin speaking, and then I AM GOING TO HANG UP ON HIM. I do not give a shit. And considering he is an ornery bastard fuckknob with his head up his ass, I doubt anyone will blame me if for some reason he succeeds in complaining about me. They'll want to hang up on his ass too.

A girl asked me for an Ayn Rand book (but didn't know who wrote it), so I took her over to the section without checking the computer, having known immediately what book she wanted. ON THE WAY OVER THERE, she asked me, "Do you have any copies?" I just gave her a puzzled look and said, "Um, we're going there to see." I could understand that question if maybe I had looked anything up and maybe she thought my computer could tell inventory (which it can't), but I cannot conceive of how the hell she thought this question made any sense. If I thought there weren't any copies, I wouldn't be taking her there; if I thought there WERE, I was obviously on my way to get her one. "No, I don't think we do have any, but I figured we'd take a stroll down the Literature aisle. What do you think of the scenery? Books as far as the eye can see. Ahhh! The smell of dead tree in the morning!" Anyway.

I helped a lady in the Kids' section and she was down to deciding between two books. When she chose one she put the other back in the wrong place, so I corrected it. Then she changed her mind about the book she'd chosen and decided to get a box set instead of the single book, and asked me where the book came from. "I'm not one of those people who puts books back in the wrong place," she said proudly. "I was a librarian for far too many years to do that." I showed her where the book went, told her to ask me again if she had any other questions, and then went to a quiet place to cry. (No, not really.)

11/26/03

A lady stopped me and said, "Excuse me, where are your DVDs?" I told her we don't sell DVDs, and she gave me such a surprised look that I elaborated, "We don't carry movies at all. We're just books." She looked even more shocked, and said, "I thought they ALL had DVDs!" Yup. Any store you go to will always have movies.

I was helping a lady in the Kids' section and she mentioned that she wanted the book Matilda, except she wanted "the next one." I of course am familiar with and like the book Matilda by Roald Dahl, and told her that we carry the book but I don't know what she means by "the next one." "Number two, the next one," she replied, explaining that there was indeed a second book made. I told her that that was news to me and I had never seen nor heard of any continuing of the story of Matilda. She gave me an incredulous look and said, "You've never HEARD of Matilda? It's a classic story!" I had never said I hadn't heard of the original, but I elaborated and clarified, and told her there was no part two as such. (And I don't see how there COULD be, but I am admittedly a bit out of touch about popular culture.) She said that the book just must not be out yet and accepted that. I did some searching on the website but nothing anywhere indicates that there is another Matilda.

And in other news, one of my managers left and I got offered her position. Ooh, score.

11/25/03

Remember the lady from 11/5/03 who kept yelling at me that her book was POPULAR? Well, you probably DON'T remember her, but I do, and she's recorded on the entry for that day so you can look at it if you want to refresh your memory. Anyway, as you can see it is more than two weeks later, and suddenly the lady came back in the store and picked up her conversation with me as if there had been no time between the incidents at all. I just wanted to note here that I love validation. Her book that is so POPULAR and yet I nevertheless can't find it (proving me incompetent) . . . well, see that book actually has a slightly different title, and she had been giving me the wrong information and only just figured it out. (Guess what. That book isn't "popular" either. But it's on some reading list, so we had some. Hooray.)

I got a phone call today and said my usual spiel, which as you may know from previous entries includes my wishing the customer "happy holidays" and asking how I can help. The lady I was confronted with replied, "Yeah, I wanted to know if you guys are in the Women's Center." "Pardon me?" I asked, confused. She repeated, "Well, I wanted to know, your office, is it actually IN the Women's Center?" I told her I didn't know what "office" she was talking about and that she had called a bookstore, which caused her to apologize and hang up. I always wonder about these people who just completely tune out all the useful information in my spiel. Makes me slightly bitter that I have to say it.

My manager told me about this one that happened to her yesterday: Seems some guy came up with the book All Quiet on the Western Front and asked her, "This book here, is this by Shakespeare?" Ohhhhkay. She didn't even know how to answer that, she was so flabbergasted; she just regarded him in silence and looked at the book, and so the guy looked at the book too, and pointed at the author's name. "I guess it isn't, huh? It's probably this guy." "Yeah, it's that guy," she agreed, and walked away in a cloud of WHAT THE FUCK. Did they even have a "western front" to speak of in Shakespeare's time? Good lord. WHAT COULD HE HAVE BEEN THINKING?

11/24/03

I had a phone call for the café manager today, from some dotty lady. She wanted me to tell the manager she was sick and wouldn't be visiting today, but when I told her the manager wasn't in, she wanted to know who WAS running the café. I told her it was some new girl, and she's like, "Oh, well is it Melissa?" and I said no, I knew Melissa, and I didn't know who the new girl was and probably wouldn't recognize it if she said it, but yet she kept on trying to ask me who it was over there like it freaking mattered, "Oh well I can't remember her name, I know I've seen some new people over there, I've met some, hmm do you think it was so and so?" Everything she said was in this roundabout sort of dazed way. I got pretty frustrated about it because, well, I HAD CUSTOMERS WAITING FOR ME and she thought I had time to talk to her about who is running the café when it doesn't matter. Eventually she left me alone. Finally.

Some lady came over and told me she wanted to know where we kept books by Junie B. Jones. Uh-huh. (Junie B. Jones is the main character of a kids' series. It's like asking me for books by Harry Potter.) Gotta love it when people get their wires crossed.

A professor is sending students in an Italian class to our store to get the textbook. Problem is, WE DON'T HAVE IT. Neither does our other local store. (I called them.) If the professor made some kind of arrangement with us, I don't know what it is. In any case, some woman was at the desk trying to pick up the book for the class and after doing some research I told her flat out that I didn't know why he sent her here because it's not a book we carry and it doesn't seem to be a book we ordered. She paused, looked shocked, and said, "But he SAID you had it." Then another pause, as if I'm supposed to do something about it.

Now I wonder, is this how she imagined it?

"Sorry, ma'am, we don't have that book."
"But he SAID you had it."
"Oh . . . wait, you're right! Here it is, sorry." (Pulling book from between asscheeks. . . .)

I had a woman ask for just a regular new fiction book (and she knew it was new in hardback and that it was fiction). She said she'd already looked for it. I looked it up on the computer, went into Fiction, and came out of the section with it in less than thirty seconds. Upon giving it to the lady, she replied, "Where WAS it?" in an incredulous voice. Oh, that hardback fiction by Foster? It was in the Hardback Fiction section that you were standing in front of. Under F. For Foster. (Or Fuckup, if you'd rather.) I mean, it's not like I found it in a bizarre place, so the shocked look on her face was quite amusing.

Jesus. Okay, I probably should open this with a disclaimer. All through my life I was a little oblivious about knowing how to do things that others thought were "obvious" or "common sense." So maybe it's not right of me to be all pissed off at this lady. But holy hell, I think this lady needs help in order to pick her butt. Observe.

This lady had a problem with SpongeBob felt boards. At the beginning of her encounter, they were wedged sideways onto a shelf and propped up with a face-out SpongeBob game. Here, I'll even throw in a cute visual aid:

My last visual aid will help you imagine what was going on in my head at that point.

Twice in a row this next thing happened (inside of five minutes), so I decided I'd write it down.

First woman came up and asked me for "baseball books." I asked if there was a particular book or kind of book she had in mind, and she said "No, just baseball books." I took her to Baseball in Sports, and as soon as we got there, she said, "Well do you have anything for like an eleven-year-old?" That would classify as something she should have mentioned when I specifically ASKED if she had a type in mind, you know? Kids' books are in another area. So then after helping her, this second woman came up and asked for books on drawing. "Any particular KIND of drawing book?" I asked her. She declined to specify, so I took her to Art, and yes, again, as soon as we got there, she said, "Well I'm looking for something for a child, a nine-year-old boy. Have you got anything on drawing horses?" Excuse me, but where was this extra information when I asked if she had anything in mind? Kids'. Books. Are. In. Another. Area. THAT'S WHY I FRIGGIN' ASKED. Sheesh! But I should expect to hear a lot more of this. Now that it is the Christmas shopping season, people are not only clueless about what they want, but they are clueless about what their family members and friends want, and usually there are more crossed wires and miscommunications in getting the desired items. I am in for a bushel of fun. God help me.

11/23/03

Early in the morning a mother and teenage daughter came into the store looking for fantasy books. They stopped my coworker and me on our way to the back room and the mother asked where we would find fantasy and science fiction books. Because there are a couple places that hold those titles, my coworker asked if she had something in particular in mind (ya know, because we try to avoid a wild goose chase whenever possible), so the mother turned to the child and said, "What books do you like?"

The teen got this bewildered expression on her face, then said, "I don't know!" as if it was ridiculous to expect her of all people to give some kind of input on a book for herself. The mother tried again: "Well what's the last book you finished?" Again: "I don't know!" with this crazed expression like "How the hell am I supposed to keep track of what I like??" We ended up just leaving them in the Science Fiction & Fantasy Paperbacks section because "Here, sweetie, these covers look a lot like the ones you were reading before." (Clue-phone: 90% of science fiction and fantasy covers look very similar.) As we went away we noticed they kept talking about how they didn't have this chain where they live and how BIG it is. You'd think they'd walked into Disneyland.

This one surprised me because it was committed by a returning customer I've been dealing with for some time, and I didn't think she was this much of a flake. Anyway, she came up and asked me about two books, and I had heard of both and happened to know where they were. For the first I took her over to Fiction, and because she was one of the people who protested that they "already checked" for the book but somehow have no idea where they should have looked, I told her on the way over there that we'd be checking in the S's (since I knew offhand that the author's name started with S). She said, "OH, so it's in order by author?" That was where my stomach started to sink. Can you think of a better way? Anyway, I found the book and gave it to her, and then she said, "And you've read this, you say?" Nnnnn . . . no. I never said anything like that, so I'm not sure where she got it; I haven't read the book, though I intend to one day (and hadn't said that either). Okay, fine; next book. I took her out of the Fiction section because, as I explained to her as we walked, "THAT one's not fiction," and she said, "No, I don't think it is." No. Really. IT'S NOT, and I'm stating this as a fact. Anyway, after I found her both books without the aid of the computer ('cause I rule), I was freed. But it bugged me all day that she said some of the things she did.

We had to do a return so I was called to the register, only to find that the woman's receipt put her at about 45 days ago and our limit is 30. Luckily my manager was standing nearby and so I told the customer they won't let us take it back if it's over 30 days but maybe we can have this manager override that.

The manager considered for a moment and then decided to be lenient and grant the woman store credit, but we would not refund the money onto her credit card. She started raising a scene asking where it said anything about 30 days. This is where it starts to be a bit fucked up on our end: The return policy sticker they sent us was the wrong one (or else someone just found an old one) because the one at that very register shows nothing about 30 days even though the stickers on ALL the other registers do mention the 30 days. "Well I didn't know," she said, still trying to get her refund, "and it doesn't say anything about that here. How was I supposed to know?" Well, forgive me if I assume, but I somehow doubt she even looked at a return policy or asked about it when she bought the book. Finally my manager said that even giving her store credit was going over the store policy and the general manager's head, and it was all she could bend to do, and she accepted it but wouldn't stop grumbling and whining the whole time; her husband (I guess) was next to her, and she complained to him, "WHO has a 30-day RETURN policy?" Oh my. LOTS of people have time limits! Some even say seven days, thank you! Some have a return policy of NO! Anyway, her husband said, "Well, it makes sense, you could buy a book and read it and then bring it back," and she said, "Well it doesn't make sense to ME," and continued about how this 30-day thing annoyed the piss out of her (her words, not mine). Later my manager came up to me and complained about the lady's behavior, saying how if she wasn't being exactly pleasant she didn't see how she was supposed to bend over backwards to do something against the rules. "And she says 'Well I didn't know,'" my manager said, "that's no excuse!" "Yeah," I agreed. "Just because 'I didn't know' that it was illegal to sodomize my dog on video on the internet doesn't mean that I can't get in trouble for it." "Yeah exactly!" she agreed. Then I got out of there quick because I think a customer heard me talk about sodomizing my dog and got disturbed. Hehe.

11/22/03

A lady was waiting at Customer Service holding a stack of books. Another woman right ahead of her was being helped by someone else, so when I walked up I offered to help her. She just shoved her books at me and when I asked if she had a question she said she just wanted to pay for her books. I told her that the checkout was in the corner. This would have been unremarkable except that after that she tried to argue with me. She gestured at the woman who was already being helped and said, "But SHE is paying for her books here!" wanting to know why she couldn't too. We had to assure her that no one was paying for books here; even the other customer turned to her and said she was just getting information. The fact that she was HOLDING books did not mean she was paying for them right then. Finally she gave up and went where she was supposed to. Gah.

I had to do a return for a lady today and when I asked her what the reason for the return was, she replied, "It sucks." There's no "It sucks" button on my register so I had to settle for "Didn't need." Hehe.

I was sitting on the floor doing some voids and some woman was wandering around aimlessly looking for something with her son. She passed near me and spotted me, and then said, "Oh, there's the store lady who knows everything. Let's ask her!" Heh. I'm getting a reputation.

Our café chick didn't come in this morning--who knows why, but we got a call from her in like the afternoon saying that she just woke up--but anyway, as a result we had to grab our register gal and throw her in the café, and then grab one of the floor people and put him on register. As a result, we had an issue with one of the café customers who decided he wanted to come in and order a "mocha macchiato."

Nowhere on our menu does it mention any kind of "macchiato," and so the poor bookstore-girl-covering-café came over and asked some of us if we knew what it was, looking scared and lamenting that the customer was probably going to yell at her. None of us knew what it was, so she went back over there and just made him a mocha of some kind. Before I knew it I was getting called to the café myself, and it turned out it was to get the man's money back.

The story went like this: She had asked him what size he wanted repeatedly, you know, like tall, grande, or 20 oz (why must they mess with small, medium, and large anyway?), but he just kept saying, "I want one that's one shot, and one that's two shots." Finally she just kind of gave up on making him make sense and decided to just make a small, and then the guy's like, "Hmm," looking at the menu, "that's funny, you charge by the size and not by the shot here." Well, hallelujah, you realized what in the world she was GETTING AT when she was asking you for a SIZE then. Maybe if you look some more you'll realize that "macchiato" is not on the menu.

She gave him whatever and asked him to taste it to see if it was okay. He said he could take one look at it and tell her it wasn't right because "it's supposed to have two shots." (There WERE two shots of espresso in the drink she made, but whatever.) So he just gave up and wanted his money back. The girl is kind of easily upset and I thought he was going to make her cry; I felt really bad for her because she had to deal with this shit. We told our manager about it and she said, "Well, if it ain't on the FUCKIN' menu, how do we know what to charge for it?" My take on it is, if it's not on the menu and you can't tell me what's in it to the point that I can decide if it's similar enough to one of the real drinks to charge the same, then you can't have it, because we don't have what we need to make it. And for the love of God WE ARE NOT STARBUCKS, thank you. (Incidentally, I looked it up out of curiosity later and a macchiato is "A shot of espresso with just a dab of steamed or foamed milk on top.")

Some dude came up to me in the Kids' section and said, "I need books on Pooh-Bah." I told him I didn't know what that was, and he replied, "You've never HEARD of POOH-BAH??" He went on to explain that Pooh-Bah was a children's book. I doubtfully told him I had heard of Winnie-the-Pooh but not "Pooh-Bah." At that he began mumbling and saying things that I think amounted to "Wait a sec, I'm not sure anymore what the hell is in my head, let me get out this grimy piece of paper where I wrote down what my grandson actually wants." After staring at the single sheet of paper for approximately a minute, he realized that the note did indeed say "Winnie-the-Pooh." Where the hell he got Pooh-Bah is beyond me, nor do I understand why he seemed so shocked that I hadn't heard of it when he couldn't even remember the name right.

11/19/03

Some lady wanted me to get her the book The Artist's Way, which is by Cameron. I took her to the section and showed her the book, but she didn't seem interested in it; she said she wanted "the next one," which she said was called Riding the Dragon. Uh-huh. Besides the fact that I've never heard of that (and it wasn't on the shelf), I wondered why the hell she didn't ask me for THAT title if she was looking for it. I ended up looking it up on the computer and it was a completely unrelated book by a completely different author in a section unrelated to the art books (it was religious history). I still have no idea what possessed this lady to ask me for The Artist's Way as a means to find Riding the Dragon because try as I might I cannot see how they are even remotely related.

Some guy came up to me and said he wanted anime. I assumed he was talking about manga and showed him the Japanese comics. Then he said he was looking for "the next one" for his son who is reading this series. But he didn't know WHAT series. Um, that's kind of important. He told me that he would get his wife to talk to me and she could probably help me. Soon enough there was a woman waiting at the desk and I asked what she wanted and she's like, "I want anime." So I showed her and she didn't seem to know which one either. I think both of them thought that telling me they wanted "anime" would be enough to find the specific book they were looking for. Surprise! No dice. The lady at least had a vague idea that the book was called "Akiro," which could have been "Akira" but that's not a series and she was saying it was a series. I have no idea.

Some lady called me first thing in the morning and asked me if I knew where she could acquire "personalized children's books." I asked her to be more specific about what a "personalized children's book" would be, since that brings up several possibilities in my mind. "Well, OBVIOUSLY," she said, with this nasty tone like she figured she was talking to someone incompetent, "that would be a book that puts the child's name in it." Um. That's STILL not very specific. You could be personalizing a book just by putting a sticker inside that says "This book belongs to," or you could have the cover engraved, or as I more strongly suspected you could go to a service where the people put your child's name in the story. I replied to the lady's snide comment with, "Oh, well OBVIOUSLY," and laughed a little, then asked, "now are you talking about asking me whether I know any service that will take any child's name and actually put it into the story in the book?" She agreed that that was what she was looking for, and I told her I had no idea who did that. She asked me some other question that was fairly snotty, but I don't remember what it was, and then she left me alone.

Then I had a genius at the desk who came up while I was standing there, put his little daughter down on the counter, and began looking around as if he thought no one was at the desk. He actually looked at me a couple times and then just kept looking around like he was waiting for something. I figured maybe he was just standing there using the counter for a seat for his daughter while waiting for his wife to find them, or something, but he really looked like he was expecting someone to walk up and thrust help upon him without him having to ask, so I asked him what he needed.

"Any luck finding a book for Jones?" he asked. (His name wasn't Jones but I can't remember what it was.) "Any luck?" I repeated. What does that mean, any luck? This was the first time I'd spoken to him but he seemed to think I knew the past history of some sort of ordeal he'd been going through in getting a book. Well, so I asked him if he'd ordered it and he said yes, and I asked if he'd been contacted and he said no. I searched for his book on the shelf under his name: Nothing. I typed in his phone number in the computer to see when he'd ordered it, but there was no record of his order, nor was there any record of him in the computer. (He even suggested that someone had probably misspelled his name on the order, and made me search for it under a suggested misspelling.) No records of him ever making an order were found. As we got further into the transaction, it became more and more obvious that this guy wasn't completely present, just from his way of dealing with me. Uh, I really think he probably never ordered a book with us. I just ordered it for him "again."

11/18/03

Heh, something amusing today . . . we started having to say "Happy Holidays" when we answer the phone, effective Sunday, and so now my phone spiel is a little longer; I say that happy holidays crap, tell them my name, and ask how I can help them. This lady who called today laughed a little after I finished and said, "My, my, now do you have to say that WHOLE thing every time you answer the phone?" I told her I did but that I didn't really care and at least I didn't have to try to sell her anything in the opening line like some stores. Grr. Anyway, she laughed again and said, "Ahh, well bless your heart!" and went on to ask me for Christian books. Funny.

Then another amusing phone call came through: the woman said she had a "strange question" for me and I told her I'm quite used to that. "I would like to talk with one of your employees, now I don't know her name," she replied, "but she's this little girl with lots of braids."

Mystery solved.

(She just wanted help with kids' books and knew I was the expert. I rule.)

11/17/03

Grr. A lady wanted "desk sets." We have like one or two kinds and they are really huge and seem to perpetually be uncalled for on displays when we move things, so they are always getting shoved into some nondescript corner of the store because our home office seems to have forgotten we have them. Anyway, some lady asked for them so I took her on a wild goose chase around the store checking all the places I'd seen them only to find they'd been moved from there too. She was good-natured about it; if she hadn't been I would have asked her where she'd like me to find her and then gone on the errands myself, but we were kind of joking about it and she understood the situation. Then I finally FOUND the place they were storing them; they only had one kind left, and it was this REALLY huge one. The other smaller one had been sold out. But unfortunately it was also advertised for a special price on the sign above these large ones.

The lady read out the price of the other desk set and asked if that price applied to this one too (which was a hell of a lot more expensive). I told her no, that price applied to the other one that we were out of, because it said "Was $35.97, now $25.97" or whatever, and this one was like sixty bucks so of course it couldn't be the same desk set. Nevertheless, she kept examining it and asking the same question in slightly different ways until I really wanted to take the set and smack her with it. Then she asked the question that always makes me want to hit people: "Do you have any more in the back?" Yeah, I'm so glad you reminded me of the ones "in the back," because standing here talking with you about how we're out of the other desk set didn't manage to jog my memory about the stack "in the back." But your specific question did the trick, so thanks. So she asked if maybe the big expensive desk set might be on sale, and I told her I doubted it since there was NO sign and NO sticker but she was welcome to take it to the register to find out. I told her there was a register in the corner of the store and also at the café. She began making her way slowly to register, and I went back to the desk, where I thought someone had been waiting but someone else must have taken care of them (or maybe they threw a fit and walked away). The woman with the desk set passed me and then came up to my desk, and asked me if I could scan the set for her. I told her I said the cash register or the café would do it, and she was like, "Oh, I know, I just wanted to know if YOU could do it too." I would have mentioned that! Seriously! And then she asked if the café really could scan her set. I just said that. I just said it! "And it won't foul up her computer?" No, it won't! I wouldn't suggest it if it did! "Well, she can scan it, but if she does that for you then our computer is going to die, but go ahead." Yes we know how to use the computer! Urgh.

I was happy about my manager's reaction to a bad situation today. It was really cool! I love it when the employees don't back down to customers acting like assholes.Here's the example.

A woman had ordered a book on our one day sale last week and she was supposed to get the special price for it, which is an extra ten percent discount. But if they're already discount card members, in order to get the register to give a full EXTRA ten percent like the ad says, you have to key it in at 11.1%, since if you take 10% off a book that's already 10% off then you get a slightly lower number. Anyway, the register girl had a hard time getting the purchase rung up because the lady happened to have some books with weird barcodes (plus the one she ordered didn't show up in the system because we don't normally carry it). So the transaction took longer than normal in the first place, and then the lady wrote a check besides. I was observing all of it because I was actually off work waiting to buy something behind the lady.

Anyway, it turned out that the register chick hadn't been there for the one day sale and was not aware that the discount was being applied as "11.1 %" instead of just plain ten percent. After all was said and done, check was in the register, next customer was ready to be rung up, the lady looked at her receipt and told the register gal that she'd made a mistake and the book should be rung at 11.1% instead of 10%. (She only knew because there was a note on the book's ordering sticker that the cashier had overlooked.)

Yes, the mistake was on the cashier's part, but what happened next was silly on the customer's part. See, first off she's arguing about 1.1%, which on that book was approximately 30˘. Okay, yes, you are owed 30˘. But my time is worth more than 30˘ and if it was me I'd just forget it. Instead, this lady wanted the cashier to fix it, and being that I am a customer service specialist I have "register powers" that the cashier doesn't, so I volunteered to take the transaction out of the register real quick so that she could do it over correctly. The lady seemed to be fine with this when I said it, but did not notice the implication: She would have to write another check for a new amount that was approximately 30˘ less.

At this point a manager had been called for another issue (a return) and was already at the register, and after taking care of his customer he noticed that we were having some issues. I had taken the sale out of the register, voided it out, and had told the cashier to go ahead and give the lady's check back, at which point she understood that if this issue was to be fixed in the way she desired she would have to write another check.

"But I don't want to write another check. You just give me cash back!" she demanded, beginning to get upset. I told her I didn't have the authority to do something like that; if we were going to fix it at all this was how our policy said to fix it, and if she wanted something different well then here's this convenient manager to talk to. My general manager stepped up to the plate.

"I'm not WRITING another check, you just give me cash back on this, I mean it's YOUR mistake," she was saying.

"Okay, well I'm NOT giving cash back on a check, I cannot do that," said my manager. As she began to rant again he said, "Now I have no problem just giving you your check back and NOT doing the sale, but I cannot break company policy to give cash back on a check even for a small amount." She looked taken aback at the concept of a retail store who wasn't SCARED at the possibility of losing a seventy-dollar sale over 30˘; I mean that doesn't happen, right? Managers are supposed to come up and lick your ass! But my manager was standing firm, understanding that if the check was in the system for a certain amount, the register records would expect a check for THAT amount and any missing change would show up as a cash shortage. She just took her voided check back and stormed out without doing the sale. My manager just told the cashier to "let it go" (she was pretty upset, and kept apologizing to the woman), but I was glad to see that my manager was not the type to have customers tell him what he is supposed to do.

11/16/03

Yay, I'm back from Japan, you people happy about it? For your info, here's a picture of a Japanese kids' section; I went in a bookstore there too. God, I'm such a book dork.

I had to run the register for maybe ten minutes at one point because the girl had a really long line, so most of my Assholes today came from that! Here is one of them: The lady who asked me where in the store you go to buy the biscotti. Now, you tell me . . . you walk into a store and it has books filling most of it, and a small selection of toys and gifts, and then . . . oh yeah, a CAFÉ. What would be your guess as to where they'd sell biscotti? You're right, you just go to the Travel section. No, jackass! You can get your biscotti right where all the OTHER edible substances are sold. Jeez.

I had a lady who had a valid discount card, but the number was not attached to a name and address in the computer, so I asked her to give me her info to put it in so it wouldn't pop up this way next time. She started being a giant turd about it. She wasn't reluctant to give me the info, that wasn't it, but she started whining about how it BOTHERS her that someone DID it wrong and this always happens to her and it rings up fine in the café but not on the bookstore registers and she wants it fixed and if it doesn't work next time we need to call a manager and get her a card that DOES work because SHE is sick and tired of it. Um. Get a goddamn grip is what I say. You're getting your discount, now stop having a fucking cow in my checkout line.

Another lady pushed my annoy button by opening up with, "Books for a one-year-old." I hate when they just walk up and state what they want without any pleasantries, such as "Excuse me" or "Would you help me find something?" I'm not a computer, dammit, so don't walk up expecting to feed me input and have me spit back suggestions. Anyway, despite this lady's unnecessary curtness, I showed her the Baby section, and she didn't even look at the books when I asked her if this was in the neighborhood of what she was looking for. She just said, "I'm looking for the books for, I don't know, for learning, little educational things." I don't know if you know, but almost every baby book is educational; over ninety percent of them teach something. I just kind of repeated back to her, "Educational things?" and she said, "Yeah, and also like maybe books with things to play with?" I repeated that back to her too, "Things to play with." (I do this so that customers can see exactly how vague they are being and how little they are giving me to work with. It usually helps. As you will see, it did not help in this case.)

After my second repetition, the lady kind of looked exasperated and said, "Well, it's for a gift, for my friend's one-year-old. How am I supposed to know what it is I'm supposed to get?" Well, a little bewildered at this statement, I replied in a sort of sweet voice, "How am I supposed to know what you're supposed to get?" I think she realized then that she was expecting a specific response when she was giving me an incredibly vague question, and backed off a bit to begin taking my suggestion to just browse through the baby books. I explained that the Baby Einstein books were on the other side of the shelf as well as some other specialty type books, and it was a pretty big section so she had a lot to choose from. She went on to tell me how she doesn't know how you're supposed to know what to get for a one-year-old. Lady, all I can say is, if YOU don't know, DON'T ASK ME.

Urgh. I need a vacation. Ironic, isn't it?

In other news, some guy made a joke at the register, saying he was going to pay for his books with a bookmark that has a money design. It was funny. I told him he needed to pay me $1.49 for the bookmark before I'd let him use it.

11/5/03

This'll be the last work log for a while since I'll be out of the country, so you'd better enjoy.

Had an annoying lady ask for a book I'd never been asked for before, and it had a common enough title that there were indeed four books in my computer with different authors and that same title. She didn't know which book it was, but began to insist shitty little things like, "Well, it's POPULAR." Sure. It's a popular children's book that I've somehow never seen and have not ever been asked for. I hate it when they do that because they're obviously trying to make it seem like it's ridiculous that I don't know this book; I mean it can't be a constructive comment (like I'm gonna go, "OH, it's POPULAR . . . now I know where to find it!"). She was also one of those horrible annoying people who says "arthur" instead of "author."

I had a girl ask me for a "classic" book that we nevertheless weren't stocking. I hadn't actually heard of it (which tells you how classic it is . . . you know how illiterate I am), so I guess she judged me incompetent when I told her we'd have to order any one of these four possible books. Anyway I told her the news and she just didn't even look at me and walked away. I just . . . I don't know. Can't imagine being that fucking rude. The end.

11/4/03

I can't believe that I went two full working days with no Assholes to speak of, but it happened. I guess it stands to reason that today I would be inundated with them.

First of all a weirdness: I got my first "Happy Holidays" from someone (and yeah, she said "Happy Holidays!"). It's frigging November 4th. Why? What holiday? Rather, what holiday deserves being wished a happy one almost a month in advance, if indeed she's talking about Thanksgiving (and I doubt it)? Is she one of those people for whom "the holiday season" is paramount and everything else is "the pre-holiday season"? Grr. Nice lady, though. Obviously.

I got stuck on the register this morning. Our customer service guy was having some heart problems and didn't feel like he should come in, and our register gal just didn't show up (turned out she didn't think she was on the schedule today, random mistake). So it was me and the manager. And wouldn't you know it, that's when everyone decides "Hey, let's shop!" Anyway, I was bound and determined to still get some stuff done, and whenever I had a spare moment I went not too far away to try and put a book away in Kids' or something. It worked fine because I could see the register and kept checking it to make sure no one was there. So I knew no one had been there a minute ago when I checked and I saw a woman standing at the counter; she couldn't have been waiting very long at all (less than a minute). Standing at the wrong counter, of course.

I walked up to the desk and asked her if she was ready to check out (since she was, ya know, standing in the wrong place to do so). She replied, "I'd like to, YES!" in this snotty way that told me she thought it was ridiculous that no one had been standing there when she'd arrived. Get over yourself. Especially when it's the early morning and sometimes shit happens (like being two people short, dammit). There is no reason EVER that being snide and snotty is okay when I'm treating you with respect.

I had another woman come up and ask to return something, and asked me about some special edition Nancy Drew thing that came with a CD. I would have heard of this if we carried it since I would have been the one to put it on the shelf, so I told her we didn't carry it. She looked all exasperated and said, "Well, I saw it advertised at Media Play. But I went there to get it and the man there couldn't find it! You know, if they're going to advertise something, they should KNOW their own STORE." I found myself thinking she was being a jerk, because I've been on the other end of that plenty of times. People don't understand that the associates don't make it their business to research every advertisement their store might be making, and it's kind of impractical for the management to make sure every product ever mentioned in any kind of ad is always in stock and easy to find for every employee or customer. What if they were out? It happens, lady! Finite quantities of products exist in the universe, you know. But no, the answer's just that that guy was incompetent and should "know his store." Whatever.

A lady was getting a discount card and I asked her what name to put on it. She handed me her credit card and told me I could copy her name off of that. I began to do so, and then . . . she began spelling it for me. As I was already writing it. As she began to spell her first name, I looked up at her a bit confused, but she didn't seem to understand that she was making no fucking sense. I just decided to ignore her and started copying the rest of her name onto the card. She did it again, began spelling her last name. She stopped halfway through after she saw I'd already written it. Okay, crack rock anyone? Anyway, I asked to see her ID for her credit card (it wasn't signed) and so she showed it to me, and then she signed her slip and gave it to me. She made some weird comment about her signature being "unmistakable," and I didn't see anything notable about it but I just agreed and said, "It's unique," and she replied, "Well, it's a partially paralyzed signature. I can't write my name as well anymore." Okay. There was nothing wrong with it; it looked like anyone else's signature. My father has no paralyzed bits and yet his signature looks like Martian. . . .

When I finally got off the register I got the supreme honor of answering phones, and some lady called me up with some hard-to-find book. I explained the situation to her: That the book was unavailable but we might be able to get it from its publisher, not guaranteed, might take three to five weeks, blah blah. She told me that she had wanted to look at it first. And then paused, like I could do anything. So . . . I filled in the silence with a little more clarification about the book, and she responded, "Well, I don't know . . . well I need to know more about the book before I order it. I need to find out if it would be appropriate." Pause. Okay, there's nothing I can do to help you find out if it's appropriate, lady, I swear. So I told her so, assuming that she was just trying to give me a reason for why she wasn't going to order it . . . but it seemed she expected me to do something, because her next weird statement was, "I don't know, could you . . . I don't know. I don't know." I don't know either, lady . . . anything about this book OR what the hell you are smoking. And then after this she paused again! Like, was she waiting for me to volunteer to go on the internet and find information on the book for her, and discuss with her all the finer points of whether this is appropriate for whatever wacky purpose she has? Finally she decided she didn't like listening to me sitting there on the other end of the phone not doing anything, so she said, "Okay, well thanks," and said her goodbyes. I still wonder what she thought I could do, and what she was going to propose I try.

11/1/03

I was dealing with a couple who wanted a new book they'd seen advertised on TV, and I explained to them that we had it but there was only the hardcover. The guy said he knew it was new because they'd just seen it advertised, and so of course they weren't too surprised that it was $35. I said we were supposed to carry it, took the couple over to the History section, pulled the book, handed it to them, and then . . . "Now do you know if it comes in paperback?" We JUST had a conversation about this, you freaks.

I helped a woman this morning with a rather broad psychological topic. She wanted two books that were out of print, so I offered to order used the one I found available from a secondhand dealer, and she said she'd get back to me with a credit card in a couple minutes. A couple HOURS later, she called, and I began to plug in her order. She kept saying that she wished I had the other book available, over and over. Then she wanted to know if there were other books on the subject so I started looking. "I want something that'll teach you the basics," she said. Well, I found a few but she said they were too expensive (these big science books, good God, one of them was over a THOUSAND DOLLARS. Give me a break!). She wanted something under thirty-five dollars or so that taught basics, and still I found a perfect one . . . read her the synopsis, and she said, "No, that's sounds a bit too basic." Make up your mind, I'm thinking! Then she kept asking questions, over and over, questions I'd already answered once, and interspersing her questions with, "I really wish you had that other one. It's supposed to be so good." Um, I GET it. Anyway, even though I'd been VERY clear that it was tough to get some of these books and some were unavailable completely, she said, in closing, that she would appreciate it if I'd "keep an eye out" and call her whenever I see something on the subject. Okay. We've already established that these books are really hard to come by, but you think I'm just going to randomly see them in my store and beyond that just keep it in mind that I ought to call you. I mean she seriously was telling me that she wanted me to continue to research her subject and do some field work or something. I could understand maybe if I was your close friend and I owned a small book shop and could do those things, but this is a damn faceless corporate store and I cannot do things like that. ::sigh::

Lovely! I got a woman on the phone this morning who asked me if I had "the GED book." I asked her which one, and she said, "The GED book!" again. I asked her which GED book, explaining that there were at least forty companies that make them. She replied, as if this made sense, "Well I guess it's the one that helps you take the test?" At this point I'm thinking you're not going to be very successful taking this test if your brain is made of WOOD. What would you write a GED book about if it wasn't to help you take the test?? She said she got a recommendation from someone that she should call a bookstore and get "the book" and she didn't know there'd be more than one. Ah yes. If only life were really that simple.

A guy approached Customer Service and handed me a photocopied flier for a book. "The ISBN number's on the back," he explained, and I told him that was great and proceeded to punch it in. The number didn't come up with anything, though, so I tried his book's title from the front of the paper and came to find out the available version was the fifth edition and his photocopy was from the third. I explained that to him and he said, "Oh, great, I'd love to have the fifth edition. Would you do me a favor and write that ISBN number on the back too? You can just scratch out the old one." I did as he asked and handed him his paper back. He took it, thanked me, and then sort of started hanging around the desk like he expected me to do something else but not saying anything. Finally he said, "Um, excuse me, but LAST time I ordered a book they took a little more information, like my name and phone number. . . ." So at first I thought he was asking about orders which hadn't come in yet when he asked, but he clarified and it quickly became apparent that he thought I was ordering the book for him and was puzzled as to why I didn't ask for his name. "Oh, well you didn't say anything about wanting to order it," I explained. Usually people don't ask you to write down the ISBN if they're planning on ordering it from you, and they usually, you know, say, "Could you order that for me?" or indicate in SOME way that they WANT you to place the order, while the closest he came was "Oh, I'd love to have the fifth edition," which doesn't fly. Nope!

Jeez. I was doing a return for this girl and I had to get her address from her. First she gave me the street address and stopped. I'm used to this; it's one of my pet peeves, but I've come to accept it. People think their address ends with the house number and street name, and don't seem to understand that I need city, state, and zip code. So, I prompted her, and she said, "OH," and instead of going on with the city or state, she told me . . . an apartment number. Jeez, as if that isn't a vital part of the address or anything. And then she stopped after THAT too! I repeated the last part of it back to her with a clear indication that I was waiting for what came next, and when she STILL didn't say anything I said, "Go on." She just looked all surprised at me and said, "What?" (You know, that "what?" you give someone if you catch them staring at your breasts or something--like what the fuck do you want now?) I prompted, "City . . . state . . . ZIP CODE . . ." and she finally got the message that even if one assumes the city and state to be the same as the store, zip code cannot be guessed or pulled from my ass like a magician conjures a bunny.

One more. I was cleaning in the Kids' section and I heard a woman say something that sounded like she was addressing me, but I couldn't understand what she was saying since, ya know, she hadn't bothered to get my attention with "excuse me" or anything. I turned around and said, "I'm sorry?" Her response was, "Color me striped." Um . . . maybe I should mention that even though it is incredible bad manners, people often just walk up to me and say their book title, as if they're being charged for how many words they say a day and therefore feel they have to talk to me in the most succinct little commands that they possibly can, perhaps to remind me that I am a servant of the public while wearing my apron. Well, I don't like to take that from people, so I replied, "Are you saying that's a book title you'd like to find?" She agreed with me and I said I'd never heard of it. She looked exasperated, and I asked her if she wanted me to look it up. She replied, "Well I'm not sure if that's the title." Oh wait, you seemed pretty sure when you barked it at me like a damn computer command. I asked her what the book was about, and she started explaining to me the familiar story of David Shannon's A Bad Case of Stripes. Yes, I'd say that if I'd typed "Color Me Striped" into the computer I would have come up with jack, considering there were NO key words in there, good thing I know my shit. Plus I have no idea where she got that garbled title from; the story is about a girl who wakes up with a mysterious case of stripes as a result of trying to be like everyone else, so I don't see where "Color Me Striped" even comes in. Anyway.

I took her to the section and pulled out the book, and she grumped that she wanted it in softcover. I told her I'd never seen a paperback in the store, and she seemed to think I was therefore telling her it didn't exist and she started to go off on how she'd been teaching out of a softcover for the last two years. I told her I understood what she was saying but *I* had never had the paperback in my store. With that she took the hardback and shoved it back in the wrong place, and later when she walked by it might have been my imagination but I swear she glared at me. That's okay. I think I'll live.