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

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SEPTEMBER!


9/30/03

Apparently fate has decreed that I finish off my month with a swarm of Assholes. Here we go.

I had a guy come up to Customer Service with his credit card out and a book in his hand. He obviously wanted to pay for it at the desk (which, as I've expressed plenty of times, is impossible), and so to tell him so, I opened with, "Hello." He replied, "I think so." And threw his card down. It just boggles my mind as to how people will register that you spoke but only respond to the question they expected to hear. I wonder what I said in that guy's head?

We were mistaken for the other store twice today. First was by a woman who called on the phone saying she saw the Harry Potter dolls we had near the back of the store but wanted to know what other Harry Potter merchandise we had as far as dolls went. We don't have any Harry Potter dolls, for one, and secondly there is nothing "in the back" of our store except a bunch of paperback shelves and magazines. Then another lady called and asked me to hold a book for her, so I agreed and said it would be at Customer Service; she said, "Right, the place up by the checkout," and I told her that wasn't the case; our two desks are in totally different areas of the store, so she must be thinking of our other store. Hehe.

I had a guy ask me for the latest book by some author, and when I looked it up the newest one had been released earlier this month. I told him we were supposed to have it and started to lead him to the Fiction section, but he planted his feet and insisted it wasn't fiction. Well, whole story told: The guy has two books out, and they are both shelved in the Fiction section. Could it be a mistake on our company's part? Hardly, since both clearly say "A NOVEL" on the front of them. Yeah.

Oh, boy, my favorite one: This lady told me she was looking for a certain book but couldn't figure out how my Kids' section was organized. (This of course is a steaming point with me.) I asked her what she was trying to find, and she told me, but said that she couldn't figure out the order my storybooks were in, because they seemed "all out of order." I asked her WHAT was out of order. She went to the B shelf and said, "Well, nothing is together. Like here, the author starts with B, and then right next to it, it's an author that starts with M." Well. I was pleased to point out that actually, not only did the supposed author who started with M actually have the name "De Marcken," meaning it started with D not M, but it was in fact the illustrator. (The author, RIGHT above it on the spine, was Brumbeau.) This confirms my suspicion that people don't pay any attention and would rather assume my section is out of order than admit they don't know how to read a book spine.

Had a lady say she couldn't find some new book, so I looked it up for her and found that it was supposed to be in the Hardback Fiction section. She said she'd only checked Paperbacks, and I pretty much point blank asked her why she'd checked Paperbacks if she knew it was only out this month. "Well," she said, in that air that tells you she thinks she's being totally sensible, "I figured if there was a hardback then there had to be a paperback." I'd like to know in what universe that makes any fucking sense.

I had a lady tell me what she wanted on the phone, so I put her on hold and checked for it in my computer. When I came back and said my usual, "Hello, I'm back," she said, "Yes, I'm calling to ask about a book. The book is called . . ." and tried to start giving me all the same information she'd just given me. Well I think it's rude to interrupt but I made an exception in this case, and told her I knew what she was looking for; she'd just frigging asked me and now I had the information for her. I wondered about it--it seemed like she thought she was talking to a totally different person. (Why would a totally different person say "I'm back"?)

I was helping a woman in Family and asked her what she was looking for. She managed to say a LOT of words that told me NOTHING, as if she just wasn't quite getting to the subject of her sentence: "Well, I'm looking for . . . I really was just needing something on . . . well, I've been going through all these books and I haven't found . . . I guess maybe you don't have it, but I'm going through . . . I just need. . . ." Can you please tell me WHAT YOU WANT? I asked her point blank WHAT subject matter she wanted to find. "Well," she said, "anything on the market, really." Why the fuck do you bother to speak to me if you won't even give me ANY information that will let me help you?

A guy came up and asked me if I could help him find "two books." He handed me a paper with one title of a book highlighted, and asked for "those." I looked up the title on the paper and it was a book we can't get a hold of anymore, so I told him so. Then I asked him what other book he wanted. He said, "The next one on there." I said there were no other book titles on the page and he leaned over and pointed to the paper, tapping the information.

"That right there," he said, "where it says, 'Authors.'" Yep, it said "Authors:" and gave the two authors of the above book. Somehow he decided that that was a whole separate book he needed. ::sigh::

And this next lady wasn't a jerk; she was just amusing. I asked for her name so I could write it on the discount card, and she didn't say it first, just started spelling (I hate when people do that). Thing is . . . she spelled out to me, "J-U-L-I-E." Boy. I'm sure glad that was on my spelling tests so I knew how to spell it. I replied, "Yup, that's a hard one."


9/29/03

Heh, this guy at my store was sort of confused. See, he had ordered a copy of some hard-to-find book, and we have a deal where we can TRY to get some of these books from their original publishers. It can take up to 5 weeks, and we let the customer know when we order them. This was indeed one of those times, and the guy opened by saying that originally they'd told him the end of September or so but he hadn't gotten a call or anything in the mail. (It would have been a call, because we don't do "mail." But he also assured me that we might have contacted him and either his answering machine ate it or his wife might have erased it and forgotten to tell him.) So, I looked his account up and first of all the book he mentioned was right at the top of his list of previous orders . . . at the other store. I told him that, and he said, "Oh, I know. I ordered one there and one here. I thought it would up my chances of being able to get one." Okay . . . even though we're the same company and would go about it the exact same way, sure that makes sense. He said also that he was planning to give one as a gift if he ended up with two. So anyway, I scrolled down a little further and sure enough right below it is the order for the same book, except placed with our store. Problem is, BOTH have been cancelled, because the publisher was not able to supply a copy to us.

Scrolling down further, I saw an electronic note saying "Contacted customer 9/27." I told him that we'd contacted him about the situation a couple days back and all of a sudden we "couldn't have," because he would have heard (even though before it was very likely that his answering machine goofed or his wife did). But I said in any case he was hearing it now; we can't get the book. And then he lapsed into confusion, and began to explain to me how he guessed he shouldn't have tried to order it at both stores because it messed things up. What? Getting him to explain a little more revealed that he thought getting us both to order it for him was the SOURCE of the problem, even though I was telling him the publisher didn't physically have any to sell us. "I tried to get myself a little extra insurance and ended up getting my wires crossed and getting neither," he said, and still for some reason had the idea that it was the double order that caused the problem. "Oh, I shouldn't have done that." I assured him again that it had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT and he asked if it would be worth it to shoot the order through again (huh?? THEY SAID THEY HAD NONE), and asked if I was sure we called the publisher or that the warehouse called the publisher, can *I* call the publisher, can he do it, will they sell it to him if he calls, on and on. I think he figured out pretty fast that I just couldn't help him but he kept sort of apologetically trying, and finally figured that there was nothing to be done except check used book stores (as I suggested) and he went away. Later on he passed me and called out, "Don't worry, I won't ask you any questions!" Heh. Poor guy was worried about bugging me.

I got called to the register for a return. I asked the lady if she had a discount card, because those give us access to all the personal information we need to fill out the return paperwork. She produced it quickly and I scanned it in and gave it back to her, setting it on the counter. I did her return, and it was WEIRD. First off it was a paperback that was like $7.99, and then it had an extra 30% off because it had been a bestseller when she bought it, and THEN on top of that she had used a coupon to buy 1 paperback get 1 half off, so there was an additional 50% off THAT price. In other words, she was returning this paperback and getting a whole two dollars and change back.

Now the fun begins. She also had a whole stack of stuff she wanted to purchase at the same time. No problem. I rang her up and she kept pulling out all the coupons (the ones we give when you buy or renew a discount card). She wanted to apply an extra ten percent off to a hardback she had, and she wanted to use a "free booklight with $50 purchase" coupon. She was rearranging all her merchandise on the counter, taking up a lot of time trying to decide which coupon to use on what, and then EVERY TIME she decided for sure, she put the coupon AND HER DISCOUNT CARD down on top of the assigned book. Now, I picked that discount card up and gave it back to her probably five separate times--see, I need it ONCE, and that's IT for the whole transaction--but she kept on slapping it down and handing it to me and kept trying to give it to me again and again. Finally we get to the end of the transaction, and she is at around $45 and really wants that free booklight, so she begins looking for something else to buy!

"Do you have angel calendars?" she asked, and I didn't know off the top of my head so she stepped over to start browsing, and a LINE started building up, but God help us, she just wasn't done shopping. Since it had been a long and complex transaction (full of discount card thrusting to boot) I did not want to abandon ship and wait for her ass, so I just kind of stood there not quite knowing what to do. Thankfully she came back pretty fast, having found an angel calendar. She added it to the stack and (you guessed it) slapped her discount card on top. I again took it and gave it back to her. Then she wanted her booklight to be blue. And couldn't find a blue. And there were FOUR people behind her. I found her a blue since she seemed in NO hurry, and came back around to get it in the system. And . . . she grabbed her discount card and thrust it at me AGAIN!!! I picked it up and gave it back and said, "You don't have to keep giving this to me. I only needed it once." She didn't comment. I bagged her up and got her the hell out of there, and then ended up spending the next ten minutes on another register helping the cashier take care of the customers that had built up. I had a lot of fun today, see!


9/28/03

I had a woman and her teenage daughter ask me for a book, so I got it for them and they went away. Soon they were back, and the lady wanted me to explain to her why this book was so much more money in the store than on our website. I explained that that is the case for ALL the books on the website, and that was how websites worked; they aren't stores, so they do not operate by retail price. "Even though it's booksamillion.com?" she asked. I said it again: Our online store has different prices than those in the store. Always. Non-retail stores do not have to sell at retail prices. They do not have the retail space they have to rent or a shoppable store to maintain. Prices = lower in that case. "But even though I'm talking about booksamillion.com?" she asked again. I said that would be the case at barnesandnoble.com, or borders.com as well, ALL online stores do that. "But I'm talking about a price I saw right on booksamillion.com," she said, for the third time. This information was obviously not quite getting through; I think she wanted to hear that we would match the price since she happened to notice. I told her we weren't the same company as our online store, and she's like, "You're not the same company as your own website?" I said we were RELATED and applied the same discount with the discount card and whatnot, but no, we were NOT the same company, the site is its own entity. I think she believed me when they finally departed from my sight. She wasn't rude at all the whole time, just randomly perplexed.

A teenage kid who was there with maybe a mom and brother walked up to me clutching a deck of cards and grunted something unintelligible at me. I asked him to repeat himself and he replied, gruffly, "Tournament today?" I said there was no tournament on Sundays; we have our Yu-Gi-Oh! tournaments every Saturday at two o'clock. He seemed shocked and said, "But I thought you guys do it on Sunday!" Mom seemed shocked too. I said it's Saturday and left them alone, but I overheard them saying like, "Wow, how WEIRD," and all these statements about how shocking it was that we didn't have tournaments on Sundays. This I don't get. Because in the whole history of my working at that store (which, as you may have noticed, is more than THREE YEARS), we have NEVER, EVER had a tournament of any kind on Sunday. Never. As in, not once. Our company as a whole has always done tournaments on Saturdays, even when it was Pokémon ages ago. And all of a sudden this is shocking and mind-numbing that we don't have tournaments on Sunday. Oh-kay.

Heh. This lovely encounter I shared equally with the cashier, but she can't have all the fun!! Anyway, these two women came up and they had noticed that a book had a buy 2 get 1 free sticker on it, and wanted to know what else that deal applied to. The cashier replied that it applied to any other book with that sticker on it, so the other books the lady had brought up didn't fit. "So the books have to be in that same series?" she asked, trying to clarify. The cashier said no, it's just anything else with that sticker. I came over to help explain, and told them that it was part of a promotion we'd been doing with the Christian Fiction section. "So . . . it only applies to the books in that series," said the lady again. The cashier again explained that there were OTHER books with that sticker on it in the store, and it applies to anything with that sticker. So the lady kept completely missing the point and saying things like, "Well of course you wouldn't want to get three of the same book, so it must mean all the others in the series!" (The second and subsequent books in that series did not have the buy 2 get 1 free sticker.) After another attempt to explain, the lady said, "So in other words that sticker shouldn't be on there? It should be taken off?" FINALLY we got it through her head: "There are OTHER books in the store with this sticker on them. ANYTHING with this sticker on it belongs to that promotion." ::sigh::


9/27/03

I was on the phone with some lady and she wanted to know how long it'd take to order a book. I told her it wouldn't be in until the next Sunday, and we probably would call her that night or Monday. She said, "Okay, so . . . two days?" No, you freak. How many places do you know of that you can call them on Saturday and the book is in the next day? Most businesses would require you to pay some kind of ridiculous express service fee to get anything ordered that fast.

Some girl in the store asked me about two books, and one we'd have to order while one we couldn't even get. She said, about the one we'd have to order, that "Well on your website it said you had it." I explained that the website doesn't say what stores have. It says what the website's warehouse has. (People don't understand this . . . how the fuck does a website even know which store you're talking about? You didn't type in your zip code or something, so . . . grr!) But then after that, I told her we could order it and have it next week, and she said, "Well, it said on the website that if I order it it ships in 24 hours." Let's just make it very clear. The website . . . has nothing to do with the store. Capisce?

Some lady asked me for a book and she said she'd already looked for it in the section it should be in, "And I didn't see it back there." I replied, "I imagine you didn't, or you would have picked it up." Sometimes I'm too much of a smart-ass even for myself.

A lady in my Kids' section was looking for certain books and she came up to me and said, "Let me ask you, are these alphabetical, like, at all?" Well, if by "at all" you mean absolutely perfectly and painstakingly organized by author's last name by yours truly, then YES. I am so offended by that question that it's not even funny, especially since it always seems to stem from people's inability to pay attention to the authors' names and their strange belief that books are "totally out of order" if they are looking at the illustrators or something and making mistakes.

A girl asked me on the phone if we had a book in stock. I put her on hold, looked it up, checked the shelf, and came back to tell her we did have it. She replied, "Well, would you know if your other store would have it?" Okay. First off, if you want to know what the other store has, CALL THEM. Secondly, if I obviously had to spend some time checking in my own store, why would I know what the other store has on their shelves without being there? Weird.

Some lady on the phone was funny. She asked me if we had a book and suggested I search for it in my crystal ball. I replied that I would do that, but these days we called the crystal ball a computer. She laughed.

Some guy lost something in the store and came up to my desk to ask if I'd found it. After it was obvious that I didn't know what he was talking about he described it to me, and then asked again, "Did you find it?" Oh yeah, I found it, since I obviously have no recognition of what you're talking about, you really need to prompt me with that question a second time. Anyway, I told him I hadn't seen it (again) and then I was saying, "Did you check up front with the cashier?" but in the middle of my sentence he just ran me over with "Okay, thank you," looking away and walking away from me. Oops, sorry I tried to help you.

Okay, so this wasn't exactly about work, but I heard it on the bus on the way home from work, and rude people are rude people. So I was sitting on the bus and these two girls sitting near me were being really snotty about why it was taking the bus so long to start going. (On Saturdays they only run every half hour, so sometimes they have to sit and wait at the mall stop so they can let the schedule catch up.) The girls kept being like, "Come on!" and "Can we just go??" Sorry, but the bus schedule does not revolve around when you decided to get on. Then when these two guys got off the bus, one of the girls was like, "Oh, I'm so glad they got off, they were sooo annoying," and the other said, "Yeah, whenever they started talking, I was like God, shut up." Um . . . no comment. Except, fuck you, shitty girls.


9/23/03

Okay, so some dude came up and wanted "the Holloway House books." I told him I didn't know what those were since he said it in such a way that it told me he expected me to recognize that without any further prompting. He told me Holloway House was a publishing company and where were their books, please? Well, considering we don't group all the books together by "publishing company," I asked him for more information (after checking that "Holloway House" didn't get any hits in the computer, of course). He didn't know any titles. He didn't know any authors. He told me they were usually black authors, so where is our section on that? We have a section of specifically African-American nonfiction, but not fiction, so I told him so and he informed me that they were "black cowboy" stories. I told him unless they were in with the westerns, I couldn't help him, especially without a single title or author that fit in this category. Okay, so this whole interaction was mildly annoying and actually it probably wouldn't have gotten on this page, but for this last part. After we'd gone through all this, he said, "Well, I'm just looking for anything that's a Holloway House book. Where would those be?" Oh my shit. Is that not where we started this whole conversation? Haven't we already established that there is no "section" for that? It was so absurd that I wanted to start clucking like a chicken.

Hmm, I got a question today that I haven't heard in a long time. This girl came up with a test preparation book and asked me if I didn't have this test prep book but with a slightly different focus--some related test. I asked her if she'd already been through all the books back where she got that one, and she said yes. I told her that if we had any books on it, they would be shelved there, and the only thing I could do at this point is see what we could order for her. She said she only wanted what was in the store today, and I told her I guessed we couldn't help her then. But she kept acting like she wanted me to do something, so I asked her, "Is there anything else I can help you with?" She just said, "Well, I was just wanting to know if maybe you have any more in the back." Oh, so that's what this is about! We must have more books "in the back." Well, let me just pull up my computer listing of all the books that haven't been put out yet, and maybe use the teleporter to locate and transport this particular book from one of the dozens of boxes it might just be inside. If we have a book "in the back," it is really rare that we know it (unless it's, like, a crate of The South Beach Diet or something). If you're reading this right now, please do not ever, EVER ask a retail associate to check "in the back" for you if they don't indicate this is a possibility. (I have heard people in electronics stores and whatnot cheerfully volunteer to do so, but in our case we would only suggest looking in the back if it was a possibility, and it usually wasn't.) If it was organized in any recognizable way, it would be on the shelf already. Thank you.

Woooo, some girls were RIDICULOUSLY rude today. This didn't happen to me though. My coworker was helping some guy at the desk and noticed a pair of teenage girls appearing behind him. She acknowledged them with a nod and asked them if she could help them with anything. They wanted Mars and Venus on a Date. My coworker told them that if we had it it'd be back in the Relationships section, and one of them informed her that they'd already checked there, didn't find it, and couldn't tell if the books were "in any order." So, my coworker said that if we had it it'd be there, and if it wasn't we were out right now. They could SEE that she was already helping someone who was in front of them, so I know they couldn't have expected that she would leave her customer and go over and search (as any one of us might do if we were available), but then they walked away and one of them said to the other in her earshot, "Well, SHE didn't want to help us." What, for fuck's sake, was she supposed to do? They walked over and immediately asked my manager for help. He led them to . . . this strange place called the Relationships section. Where the three of them looked through the books and determined that there were no copies. Surprise!

In other news, our back room fridge stinks. Something in there is funkier than George Clinton. I'm gonna puke.


9/22/03

Some lady asked for my help finding some book, and while I was helping her I noticed she was holding the board game and the eight-ball toy from A Series of Unfortunate Events. I told her I had the game and loved the series, and she said she was getting them for her granddaughter. Then she asked me if the eight-ball was any different than the usual eight-ball toy. I told her it was basically the same thing, except that it gave every fortune in a sort of dismal tone. She looked at a few of the answers it gave and then said, "Nah, I think I'll put this back and just go with the game." She then thrust it out at me and put it in my hand. Oh, no, that's okay, I don't mind putting it back for you even though you're going to walk past the endcap you picked it up from on your way to the register. I made a point of putting it down as she was walking by, and she asked me some other thing and said that her granddaughter loves the series so she thinks she'll like the game. I told her the new one in the series comes out tomorrow. She said, "OH! Well don't tell her!" Yeah, I'm gonna track your granddaughter down so I can tell her so she can be mad at you that you didn't buy it for her. Whatever.

Some lady asked me for a book and I looked it up, and it said it's a book I'd have to order. She told me, "No, I already have it ordered, I just wanted to try to get it today, thanks." Jeez. Just chill and wait for your book.

A lady was vaguely hanging around Customer Service in a way that did not tell me whether she needed help. If a customer goes to the desk and waits, I know they need help and I come over, but if they're biding their time waiting to see if someone shows up by looking at the fiction books, we assume they're set and they already know what they're looking for, and if by chance we glance at the desk and only see fiction browsers, we don't come over. But this lady was being so . . . I don't know, wandery, that I went over to see if she wanted help.

As I stepped into the desk she walked right up like she'd been waiting for that, and put her books down but didn't say anything. So I asked her if she wanted any help, to which she replied confusedly, "Are you open?" It became clear at that point that she'd been hanging around forlornly waiting to pay for her books. Er . . . Checkout's over there (under that big red sign that says "Checkout," actually).


9/21/03

Okay, fucking shit! Some lady came in and asked for a book on the school reading list, so I ducked behind the desk where the school reading list books were displayed and picked the book up to give to her. She immediately asked me if this was the least expensive copy. I told her I didn't know but that was what they ordered for the school and that was the one the kids were coming in to buy. She noticed that the book actually had other stories in it too, and demanded that she wanted ONLY the story that her son had to read or whatever, so I told her we could check in Literature and maybe some would still be there. I took her over there and lo and behold, there were a few different versions; some were hardcover (out of the question, of course, because they were even more expensive), and some were cheapie paperbacks. She chose the skinniest, least expensive one and thanked me, and made her way to the register.

Then I found out later that she told the register girl to summon the manager, and had a word with my manager about how she doesn't like our policy of trying to sell the customers the most expensive books. Apparently we have all been trained to try to get people to buy things that will cause their wallets the most damage. Yeah, I'm sure that's what I was trying to do, since I really care about a few extra dollars made for my freaking company that pays me jack shit. Turned out the small inexpensive versions were ABRIDGED anyway, which why that version was ordered for the school reading list, and that is what my manager told the lady, but she wasn't buying that, convinced instead that we would do anything to make a buck off her.

Another lady was looking for school reading list books and we seemed to be out of the one she wanted. I checked three places for it just in case, and at the end of the last one I said, "Nope, looks like we're out." Then she said, "There's no way you could check your computer and SEE if you have any copies?" Oh fuck, why didn't I think of that! The COMPUTER! Oh wait. It just tells me if we carry something, and where. And since I already know this damn book, I knew where to look, and if we'd had any it would have been in one of those places. As long as I work here and probably as long as I live I will never understand people trying to tell me how to do my job.

Okay, this dude really started to piss me off after a while, but actually while it was happening it was also sort of paradoxically funny. Allow me to explain.

The dude comes up and he wants a book whose title isn't showing up in the computer. Then he spells the author's name for me and I get nothing. He writes the author's name down for me, to see if that helps (he's thinking I can't understand his Spanish accent, maybe), and I tell him that's exactly what I typed. The title and author don't exist in this country, seems like.

So he goes away and browses in the Spanish section. Then he comes back and oh my gosh, he's located a book by that author, and asks me if I'm sure I don't have the first book because I said there was nothing by that author and then here sits something by her.

Well, I pointed out that he had spelled it to me wrong, so that he would know where the blame lay (heh, I never take the blame like some people do--it's their fault if I can't find a book, not mine), and told him the computer is really picky with spelling. With that I found the author, but nothing was called even remotely what he wanted. He then revealed that he THOUGHT that was the title because it would be a translation of a book published in Spanish. I told him to give me the Spanish title, and it turned out the English version of it was something TOTALLY different.

So I offered to order it for him, since it was a book we don't carry. He said, "If I order it, you think it would be here by Wednesday?" No, I'm fairly certain it wouldn't be, since that's three days from now and we get ZERO shipments between now and then. (Once a week, and that's it; you missed the boat, buddy.) He asks when we're going to have it on our shelves, and I said our company doesn't carry the book; we're not planning to have it in the store unless you order it for yourself. (So many people think "We'd have to order it" means "We're temporarily out right now." They fail to realize that if we carried every book in print, we would not have room to walk.) Then he asks if the Ocala store would have it. The company doesn't carry it. I'm telling you. He went away all frustrated.

So of course he came back. Twice more. The first time he had another case of mistranslated Spanish title; I couldn't find an English counterpart, but he opened his request by asking for the English title he'd made up, disregarding the fact that it might just not be in existence. I showed him the author's books and he picked over them, and then the second time he came back it was to ask me where the author's new book was since I'd mentioned there was one hardback before leading him to Paperbacks. I told him it's in this Fiction section right in front of us, and he's like, "Under the author's name?" and I say yes, which is why it puzzles me that he turns right around and begins to look quizzically at the authors whose last names start with T. (His author started with an M.) ::sigh:: Sorry, but Spanish has the same letters in the same order as English (plus a few added), you don't get to use the excuse of being foreign for not knowing the alphabet.


9/20/03

Some lady wanted something on some really, really obscure subject and couldn't remember the title, but I couldn't find anything in the computer that matched. The author she was giving me was also coming up with nothing in the ballpark, at which point she got all snotty and was like, "Well they had it on Amazon.com!" Well, you can either come in here with, say, the TITLE, and in that case I can ascertain whether it's a book we carry or could get, OR you could just order it from Amazon.com instead of trying to use them to threaten me.

Some lady came up to the desk and just said, succinctly, "Williams." Considering I'm not a computer and I don't respond to single-word COMMANDS, I said, "Are you saying you're here to pick up a book?" She was like, "Yeah, Williams," so I got her book and then asked her if she needed anything else. She said, "YEAH, someone to pay for it." I told her she could go to the cash register for that, and she didn't move. She replied, "You asked me if I needed anything else. I need someone to PAY for it." So I told her I was asking if she needed anything else as in any other books or any questions, and if she wanted to pay she could go to the cash register. After that was over I wondered if she was joking about how she wanted someone to pay for her book, which would have been funny . . . except she wasn't smiling or indicating that it was a joke. Oh well, guess I didn't get it.


9/17/03

For my biggest rudie of the day, I'd like to postulate that this was in fact the same man who made my 10 worst customers EVER list from 9/1. He talked the same and was similarly rude, so I think he was the same guy. He wasn't rude enough the first time so he decided to try again, maybe? Anyway.

I answered the phone with my usual spiel and the guy replied, "Now I didn't catch all that. Am I calling the right store?" I told him he was, and he said, "Now, my hearing is JUST FINE, but you TALK too fast." Uhm, okay. "Do you have Al Franken's new book, Lying Liars or something?" I replied with the full title: "You mean Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them?" He goes, "WHOA whoa whoa, now slow down, WHAT did you say?" I slowed down my repeat of the title, but he interrupted me, and said, "But do you HAVE it?" I was sick of him acting like I was a voicemail service, so I told him to hold on while I checked. I knew it was one of our bestsellers so I went up there, found it was like number 5, and got back on the phone to tell him we had some. "Well how much is it?" he asked grouchily. I told him the original price and that it was 30% off that because it was a bestseller this week. Then I asked him if he wanted me to find out what the exact amount was, because for that I didn't happen to know (not so good with exact calculations of that sort in my head, you know) and would have to scan it into a register. He just said, "Did you say THIRTY percent?" I agreed, and he made a snotty little sound and said, "I can get it at Borders for FORTY percent," and then he hung up on me without saying anything else. What a jerk.

I dealt with this lady who just wasn't listening. She asked me for books by a certain author, and I didn't know them off the top of my head so I asked if she was looking for a certain book by that author. She told me she was, and after a moment of hemming and hawing she came up with a title: You Can Be Happy No Matter What. Believe it or not, the book actually came up in my computer as existing despite her confusion over whether she had the title right. I took her over to the section where it was supposed to be, but it wasn't there, though there were a bunch of other books by the guy. Turned out he was the dude who wrote Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. She said, "OH, I recognize that, maybe that was it," and started picking up every book that said Don't Sweat the Small Stuff on it. Then she said, "Maybe it was Don't Sweat the Small Stuff: You Can Be Happy No Matter What." I told her that the title she'd given me HAD come up in the computer, she had it right already, but now she was bent on doing detective work to figure out this elusive title she thought she had wrong, picking up another title that was sort of similar and saying maybe THAT was it, then picking up every book by the author and thinking it was another version of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff just because it had something on its cover that said "By the author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff!" or whatever. It's like . . . lady, you're not confused. You have the title right already. I guess since it wasn't there on the shelf she thought she must be wrong, but I kept telling her and she wouldn't listen; she just kept picking up every book and reading its back and postulating that "maybe this is it." ::sigh::


9/16/03

I had some lady extolling the virtues of a couple of books she was buying. "If you ever want to read something really funny, read this woman! She's had a hard life but she handles everything with humor." She went on to tell me that this poor woman had her husband leave her, lost two of her sons in a car wreck, and then . . . are you ready for this? . . . found out that her third son is GAY. "And the Lord got her through it!" she claimed. Well, of course He did. If He hadn't, she'd be dead, and that would have been God's great plan too. Whatever.

I had a lady ask me about a certain author, and I looked it up on the computer and it unsurprisingly told me that her books would be in regular Paperback Fiction. I asked if she already looked there and the lady said that she had "looked at every single bookshelf!" It was that sort of snotty way, like "Well I already THOUGHT of that! How dare you suggest it might be in the place I already looked!" I took her back to where she needed to look, and she said, "Oh, I didn't come this far. I looked at every bookshelf EXCEPT this one." You mean the one that's clearly labeled "Fiction"? Boy.

Now for a list of unspecific pet peeve buttons people pushed today! All of these were committed by at least one person:

The end.


9/15/03

Had a ditzy lady in Kids' today who wanted books by a certain author. I took her to that author's section but none of the books on her list were in my section. Her response was to ask me if I was sure there wasn't another batch of them somewhere. I was thinking, "Yeah, well sure we're looking under the author's name and I didn't mention anywhere else they could be, but now that you mention it, we do have that 'Books people look for' section and 'Books your granddaughter likes' section, let me take you there." (Actually, mostly my thoughts at the time were "Dickhead!" and "Argh! Argh!") I told her that her granddaughter has probably already bought everything that's readily available, and the others that she wants are probably the less popular ones that our bookstore doesn't carry. A non sequitur answer came back at me, one that I was sure the lady thought made perfect sense: "No, she shops here all the time!" I don't see how that contradicts my theory. The lady started acting all confused about why we wouldn't have ANY of the books on the list even though this is the same author, and I said they could probably all be ordered, but she still just didn't seem to understand--she thought that since none of them were there, she must just be in the wrong section. I gave up.

An ex-employee called and asked if the book he ordered was in. I was thinking, jeez, doesn't he know we hate it when people do that? Anyway, his book wasn't there, so I looked it up on the computer and he had ordered it THREE DAYS AGO. I told him that, sort of incredulously, and he said, "I know, but you guys get your shipments on Mondays so I figured it would be in." Good lord. He worked here a long time ago when we actually did get shipments on Mondays, but even considering that . . . you're not going to get a book you ordered three days ago, not unless you paid shipping to have it delivered to your house. It bothers me when people ask me a question like this, but when it's an ex-employee I just want to kill.


9/14/03

A lady at the register asked me if she'd missed out because she didn't pick up one of the "coupon books" at the door. I told her I didn't know of a "coupon book," and she said it was advertised at the door, so I asked her if she meant the discount card. At that point she just said, "Well, obviously you don't know what I'm talking about, so just let it go." Ohhkay. Then one of her books was not scanning into the register even though it had a totally regular sticker, which is so unusual that I've seen it happen maybe one other time in three damn years. I tried to look it up in the inventory so I could get it to charge the book, but it wasn't in the list of books, just some glitch I guess, so I had to do some computer gymnastics to make the book get charged to her bill there. She observed my problems and started randomly saying shit, like "Oh, well she found it in the computer up there!" (at Customer Service, I guess), and as I was typing in some codes to make the book ring up I explained to her that the computer just wasn't reading it and I had to lie to it to make it work. She just kept saying stuff that didn't make any sense . . . it sounded like she was indignantly trying to "help" me by telling me again that the other lady found it in the computer. These two computers have nothing to do with each other. One is a store inventory keeper and one is a cash register. So I told her it was not caused by anything either of us did and I was taking care of it, and finally it rang up when I keyed it in as "miscellaneous." I think that lady probably thought I had no idea what I was doing. After she was gone I checked to see what the fuck "coupon books" she was talking about. It was this leaflet that said "Books that Changed My Life" and was just a feature book listing, that happened to say "look for valuable coupons inside!" Okay, sure, it's a "coupon book" then. Mmmyeah.

I had a lady come up in the checkout line, and she overran me saying, "Did you find everything okay?" with "NO I don't, and NO I don't!" Then she registered that I wasn't asking what she thought I would, I guess, and after a beat she said, "Yes, I found everything just fine, thanks." Turned out she'd been to our store and been offered a discount card so many times that she knew what we were supposed to say: "Do you have a discount card? Do you want to get one?" So, "no I don't, no I don't." Tell me something, though . . . if you've been to the store so many times that you know what the cashier is supposed to say, don't you think you ought to get one?

Some girl on the phone this morning told me her book was by "Sutre. S-U-T-R-E, Jean-Paul Sutre." Sure it is. I didn't correct her because maybe other bookstore people will enjoy giggling at that.

In Kids', someone came up and said, "I'm looking for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It's a book series." No it isn't. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a book. The Chronicles of Narnia is the series. And I have to say I hate it when people give me more information than I need; I probably shouldn't be annoyed but I find it insulting that someone thinks they need to tell me "it's a book series," I'm the damn kids' book specialist and I know what Narnia is. :)


9/13/03

A lady had her three kids buying Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, and she seemed somewhat annoyed by the whole process. When she found out her discount card was expired, she asked whether she could use her husband's card. His was still in date according to my computer. I kind of offhandedly said, "Well, at least he's good for something!" She went off, saying, "TELL me about it!" and then, "I say, once they've done their SPERM donation, they're useless!" and stuff. Wow, I didn't intend to start a misandry riot. Hehehe.

Grr. Okay, so if you saw a sign that said "30% off on specially marked items!" what would you think the 30% off was on? I would think it would be on . . . the specially marked items. We had a little shelf of books, this little freestanding thingie, that had maybe half of its books on 30% discount, the other half were 10% or whatever. But I had a lady in my line ask me if a book from that was 30% off. She said she got it from somewhere that said it would be 30%, so I asked her to show me. I read the sign to her, and she replied, "Oh, I see. So in other words it shouldn't have been on that display." She argued with me that it just wasn't in the right place, if the 30% didn't apply. I tried to impart to her exactly what "specially marked items" means, but she still just didn't get it. Why? Not complex, I tell you.


9/10/03

WEIRD thing happened today. I was in the back room counting some books for a shipment and I heard an announcement. I knew it was my name, but I didn't know what they wanted me to do, so I figured, hey, it's probably just a request for assistance to Customer Service. So I went to the desk.

Some dude was standing IN the desk, behind it. I noticed he was throwing something in the trash can, so I was like, oh, he's just throwing something out. So he then started kind of glancing at the computer, and as I arrived he came out. I asked him if he needed help and he said, "Do you guys have computers for the customers to use?" I told him we didn't and asked if he wanted something looked up, and he replied, "Well I just wanted to check my e-mail." Okay . . . you came to the bookstore and you randomly want to check your e-mail. That wasn't the weirdest part, though.

I went up to the register to find out what I'd originally been paged for, just to make sure I'd taken care of it. Turned out some woman was waiting for me in the Self Help aisle (which is weird; come to Customer Service, where I can actually look shit up, right?). I went over there, and saw the woman standing there looking confused, holding a slip of paper. The customer who wanted to check his e-mail was walking away from her. Hmm.

I asked her what she needed and we went to the desk to look up her book. On the way, she said, "You know, I don't know that man from Adam. But he just walked up to me and gave me his e-mail address." I was like, WHAT? and she repeated that he had come up, introduced himself, and given her his e-mail. Hmm . . . I think maybe he just got e-mail and wants something besides junk mail, and then he wants to check it at every available opportunity (and some opportunities when it's NOT available!). Hah!

Okay, this is annoying. This one rude lady went to the Customer Service area while our café manager was using its computer to order supplies. She asked for help and the manager said she'd call someone to help her. "Well can't YOU help me?" she demanded, and the manager said she could try, but she worked for the café and might not be able to.

Well, she didn't really know what she was doing (not her fault, of course), and ended up looking up the lady's book and finding it listed in the computer, but not knowing how to find books from that point, she just kind of walked into the Religion section and told the lady it was in paperback and we should have it. From there they had no idea where to go so they called me. I showed up. I asked the manager which religion SECTION the computer had said it was in, and she was like, "I don't know, sorry!" so I went back and it said it was a book we didn't even carry, we could only order it. I told the lady that, and the lady replied that we already SAID we had it and we'd been telling her that for ten minutes and now we were changing the story. "I'll just go to the CHRISTIAN bookstore!" she snipped, and walked out. Well, that's what you get when you demand help from someone who already said they don't know how to do that job.

A guy asked where he would find cookbooks. We were RIGHT next to it where we were standing, so I pointed to the really large letters on the wall and said, "Right over there, see up on the wall there's the sign that says 'Cooking.'" He just kept standing there and I looked up at him and he was just vaguely looking around, not in the direction I was pointing at all. I told him, "LOOK where I'm pointing, see the letters on the wall," and finally he noticed and went over there. I think it's really weird how people will ask for help and then do everything in their power to avoid actually taking the help. I mean, I was POINTING and he wasn't looking at my hand. Come on now.


9/9/03

I had something annoying happen today. This lady had bought The South Beach Diet and gotten charged too much--it was on the bestseller list and it was supposed to have rung up with its discount automatically, but whoever was the cashier at the time hadn't noticed, and neither had she. She got home, and three days later she was back in the store wanting to get the difference. Okay, that's fine and dandy, and it sucks that we (VERY collective "we," by the way) fucked up. But the way she handled it bothered me.

First of all she didn't tell me the situation at all, and just handed it to me for me to take care of it. When I figured out that she wasn't returning the book but just wanted the difference from the extra charges, I had to call my manager because she had written a check, and we can't do anything with those sorts of things if the check hasn't cleared. So my manager told me to tell her she couldn't do anything about it until it cleared and to get her name and phone number, so we could let her know when it did.

Instead of being nice about it, the lady said, "Well, if that's the case then you'll send it out to me." (I can't imagine saying that, just going into a business and telling someone what they're going to do for me, even if it was their business's fault that something bad happened.) She explained that she had already come out and made the trip, and so we would be sending it out to her. I called the manager back and asked her what she wanted me to do, after I got her address; she said it would be no problem to send the money out to the lady, but that I should bring the receipt back and make us a copy. I did that, but then when I came back out there the lady launched back into her thing, saying that how we handled this was making her feel bad; "I didn't rip you off, YOU ripped ME off," she explained. I think she thought that our inability to do anything with an uncleared check insinuated that we thought she was trying to con us out of six dollars or whatever. So I told her exactly what I thought: I said it wasn't like it was ME that did it, and whoever did it did not do it on purpose, and I was sorry no one caught it at the time. Yeah, well she told me how the whole thing was "handled badly" again and wrote down the manager's name and phone number. Blargh. If I was that lady I would have called or something to find out what could be done; she might not have even had to come in. But I am SO over talking about this now.

Heh, some lady stopped me and asked me if we had any books on learning Thai. "I want to learn Thai," she said, and then after a pause, "That means like in Thailand." No, I thought you meant the Thai they speak in France. Whatever.

At the Customer Service desk today, I saw the lady running it was getting backed up, and her phone rang, so I went to help the customer standing behind the one she was already helping, thinking it would lessen her load a little. I got to the desk and addressed the person behind the first lady (doing that very obvious "I'm looking over you" motion), and even as the second customer came forward the first lady said, "Oh, she's already helping me, thank you." Heh, I love it when people think they're the only person in the world. . . .

Ooh, I had a really condescending lady at the register today! First off, she had a book that was marked with one of our 30% off stickers, which says under it "+ 10% off with your discount card." She gave it to me and looked all concerned while I was fixing it to ring up right, and since she was obviously one of those types that would insist she was charged wrong if I didn't make it clear what I was doing, I told her the steps I was doing out loud. At the end of it she said, "But that doesn't end up being forty percent." I told her that the book WASN'T forty percent off, it was thirty percent, plus ten percent off THAT price with your discount card. She replied, "30% plus 10% IS 40%, hon." I'm so glad you gave me that math lesson, obviously I needed it . . . let's have you attend the next class, where we learn to listen. Hehe. I repeated my earlier statement and she understood this time. So, anyway, I gave her the total, and she replied, "Well, you've already put my card through, right?" I told her I hadn't; I didn't ever have her credit card. She said, "Yes you did, and I put it away already," and I told her that the only card she'd given me was the discount card, which I did indeed swipe through and give back to her. She replied, "NO, I gave you BOTH of them!" so I replied, "Well, I didn't TAKE both of them." I remember her holding both cards, so I know what she's talking about, but I never picked up the other one, so I don't know why she put it away and then got all insistent over it. But she took the card out and paid with it like usual, and after that everything was hunky-dory. What the fuck does "hunky-dory" mean anyway, where did that come from??

Something weird happened in the store today. A dude was just sitting in Magazines reading a book and some old man came over to him and started beating him on the head with a magazine! He looked up and asked the guy what the hell he was doing, and the guy replied, "OH, sorry, I thought you were someone else!" Yeah, I regularly come up and bean people in the head with magazines if I can't even see their face clearly, don't you? Hehehe.


9/8/03

Had a surprise today! Some lady couldn't find a book and I told her it was in the Newbery section. I took her to it and she said, "Ohh, wow, well you guys are ALWAYS moving things around." People say stuff like that often in order to make it look like they KNEW where to look but we fucked them up by changing things around, when in fact they either had no idea where to look, hadn't tried at all, or were in fact thinking of another store. (They like to tell us that we "moved" the bathroom because they misremembered where it was, for instance.) Anyway, I thought this lady might be one of those, so I asked her what we moved, and she said, "Well the Newbery section used to be over THERE." And lo and behold, she was pointing exactly to where Caldecott & Newbery used to be over two years ago, before the Kids' reset. Wow, old school!

Some lady needed a medical book that was bilingual, and she didn't remember the title but kept repeating the part of the title she DID know over and over. I took her to Medical and then I told her it would probably be in with the Spanish books, and she said she'd meet me over there. So I went, but nothing was there resembling the title she wanted, and before I knew it she had come over to the section . . . bringing along ANOTHER associate. She had asked HER all the same questions, repeating again and again the part of the title she knew. We told her (in two languages!) that without the full title we didn't even know if we could get it, despite her friend saying she bought it here, and that our other store might have different books, blah blah. Seemed she preferred standing there, saying the partial title over and over, and bewilderedly browsing the shelves. Grr.

Today the customer service girl and I were talking, and she told me that some customer had come up to her another time and asked for "books on Pie Lates." She had no idea what she was talking about until she clarified, "You know, Pie Lates, the exercise program." Oh, Pilates. (Pronounced with three syllables, incidentally.) Surprise!


9/7/03

Maybe I shouldn't bother saying some of these things, because it certainly gets tiresome typing out that the same people keep doing the same crappy things, and I'm sure it must get boring for you to read too. Anyway, I had another person who needed help finding a book at the register, and in the middle of my sentence asking him to go to Customer Service and I'd call someone to meet him, he ran me over with, "There IS no one at Customer Service!" With those people I make it very clear that they have interrupted my presentation of the solution to that problem, and I explain that I was GOING to say I would call someone. They just can't even wait for me to finish my sentence before they start whining, and it pisses me off.

A kid was being kind of weird. He was by himself (Dad was somewhere else in the store, apparently), and he had eleven dollars and wanted to buy Yu-Gi-Oh! stuff. He kept asking me for price checks on things--not a problem, but then when I told him that a deck was $10.99, he said, "Will you take eleven for it?" It sounded like very adult phrasing, I know he must have heard some grown-up haggling at a yard sale, but did not grasp the idea that you can't haggle in retail stores. Hehe. Later, in explanation for his repeated requests about prices, he explained, "I only have eleven dollars on me." Again it sounded really adult. In any case Dad had a discount card so his theme deck ended up being less than eleven bucks anyway.


9/6/03

Someone asked me if our store carries puzzles. She was asking for her husband, who was not particularly near her, so when I described where the puzzles were, she started shouting repetitions of what I said over across the store to him. Well, ALMOST repetitions. It went something like this.

"Do y'all carry puzzles?"
"Yeah, on the toy table."
"ON THE TOY TABLE! Where's that?"
"Over on the other side of the fiction signs."
"OVER ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FICTION SCIENCE."
"Fiction SIGNS."
"Oh. FICTION SIGNS."

Then she figured out how funny "fiction science" was and we all had a laugh.

Ooh, Harry Potter lady again. Oh jeez. This time she came in wanting to get a crossword book for her boss. I took her to Games & Puzzles, but as soon as she saw what the crosswords were, she realized that wasn't what she wanted: "NO, no, I want those kind where you find the word and you circle it!" I informed her that those are not crosswords; they're find-a-words or whatever, and I took her back there. She started browsing through them and saying how she loved them, and then she said something about how she loved the ones that had the NUMBER searches too, and even better, the bendy searches, the ones where you don't find them all in a row, the word WIGGLES and you have to find it. "Not everyone can do that!" she claimed. Yes, it's ADVANCED find-a-word here at the bookstore, folks.

I had a kid ask me for a certain kind of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and I went to get it. As I was getting it, the kid told me which color the card package was. I got to gleefully tell him I already knew that, "'Cause guess what? I can READ!" The great thing about kids is that you can be semi-rude to them without them taking offense.

Some lady in my checkout line (while I was giving the cashier a lunch break) was really condescending. Actually she really wasn't THAT bad, but she did this crap twice. First she was getting a discount card and it was my first time having to write the date today, so I was a little hesitant after two days off, and said, "It's the sixth, isn't it?" as I wrote the date. "Oh, no, honey," she replied, "I believe it's the fifth." I checked my watch and told her it said the sixth, and checked my computer and it said the sixth too. That wasn't so bad. Then later she came back to use the card again, and she was buying almost forty dollars' worth of books. She laid a twenty on the counter, and when I told her the total and she didn't move to add more money, I just asked her if she wanted a bag and then repeated the total. She put her hand on the twenty and said, "Right here, honey." I'm sorry, I'm afraid you need almost twice that much. Honestly she wasn't rude, it was just funny how she was wrong twice in a row but felt compelled to "correct" me with that disparaging "honey" modifier. ::sigh::


9/3/03

Someone wanted to know if we had several copies of The Hobbit in paperback. I asked if she wanted a particular version of it, and she said, "Well, you know, just the classic one, by Tolkien." I told her that The Hobbit is by Tolkien no matter what version you get, and that there are like seventy different versions of it in paperback. She said, "And they're all by Tolkien?" Yes. You're not getting this are you? People never heard of there being multiple versions of a book?


9/2/03

People have this weird frame of mind that you automatically know what the fuck they're talking about, like you're already on the same page as them when they start talking. This guy called me and said, "Hi, I ordered a book." I'm thinking, "And. . . ." He paused and then added, "The author is Callahan." So I just said it. "Okay, so what did you need?" He said in a sort of "are you incompetent?" voice, "Well, I called to see if it's IN." Well, I told him that giving his name would be good, so I checked and it wasn't there. I told him he would have received a call if it had come in, and checked the computer. According to the list, his book wouldn't be in until this coming Sunday.

"Well, they told me it would be this Sunday," he informed me, and went on a tangent about how Amazon would have given him 30% off but he wanted to give US the business and that was why he ordered it from us, and he thought I should tell my management that books need to come when they're promised. Gee, what an idea . . . yes, telling the manager that he needs to make the warehouse books come faster will work. I also doubt that anyone "promised" a date. I myself am always very specific about mentioning that books can get bumped to the next shipment sometimes. Argh.

In other news, some guy was caught masturbating while standing in the New Age section. That's a weird place for it. . . .


9/1/03

Some lady came up and asked me where we have our "commentaries." When I asked, "Commentaries on what?" she gave me this look like "What are you, asleep?" and said, "On Bibles." I love how everyone thinks that the only type of commentary they've heard of has to be the only one made.

A lady called me on the phone and asked if we had a certain book. I told her we did and said that I would go get one and write her name on it. She told me she was right around the corner and that she'd be there soon, and I found myself saying, "Wait, I need your name," to the dial tone. People are just lovely.

I was looking for this one lady's book in the customer holds. Her order seemed totally legit; she'd gotten a call yesterday evening, the computer said her book came to this store; and it was supposed to be there, yet it was not. I finally did my last resort thingamajig where I assume that some employee didn't know the alphabet, and I start looking in the boxes other than the right one. Bingo! The lady whose name started with M was in the L shelf. (Also, there were quite a few other M's there, as well as some N's in the M shelf. I think we'll need to have an ABC lesson at the next meeting, because I seriously almost looked like a total ass there just because someone wasn't paying attention in kindergarten.)

Some lady called and wanted a cookbook about recipes from the highlands or something. I repeated back to her, "Okay, Recipes from the Highlands," and she said, "NO, no, highlands." I paused for a second and said, "That's what I said." A pause from her. "OH. I thought you said 'islands.'" Hehehe.

Some guy asked me if we have a Science Fiction section; he was confused by our regular Fiction section where they're all hardbacks and large-sized paperback books mixed together. I began to explain how the hardbacks and large-size paperbacks are mixed together but there is a SMALL paperback section of all science fiction, but he interrupted me to clarify his question because he thought I didn't know what he meant, and he reiterated that he wanted science fiction, not science fact (huh? When did I say anything about "actual" science?). Anyway, I got so frustrated that I was explaining it and he wouldn't stop talking long enough to HEAR the damn explanation that I just broke in and said, "No, no, I wasn't saying that. Just LISTEN." And then I finished my fucking sentence and he agreed with me that he was indeed looking for small paperbacks. Grr. I took him back there and bounced back to friendly again, asking him if he needed anything else. He didn't. Yay.

All hell broke loose at Customer Service today. All of a sudden everyone discovered we were OPEN on a "holiday" and decided to flood into our doors. I had people in lines at Customer Service and people calling in and tying up both lines. I called for backup but she was pretty busy too. So anyway, I was actually mostly calm during this time, but several things happened that pissed me off. (And dammit, I was so swamped that it took me like a half hour to get a second to write down my Assholes! I could have lost them! Grr!)

First I had this lady ring in on the phone while I was helping people. I told her I could help her in just a second if she wouldn't mind waiting; I had like three other people ahead of her. She replied, "Oh, that's fine, could you just transfer me to someone who can help me then?" What part of "we're busy" don't you understand? Heh, that actually amused me a little because it's like OH, why didn't I think of that? My coworker's just standing here with her thumb up her butt, so I'm glad you reminded me that there's someone I could *transfer* you to, special customer. Or . . . you could just wait like the rest of the piggies. Oink!

One of the dudes in my overflow of customers took up a lot of my time because he was insisting the book was titled something that wasn't coming up in the computer, and also insisting that it was a New York Times bestselling book. I happen to have ACCESS to the Times bestsellers, and looked on their lists too, but it was nowhere to be found, and neither the author nor the title came up as hits in my computer. I just love hearing that, though: "I can't find a record of this in the computer." "Well, it's a bestseller!" Sure it is, buddy.

For some reason I was in a really good mood when I took this guy's call, so it didn't hit me until later how incredibly, HORRIBLY rude he was, and I think as soon as I finish writing this up I'll go browse my "Ten Worst Customers" list and see if he qualifies for a position. Here we go.

The guy called and pushed a pet peeve button by giving me a long title and then when he was finished saying it he immediately launched into telling me the second book he was looking for, also with a really long title. I'd rather he at least have the courtesy to ask me if I'm ready for the second one, but why should he worry about how I deal? If he goes too fast for me, he'll have the satisfaction of feeling righteously indignant over my misunderstanding when he has to repeat himself. Anyway, I was on my way to the desk so I could look up his books, and he said, "I have the authors if you need them." I said, "Well, it's usually easier to find something by its title," and he said, "So, that's a no." I was like, "Uh . . . yeah. They seemed like pretty unique titles so I doubt I'll need an author too." And he repeated. "So . . . that's a no, you don't need the authors?" ::sigh:: "That's right." Then I told him he messed me up on the first title when he immediately told me the second, so I asked him to repeat it. He did so, and then did it AGAIN, launched into telling me the second one again so quickly that it almost sounded like he was talking about one book with an EXTRA long title. In any case I type like the wind (if there's, ya know, a COMPUTER in front of me), and I got both in this time. Turned out we were supposed to carry both, so I put him on hold and looked to see if we had any.

We were out of both, goddamn it.

I got back on the phone to tell him the bad news, and he replied, "Well, when does the order come in?" I was a little confused by that--what order?--and I asked him that. "The ORDER, when you get more copies of the books in!" I told him there was no way to tell that, because it all depended on when they were bought as to which shipment they'd end up in. He replied, "Well, could I talk to someone who can help me?" I said, "Excuse me?" and he said, "Well, it seems like you just don't know what you're doing--never mind, I'm calling another bookstore," and he just hung up after that. I just kind of chuckled and shrugged, and went to help the next person in my unending line. It was only later that I realized how incredibly CRAPPY that was, to act like we'd have inventory information ready to offer out of our heads if you haven't specifically placed an order for yourself. What a pain in the ass.


On to October!


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