My Record of Work: The Annoying, the Interesting, and the Just Plain Weird--The Year 2004.

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AUGUST!


8/31/04

I was running register for a break and the first thing that happened was the computer screwed up. We were like at the very dead center of a sudden storm and every time the lightning and thunder came, the computers blinked. We didn't lose power, but my first customer came up and I scanned her discount card and the computer went a little loopy, hanging on the part where it was supposed to process her discount card information. The lady seemed undisturbed--she'd totally seemed nonchalant and obliging when I'd had to take her to a different register to start the transaction, too. And so one of my nearby managers observed the problem and said she'd check to see if the server was fried from the lightning and had to be reset. As soon as she went in that direction, this lady plopped her card down on top of her relatively large stack of purchases, huffed a big martyr sigh, and rolled her eyes, muttering, "comPUTERS" under her breath before stalking out of the store right out into the rain. She left her discount card there and everything, and she wasn't just leaving to check on the weather. Just dropped everything and left because I could not ring her up i-fucking-mmediately. The computer came back up less than a minute later. I don't pretend to get people like that. If I was going to leave over something that was in NO way the salespeople's fault, I certainly wouldn't act miffed as if there was something they could have done about it. What the hell was her problem anyway?

Also while I was doing the register break, some guy came up and told me he was looking for a study guide for a particular book of the Bible. I asked him where he'd already looked, and he waved his hand exasperatedly in a completely non-specific gesture vaguely at the Bible section, exclaiming, "All OVER!" I told him that didn't really tell me anything, and he goes, "They're not really in any order," to which I replied, "Oh, they're in order." I came around the desk and led him to Bible Reference, but he continued past me, held his hands up at a different bookshelf, and complained that this "Christian Living" section had nothing. I just stood there in Bible Reference and kept having to coax him into the aisle to show him that he was looking in the wrong place. I guess he hadn't looked "everywhere," as he said. I hate that, people get so exasperated like they can't find anything because we just have an annoying system. Screw that.

Someone called early in the morning about a book on the school reading list. I told her we were out and she replied, "Whoa! You're OUT? See, I'm from Miami, I'm not USED to stores being out of STOCK." Yes, because in Miami, school reading books fall from the heavens, and all bookstores are fully stocked. "What do kids DO if all the bookstores are out?" she demanded. I told her I didn't know. Why would I know what they do after they can't get it from us? My guess is, most people make arrangements to get the book soon after they find out they'll need it, and allow themselves plenty of time to receive the book if they have to order it. If everyone in town needs it and no one has bothered to tell the bookstores, what do you THINK is going to happen?

A couple came in and asked me, "Where are the baby books?" I replied that they'd have to be more specific. The guy looked at me like he thought he must be talking to someone incompetent, and gestured impatiently with both hands as he explained that he wanted "BOOKS about when you're going to have a BABY." I clarified, "You want books on pregnancy and birth?" They agreed, so I took them to that section. I could see the wheels turning in the guy's head about how incompetent I was for not knowing exactly what he meant by "baby books," so when we got to the section I turned around and pointed out that the section of "baby books"--books FOR babies--was behind him, and that the section of "baby books"--books in which to record information about your baby--were on this shelf at the end. I think I made my point.

Some lady called and asked if we had The Purpose-Driven Life, but before she'd even finished her sentence she was changing her mind, giving me alternate titles that sounded like maybe they were companion volumes to the famous book The Purpose-Driven Life. It turned out that she really did just want the book The Purpose-Driven Life, and apparently from her explanation she thought I'd never heard of it. I hate that, they always think they're asking for something totally obscure, and my confusion on the topic was just because she couldn't decide what friggin' title to give me.

My café manager asked me to help a guy who was in the computer section with finding books on fixing computers, with lots of pictures. She added doubtfully, "I don't think he speaks." I wondered how she even found out what he wanted, because when I got over there the young man only communicated in grunts. Beyond that, the grunts didn't seem to mean anything, as he kind of made them here and there anyway. But he wasn't mentally challenged as far as I could tell, except for the whole fact that he didn't seem to realize my inability to speak Grunt really limited my ability to help him. He would grunt and sort of point to pictures in books, and then maybe grunt meaningfully again. "You want books on repair, or just computers in general?" "Unh." Mostly I just stood there while he pulled books off the shelf, flipped through them, and grunted. Eventually he grunted sort of happily and chose one of the books. I have to wonder what he expected me to do. We have this one other customer who can't speak but he comes in with a pad of paper and tells us stuff very politely. If you only speak Grunt, you should either have a way to communicate with people who don't OR you should come in ready to find what you need unassisted. Otherwise . . . UNH!


8/30/04

A lady came to pick up some books, then went away for a while and returned to the desk with an armload she wanted to put on hold. After making fun of herself for being addicted to books, she asked how long I could hold these for her. "Well, when were you planning on coming back?" I asked, since we'll pretty much hold them until whenever a customer asks if they specify. "How long will you hold them?" she asked, and I told her again that that depended on when she wanted to come get them--we can put any date on there and as long as it's reasonable we'll keep 'em on hold. "But how long will you HOLD them??" she demanded, and I had to rephrase it until she got that I would hold them 'til whenever she wanted. Then we got to have lots of other fun: I asked for her name so I could know who to hold it for, and then after that she started rattling off her phone number . . . I told her I didn't need that, just a name, and then just a moment after that she's like, "You don't need my phone number?" Why? What are we going to call you about? We're not waiting for an order. If you don't come we'll just put your books away eventually. Whatever. But then she was going away and wanted to know how much a lap desk was. She had her hands full of books she was buying today, so she kind of indicated the endcap with her head, and said, "How much is that? I never could find a price." I picked up the first desk and realized there was more than one kind on the endcap (which makes it difficult to indicate with a head nod), and I asked, "These big wooden ones?" "I don't know!" she said, sounding weirdly indignant. I'm not asking for a complicated answer here. I just kind of held out the desk and said, "THIS one?" and she said yeah and I read her the big old price that was right there on the box on top. ::sigh:: Can't wait 'til she comes to collect these. . . .

My manager got a funny comment today from a big guy walking out from the bathrooms: "Y'all should all put the bathrooms in the same place." I dunno what exactly that means, but my guess is he's grumping that not EVERY STORE IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD had a standardized positioning of their facilities. Can we please get a life and complain about things that actually matter? I bet he just walked into the back room thinking it was the bathroom and ended up feeling like a jerk or something.

A dude walked up to the desk first thing and started hollering, "Anybody workin' here?" I guess it would be too much to ask to have someone say "excuse me" or not yell in a bookstore. Whistling and snapping are also tricks of this trade, and I find it totally disgusting that people think I would respond to that. (I have actually seen someone stand at the C/S desk and whistle, at which point I dropped what I was doing and walked into the back room in disgust. Sorry, that's not how you ask for help. It's how you call your dog.) Anyway, this dude got my help reluctantly, and when I handed him the book he ordered he just threw it down on the desk and didn't look at it and said. "How much do I owe ya?" I always pretend to be surprised with people like this and was like, "OH, you don't pay ME, you go to the REGISTER," and told him where to check out. Grr. I had another dude do this today too, he picked up his book and looked at ME and said, "How much is it?" Why don't you look at the damn book before you ask me? And they always act SURPRISED when I reach to pick up the product in question, as if they just expect me to have all the barcodes in my brain.

I had a lady come up and want to do an exchange. She had a pack of thank you cards and wanted to turn them in for something more appropriate because "these are for a funeral, and I didn't realize that." She didn't have a receipt and the package was open. I told her I didn't think I could do anything with this because the package was open, and she's like, "Oh is it? I didn't notice that, I didn't even know, I'm sorry," and then she started talking again about how the cards looked like they were more appropriate for a funeral. She read me what it said on the back of the package (which was how you were supposed to tell what was inside the card)--after the "Thank You" on the front, the inside said, "Your kindness meant so much." Again she insisted that that was only appropriate for a funeral, and asked if I agreed. I told her I didn't see what was even remotely "only-funeral-esque" about it. It sounded to me like it was thanking a person for their kindness. She seemed satisfied and decided to keep the cards, apologized, and left. Okay.

A lady wanted to do a return and since the regular cashier can't authorize them he called me. Apparently, before I came, the cashier asked the woman to please step aside and let the man waiting behind her come through, and the lady heaved a big exasperated sigh and rolled her eyes. Umkay . . . I for one don't understand how someone could be that rude, I mean, you think it's a better course of action to just block the line with your behind while nothing is happening, waiting on a manager? Please. So when I got there he was finishing up the man's transaction and I hopped on to take care of the woman. I asked her if she had her receipt (all she did was hand me the bag), and she's like, "It's IN there," like I'm incompetent. I hadn't examined the merchandise yet so I just wanted to know what kind of situation I was dealing with (i.e., if I even COULD do a return), but try telling that to some people. Anyway, I took her books out and asked her why they were coming back, and then she takes her keys with the discount card on them and says, "Don't you need THIS?" Have I mentioned how much I hate being PROMPTED? Believe me, I know how to do this and if I need something I WILL ASK YOU. I wish we were like those pizza guys; they're in control. You call for delivery and immediately they are bossing YOU around. They rapid-fire questions and you meekly answer and they thank you and hang up. That's the way retail should be--I ask the questions and you tell me what I need to know so I can help your ass in the quickest way possible. Screw all this crap.


8/29/04

I overheard some guy being an ass at the register today when my coworker was offering him a discount card. "Is it free?" the guy asked, and my coworker said no. "Then it's not a discount!" the customer announced, and then sort of started making fun of it like it's this thing that makes no sense whatsoever: "Paying extra for your purchases, how would you like a NON discount card?" People just don't seem to get that we're not asking them to pay us ten dollars to save five overall. We're telling them to pay us ten dollars to save five right then and then on EVERYTHING THEY BUY FOR A WHOLE YEAR. It just plain makes sense if you buy enough books. I hate it when they act like they're so smart for figuring out some supposed game we're playing to get their money.

Grr, this lady who comes by the bookstore once in a while was there again annoying me. I don't know why her voice annoys me so much, but whenever I hear it I really want to be far, far away. She comes in with her toddler and talks to him constantly without saying anything really (you know, making incoherent statements like, "It's a TRAIN, isn't it? Yes, we're having fun, huh?") and putting "my darling" on the end of nearly every sentence. The kid sneezed one time and she said, "Gesundheit, my darling!" I wonder if that kid is going to grow up like in that Bill Cosby skit and think his name's "My Darling"? (Bill Cosby and his brother thought their names were "Dammit" and "Jesus Christ." In the comedy show anyway.) Anyway, what's weird is the mom kept talking to her son when she wanted to go, like she was trying to reason with him about going to the gym. "Let's go to the gym. Mommy wants to go to the gym, my darling. We can come back another time if you want, but Mommy really wants to go to the gym." The kid, I should note, was not making a sound of protest. I think he is just so used to her constant almost-meaningless talking that he ignores it, and she takes it as refusal to obey. Now, this went on for a while and then Mommy had to go potty, and she came up to ME and said, "Excuse me?" Having been annoyed by her talking while I was cleaning up for such a long time, I guess maybe the expectant smile I returned looked a little forced. She just stood there and stared at me and then said, "Sorry . . . well I don't mean to interrupt. . . . " Yes you do, now out with it. "I have to use the restroom . . . and I don't think my son is going to cooperate . . . so would you keep an eye on him for me?" Oh yes, that's brilliant; the kid won't cooperate with his own mother, so it's a great idea to leave him with a bookstore worker you don't even know and make sure he's okay. I was like, "Um, all right . . . " but then when she tried to walk away her son placidly toddled after her. That was the last I heard from them. ::sigh::

A lady came up to me in Kids' with a long list of books she wanted to try to find, and she said she could use pretty much anything on it, she just wanted to get a few of these for her son. I took a long look at the list and then pointed out the titles I knew we carried; four of the titles on this twelve-or-more-item list were regularly stocked in my kids' section and I knew them off the top of my head. I told her this, and explained that the others I hadn't seen in my section and since I'm the department head I know I would have seen them if I had them. I proceeded to take her to the books, and out of the four we had two. Her response? Leaning over to show me the list, "Well, what about this one, would you have this?" I explained that we'd already looked for every book we would carry. "What about this one?" she replied, as if I had been speaking ancient Egyptian. I repeated that every book we might have had we'd already looked for. I asked if she wanted to order anything in particular from the list. She said no and then asked again if I knew if maybe we'd have THIS one. After I told her AGAIN that this one, this one, this one, and THIS one are the only ones we carried, she pointed to the title again and read it to me. Yup. I guess it's one of those things where you type what you want in Google and when nothing comes up you just rearrange your sentence in hopes that it's really out there but Google didn't find it. Tell you what. I know my section. If you're disturbed that I didn't have to use a computer to give you the stats on books, don't assume that it means I am just talking out my ass to avoid work. And look, don't Google me. You receive 0 results.


8/28/04

I got a story from another associate about an older couple coming in to get "those edible Hello Kitty erasers you guys used to have." Concerned that we didn't have them anymore, they tried to get help finding them and no one knew what they were talking about, so my coworker mentioned it to me when I came back to work today. Okay. My first thought was "Yeah, I know what erasers they're talking about." My second thought was, "WAIT, those aren't EDIBLE!"

And think about it. How can an eraser be edible anyway? Once you erase with it, wouldn't you be eating the lead? So . . . WHAT??

The grandparents claimed that their kids loved those darn things, and hoped we'd get more soon. But . . . but . . . THEY AREN'T EDIBLE! They're just scented like food! And furthermore, they SAY SO ON THE WRAPPER!

[not edible dammit!]

I'm really disturbed now. People are buying their kids non-edible putty erasers and they are eating them. Next thing you know they'll be sucking on smelly markers and eating air freshener.

A dude came up to me holding a book and saying that it was the only book on Picasso we had back there. Um, no. You lie. You lie!!! Anyway, I agreed to help him and he was one of those people who always tries to disagree and impede every attempt to help . . . "Oh, I already LOOKED there. You don't HAVE anything there. I LOOKED." Yeah. That's why when we go over there I find something like seventeen more Picasso books. ::sigh:: I mean, I don't expect him to be able to find books as well as I can--it's kind of my job--but I would appreciate it if he wouldn't go off on me as I try to help him find stuff, considering he obviously didn't know what he was doing or he would have found these books.

Some guy waiting for my services at the desk made it obvious that he was feeling rather impatient. When I helped him after finishing with my current customer, he volunteered the extremely helpful information that he was "looking for a book." I asked him which one and he's like, "Oh," and started rummaging around for the paper with the vital information on it. Now, I really think he could have refrained from wasting both of our time if he'd devoted some of that energy from looking impatient into looking for his goddamn paper. But that aside, he wanted a book in the health section and wouldn't stop whining that it wasn't organized well. I told him it was indeed by author but that that was within little sections in the Illnesses/Injuries/Disorders section (you know, so that all the books on arthritis or cancer or diabetes are together), and he's all whining how it should just be by author and how the hell do you find anything in here. Grrrr.

Some girl told me that she had come to our store rather than the local store Goerings because "they're just ridiculously overpriced." Surprised, I asked if somehow they were jacking their books up from retail price (to my knowledge, NO ONE does that), and she explained that she was responding to the prices listed online. Oh, surprise. Well, I guess we're ridiculously overpriced too--we're a retail store and we (like Goerings) sell at retail price. People just don't know this shit.

Some dude wandered up to me and said, "Do you have any more couches?" I was like, "Huh?" and he complained that he wanted to sit on couches. I told him the only comfy sitting places were over in Travel and over in the middle of the store--and a lot of them were taken up by those damn Yu-Gi-Oh! kids. I told him where they were and he made this distasteful face and said, "Yeah, well THOSE are all kind of FULL." Deal with it, dude. Sit in the café, or at one of our tables, or whatever. What did he think I was gonna do, tell people to leave? Put him on a waiting list? Damn.

Soooo . . . really annoying thing of the day. I was putting in a shelf. It was really more like a wall panel, designed so I can do weird things like insert J-hooks into the wall and . . . you don't care. Anyway. So I'm putting this panel into the bookshelf and this older couple comes along and stands at the end of the row like they want me to put this heavy thing down and ask them what they need. But they got over that right quick because they decided to come over and tell me what I was doing wrong.

First the woman told me she used to work with these things and that I needed to "count the holes." I wasn't having any problem positioning the thing and told her so; it just takes some precision and I have very little leverage since, you know, I'm a munchkin. But I've friggin' done this before, and furthermore I wasn't struggling, it just takes a little while and plus I wasn't quite sure where it was going to end up along the wall yet. Then the woman told me it wasn't going in correctly because my hand was in the way, and I just told her I was doing fine and wasn't having a problem. Then the dude started in on me: "Do you want me to help?" and actually tried to take the paneling away from me, which really was ridiculous because I had it halfway in and it was going to fall out of the hole if he moved it without proper support. I just started going, "NO, no no no," and the woman's like telling her husband to stop because I didn't want help, and he's like, "She shouldn't be doing this anyway. You shouldn't be doing this." Yeah 'cause I'm just trying to be too big for my britches. Anyway I got sick of it and just put the damn thing down and asked them what the hell they needed, and helped them and came back. I got the shelving into the wall and was in the middle of putting up another shelf (much easier) when a guy wandered up and asked me if I needed help. Hahaha. He was nice though, and while I was helping him with what he needed, one of our new associates came into the kids' section looking worried and sort of following us around. Finally he interrupted and asked if I needed help with a shelf. Confused, I told him I didn't and informed him that he was the THIRD person who'd been trying to help me, so what was going on? Get this. The old man had accosted him in the bathroom and said, "When you get done in here you need to go help that little girl with that shelf, she's out there killing herself trying to put a shelf up." Good God. Look, it WASN'T HARD TO DO. I am not a weakling just because I am a small woman. And later I had to move the shelf again and I still had no trouble, damn it.


8/25/04

This guy was a dick to the tenth degree. As expected, we sold out of Unfit for Command yesterday, the same day it came in, so of course today we had to deal with jerks coming in to ask for it and getting all riled that they missed their chance. Whatever. ORDER IT. So this guy came and asked for it and I told him the bad news, and then he goes, "What happened to your top ten?" Huh? What do you mean what "happened" to it? "Your top ten, it's been taken down." I asked him what he meant by that since to my knowledge our top ten display is healthy and flourishing. He told me that our bestsellers display starts with number eleven, therefore our top ten has been "taken down." Understanding, I explained to him that during our remodel we changed formats from displaying the top ten in these nifty numbered towers to putting them on shelves with little signs under them, and as such our ordering the signs has done nothing. So basically we HAVE the top ten up there but they're not labeled as to which is which. Damn sign people.

Anyway he kept arguing with me that they were "taken down," and then started saying that we probably took the top ten down because we didn't like what was on it. "WHAT now?" I asked him, and he explained that since the John Kerry book was on the top ten and we probably wanted to hide it, we just took our top ten down.

WHAT THE HELL KIND OF SENSE WOULD THAT MAKE?

Okay, number one. We don't want to hide the book. We would sell it if we had any, and yesterday is a testament to that. Number two, WE ARE NOT A LIBERAL BOOKSTORE and WE DO NOT HAVE AN AGENDA, as I've said a million frigging times. What kind of bookstore is based in Alabama and has a liberal bias? Exactly. And number three, now someone explain to me how the hell it makes sense that if someone at our company doesn't like the John Kerry book, it would deal with the book's high sales by having us stop displaying the whole top ten rather than admit that it's selling? That's right, this sly guy who's nodding to himself every time he says something ridiculous has got our number now--if we don't like something, well then, we'll just stop displaying top ten and hope no one notices that it starts at eleven. Sneaky eh? I finally had to take him over there and show him that our bestsellers WERE up and DID NOT include the John Kerry book--and that is because this is not the New York Times bestseller list, it is our store's bestseller list and that book can't exactly hit the top thirty if we don't have any to sell. He accepted that and moved on, but more Assholes moved in to take his place. . . .

Apparently on a radio show someone announced that Barnes & Noble is not carrying the book and that its CEO does not want it to be released and that the store will not be carrying it. I heard that from FOUR people today, about how everyone's talking about this horrid censorship and how everyone's trying to keep the truth from the conservatives.

Putting aside the fact that all these people already believe what they are going to believe BEFORE they read the book, I have an answer. Did anyone take into account the fact that the print run of the book was tiny? And that NO ONE seems to be able to get it? The whole world is not liberal. If you think that failing to possess this book reflects a store's liberal bias, you are on a different goddamn planet. Barnes & Noble is not liberal. They have nothing to gain by taking a political affiliation. Some people are screaming about how B&N is listed as a supporter for the Kerry campaign. Did you know lots of companies support both? They think it's good for business to be involved in politics. Kind of like how you'll buy cookies from both Girl Scouts even though they're in a race to see which of them will sell more cookies. Stores being temporarily out of stock does not mean they're censoring the book. It means they don't HAVE any. Because the guys who wrote it hired a really tiny printing company to handle their shit. Give me a damn break!

I helped a lady find a book and she asked me "how much is this?" while sort of half-assedly pulling at the book as if she can't summon up the strength to take it all the way off the shelf. Well, you're in my way, so I can't see how much it is. I came around and pulled it more off the shelf and pointed to the price tag and said, "Ten dollars." I thought I was kind of being a jerk because I pointed to it kind of sarcastically and did it like I was trying to make her feel like an ass. But then she replied, "How can you tell?" I can tell because it is THERE ON THE PRICE TAG, lady. She then asked me to show her one other book, which she decided not to get, and then she turned to me and then said, "Well, then I'll just get this," and handed me the book I'd thought she wanted to buy. I wasn't clear on why she was handing it to me if her words indicated that she wanted to buy it, but maybe she was talking about buying the book she'd just put down? I asked for clarification and she said yes, she wanted to buy the one she'd just put in my hand. So I said okay and handed it back to her to allow her to get it. I asked her if she wanted anything else and she said she didn't, and then I told her to tell me if she wanted me and started to go away and she started following me, holding out the book at me. Good lord, what now? Turned out she thought she could buy it from me standing there in the middle of the store or something. What? I don't know about her, but I have never lived anywhere where you can go to the grocery store and hand the stockman a copper and walk out with a jug of milk. Lady, you go to the checkout and stand in line and pay. You don't buy the stuff with the floor person. Hi?

A lady had ordered three books and two had come in. She wanted to know about the last book and asked me if I could tell her whether it was coming on the next truck. I said I could. I looked her up and the computer said one had been "picked" (which means it had been packed in the truck for this weekend) but none had been shipped (which means it wasn't on this last week's truck like the other two). I told her that yes, according to this it would be on the next truck on Saturday. She replied, "But how do I tell if it's coming in the next shipment?" Because I just told you? I ironed out for her that the computer said one had been picked for the shipment, and she said, "Well I don't know what that means!" IT. MEANS. IT. IS. COMING. AND. I. JUST. ANSWERED. THAT. FOUR. TIMES. Then at the register she did something else goofy, I handed her a pen to sign with and the thermal paper did its frequent trick where it doesn't want to be written on. Used to that, I offered her something to put under it (that does the trick), but she said, "Your pen isn't working!" and grabbed another one, which happened to write correctly on the paper. I replied, "It's not the pen, it's actually the paper," and before I could explain that it was thermal paper she said, "Well, it's either the pen or the paper!" Besides the fact that there's no other choice (what, is it the elephant's fault?), I ALREADY SAID it was the paper. ::sigh::

A dude came up and told me he wanted a certain John Grisham book, and added, "It's NOT in the John Grisham section." Uh-huh. Well, I usually take it for granted that no one but me knows what they're talking about (it is SO good to be the Queen), so I just walked to Fiction where John Grisham would usually be and started leading him toward it. "I already checked where his other books are," he said in protest, "so could you just look on the computer?" Uh-huh. The computer . . . would . . . tell . . . me . . . to . . . come . . . HERE. I promise. So I just said, "Sorry?" as if I didn't really understand and kept walking to the section. I found about fifteen copies of the book he wanted, in paperback. I picked it up and he just looked at it grumpily and said, "Hard." I guessed that meant he wanted it in hardback. Ooh, foiled me. So I glanced at the shelf above and lo and behold there was one hardback version too. I gave it to him. Then he wanted a book we didn't have and then he went away. ::sigh::


8/24/04

DAY OF JACKASS.

We finally got Unfit for Command! (Also known as "the John Kerry book," "Unfit for Service," "Unfit for Duty," and "that one about Vietnam.") Yes, some guy came up and described it as "That book about the 185 Vietnam vets." (On that last I wasn't sure, so I asked him what it was about and he didn't even mention John Kerry, he just said, "It's about what happened over there." Only with some prying did I manage to get it out of him that it was the one involving John Kerry. It's not that difficult, people! It's kind of the point!)

I stayed an extra hour and fifteen today to help with customer service because it was so damn busy. Now what has people all in a tizzy on August 24th, a Tuesday, anyway? I still have no idea what caused this flurry of excitement, but it was horrible all day.

I heard a story about something that happened at the other store. See, we have these things called "Gold" discount cards--they were issued once upon a time to a few people who buy lots of stuff. Some lady came up to a manager at our other store and said that she wanted to turn in her card and never shop there again. When the manager asked why, the slightly foreign lady replied, "You have FOX." Fox? My manager tried to pry out of her what the hell that meant--was it a porn mag she couldn't believe we carried? Was it a slang term for a type of decoration she can't stand? Ahh, it's . . . the TV station! "You have FOX on the TV back there!" Oh, well apparently this lady was upset that the store's television was tuned to the FOX news. Which as I hear is kind of Republican-oriented. She was very offended at this (and that's kind of annoying because, guess what, people change the station all the time, what the television happens to be showing at the time does not indicate some kind of attitude of the store, it shows that a customer decided that the sign reading "Please do not change the channel" did not apply to them). The manager went back to the TV and turned it off, and the lady decided to keep the card and keep shopping at our store because it was no longer having FOX. Later, the manager checked to see what station it was supposed to be on, and the directives say CNN, so she turned it onto that and immediately some old man made an exasperated sound and commented, "Now I have to watch that liberal crap!" Um? DON'T WATCH IT if you don't like it, this is a public place and you can GO AWAY. Watch TV at your own frigging house! And SHUT UP! Next they'll be saying they don't like the color of the shelves!

Some girl came up to the desk with a list of four ISBNs. She wanted them all to be ordered and claimed that she'd been told the books would arrive this weekend. Trying to head off a possible disaster, I informed her that indeed if I ordered them today they would PROBABLY be in this week's truck but ordering on a Tuesday is a little iffy because sometimes depending on how far along they are in processing, the truck might be packed already by the time they get the order. The girl insisted that a manager had told her last night that if she placed them by this morning they WOULD be here this weekend. She remembered the manager's name and it was almost funny--this manager would NEVER say anything resembling a guarantee to a customer, because she knows all too well how many times we've been screwed over by our own warehouse. She did not say, "It WILL be here" to anyone. But this girl was adamant and even though I assured her that it would *probably* be this weekend I would not and could not make a guarantee. You're just stabbing yourself in the ass if you do that. The girl replied with the manager's name again and asked if that manager was around. Yes, because she'll give you a different answer. ::eyeroll:: She wasn't there anyhow. The girl said to order the books anyway and then said she was in a hurry and had to go, and started WALKING AWAY from me. I told her to wait because I needed to know who I was friggin' ordering for, and she just waved her hand at me impatiently like "buzz off" and said, "Just order them to the store!" Girl, you don't know how this works, we don't order stuff "to the store," we order stuff to come into the store FOR PEOPLE, and I can't order something if I can't tell the computer who it's for. I told her I needed a name and number and she complained again, "Okay but I really have to go, I'm in a hurry!" and wrote down her name and number and ran away. Look, if you don't have time to shop, then DON'T.

Some guy wanted Julia Child books. He didn't know which one so I took him to Famous Chefs and let him look at the Julia Child section. There were three books there and he looked at the shelf and said, "Just those two?" I said there were three, and he contented himself with picking one up, leafing through it, and then saying again, "So just this one and this other one, huh?" I said there were THREE, and pointed to the third one, and he was like, "Are there any others besides these two?" and I said, "THIS ONE," and kept kind of wiggling it back and forth for him (it was a really big and heavy book so I didn't want to pull it down from the top shelf if he wasn't going to look at it). He goes, "Oh, that's one of hers too?" Why the fuck do I bother speaking?

I had to deal with a dotty older woman at the register, doing a return. There was all kinds of preventable nonsense involved in the transaction, the most annoying of which was that she was buying books with her granddaughter and received a call from the child's mother who vetoed her child's choice of exchange material while I was in the middle of ringing it up. Anyway, none of this really warranted the Assholes page except for the fact that it really annoyed me at the end that when everything was said and done the lady prompted me for "a bill," and when I asked her what she meant by a bill since, well, I was refunding money to her from a return, she got all flustery and just repeated, "A bill, a bill," and when I handed her the receipt and said, "Well, I have a receipt," she's like, "That's what I was saying, honey." No, bills are different, aren't they? I gave YOU money. C'mon now. Not to mention that you don't have to prompt me in order for me to give you a receipt. It's kind of required.

Some lady cut me off in the middle of my phone answering to tell me, "Yes I just talked to you, I'm so-and-so and I'd like to cancel my order." She *hadn't* just talked to me--she talked to my manager who took her order. I had to take her information and assured her that I would cancel the order, but then her phone cut off in the middle and I could hear her but she couldn't hear me, and she kept going, "Hel-LO? Hel-LOOOO???" I can't stand that. It's YOU who's on a cell phone. The reception is your fault, so why are you acting like you have to say "Hello" like that or else the person won't answer?

A dude came up and asked for Paula Deen books. I asked which one and he gave me this "what the fuck are you, incompetent?" look and said, "Paula DEEN, she's a CHEF, I want her BOOKS," and I said she had more than one and did he have a particular one in mind? He didn't, so I took him over to the section and when I got there I said she was the author of the Lady & Sons books. At this I guess he still thought I was lost as to what he wanted because he repeated AGAIN that he wanted Paula Deen and that she was a chef. I had to put a Lady & Sons book in his hand before he understood that I was not only on the same page as him; I was reading ahead.

I talked to a guy on the phone who wanted this etiquette book and we had it but only in hardcover. He didn't want to hold it (because it was expensive), but then he came into the store and just greeted me at the desk with, "I just called about a book." Silence. So I asked what he meant by that; did he have something held or--"No," he interrupted, "I just called about it." I asked him what it WAS--jeez, as if he's the only one who "called about a book"--and I said I remembered where that was and went to get it. Since on the phone he hadn't sounded like he wanted to get it, I asked if he just came by to look through it, and he goes, "No, I wanted to GET it." Then he just planted himself at the desk and didn't come to the section with me like most friggin' normal people do. That's right, just send the bookstore dog off to play fetch. Whatever. This guy DOES need an etiquette book.

A guy came in looking for "a study guide for algebra." I asked if he had any particular title in mind. He replied, "Uhhhhhhhhhh. . . . Well, how to do it?" That's not a title. And I doubt there's any books back there on algebra that don't tell you how to do it. Sure, there's a bunch of algebra books back there that just tell you what it is and give you biographies of everyone who helped invent it. GAH!

I had a person call on the phone and ask if we had gotten any of Unfit for Command. I immediately told her we had received some that morning and asked if she wanted one to be put on hold. She asked for the price, and as I was picking a book up to read her the back cover's tag she said, "I have an ISBN," and started reading it off to me. Okay, what's wrong with this picture? You call someone and they immediately express recognition of your title, and you give them the ISBN? That's like if I went up to a grocery guy and asked him "where are the bananas?" and he said "right this way" and started walking and then I began telling him that bananas are long yellow fruits. Mehhh.

Interestingly enough, with the John Kerry book, I've been getting some mail from other amused and frustrated bookstore workers who sympathize with my stories and have their own. I love it. Keep it comin', guys. And while you people are at it, I love feedback and I love hearing about other bookstore workers and their plight; feel free to e-mail me.


8/23/04

Had a person ask me for help today, and when I took her to the section where her book would be if we had it, we didn't find it. After a few minutes of fruitless searching, she said, "But it would be in THIS section?" I don't get it. If it WOULDN'T be in that section, why would we be looking there? If that wasn't the only place it could be, wouldn't I have suggested another place before staring blankly at the shelves for two and a half minutes? I reiterate: I don't need to be prompted. I am doing my job to the best of my ability. GRR!

There's a dude who frequently comes into my store and lies to me. I only just really internalized and realized this today. This dude is an older fella who always comes in and asks if anything new by Stuart Woods is available. Now, I remember when I first started, maybe a month after I got there this dude asked me about Stuart Woods and told me that he had signed up for something at one time where we were supposed to notify him of upcoming releases by his favorite authors (which in this case of course is Stuart Woods). Being that I wasn't familiar with a lot of stuff back then, I figured he was telling the truth but didn't know how to sign him up for anything like that, so I just ordered whatever he wanted and he went away. Now, maybe more than a year later he came back and did the same thing and it rang faint bells--I didn't realize then that this was the same dude claiming that we have some kind of notification program to tell him when Stuart Woods releases something else. I figured back then that he was just confused; that he orders stuff and we call him and tell him it's in and he thinks it's some kind of special program. Well, today he came in and I remembered everything from the past, because here he was again saying that he thinks he has everything Stuart Woods has written but can he put in a request to be notified next time something new is available? I say we don't have a program for that--just a possibility of advance ordering stuff that's already on the horizon--and he insisted that we've signed him up for shit like that before. Ah-HAH. No, actually--you're talking to someone who's been here for FOUR YEARS and counting, and we have NEVER had a program like that. Dude, no one's signing you up for notifications on Stuart Woods. Not that you probably need any reminders, since you ask about what's new by him every time you come in. Bleh!

Some lady came in shopping for her adult daughter who was not present. She had a handwritten note from the daughter about Nora Roberts books. It had a note on it to pick up the "Nora Roberts trilogy," and listed one book she already had, a title for the second one, and a partial title for the third. (She knew it was "Key of SOMETHING" but didn't know what.) Now, this woman had NO idea what her daughter wanted and thought it was cool to just hand me the paper and tell me she wanted "that." I extrapolated the meaning and started handing her the books, but when I sought to confirm--something like, "Is this what she wants?"--she replied, "*I* don't know, honey," in this sort of weary "why are you asking ME?" tone. Well, I told her I figured that was what she wanted since she wrote that she wanted this trilogy, and the lady's like "Well is there a book four?" (I had handed her two and three.) I replied that since she wanted a TRILOGY, there couldn't be a book four (well, unless you're Douglas Adams, but we won't go there). You know what she replied to me explaining that? "*I* don't know, honey," even though I hadn't asked a question--it seemed she was getting annoyed that I was making sense of the word "trilogy" for her. I explained that tri-lo-gy means THREE, and then she wanted me to help her find "this cookbook that I can't remember the name of." ::sigh::


8/21/04

PEEVE OF THE WEEK!

I hate when people put words in my mouth.

Seems to be happening a lot lately: I'll get a phone call for a book, look it up on the computer, and say, "Well, according to the computer we carry the book," only to be answered by the customer with, "But you don't have any?" Did I say that? Did I hint that? No. What, you were hoping I didn't have it? "Hmm, looks like we're out right now--" "And you're not getting any more?" Um, well yes we are. "Right, we've run out of that one--" "I guess your other store doesn't have any either, right?" They might; in fact, it's very possible. "What are your hours?" "Oh, we're open from 9 to 11 Monday through Saturday and--" "So you're not open on Sunday?" Would you let me finish my frigging sentence? You asked me a question, so I kind of thought you wanted to hear the answer! If you feel like answering your own questions . . . then why don't you go off in a corner somewhere and talk to yourself, dammit!

I had such fun today. I'm actually not kidding. I'm not sure what got into me, but . . . are you ready for this? . . . I went off on a customer. Yeah, I got in a big loud argument--in front of two other employees and another customer, to boot--and I'm serious, I had a ball!

A crabby man came in and asked me if we had any of the Unfit for Command book. I've talked about this damn thing in a previous entry, but let me iron it out: Apparently, not anticipating the demand, the publisher of this book did not print enough copies, leaving both our chain and Barnes & Noble largely up the creek when it came to receiving copies. We have yet to see a copy of Unfit for Command. The story is that the publishers or whatever have been rushing to go to second printing already and as of yesterday our update indicated we'd be receiving copies starting on Tuesday, special delivery by UPS. This kind of thing has happened before--you know, with stuff like Harry Potter--and we just deal with it. What else are we supposed to do? The problem is, in the meantime, we're getting narrow-eyed looks from all the elephants, receiving half-serious accusations that we don't have it because we don't want them to get it. This guy I'm about to talk about wasn't half-serious. He was totally serious. I laughed in his face.

"You got any of Unfit for Command?"
"Nope."
[Brief silence.]
"They're telling us we're supposed to get some in starting Tuesday--"
"Well NO, you're not. You know what, you're not GOING to carry the book."
(Seeing where this is going) "Oh yes we are. They didn't print enough, and they're doing the best they can to get them out to us--"
"This happened with RUSH's book too, and I'm tired of it! You're not gonna carry the book because you DON'T WANT US TO READ IT!"
(Laughing) "Uh-huh, RIGHT. No, believe me, we want to make money."
"This happened with Rush's book too, this always happens, and you know what, I am DISGUSTED with this company, I am never going to shop at this dump again!"
"Oh yeah, well, go for it, believe whatever you want, but we don't have any kind of agenda besides MAKING MONEY."
"OH yes you do. This always happens. You managed to get tons of Bill Clinton's book but every time something that's not liberal trash comes in you try to keep it from us, why are you HIDING it from us?"
(More laughing) "Oh yeah right! Hey, you wanna go over there to the politics section and just see how many right-winger books we carry and keep telling me we've got an agenda?"
(Another associate chimes in) "We've got lots of Ann Coulter books over there--"
"YOU DO have an agenda because THAT'S WHAT THE LIBERAL MEDIA DOES and your store always does this!"
(Unabashedly laughing at him with folded arms) "Uh-huh. I don't believe it."
(Customer emits more verbal sewage, vibrating with apparent annoyance at the cute pigtailed girl who would dare deny the liberal bias infecting the world, and leaves.)

I bounced around the desk for a while, giggling about how fun that was, and the customer who had witnessed the interaction indicated that the man had scared her. I told her that that's like the third time this week I've been accused of being a "liberal Nazi" because the publishers of the John Kerry book had bad planning.

I found out later that this dude went up to the register and gave my cashier a hard time too. Now, her interaction sounded remarkably like mine (well, minus her taunting and standing up to him), so I have to wonder which one friggin' came first. Did he go up to her and THEN accost me, or vice versa? In any case he was in her line arguing with her about how we weren't GOING to carry the book because of our liberal piggishness, and kept referring to our carrying of Bill Clinton's autobiography (which he kept referring to as "My Lie" instead of My Life, repeating it several times so everyone in the line could hear how clever he was). He insisted that he'd never be back, which was funny because he went out the "out" door and almost immediately walked back into the "in" door. (Maybe that's when he decided to go harass me. Or maybe he just wanted some coffee. Watch out! It has liberal juice in it!)

Apparently the people in my cashier's line were either disturbed or amused by the jackass, and one of the customers started making fun of him, pointing out that we carried a certain series of cartoon character books and expressing fake annoyance at it. How dare you carry Winnie-the-Pooh books!

Now, one thing I want to know is . . . if this man has been checking with us repeatedly about this book and is now off his rocker pissed that we don't have it yet, exactly how likely is it that we're the only place he's been checking? You wanna bet that he's been ALL over this city asking about it? You bet your sweet socks he has! And you think there's a bookstore in town that has the damn thing? Oh, I bet not. I guess everybody is liberal! My cashier told him some of the same stuff I had, about how maybe if it was a small bookstore they'd cater only to one viewpoint, but we're a chain conglomerate, and beyond that we're based in Alabama, how likely is it that a bookstore like ours is going to have a liberal bias? The only bias, as I've said before, is in what actually gets published. Once it's published, we want to sell it and make money off you, okay? THAT'S our agenda.

Just one more goof for today: A guy wanted to do an exchange without a receipt, so I was called to approve it. The guy explained the situation . . . but the problem was, he wouldn't shut up and let me tell him what to do. "I got this book, and I bought it at the other store, I decided I wasn't gonna use it, now I don't have the receipt, I don't need you to give me any money or anything, I just want to get something else to replace it, I decided not to take this test, now I haven't USED it or anything, you can see I haven't even opened it, I'll understand if you don't want to give me any money, I mean all I really want is to get a book for the ACT instead, now I don't know, do you want me to take it to the store I bought it at? 'Cause I didn't get it here, I got it at your store on 13th Street, now I don't have a receipt, I know you might not want to give me any money. . . . " I'm just standing here this whole time just kind of looking at him waiting for him to stop talking, wondering if he was expecting me to interrupt him to throw him out of the apparent excuse loop he'd fallen into. Finally I guess he got the confused/amused/expectant look on my face and stopped running his mouth, and I replied with, "OKAY, now let me tell you what I'm gonna let you do." He kind of laughed in an embarrassed way and acknowledged that. I told him he could get something else from our store that was the same price or higher, but that I would only perform the return if he picked up a replacement product today and if I didn't have to give him any change. He understood and went away to shop for a new book.

Now, I was in the middle of doing my hair in the back room when this call came in, and I kind of wanted to get back to it since I had one messy pigtail and one that was finished. But I figured he wouldn't be long and that as soon as I walked away he'd come back wanting me to perform the exchange, so I waited, chatting with my cashier. Finally it took so long that a customer needed my help, so I went back to help him and my travels took me to the same aisle the ACT book guy was in. When I finished helping my customer, the guy got my attention, standing there with a stack of four ACT books unable to decide, and whined at me, "This is HAARRRRD!" Hahaha.

I tried to help him decide, pointing out that two of the books were by renowned publishers, but he just kept waffling and opening them and looking confused and befuddled, and it became apparent that he had my terms backwards and thought that he needed to get a book that was the same price or LOWER. Maybe he thought we would just make a swap-out without any paperwork and that if he chose something lower-priced we wouldn't mind because technically we'd be making money. Bleh. No, we have to process returns so we know what we have in our inventory, and if there's a difference we have to give you change, which I will not do without a receipt. Finally we got it straightened out and I performed the exchange. I think he knew he was being a pain in the butt and he was good-natured about it.

And here's a weird file for today. I was doing the register break and a dude came up and responded to my usual greeting with, "And where are YOU from?" He said it like I should understand why he was asking, but I didn't, so I asked what he meant since I was kind of "from" all over. "Maybe the better way to phrase it is, where is your accent from?" Sure, my accent. Wait, huh? I asked him what it sounded like to him, and he replied with, "I'm not sure, that's why I'm asking you." I told him I hadn't been aware that I had any sort of accent, and when he asked where I'd been born and I said New Jersey, he said, "Oh, well THAT'S it." Um, right. I told him I'd lived there for TWO YEARS of my life, and he replied with, "But I'm sure you've been around people from there, that's where it comes from." Riiiight. Weirdly enough, I mentioned this to one of my managers and she replied with, "No, you don't sound like you're from New Jersey. More like maybe Chicago." CHICAGO? I went to Chicago once when I was like twelve, to see my grandmother in the Broadway tour of Man of La Mancha, but somehow I'm doubting that I picked up an accent there. . . . Go fig.


8/17/04

I got to the customer service desk when my coworker was already helping someone. There was another dude hanging around near the dude who was getting help, and I glanced at him and he didn't say anything, so I figured he must be with the dude who was getting help or else he'd speak up. I stood there kinda just wasting time--it was near the end of my shift and I was in slacker mode--and then I looked at the guy again and he was looking at me, and I just kinda smiled at him and made a comment about his shirt. He smiled back and acknowledged my comment, and looked away. Finally my coworker finished helping the other guy and came around the desk to show him where something was, and the silent dude didn't go with him. This is what he did: He came forward and occupied the spot the other dude had been in just a moment before, and just started kinda looking at me again. So, I said, incredulously, "Um, do you want to ask me something?" He said he did! So I raised my hands up and said, "Well, I'm HERE," and he proceeded to ask for a book about the circus. I don't get it, I obviously was available to help and he was standing at the desk and . . . oh blah. Never mind. You can see how absurd this is.

In other news, WHAT IN THE WORLD HAS HAPPENED TO THE POWERPUFF GIRLS???

[glam powerpuff girls!  it's just wrong!]

What is THIS?? The Powerpuff Girls look like little fashionistas now. They came in all glammed up on the cover of a book and I did a double take. What? The Powerpuff Girls are superheroes. And they're KINDERGARTNERS. Why are they wearing lipstick?

I flipped through the book, which features horrible style games and boy quizzes and weird glammy stuff that looks a lot more like Bratz than Powerpuff Girls. WHO BRIBED CRAIG MCKRACKEN???

The book features such gems as a page with a teen-ish Blossom picture to color, accompanied by the words "Blossom has a hot date with a credit card and a shoe store. Help her apply some fabulous makeup and accessorize her hair." WHAT? Accessorize her hair?? On another page, "Dancing Queens," we are instructed to write a story including six of these eight words: "ballet, cheerleader, clumsy, jazz, tutu, trip, music, and jam." Why would I use "cheerleader" in a story about dancing? A page called "Party Pics" instructs you to draw yourself at a party with the Girls, with a caption of "Everyone who is anyone was at that bash!" I am just . . . I am going to barf. Who authorized this???

I'm also frickin' sick and tired of people referring to the new John Kerry book as "Unfit for Service" or some variation. No one has this title right. And everyone insists that their mangled version of it is the correct title. Get over it everyone. It's called Unfit for Command. I have a picture of the cover on my computer. And no, we don't have any.


8/16/04

I helped a lady today who was pushing a baby around in a stroller. She was nice and pleasant and everything, and as I was about to part company with her I commented that the baby must be enjoying his book--he was holding a small cardboard bargain book and the corner was lodged wetly in his mouth. When the woman saw that she got disturbed and said, "OH, no, you were supposed to just hold it, not eat it! We'll have to buy it now," she said, resigned. Um, lady? Babies . . . put things . . . in their MOUTHS. You cannot possibly think, after being the mother of one, that your child would not put that book in his mouth. Come on now. Hahah. I just thought that was amusing, her actually seeming surprised that the kid sucked on the book.

Some college guy came up and told us that he wanted this book and he'd forgotten what it was called but it was by Shakespeare. Guess what other piece of info he had? "Um, well it's a play. . . . " HAHAHAHA. That's it, just HAHAHAHA.


8/15/04

Okay, well this one's a bit old because it came through a coworker, but I wanted to get all the details before I posted it. See, what happened is, this lady came in and she wanted a book that wasn't in our system. She had a title and author but it just wasn't coming up, and my coworker--who is my manager--had to deal with this lady then demanding that she call Borders and ask THEM. This is not something we would normally do as if we can't even find it in the system as EXISTING it is not really something we wanna call around town about. But my manager did it anyway as she is a kind soul, and upon getting Borders on the phone this lady decided to whip out her cell phone and call someone. (No, not answer a call--she deliberately MADE a call in the middle of her transaction here.) Now, the Borders computer had access to a copy of this book--which, unsurprisingly, was out of print--and the lady wanted to order it from them. My manager was then stuck as the go-between for Borders and this lady. Who, for her part, had decided to be a giant JACKASS. She wouldn't stop talking on her cell. She was ranting to someone and freaking out about something about a buyer and being on the verge of cussing, and while my manager needs information from her so she can have the book ordered, the lady continues to talk and ignore or partially ignore what's going on around her.

"Just a second. It'll be just a second," my manager kept having to say to the Borders girl, who could hear the loud phone call of the lady even through the phone. She kept snickering and giggling because the lady was being so ridiculous. She wrote down her name. She wrote down PART of her phone number and then lapsed into screaming into the phone some more, so wrapped up in her little drama that she couldn't just write a few more digits and free the people who were stuck helping her. That is so horrifically rude. Finally they got everything they needed from her and my manager, still relaying Borders's information, told her some delivery stats. The lady kept acting like she was an annoyance: "Okay. FINE, that's FINE." Shoo-fly, don't botha me! All right, lady, you've just been incredibly rude as to initiate a transaction with someone else before you were done with the first, and you've badgered one business into arranging a deal through their own competition, and then you have the balls to act like they're annoying you by giving you the information? And then you walk off still screeching like a harpy without THANKING the bookstore girl? I tell you what. I hope there's rat pee on her item when it comes in. You never can tell what condition the items are going to be in when you order them from out of print searches. Oh, now how did that pubic hair get in there?

I have a junior Asshole today. A girl almost walked out of the store today with her family while holding a gimmicky pen she'd been playing with, stopping just short of stealing it by realizing it was still in her fist. She dashed back in and apologized to me--I was running the register--and then was like, "Excuse me," and tried to hand me the pen. I found this confusing because she was actually quite a bit closer to the place the pen belonged than I was, and she wouldn't have to come out from behind a long desk to put it back. She was just trying to hand it to me to put back while standing within arm's length of its proper spot. I decided to try and make her see the ridiculousness of this by saying, "Oh, I have no idea where you got this." She replied by tapping the bin, saying, "Right there," and tossing the pen onto my counter and walking off.

This is a case of someone who just thinks everything is self-explanatory. Some woman came up and put her stuff down at the wrong register, first of all, but she was shuffling around so I thought maybe she was just using the other counter to get her discount card before approaching me or something--they often do that. But then when she made a sound and I looked up and greeted her, she was like, "OH, there you are, am I supposed to come down there?" I always let a moment of silence pass when they say stuff like that because I'm hoping they'll start making fun of themselves, but she didn't, so I answered, "Yes, this is the open register," and she came over. She had taken two books out of a bag and was holding a receipt, and she just put them down but didn't tell me it was a return. "It looks like this must be a return, huh?" I asked, and she said, "Yes, I'm returning these." I'm so glad you told me, lady. Then she held a book at this peculiar angle so I couldn't really see its front OR its back and said, "How much is this book?" I told her I couldn't see from there and maybe she should hand it to me. Like I fuckin' know the price of a book just by her waving it at me anyway. So I told her the price and she goes, "Oh, that's expensive," but doesn't say anything else. I processed her return and then asked her if she'd be taking this other book in exchange, and she's like, "No, no I don't want it." Glad you told me that too, lady. I charged it back to her card and she went away. Yay.

Okay, some lady at the customer service desk didn't understand basic language. She approached me and my coworker, and he was mostly handling her so I just added a helpful (I thought) comment now and then. She wanted to know if her books had come in yet and after checking the hold shelf it was immediately apparent that they hadn't. "Did you get a call?" was the next question, and she said she hadn't but that they had told her the books would be in today. We had to explain that because of weather stuff our truck had been delayed a day and so the shipment that would have arrived last night actually is arriving tonight instead, nothing's here. We looked her order up in the meantime and it was actually two orders; one was showing as being on the truck that was on its way to us, and one was showing as "pending." And surprise--it was one she'd made TWO DAYS AGO. Of course it was pending! He told her it was pending and she was like, "But what does that mean?" He explained again about the truck and how one of her books from an order placed earlier in the week was on its way to us, and the other was still coming. She said, "But I don't understand what you mean by 'pending,'" and he scrolled down further on the screen and actually read her the definition of the word "pending": "Items are still being gathered." "Here?" she asked, and we didn't know what she meant. "I don't know what you mean by 'pending,'" she said again, and wanted to know if it was HERE that the order was coming to, and finally it became apparent that she wanted to know if the book she wanted was somewhere here in this store but no one had actually gotten out of their chair and gathered it for her yet. No, lady, we get deliveries. From a warehouse. In Alabama or something. But this whole thing bugged me the most because the bottom line was "Lady, we don't have your books yet. We'll call you when we do. Go away."

A guy came up and asked for Bushworld. My coworker immediately replied that we'd sold out already, and the guy replied, "What are you, some kind of right-wing Nazis?" I made a really weird sound and ran away from the desk at that point. (I got the sense that this dude wasn't actually serious about calling us that, but at the same time, I caught a slight hint of insinuation--if we don't have it, it's because we don't WANT to have it.) I can't help but recall at this point that our being out of something or not yet having the book about John Kerry (which HADN'T BEEN RELEASED YET) was indicating to some other customer that we were dirty left-wingers with a liberal agenda here at the bookstore. Funny how they just don't understand that however you swing it our agenda is MAKIN' THE PHAT CASH. If we really sought to control the mind of the masses by what we carry in the damn bookstore, I doubt we'd have books on practicing Witchcraft in the same store with Christian books. For that matter, fuck this--no dessert books can be carried if you want to have an exercise section, and damned if you carry gambling books in the same store as personal finance. No, guy, I'm afraid we carry books for liberals AND conservatives because they both have MONEY and we will do whatever it takes to make people give it to us. The REAL censorship happens in what's allowed to be printed and published, not what the bookstore carries. Take that, conspiracy nuts!


8/14/04

It was really dead today because everyone freaked out and hid under a rock hoping to avoid being hit by a hurricane. Har har. There were no Assholes today, but there was a weird occurrence. We weren't having our usual Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament this week, and there was a phone call asking about it. While that call was still in progress the other line rang, and it was someone wanting to know if we were doing Yu-Gi-Oh!, and then the phone rang again while THAT call was in progress (the first line having been answered and completed) and it was YET ANOTHER WOMAN asking about Yu-Gi-Oh! We're talking three people in thirty seconds. Asking the same question. We had maybe four or five more people ask that question but it was before and after that at very regular intervals. Weird.


8/10/04

I hate this. Some jerk woman wanted books on a subject--and it was one of those subjects that there are no books for because it's something you're supposed to figure out yourself, no book can really teach you--and finally when I found her a few things in the ballpark she pulled them off the shelf and didn't bother to page through them or read anything on the back before she just said, "Well which one's better?" In other words, "Please, you know nothing about what I need or what my preferred methods of information-gathering are, but I need you to make the decision of what book to buy since I am far too lazy to figure out what I need." I mean, I can point out the strengths and weaknesses of a couple books or whatever, but unless I have read the books or know a lot about the subject, do not ask me to decide for you which one is "best." There is not a consensus on that. If there were, the one that wasn't as good probably wouldn't be published.

A lady at the desk was asking for two books, and since there were two of us standing at the desk doing nothing we each looked up one of them. My book would have to be ordered, and my coworker's book was supposed to be on the shelf but after she checked it wasn't there, so we were looking at ordering both if she wanted them. While my coworker was checking the shelf, the lady was asking about prices and acted all shocked when I told her what they were. "But that book is ten dollars on your website," she said, "and this one is fifteen. How could that be?" I explained how EVERY online site sells at significantly below retail price, once you go to a retail store the price rises because it is a store. (You know? Pay employees, keep the lights on, keep it clean, merchandise and do projects, run a café--it costs MONEY!) She replied with something like, "NO, no, but I looked ONLINE, and on your site it had that one listed for TEN DOLLARS, and this one listed for FIFTEEN, how could that BE?" I explained it AGAIN. Then we got to have the argument about how the online site is separate from physical stores. She started talking about how it was much cheaper online but she figured she didn't want to pay shipping so she'd get it here, but she just couldn't believe it was so much more expensive--she kept on going like she thought I didn't UNDERSTAND what she was talking about. I get it perfectly, lady. You don't know how retail works. I told her again about how ANY online bookstore would have a big difference in the prices, and actually that's partly because they figure in that you will be paying shipping. When my coworker came back with sad news about the other book not being on the shelf, the lady got into it with her too, and I was proud to hear that actually some of the same exact sentences I'd said came out of her mouth to help explain. I love when that happens. Then they have proof I'm not just filling their ears with dog poo.

Urgh. I had a phone call come in just after a woman came up to the desk for my help, so I answered the phone call and then put the person on hold and helped the in-store woman first. She wanted books on how to speak French for her daughter, who apparently is meeting a band or something and wants to be able to communicate with some other people in the band who speak French. She kept on picking over the French books and telling me about her daughter and asking me, "Is this okay? Is this a good one?" Okay, well there are probably around 200 titles in the French section. I am not going to stand here and tell you what you want--YOU have a good idea of the type of book your daughter will want and the level at which she speaks. I recommended a couple good ones but she wouldn't leave me alone. Finally I told her the woman on the phone was waiting and she was welcome to keep on browsing, and if she wanted to she could ask my opinion of a final choice or something but I made it clear I could not stand there and bullshit while I had someone waiting. She was like, "Oh, okay, well . . . how about THIS one? Is this better?" and I just kind of shot off some details about what was good about each so she could decide, and then she's like, "Oh, you know, my daughter, she wants to be able to say, like, 'you rock,' or something, you know, ROCK words, but she might already know some of that. . . . " Okay. Jeeeeez! I excused myself very quickly and ran far, far away.

My coworker got a couple of really annoying questions at once. First there was someone who said that her book was "a book about a guy, like, this guy, I don't know the title, and um, he was on drugs? Where would I find that?" He just told her "Biography" and walked away to help the next person, who was incredibly informative by saying that their book had the word "walk" in the title and they didn't know anything else. COME ON PEOPLE!

Found a very amusing series of fairy tale books in my shipment today. I beg you to not think I'm racist or anything when I say why this amused me, but it was a series of fairy tale books whose art uniformly featured black characters instead of the traditional white characters in the fairy tales. What amused me was this:

[goldilocks]

They did Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In order to make Goldilocks's locks gold, they made the beads in her hair gold-colored. I for some reason found that wildly amusing. (There are black people with golden hair, after all--but this one had gold hair beads, not gold hair.) They also have Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella. I just hope they never try to do Snow White because that'd be awkward.


8/9/04

A dude on the phone treated me like a computer--I freakin' hate that. He just started rattling off information and spelling names like "Flynn," with no indication from me (after me saying, "Okay!" after he gave me the title) that he needed to continue giving me information. Anyway, that just bugs me a little. What bugged me a LOT was what happened next--dammit! The book wasn't in my system, and I tried looking it up by the author and the editor, but the book just wasn't apparently in existence and the dude decided not to leave it alone. After I explained that either it had limited publishing or it was out of print or old or something, he just started explaining to me what the book was about, "Well, what it is is kind of a wood dictionary," all about different kinds of woods and what you use them for and all this junk, and then when he finished rattling it off he just fell silent like I was supposed to respond to that with "OH, THAT book, yeah, I've got one waiting here between my asscheeks for you!" Why do they think that after giving relevant information and getting NOWHERE that rambling about the book is going to bring some result? I mean, it's not like he didn't have the title or know the author, in which case possibly some rambling might have helped. But you don't go from ultra-specific to super-general and expect results. I explained that this new information about the book did absolutely no good in finding anything out, and asked him where he found out about the book so that maybe I could sic him on THEM. He said he saw it at a wood shop, and I suggested that if it was for sale at the wood shop he go there and find out how to get it. He explained that it WASN'T for sale--he saw it being used by the employees. Okay. So we're dealing with a weird shop manual used behind the scenes. Mystery solved. After telling him that I in fact had no idea how to get this book since I had no information about its availability, he let me go. Bleargh!

Just a mildly annoying guy wanted a bestselling book and when I took him to it he asked me if it came in paperback--generally speaking, if something's still on HARDCOVER bestsellers it's very unlikely to have come out in paperback, 'cause if they're still making money on it in hardcover they may as well keep doing so. (Angels and Demons and the Harry Potter books foil this generalization, but they have really good reasons to sell well in hardcover despite there being paperbacks for them.) Anyway, when I told him it didn't come in paperback the guy was like, "Well how much are these books then?" while waving his hand in general at the bestsellers bookshelf. Yes because all books are the same price and I know what it is without looking. Try turning it over and looking at the price tag, dork.

Urgh. Now, this lady was within her rights asking for help and everything, but her attitude bugged me. She wanted a certain magazine and couldn't find it, and so I looked it up in our computer and it did indeed say we carried it but it was one of those annoying entries where the people who categorize stuff on the website didn't bother to tell me which category. So I tried to pry some information out of her to help her better and asked her if she'd already looked in the art section of magazines, and she said she'd been through there and then said, "But . . . I couldn't find it. Look, I NEED HELP, I can't find it!" Lady, calm the fuck down, I am helping you and will continue to do so, okay? Anyway nothing really important happened after that, I found her magazine and she was nice about thanking me. Bleh.

Annoying! A lady called me and asked me to look for a book called It's Pajama Time. I dug in the 'puter and there was NOTHING. I told her so and she said she didn't know the author but "Well . . . it's a very POPULAR book." Okay. Now, I know that people probably aren't consciously thinking this when they inform me that something is "popular" after I've had no success in finding it, but what they're telling me with that statement is "You're not doing your job right." If something was popular, that would mean lots of people are asking for it and it's something a bookstore worker should know about, and if she doesn't know then she is incompetent. Uh-huh.

So I told the lady that if in fact her information was correct on the title AND it was "popular," it was "popular" through some channel other than existing in the inventory of any bookstore, because we tend to be able to order any book IN PRINT. She changed her tactic and asked me to try the book's title search as just Pajama Time. I agreed that the computer is quite picky about titles and did that search. I hit paydirt: Pajama Time by Sandra Boynton.

Which I have to say I have NEVER been asked for by name in the entire four years I've been in charge of the kids' department.

Very popular, I know.

The lady told me she wanted to get three copies, so I told her I'd check to see what was on the shelf. She interrupted me with "But I want them to be in new condition." Confusedly I informed her that we don't really sell non-new books except for sale books and I wasn't looking in sale books. She added that most books on bookstore shelves have been "fingered" and she wants them in absolutely unmolested perfect condition. I told her I would check and see if she would hold on.

We had two copies. One looked a little shelf-worn, and if this lady was so stressed about "new condition" that she'd tell me so on the phone, I imagined it probably wouldn't be good enough for her. The other looked fine. I went back to the phone, picked it up, and told her, "Okay. First off I found two copies--" She cut me off by pouncing right on a demand to know about their condition. Okay, see you made it very clear that you wanted perfect pristine books, and I really was about to explain their condition to you if you hadn't interrupted my doing so to demand that I do so. Ugh. I don't need prompting! My brain is working correctly and is programmed with simple functions such as "telling you what you asked me to tell you!" So I continued my information spiel and she let me talk.

Finally she said, "Well, this is a VERY POPULAR book. Since you won't have any trouble selling them if you order some, I would like to order three new copies. . . . "

What kind of sense does this make?

Lady, it's either or. I order three copies for you? They're yours. Whether they'd sell to anyone else is now MOOT. If you're asking me to order three copies to the store, bite me, because we don't do that. And I have two that don't sell to begin with. Anyway.

I agreed to order three copies for her. We had some mix-ups with collecting her information, also--again, because she was trying to interrupt me. I asked for a phone number to reach her at and she blathered about how I could call her at home but then oh wait her work is just down the street maybe I should take that number and blah, and finally she gives me a number, I write it down, and then she goes into dismissive mode trying to get off the phone like, "Okay, well thank you honey," and I'm like, "NO WAIT I need your freakin' NAME," and she apologized and gave it to me and then, "Oh, do you have my work number?" I read off what she'd given me and she goes, "NO, that is my HOME NUMBER," and it's like excuse me, but I have what you GIVE ME okay? Finally I got both of her numbers and everything was good and I got off the phone.

She called me back five minutes later to cancel the order. The person she'd ordered for had chosen a different product. Terribly sorry!

I'll keep y'all updated on the sales quotes for the fantastically popular Pajama Time.

Some dude decided that banging the magazine he was holding periodically on the customer service desk was a good way to make someone come. When I showed up I banged a book on the desk in the same rhythm all the way up to the point where I was across from him. He didn't appear to notice. He wanted to know if I carried this magazine he was holding, which had a simple title and was religious. He said its title even though he was showing it to me, and as I began to type it in, he then SPELLED the title of the magazine for me. Okay, man, like, I can SEE it so I don't need it spelled, and I didn't ask, and who the hell needs two-syllable everyday words spelled for them anyway? So the computer said we don't carry his mag, and he just responded to that by turning around and making as if he was going to stalk off. Then he changed his mind, turned around, and asked me more questions about whether I could order it and where would carry it. I started asking him about where else he'd checked when he just walked away in the middle of my talking. Okay, it's not like I'm the push-button announcer on a display or the voicemail robot you can interrupt by pushing pound. You're not supposed to walk away when someone's friggin' talking to you, especially when they're trying to help you. Fuckin' get some manners, twerp.

I couldn't believe this one. It actually shocked me (after four years in retail!). First off this lady was incredibly rude because she was looking for a book for her daughter but her daughter wasn't near her, and when the woman saw that I was there to ask she got all excited about calling her daughter over to ask the question. But none of this included me. She didn't say "Excuse me" or tell me that she was getting her daughter in order to ask me a question or asking if she could interrupt what I was doing. It was just "OH! Oh, Sheila, you can ask her, come here, Sheila, Sheila, here, she can help you." (Her name wasn't Sheila. I just can't remember what it was.) Anyway, the girl came over and she was very polite and asked me the question, and I handed her the book she wanted. But then apparently they had other books to find because Mom started talking about baby books and as she was doing so she absentmindedly picked up a Hardy Boys book from my display, kinda-sorta looked at it, and then THREW it back onto the display so it knocked some stuff around. While I was standing right there. Why the fuck would someone take a displayed book off its hooks and then just kinda throw it at the display for no reason? I picked up the book, replaced it (my mouth was actually open in disbelief, I remember that), and then I just walked away from them to go recover in a corner somewhere. Is there a trauma unit for bookstore workers? I mean, I know, no big deal, but WHAT THE FUCK? I thought my displays get ruined by jerkass people walking into them or children who can't put it back correctly because they DON'T HAVE COMPLETE CONTROL OF THEIR LIMBS YET. That obviously is not the case with mid-forties Mom here. It's people like that who make me want to go to their houses and have a drink and then kinda just throw the glass vaguely in the direction of the table. See how they like that.


8/8/04

I had a woman ask for help with a book, and when I looked it up and asked her (as I usually do) whether she'd already been to the section where it was supposed to be shelved, she said, "Well, YES, but I didn't look at EVERY SINGLE BOOK!" Well, lady, it sure is lucky that here in my world of logical order, looking at "every single book" is not necessary to determine whether we have the book. So how about we walk our asses over to Christian Living, give the S shelf a glance, and pull your book out? Would you believe that's exactly what we ended up doing? And I really didn't have to look at many other books at all. GRR.

A weird dude came up to me and pointed to the back of the store, and said, "You mean to tell me that over there under that sign that says 'Newspapers,' you only carry . . . " and he was off and running about which papers he'd seen back there. I ran over the end of his statement with "No" because we don't keep all the newspapers back there since we have some on a rack right as you come into the store. He stopped talking when I said "No" and replied, "What are you saying 'no' for when I haven't even told you what I was looking for?" Okay, slow down for a second here, dude. I promise I can help if you'll let ME take hold of this conversation. "I said 'no' because we have some other newspapers in the front. Which ones are you looking for?" He wanted two we didn't carry and when I told him we didn't carry those he just walked away all rude. This really could have been handled a lot better if he'd come up and said something like, "Say, I've been back there under where it says 'Newspapers' and only saw a couple papers, is that all you carry?" or "I'm looking for the Times-Union, do you carry that?" Opening by abusing my store indirectly through me is not a good way to get service.

I'm also tired of these freaks who keep giving me completely unnecessary information as if they think they have to hold my hand in order for me to do my job properly. When you come in to pick up your book, you do NOT have to volunteer that "Thomas" is spelled "T-H-O-M-A-S"--because first of all I know that and second of all even if I didn't know how to spell Thomas I doubt there's too many books on the "T" shelf anyway. And then also, you do not have to begin explaining what the book looks like in order for me to find it; telling me "It's a paperback" is unnecessary, and furthermore if I need help finding your book I will indicate to you what I need. Now, it doesn't hurt me if they just want to stand there all day running their mouths with useless information, but still, it irks me, you know? It's like explaining to the cook what a spatula is.

I helped a lady in the baby section; she wanted a book called 1-2-3 Magic. It's about discipline. I got it for her and she got all weirded out because the book's cover was red and she'd seen the book before but it was yellow. (I don't remember a yellow one, but the previous edition was blue--maybe yellow was first edition. Point is, we're on third edition now.) I explained that now that the third edition was out, we no longer carried older versions. She freaked out and kept trying to find out if it was the same book (YES, freak!) and whether we still had the old one because I guess it was just that important that it be the same color. Later she came BACK and asked me if I could order the old one anymore. Are you not understanding this concept of NEW EDITION??

Some lady was all rude to me about Christian books. She came up and had this title that wouldn't show up in my computer, and was all kind of snotty when I didn't find a listing, telling me who the author was and insisting that he was very popular and stuff so she just couldn't imagine that we didn't have this book. Well, she asked me, "Is there a CHRISTIAN bookstore in town?" and went away unsatisfied only to come back and show me the ad for the book in another book. Problem 1: She'd been telling me the wrong title. Problem 2: She'd been telling me the wrong author. "I didn't know it was co-written," she explained in a sort of apologetic tone. I took a glance and saw that the author she'd been telling me it was by before had actually only written a foreward and an afterword; the author was a totally different person. When I got the book on my screen she still started insisting that the book had a different title and that the ad she had was not right, it must be a totally different book entirely that was being advertised here. Uh-huh. Finally she shot me with "It doesn't make sense that you'd not carry this one when you carry EVERY OTHER ONE OF HIS BOOKS," tossed her head, and stalked off. Guess it's always someone else's fault through misprints, incompetence, and misinformation, not, like, your own bad memory.


8/7/04

PEEVE OF THE WEEK!

I hate people who can't seem to understand that we are busy. Like, I mean, I look around and I see lines or crowds or whatever and I immediately lose any annoyance I have about having to wait. It's not like I'm HAPPY to wait either, but I do NOT voice my dissatisfaction to the customer service people and I do NOT act like they need to do a better job serving me faster. I very recently was at a sushi restaurant where there were lots of people ordering stuff and I really did not mind that it took the guy a while to get to our orders. We had to share the sushi chefs, you know? We were a tad understaffed today (and this has happened last Monday and the Monday before), and it reminded me that people just don't know how to handle it when it isn't their turn. Next!

First, the biggest annoyance of today. An ass in my checkout line. Actually I'd been called to do a return and ended up stuck up there, and then at the end of the line was another dude with a return so I took him. Problem was, he had no receipt, and the item he bought had a price sticker from our other store on it. No biggie if he wanted to exchange, but he insisted that he did not want to shop today, he wanted me to give him credit. That's not as bad as those asses who demand cash, but what I don't understand is why he can't just come back when he does want to shop--same thing as store credit, except I can't issue store credit without a receipt and still be following the rules. Truthfully "the policy" says that any returns that are done without receipts or after 30 days are manager's discretion. I'm not a manager, but I speak for one in the arena of returns, and I denied his return because without a receipt they'd kick my ass for doing it, especially since it was the other store's product.

So the dude started arguing with me and doing this really annoying thing where every time I stated the policy and his options, he'd say, "So what you're saying is . . . " and go on to say something I hadn't said, or some phrasing that to try to make me sound ridiculous. He maintained that if it mattered which store he took it to, then we must be independently run and operated stores that are franchised or some such, and I said that that wasn't the case, we were a chain, but the only chance he had of getting a different answer than the one I was giving him (i.e., NO, buy something else that's the same price or more or else LEAVE) was to hit up the manager at the store where he bought the product. "So in other words you don't have the authority to make this decision," he replied, and kept trying to get me to say something that made no sense, trying to like catch me in a paradox or something.

I kept repeating that in THIS SITUATION his only option was to shop for something to exchange it with or see if the other store's manager would choose to take it back despite policy, but finally he was like, "Well then who is the manager who makes those kinds of decisions at THIS store?" and I told him my general manager wasn't here but my co-manager was. He said, "Well, then where is she?" and I said she was busy with supervising the unloading of our new shipment, and he goes, "Well then you can tell her that I'm waiting." Heh. I was amused by how he thought he was gonna "win," like this is some battle to see how much of a jerk he can be to get what he thinks he is owed. So I bring the manager out and she's pissed because she's trying to eat her lunch and watch the truck and now this ass wants stuff he isn't entitled to, and she comes out and tells him the SAME stuff. And he kept hitting her with the same things, like trying to rephrase what she said into "So you're not authorized to make that decision"--yes, jerk, my decision is NO!--and finally when he tried to rearrange something she said into "well you CAN do it but you WON'T," she agreed and said it wasn't worth losing her job to break policy. He asked, "So your job is more important than keeping a customer?" Later she commented to me that she'd wanted to basically say "HELL yes," and explain to him that unless he planned to pay her bills then damn well YES it is more important to follow the rules and keep her job than to satisfy him when he's demanding treatment outside of policy! Grr. Strangely enough, though, this guy didn't make me very angry because he just kind of struck me as ridiculous. I never felt threatened or close to doing something shady to give him what he wanted to shut him up or anything, and I got the idea that he thought if he badgered us enough we'd give him what he wanted. And again, I don't understand--if we gave him a store credit that he'd have to eventually come back and spend, why couldn't he just bring the product back when he IS ready to shop? People will never cease to amaze me.

My boss's kids had some fun this last couple days I've been off, so in addition to the usual piled-up mess I have to deal with on Saturdays, they had left me McDonald's trash to clean up in the train and they had done some mischief with removing the dust covers of several dozen books and hiding both the cover and the book for me to find and put back together. Also some magic kits were open and parts of them destroyed, so I had to damage out a lot of products. I guess I can't be *sure* it was them (except for the McDonald's trash and the drawing paper strewn over the benches), but normally when something smells like them, it smells like them. You know.

So I was rather frustrated by the combination of that, the usual mess, the rude and plentiful customers, and the fact that I wasn't getting anything done all day. By the time I FINALLY got to the baby section (the last on my usual tour through to clean Kids'), I noticed that the books with wheels were all just crammed onto the shelf every which way. So . . . I had some fun. I took an armful and threw them on the floor, and kept doing it, making a huge pile of every wheely book because I had to completely re-do it anyway. Strangely enough a customer asked me for help in the middle of my rampage. I explained that I was having fun. She admired my pigtails and partook of my knowledge. Yay. (Is that a word? Partook? Hmm. Forsooth!)

I had a lady ask for help finding a book and as I was taking her to the regional section she said, "You know, if everything was in alphabetical order, I could have found it myself." She amended her statement to explain that she meant it would be better if the WHOLE store was just one big by-author organization regardless of subject. Uh-huh. I told her that I'd heard that suggestion before, but thought it would result in such things as How to Drive Your Man Wild in Bed being right next to Skippy the Dog Goes to Camp. (As Fred once said at this concept, "That could ruin someone's life!") Would not work, lady. When we got to the section she claimed IT was not in alphabetical order either, and I claimed it was, at which point she pointed out an author that was not right. I pointed out that she was misinterpreting the author's middle name as her last name, and the last name starting with R was indeed in an appropriate place right before the S's. I had to go help someone else then, but actually that pointing out of a book assumingly in the wrong place was the second time today. Let me tell you 'bout the first time:

A girl told me she needed help finding a book because she'd been back there and the fantasy section was TOTALLY just in no order. I told her that surprised me and that I wanted to know where she was talking about and in what way it was out of order so I could see this strange phenomenon and inform the guy who takes care of Fantasy. She told me that Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon books were in one place and then there was a whole set of bookshelves and then MORE Bradley books very far away from the rest. That sounded fishy to me. I questioned her about it and she responded with these weird über-confident "Well yes, I KNOW it is" answers as she described the problem. Turned out actually it was totally in order and she had thought these other Avalon books were misplaced but they weren't, because they were written by a different author and BASED on Bradley's stuff. Has the other author's name right on it. AND it seemed weird that she would claim the whole section was fucked on basis of one author being misplaced. "Avalon here and . . . AVALON THERE?? The entire place is in NO ORDER! AGH!" Blargh.

A couple women came in looking for a certain book when our computers went down near the end of my shift. Luckily I had looked this book up for someone earlier in the day so I knew we were supposed to carry it, but the woman who'd come in earlier hadn't wanted it in hardcover (the only way this book comes yet as it is NEW), so we hadn't checked the shelf for it. I went to take these women over there but the book wasn't there, which, as I explained to them, probably meant we hadn't received it yet. Since it was a new book but not, like, one everyone was going to stampede to buy, our company hadn't seen fit to send us a box or case of them marked with a strict mid-week release date and let it sit in the back until the exact release date. What happens with these books that no one hears a lot about is they just come in with regular shipment after they've been released, and they make their way onto the shelf in their good time. When I explained this, though, one of them indignantly burst, "BUT it was RELEASED on the THIRD!" Well, I had to explain that that fell exactly into the situation I'd already explained--it just wasn't a big enough deal for them to send us a specially marked box of them, so they'd be on our shelves when we got it. "I'm just not meant to get this book," one of them said, and when (being friendly, you know) I sympathetically asked if she'd already been around looking for it, she said one other store had not had it either so far. "What place would DEFINITELY HAVE IT?" she said. I just did not know what to do with that question. I told her I had no way of telling her what bookstore definitely has this book. What the HELL? "Yes, well, you're guaranteed to get it if you visit Barnes & Noble and I know this off the top of my head even though we are not affiliated with them, but despite the fact that I didn't even know without checking whether my OWN store had the book, this makes perfect sense." Blerghie!

You 'member the manager up there who had to deal with the evil return guy? Here's her first customer of the day. She was walking into the back room and passed a woman looking at magazines, and the woman stopped her, pointed at the magazine wall vaguely, and said, "Do you understand this?" My manager just stared blankly, hoping that the customer would do something to, ya know, make her question in any way a little more clear. She waited a while, but just before my manager was forced to extract clarification from her, she volunteered, "Spiegel? You don't have Spiegel?" Yes, of course, that's what was obviously meant by "Do you understand this?"

"Do you understand this?"
"Yes ma'am, Spiegel is over here."

Perhaps the woman was attempting to convey that she wanted to know if my manager was familiar with the magazines, but the way she said that she had no business looking at her and waiting for any kind of answer. What. The. Hell.

Annoying guy at the desk asked me if I had Alas Babylon. I said I probably had some in Literature and went to go get it. He asked me if I'd read it and I said I hadn't, and he goes, "Well, you should." And he seemed offended that I hadn't read it. Apparently it's VERY relevant right now. So I got him the book and then he wanted something else that wasn't in my computer. I dug up the title as a children's happy storybook of some kind, and that was not what he was looking for. "Well it was required reading when I was in seventh grade," he protested--which tells you something as this guy looked like he was eligible for our senior discount card program and seventh grade must have been forever ago for him--"I own a copy of the book myself!" Well, yes, since you now have given me that startlingly relevant information, I'm sure the computer will suddenly have more results for you. I suggested maybe it was out of print and he finally left me alone. Hello. I didn't say the book doesn't exist or that you have the title wrong (though he kept suggesting I try it with "the" in there, which makes no difference as the engine ignores "the"). I said it wasn't in the system. Go to a used bookstore for antiques, okay?


8/3/04

Some lady needed a book for her kid's school reading and it was one we didn't carry. As I was ordering one for her, she commented helpfully, "You know, you might want to order some, because her school all needs to read it." I explained that I can't just "order books for the store" unless it's been determined that there's a good chance we'll get asked for it a bunch, and that wasn't one of the schools that we expected to get a lot of customers from. Then the lady asked me if I could make sure no one else got this book she was ordering. Yeah, that makes sense--we have a specific request for a book order so we'll just order one copy and put it on the shelf where anyone might take it. No, I'm ordering it FOR YOU, it'll have your name on it. I friggin' promise. The only way it'll get sold to someone else is if they come in here and claim they're you.

Had to help this annoying foreign lady who (again) knew enough English to argue with me so her foreign-ness doesn't prevent her from being listed on this page. She came in the kids' section and wanted "activity books" for sixth through twelfth graders on the subject of math. I told her we really don't carry books for kids that old for the most part; if it's that old it's just a study guide and it isn't a workbook anymore (and she expressed that she wanted workbooks). The problem I had with this is that when I kept denying that we sold what she wanted or tried to take her out of the kids' section for it, she kept repeating, "But I bought here. It was in this section. I bought here." So she'd bought it here already, and apparently knew right where she needed to look, but somehow also needed my help in finding it. Lady, if you're so sure that you bought it from here and it wasn't in another section, be my guest and show me where. And when you do that, you won't need me anymore, now will you? She left me alone when I laid out her choices as either workbooks for younger children or teacher planning guides--actually she seemed pleased with the planning guides so maybe that was what she wanted and she couldn't express it. No crime in THAT (not being able to express it), but it was the whole unwillingness to work with me thing that really bugged me.


8/2/04

It was early in the morning--I was coming back from the café with my coffee, having not even donned my apron yet--and I saw someone hanging around the school reading list area with a slack-jawed expression like she just didn't know what to do with herself in the midst of all these cover-bound dead tree sheets. So I approached her and asked if she needed any help.

"Um . . . well do you work here?" she asked.

No, lady, I walk up to other customers and ask to assist them for fun.

"Yes, I do . . . is there something in particular I can help you find?"

[pause]"Um . . . a book?"

OH NO REALLY? WE DON'T CARRY THOSE DO WE?

After that it wasn't really notable, I asked what book and helped her find it and she went on her way. But I just don't understand why people make it so difficult to assist them.

Grr. A lady approached me and asked for help, so when I asked what she needed she said, "The book is . . . " and gave me the title. She elaborated while we waited for the computer that she just didn't know the author so it would be tough to find the book. Sure. I found the book in the computer, told her the author (at which she had an "oh YES of course!" moment), and then as I came around the desk to help her find it she said, "Well that's not the one I wanted, I was asking you to tell me what books you carried by that author. I already have THAT one." This was all delivered in a tone of voice like I should already know this information, I should know she wasn't really looking for THAT one. I'm pretty good with that whole mildly telepathic thing but even I cannot be expected to read everybody's mind, right? Maybe after a few more classes at Psychic School.

Two of us at Customer Service were scrambling to help everyone, and I went back to Travel with a couple of women looking to go to San Francisco. I helped them to their satisfaction and as I was excusing myself my phone rang. When I got back to the desk, still helping the person on the phone, the other associate was still busy and this one lady was standing there still having not been helped. As I was about to put the guy on the phone on hold to find out if we had his book, the waiting lady shouted out, "Would someone please help me? I've been waiting since before you went to help them!" The guy on the phone was still talking, having remembered one more thing to ask, but I missed it because this lady decided she needed to demand to cut in line. I would never dream of informing anyone that I was next in line for their services. Even if it was true--it might've been that she actually arrived at the desk before this phone call came in--there just isn't any reason in the world to wave your hands and demand to be next. We're grown-ups here.

Some lady wanted a classical music coffee table book and hit up the brand new café guy who was taking a training test on the computer. I was on the phone so I just overheard it, but the lady asked him for help and he informed her that he worked in the coffee shop and could not help her with that, he didn't know how yet. She replied, "But can't you just look it up?" You're not grasping this whole "I DON'T KNOW HOW TO HELP YOU" thing, are you. As an added bonus, when I went to help her, the friend that was with her was insisting that they'd already looked in Music and "it's all ROCK, NO classical at ALL" when they just hadn't gone to (hello!) the other side of the bookshelf. ::sigh::

I helped a girl find a book and when we got to Fiction she was like, "Are these organized by author?" I told her they were and she acted all surprised and told me she just hadn't been able to figure out how they were organized or she'd have looked herself without my help. Come on. It was only my being vocal about looking for the author (i.e., "Okay, here's the H's, looking for the L's . . . okay, J, K . . . ") that tipped her off that there might be any organization at all. GOD!

A guy asked for my help finding a magazine that he'd already looked for back there, so I offered to help and walked back with him. We didn't find it, and so I told him I saw a couple similar ones but not that one. He was right there with me as we both looked, and finally I told him I supposed we just didn't have any at the moment. He replied, "So . . . you didn't find it?" Oh jeez! Well yeah I found it--somehow I managed to find it when you didn't notice despite you being there the WHOLE TIME--but I'm just waiting for you to ask if I found it before I tell you I did. I don't get people like this. They watch you look for it, listen to you say you don't have it, and then say, "So you don't have it?" while looking at you EXPECTING AN ANSWER. I so just want to walk away when people do that.


8/1/04

Had a girl who was maybe in her mid teens come up to me and hand me an audio book and go, "How much is this?" I could understand asking me if there wasn't any price on it, but it was clear as day on the back of the box. I don't know what possesses people to overlook such things and then take the trouble to track down and ask an employee instead of, say, just taking a close look at the package. Come on now.

Weird occurrence today. A guy came up and asked me if I had The South Beach Diet. Of course I friggin' do, it's like #2 on bestsellers. So I told him so and took him up there, and then for some reason my brain skipped and I knew when we got up there he was going to ask me if it came in paperback. People do that a lot with hardbacks, but I just felt so sure, and I just started kind of chanting under my breath as we walked over there, "NO it's not in paperback yet, NO it's not in paperback yet." When we got there I showed it to him and he was very nice and stuff, and I really thought he was about to walk away and not ask me. Hah. No such luck. He turned back around and said, "Oh, does this come in paperback?"

"No. It's not in paperback yet."

::sigh::

Is this a sign that I need to leave this job?

My coworker got a dude asking him for a book, and we were out of it when they checked the shelves. The customer said, "Okay, well, order me a copy. The name's Thomas." (It was not actually Thomas, but I'm protecting the identity of the jerk, ya know.) Then he just walked off. My coworker had to chase the guy and be like HEY, I need more info than just you dropping your last name and walking off, how 'bout a PHONE NUMBER so we can call you--it's not like you're the only person we're gonna order for and when it comes in everyone will know it's Mr. Thomas's book. And apparently the dude kept trying to walk off before giving all the information he needed. Guy, just let us give you the cues, I promise it will be much easier.

I heard about this today: Apparently my boss's daughter was hanging out at the store--she's a little girl and sometimes his kids just stay there instead of getting daycare or whatever when their dad is working--and she got bored and picked up the phone when it was ringing and said "Speak!" Luckily it turned out to not be a customer but rather the boyfriend of one of the employees wanting to speak to her. But this boyfriend is very professional and was not amused by the fact that a child is grabbing the phone in the store. "Do you not understand that this is a business?" he asked her. At that point the boss got wind of this, told her to get the hell off the phone, found out what the caller needed, and made an announcement to the tune of "If you kids pick up the phone again, I will beat you to within an inch of your life. Oh, and Erica, you have a phone call." Hahaha. I just find it amusing that he will threaten his kids over the intercom system.

All righty then! Come to another amusing thingie. Last week (7/26) a girl came in asking for books that weren't out yet--if you want a background on this entry you can read that one--and today she was back, wanting the one that came out today. She opened her questioning session with a big long preface about how she'd already talked to our other store and they didn't have it yet but they'd told her to check with us and see if we had it in the back and it's supposed to be out today and blah. All this without telling me what the book was. I waited for her to run out of steam and then said, "Okay. What is the book?" That part is kind of essential if you know what I mean. So she told me what it was, and I looked it up and saw where it was supposed to be. Since we already went through this last time, I didn't bother to check the shelf since she already had and I trusted her, and went ahead and told her if it wasn't there we didn't have it yet.

"The other store said you got a shipment yesterday," she said, and I was like uh-huh. "We got a shipment at 9:30 last NIGHT," I informed her, "and it's barely begun to be unpacked, there's no way of knowing if it's come out of a box yet." At that she told me she wanted me to go check in the back and ask the receiving girl if she'd come across it yet. Now I understand being anxious to get a book but asking someone to do something like that is a little much. I told her there were like two thousand boxes back there and I doubted it, but she was like, "No that's okay" (it is??), "just ask her and see." Um. Well, I figured I couldn't lose anything, so I went back to see if it was in one of the very few boxes of paperbacks that had been sorted yet.

I should say right now that if you don't know our receiving girl, you won't completely "get" this next bit, but just trust me when I say she is a piece of work.

I went back there and started looking in the red boxes that hold paperbacks, and the receiving girl asked me, "What'cha lookin' for?" I told her and told her why I was looking, and she was like, "OH." At that she said she'd seen it--and it was in the first box she'd sorted--and she dug to the bottom and pulled it out. "Where is the girl? I'll take it out to her."

Uh-oh.

So I told her she was near Customer Service and kind of followed her out to watch her with the customer. Now she marched up and handed it to her, and began her tirade. "I wouldn't normally do this," she began, and then went off about how it's ridiculous to ask someone to dig through all those boxes and she needs to wait like everyone else for us to process the shipment because she's not anything special that we should change how we do things because she can't wait one more day, "And we get hundreds of totes of books--you work at Winn-Dixie, you know what a tote is, right?" she asked, taking note of the girl's name tag and calling her by her name. The girl agreed that she knows what a tote is, and she replied, "Well good, then you know my pain." She went on a little more and then released her from the verbal lashing. The customer just went from there and checked out. According to the manager who checked her out she didn't mention the incident or anything, but I was worried she was gonna get in trouble for it. I would never have done something like that, but I have to say I was kinda cheering for her even though it was really rude--I bet that girl will never ask someone to "check in the back" again.


On to September!


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