12/31/05
We had a family from some English-speaking foreign country--sounded like maybe Scotland--upset over the Beanie Baby prices. Now, there's this thing about Beanies. The people who buy them are by and large collectors, and collectors refuse to buy them if there is anything sticky on the tag. So sometimes there are prices on the toys' soft tags, which easily come off, and sometimes we just don't bother to price them because our company has come up with an ingenious way of showing the prices of everything. There are little cardboard "shelf talkers" that say categories of Beanies, such as "Beanie Buddies," "Beanie Baby Classics," et cetera, and then a price is displayed next to the type of toy. Every Beanie has what category it belongs to written on its tag. So basically, even though each Beanie is supposed to be sitting on the shelf of its category, children often move them however they want, and that way our asses are covered even if a Beanie shows up in the wrong shelf. In other words, just because there's a shelf of "Beanie Buddies" that are $4.95 doesn't mean that when a larger "Beanie Classic" ($9.95) gets jammed in there, we should have to honor the lower price. It just makes things difficult when we can't label the actual *product* like we can everything else (the standard response is "Sorry ma'am, if it was discounted it'd have a sticker on it. Someone just put it down on the sale table, but it's a regular-priced book").
This was not cool with our pals from Scotland.
After asking about the prices and being annoyed to find that every Beanie Classic shoved in the Beanie Buddies bin was not $4.95 instead of $9.95, the older woman began to raise a stink, claiming, "Back HOME if something is on a shelf labeled for a price, you get the thing for that price!" I wasn't the main person dealing with this family, but I put in my 2¢ since I'm the kids' specialist, claiming that since there was a price key it was our insurance against kids moving things into cheaper bins. I mean, honestly, all you have to do in this instance is say, "I found this in the $4.95 bin, so I therefore now get it for half the price it should be." No. We have the prices of the different types POSTED for exactly that reason. One of the little girls with the family was saying in a prissy, bossy voice, "If it SAYS it's $4.95, it should BE!" You're missing the point. Perhaps people "back home" are also taught never to touch and move things? Perhaps children "back home" are never left unattended to put things where they don't belong? I guess everybody is so well-behaved "back home" that someone sticking something where it doesn't belong never happens, thus all mistakes of organizing toys are the store's fault and therefore the store's responsibility to honor. Wait a sec . . . if you guys are any indication of how people behave "back home," I don't believe it for a second. Ciao!
12/30/05
Okay, picture this. Store just opened. Early Friday morning, probably a couple customers milling around in the store but overall not much going on. The manager had to make her usual stop for a deposit and the rule is to take an employee with you when you do that, so she kidnapped our cashier and went to do that, leaving me in charge of the store. This happens often enough; we just trust that nothing is going to happen that will require me to be in both places (Checkout and Customer Service) long enough to cause a problem that early in the morning.
So, of course the FedEx people decided to make a delivery during this window where no one has the back door's key, and when he rang the bell I had to go back there and talk to him through the bay door telling him I couldn't let him in. He was quite a stubborn lad because he wasn't too keen on accepting the only options (either wait for the manager to come back or just go do another delivery and come back); he wanted me to come out the front door and around and sign for the packages and leave them stacked outside the door, or he wanted to bring them though the front door (which is totally not allowed). After convincing the guy to go away and come back later, I went back into the store and of COURSE there was a customer standing at the register with that perplexed mouth-open "Hey, there's no one waiting to check me out, maybe if I stand here staring long enough they'll appear" look.
I didn't know how long he'd been standing there, so I did the usual and made a little joke about how there needs to be a way to clone me or something, since I'm trying to run the store by myself. Sometimes when a customer has had to be kept waiting because of a situation like this, they'll become more sympathetic if they realize I'm the only person in the store or that we're understaffed, whatever. This guy? Nothing.
The man started handing me bullshit as if having been made to stand there for a few moments with no one to help him had been traumatic. I tried to keep it light, telling him that sometimes when the manager leaves to do the errands it is indeed very inconvenient to have me trying to do everything, with the only open register in the café and little old me having to try to assist everyone. He was like, "Well if I could have checked out in the café, YOU should have put up a SIGN!"
Hmm, okay. So I should have taken approximately one minute to make a sign in case anyone should wander by in this dead store on a Friday morning, making the guy ringing the back door bell wait even though there didn't seem to be anyone in the store needing assistance. Ooh, and the thing that kills me about this is that if I had made a sign (as I have sometimes ahead of time), I know he wouldn't have read it. Customers like this never read signs. He would have stood at the wrong register with the same look on his face, and if there had been a sign, he would have complained that I should have made one for each register so that anywhere a customer had wandered, he would have known to wander to café instead. Okay, look. The store JUST opened three minutes ago. We're still working on it. So . . . just chill your ass out, 'kay?
Here's a story of one of my mind-numbing returns. A man walked in holding some non-book gift item saying, "I'm doing a return." I took one look at his product and said, "I don't think we carry those. . . . " He said, "Oh. Well, I don't know where it came from." You didn't drop that little bit of information when you came in here informing me that you're doing a return, did you. I checked its bar code in the system and the computer said, "What the fuck is THAT? We don't carry that!" So I told the dude he didn't get it here and that perhaps he'd have better luck returning it at a place that is better known for carrying picture frames. . . . Kinda made me go "huh?" when I thought about the thought process that must have happened: "Hmm, don't know where I got this picture frame. I'll try the bookstore!"
I heard about this from one of my friends at our other location--apparently some woman was upset because her husband had been denied a cash return on an item because they claimed he paid with a gift card. He claimed he couldn't USE his gift card because we told him it was empty, and then charged him cash, so he should be able to get cash back. Umm, he definitely had to have used a gift card of some type or we wouldn't know anything about it by looking at the receipt, though being that I wasn't there I guess it's possible they didn't notice that it was *partially* a gift card payment and *partially* a cash payment (in which case we can technically give cash for a return). Anyway, after this happened and the husband got upset, his wife began to seek vengeance for the situation, and went to their location upset and demanding cash for the gift card. They said they couldn't do it and . . . for some ungodly reason . . . sent her to our store. This is where we come in.
She showed up, and for her part she wasn't rude or loud, but I do believe she didn't have a leg to stand on, because now what she was whining about was that gift cards ever expire. She said that her husband's gift cards had been eaten up by this random "non-use fee" that activates after TWELVE MONTHS of NON-USE, and that that was unfair--if your money is given, it should stay there, no one should be able to charge fees on it. Now on this of course I disagree. You have this shit sitting around for a year, this old number in the company's computer that stays there untouched and untouched and untouched because you probably forgot you had the card, so eventually they just want to not have a billion open accounts and begin eating it at the price of $1.50 per month, which is usually fine because you forgot you had it anyway.
This lady claimed that if anything the money on the card should INCREASE with some kind of INTEREST, not decrease with disuse. Ohhh, great idea. I'll save my card for that long and soon I'll have more to spend, because this is a bank, not a retail store. And I think the thing that bothered me the most about this was she was specifically talking to my manager about how her impression of our store is tarnished because we have this policy (hey, wait, actually MANY stores that issue electronic gift cards have a fee that starts eating the card's value after a particular period of non-use!), and the punch line is ALL THE GIFT CARDS WERE GIFTS FROM STUDENTS. The husband's a teacher. He gets them for free from his students all the time, and then because he lives around half an hour away from one of our stores he considers that a long trip and doesn't get around to spending them for over a damn year. So this lady is self-righteously rambling about her impression of us as a company as though her Customer Power is now going to be directed to a different bookstore, when it's actually OTHER PEOPLE who are our customers. You guys are just the recipients of gift cards, not paying customers we've wronged with this travesty of reclaiming the money in accordance with THE POLICY TYPED ON EVERY GIFT CARD'S BACK. Now, I'm not saying she didn't have the potential to become a customer or that because she's not really a customer who gave us any money she shouldn't be treated right, but I really got annoyed at this "I'm a customer and now my impression of your store is bad" attitude when she never even bought anything and her threat to withhold her business is moot since she never GIVES us business. She outright admitted that she and her husband don't even get out to our store often enough to use up the gift cards for over a frickin' year, so what's she really on about?
Okay. Another annoyance at the register: This guy who spoke pretty good English but with a rather difficult-to-understand accent was talking to his friend a lot during our cashing out--they were talking in English, so I followed it, but he really wasn't paying much attention to our transaction because he was just talking away to his pal all jolly. As I was finishing up the transaction and getting a bag for his purchase, he kept rambling to the other dude, and then the friend kind of walked off pretty quick and ducked out the door. My customer was apparently waiting for me to finish bagging his purchases for him to follow, so I was putting them in the bag and I asked him if he wanted the receipt in there too, but he didn't seem to get it and said, "I have to go." I repeated my question and he's like, "Yes-yes, now I have to GO!" Then he started harassing me to hurry up and give him his stuff because he had to GO NOW NOW NOW! Dude, a second ago you were rambling your ass off holding up every bit of this transaction because you couldn't stop talking to someone else, and now you need my immediate speedy response? What an ass.
Oh, and this was kinda cute: My kids' section was being visited by a group of adults with intellectual disabilites, with their caregiver, and they were milling around as usual when I ran by the section at a terrific pace because someone had called me for a return and I had had a delayed response because of being with a customer. So when I jogged on by this group, one of the well-meaning men stuck his head out and yelled, "HEY, no running in the grocery store!" Hehehehee. . . .
12/28/05
A lady wanted a particular toy, and we had it, but it had no price on it. So I told her I could scan it, but then she kept asking me questions while I was trying to find out the answer to her first one, so she kept diverting me with these extra questions and then ASKING AGAIN, "And you don't know the price of that?" Lady, stop interrupting me and I will find out! Also we were out of one of the books she wanted and she kept saying, "And so you don't have that one, you only have the second one? Well I want the first one. You don't have the first one? Oh this is the third one. So you don't have it?" I guess she thought asking for it enough times would make it appear out of my bum.
Lady at the register with one of my coworkers wasn't listening very well when the cashier explained our e-check policy. I think she thought we were trying to sell her something because she looked up in incomprehension and then said, "No, I'm not interested in that, thank you." The cashier didn't know what to say to that and tried to explain again but the lady's like, "NO, no THANK you." We're not trying to sell you something. We're explaining that we process checks electronically. You don't have a choice in the matter, but we do like to let people know so that a) they don't freak out when we (gasp) GIVE THEM THE CHECK BACK, and b) they don't have to write out the check if they don't want to. But hey, no thank you. . . .
12/27/05
The returns people are killin' me. I have the powers of a manager (all hail the great Mini Manager™!) so of course the managers tell the cashiers to call ME for returns (thus freeing them of the constant running), and I have been taking care of them steadily. The thing that is driving me totally up the wall is that people just don't tell me a reason. I'm asking for the reason for your return because the computer wants to know, and I wouldn't be asking if it wasn't something I needed to know . . . therefore, when I ask, "What was the reason for the return?" it is very unhelpful if you just shrug and say, "Didn't want it."
Didn't want it? That is obvious. Because you are bringing it back to me. Now, are you returning it because you got it as a gift and you don't want it? Are you returning it because you bought it for someone else and THEY didn't want it? Did you buy it and then just decide you didn't want it anymore and returned it? WHY didn't you want it? Did you already have one? Did you decide it was inappropriate? Did you find it cheaper someplace else? These are filed under different reasons in my system, and I'm assuming they wouldn't ask us to ask people if they didn't need to know for some reason. So . . . can you please do a little more than grunt at me while I process your return? Thank you.
Another killer: Hallmark ornament vultures. All stores that sell Hallmark ornaments know what I mean. They are usually women (or if they are men, they often have a wife with them). They are usually beady-eyed and merciless, and also have some strange inability to understand the phrase "we're out." Here is today's example.
She called on the phone so that she wouldn't have to lug herself in here, which is nice 'cause I don't think I'd have liked to deal with her in person. She wanted me to check for a particular ornament and didn't give me much detail, but I decided to go with it and put her on hold while I searched. Not much remained from yesterday's carrion feast (I mean, bargain shopper rush), so it was pretty easy to tell that we didn't have what she was looking for. It was when I got back on the phone to tell her so that the annoyance began.
"Nooo, nooooooo!" she cried. "You're out??"
I told her it looked that way.
"You don't see ANY?"
Yeah, I see a few, but I figured you'd need like eight, so I told you we have none. Come on.
"So you don't have any IN STOCK?"
I told her that I was looking where they'd be if they were in stock, and I didn't see any.
"Well would you have any in the back?"
Yes, that is a brilliant place to store highly in-demand, past-prime, discounted merchandise. In the BACK. No, I told her we had all we had on the shelf.
"Well could you call your other store for me and see if THEY have it?"
I paused. Then I just had to say it. "You want me . . . to put you on hold . . . and then call my other store and see if they have your ornament?"
Luckily this is the one part of the conversation where she seemed to notice the subtext; that I was in fact implying that it made no sense to tie up both of our lines and her time and mine if she could just call them herself.
"Well do you have their number?"
Nah. I don't have the number to the other store, sorry. You were just asking me to call them for you and you didn't ask if I had their number THEN, but now it makes sense. Yeah, I have their damn number. Here. Now go whine at them.
People don't seem to get that if they're going after *collector's items*, they are not going to find the most in-demand ones two days after Christmas after they're discounted and mostly sold out. If it's really that important that you get it, just buy it before Christmas and save yourself the anguish, you know?
A lady was looking for a particular test prep book and she knew the name of the test and the color of the book but we didn't seem to have it and everything I brought up in the computer was not remotely close to the color she was suggesting. I ended up ordering something for her. But before that happened, we had this lovely exchange:
After I'd already browsed the shelves looking and only found one thing that seemed kind of vaguely related, she said, "Well why don't you check your computer and see if you have it?" Oh, well why didn't I think of that? Oh yeah, because at the beginning of this conversation you said you weren't interested in the larger selection that we could order from; only what's in the store today. So I went to the section where said books would be. ::sigh:: I ended up checking the computer and finding the thing we could order, but then she was like, "Well my husband is off tomorrow, he can come in with me tomorrow and HE can look." I asked her what good that would do and she said, "Because maybe he knows more about it than what he told me." Lady, somehow I doubt bringing your husband in to stare slack-jawed at the same shelf I already combed for your book is going to help. I don't have it. I'm not supposed to have it. I don't care if someone told you we did and I don't care if they told you it had a gold cover, I do not see it. But I guess if she wants to do that and waste everyone's time, it's up to her. Heh.
12/26/05
Had a bit of a nutbag on the phone, who was nice and everything but still . . . nutty. First of all we spent about a minute trying to communicate a simple idea back and forth; she wanted to talk to a particular cashier and was asking for her by name, and I was trying to get her to understand that that particular cashier was not here. When it became obvious that it was not a personal call FOR the girl, I tried to figure out what her issue was, and she was still trying to wrap her mind around the cashier not living in the back room or something . . . she seemed to think I was telling her that cashier didn't work here and that I therefore thought she was calling the wrong store, so we were having a conversation about whether indeed she called the right store, with her trying to convince me that it WAS us she bought her books from the other day. Okay, okay, lady. YES. We have a cashier by that name. NO. She is not here.
Finally she got that figured out and began to pose her problem, starting it off with the usual long ramble about how she was in the other day and actually she's not sure which day it was and . . . but all of a sudden, this came out: "Why am I hearing myself?"
I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't.
"HELLO?"
"Hi. . . . "
"WHY AM I HEARING MYSELF?"
I told her I didn't know and that I didn't hear any echoes.
"Are you RECORDING this conversation?"
Yes, because we like to record every conversation in case one is nuts.
After ascertaining that I was not recording her and that no one knew why there was an echo on her and and that yes, it is goddamn annoying, she told me that the cashier she'd been trying to get a hold of had made a mistake and put the check she'd paid with IN HER BAG. She thought we didn't have our money.
So I got to explain to her how the check was cashed electronically and they're supposed to give the check back. "Oh," said the lady, "she explained that to me, but I guess I didn't understand." Heh. Now it was awful cool of her to call us thinking we'd screwed up and cheated ourselves out of money by making a mistake, but it was still a stroll down nut lane.
And this kid wasn't at all an Asshole, but I thought his logic was amusing. He wanted a particular fantasy series and I took him over there. He was very polite the whole time (with this whole "I don't mean to bother you but" attitude), and when we were walking he said, "It's my mother's fault, she gave me this CURSE of reading." Heh. So I talked to him about reading a lot and how it costs a lot but there's a lot worse things you could be addicted to. "I know, it costs my mom a lot," said the kid--and for clarification, he was maybe thirteen or fourteen. "I read books within A MONTH." I could tell he expected me to be impressed with that, so I just didn't say anything about how a month is pretty unremarkable, even for a young teen . . . I mean, how many books a DAY did I read at his age, anyway? But then he spoke up and said, "And the newest Harry Potter? I read it in A WEEK." So I told him I knew how that was, I read the damn thing in two days. "Well, I'm sure you were uninterrupted," he said, "*I* had homework and stuff." Heh, okay, kid . . . "Hmm, well I did have a break where I had to go to work for a shift, but other than that, yeah, I was free."
I guess it helps that I don't sleep, too.
He said me and his mom should have a reading contest.
He seemed like a cool kid. :)
12/25/05
No Assholes for Christmas Day because we were closed, but you can rest assured that the Assholes were somewhere being assholes with their families, and all is right with the world.
12/24/05
Christmas Eve and the forecast for Assholes is relatively clear! Most of the people still shopping today are not Assholes because they know that they left their shopping to the last minute and no one can be expected to meet them halfway with this crap. Though there was this one kid who had ordered a book and came in expecting us to do something about the fact that it hadn't come in. According to the computer it was a long-term special order and was supposed to take 3 to 5 weeks before we even found out IF we could get it (and he'd ordered it on the 9th or something), and when we tried to explain this to him his response was mostly just to stand there staring at us expecting us to do something. I wasn't involved in helping him, I just kind of overheard my coworkers attempting to do something for him and make him stop responding to their "I can't do anything about it" explanation with silence or "Well they were supposed to call me" or something. So either someone didn't tell him that it was a long-term special order when he ordered it (unlikely), or he just didn't listen (usually the case). Feh.
Sometimes special books--like Bibles--have their own ID number within their catalog or whatever. I had a lady on the phone try to read me off this combination of numbers and letters, and I explained to her that whatever that number is, it's some internal identification, my computer can't look it up by some other company's tagging system. She responded by just leaving the letters off the end and reading it to me again, thinking that would make it be the ISBN or something. As it turned out the information was helpful once I got to the shelf and zeroed in on which Bible she wanted (because those numbers were ON the books), but it certainly isn't filed in our system that way. . . .
And now, funny people. I was singing some Christmas carol that had just been on the intercom and some man looked around and saw me there, regarding me with a startled look. "I didn't know where that was coming from," he said, "and I turned around and it was a PERSON!" Okay, yeah I guess that's a compliment--people have certainly mistaken me for the radio before (yes, I'm THAT GOOD!!!), but then he went on to tell me that he's only "allowed" to sing in the shower, and that it kills the germs when he does so. Thank you for that pleasant visual.
And one man told me he "appreciates" my elf ears "every year." Hmm. Well, I'm glad someone appreciates them instead of just giving me weird looks or asking me if the points are part of my hat. . . . I guess that's all over with, though, for now that the working days of Christmas are over I will be hiding my inner elf from the public (at least at work) until next year. . . . Hmm, maybe by next year I'll GET THE HELL OUT OF RETAIL. . . .
12/21/05
A non sequitur somehow became a justification today. A lady asked about a book, and according to my computer we didn't carry it on the shelves. "Well, THAT'S funny," said the customer, and proceeded to tell me that another bookstore's website had it listed. So apparently it follows from the fact that another store's website shows the book that we should have it on our shelves. Gotcha.
A guy came up to Customer Service and wanted to borrow my pen. I didn't have one in my apron because I'm an ass and I kept leaving them at the register, so I just handed him a pen that happened to be floating around the desk, one that is actually a type we sell and still had its price on it. (It had probably been separated from its case or something, and that's why it was being used by the employees.) He looked at its price tag and said, "Well don't you have a cheap one?" I was like, "Well it's not like you're trying to BUY it, you're just borrowing it," and he goes, "I know, but I don't want to LOSE it. . . . " So don't lose it, loser. You have the ability to go away, write with it, and bring it back regardless of how much the thing costs. Now go do that!
And we had a customer who was kidding around with us about Santa saying "Ho ho ho!" and said, "THAT could be an insult!" HEHEHE!
12/20/05
So, weirdly I had a full day on the register and yet I did not have a lot of contact with annoying, pissed off, or jackass people, which is nice. There was one guy who seemed determined to give me an extra 2¢ on his purchase, it was kinda funny. I told him the total was $16.52 and he said, "$16.54?" I corrected him that it was only 52¢, and he started counting out his pennies and after hitting 52 he goes, "Fifty-three, fifty-four," and I said, "It's only fifty-two, sir," and he seemed to understand and regrouped and started counting again, but then when he handed it to me it was still 54¢, and he seemed quite surprised when I gave the extra 2¢ back. I wonder if that was supposed to be my tip?
And one of my register customers was hilarious--I was checking her out when a young child's scream echoed throughout the store--obviously someone was being made to leave the train before he was good and ready or something, so I just idly commented, "Ahh, seems as though a small child is being murdered elsewhere in the store." "Yeah," my customer agreed, "makes me glad I don't have kids." I agreed, and then she went on: "Actually just the SOUND of it makes me want to run out and get my tubes tied RIGHT NOW." ::blink blink:: She continued to say that it inspired her to go make the appointment for her husband's vasectomy. Extremes anyone? Hehe.
I dealt with a sort of frightening man who looked at me putting out books and asked, "Are you one of Santa's helpers?" I told him I was helping out on a temporary basis, and he seemed to think that was quite clever and went on his way. But later he needed my help, so he yelled, "Hey, Santa's elf? Can I have some help . . . temporarily?" Heh. I helped him, and after he was satisfactorily helped and I was back at the register checking out customers, I heard him at the front door leaving yelling, "HEY, ELF!!!" I looked at him and he didn't seem to want anything, he was just yelling. Odd.
And a lady confused me. She said she wanted a certain book on fishing, but then elaborated by saying, "And I DON'T want a newspaper!" I was like, well, yeah, 'cause newspapers are not books, and you're asking for a book. When I tried to figure out why she'd be telling me she didn't want her book to be a newspaper, she just pointed at the sign at the back of the store that says "Magazines/Newspapers" and said, "Well, I already saw the MAGAZINES on the subject. . . . " Okay, but a book is different than that. Books don't go in the magazine section. She apparently hadn't even seen the fishing section.
A kid found the little stuffed toy we have of Walter the Farting Dog and encouraged his mom to squeeze it. She did so, and found that it actually farts like its literary counterpart. Her comment: "THAT . . . is a BAD DOG." Heheheh!
12/19/05
Boy will I be glad after next week! I'm ready for the holidays and all the "fun" that comes with them in the retail world to be DONE!
The cutest little girl came in today and came up to me all by herself to ask about a book. "Can you help me find something?" she said, sort of meekly, and I agreed, but then she couldn't verbalize it, giving me, "Well I'm looking for this thing . . . I don't know? What is it? Um. It's a thing? Where's my mommy?" ::grin:: What's great about this is before we even found Mommy, the girl figured out how to say it and told me she wanted "that big fairy book," and I figured out she wanted Fairyopolis with the Cicely Mary Barker fairy art. I gave it to her and she seemed so happy. Then we found Mom. :)
I got a ten-car pile-up at Customer Service and when I came back from helping someone I surveyed my group of customers and asked who was next. They agreed amongst themselves that this one woman was next, and as I moved to ask her what she wanted a friend of hers walked by and did one of those "Oh, HEY! Fancy seeing you here, how have you beeeeeeeeeeeeeen???" things. My customer responded in kind, and the two of them had a joyous reunion standing there with everyone watching them waiting for their own turns now that they'd turned the baton over to this lady. Who was now completely oblivious. Yes, I took the next customer. :)
A lady told me she'd already been helped on an issue by someone else, but now she wanted me to call the other store for her and ask about her product. So I did, but then after they didn't have it she was like, "And you're SURE you don't have it here?" I had to remind her that I'd come into this interaction at the part where I call the other store; I don't claim to be "sure" of anything the last person did. And then she asked me a question about her book while we were looking for it, wanting to know if another bookstore had said they had it. "Oh yeah, you didn't call them, did you?" she said, realizing aloud. Hmm.
12/18/05
A woman kept asking me for the prices of books as we found them. I don't mind customers asking me for prices; sometimes they don't know where to look, and sometimes they don't have their glasses or whatever. My problem was that this woman wouldn't hand me the books to let me look for her. She'd just hold them, look at them on their fronts herself, and ask how much. It was like a new exercise every time she did this and I had to extract it from her grip. Then I noticed one had a 20% off sticker, and after I explained that to her, she said she saw that it was a 20% off discount plus ten dollars off. "No, that's plus ten PERCENT off with discount card, do you have a card?" I asked, and she said, "No, I don't. I just have that club card of y'all's." Hehehe. . . .
A customer pile-up happened as usual at the desk, and while I was helping one lady the next lady seemed disturbed that she didn't get to ask her question before I went to help my current customer in the store. I thought maybe she just wanted to be pointed in a direction or wanted to pick up books, so I asked her whether she needed help finding a book. When she confirmed that she just wanted help with that, I said I'd be back to help and began going off with my current customer, and the next lady again protested and said, "But I just need you to look up a book and then show me where it is!" Hehehe . . . but I'm doing that now for the person who was ahead of you in line! It's always funny to me how people think their question is something else or something special; what do you think everyone else here is in line for? To ask directions to the pet store? They all need help finding books! Seriously, one of us will help you soon . . . sit tight . . . really. . . .
A woman told me she wanted a certain book in a popular series and I thought we had them, and she said she'd already been through the section and found nothing. That is a special disease only customers have, so I decided I'd help and came around the desk to go to the literature section. Then I noticed she'd disappeared, wasn't following me to the goal, and then after I beat I noticed she was in the audio section scouring shelves. Turned out she wanted an audio book version and hadn't mentioned it. Yeah, the audio version is a different story altogether. "I didn't know you meant AUDIO," I said, and she said, "I know, dear, how could you? I didn't tell you!" Hehe, poor lady. She knows what she wants; how come you didn't read her mind?
I was running the register and I had a woman who was probably in her own world or some such. I asked her if she had a discount card and she pleasantly nodded and said, "Uh-huh," and then didn't move to get it or to provide me with information to look it up. Turned out she'd just tuned me out and thought I'd asked her if she found everything okay or something, one of those things people say to you that causes you to not listen and just to nod and smile. Oh well, there are a lot worse things one could get during Christmas. . . .
A woman was buying a newspaper and she didn't seem to want to hand it over to me to allow me to scan it; she just told me it was "a paper." I asked which one and she told me, and I got it on the screen and confirmed with her that it was the paper that cost a dollar. But then when her total was 96¢, she said, "Is that WITH my discount card?" Er . . . how does one answer that?
A man found the sale table of literature classics at a relatively cheap price and wanted to know if I had these authors anywhere else in the store. I told him, "Oh, no, that's just the sale table," and enlightened him to Literature and left him to browse, and then he came up to me with a little paperback of a classic and said, "Can you explain to me why this one is so much MORE?" I explained again that we'd just been in the sale section, of course regular books would be more, but then it turned out that wasn't what he meant by "more"; he wanted to know why the sale book version (a gold-leafed, illustrated, large-size hardback) was so much thicker than the mass market paperback. When I laughed off the whole "oh I thought you meant price and you meant actual book thickness" thing, he seemed confused and told me he hadn't asked why it was "more," he'd asked why it was "larger," or at least he thought that was what he'd said. Ehh.
And to add to the list of comments on my elfyness, a customer asked me a question and then added, "Ms. ELF" to the end of it in a goofy way. Hehehe!
12/17/05
Some guy in the checkout line had an amazing attitude today! In a good way! The cashier asked how he was doing and he said, "Fantastic." He then told us a story of how you learn to feel "fantastic" by saying it and really believing it, and that he used to tell people about his indigestion or whatever but no one wants to hear that: "How are you doing" is a greeting, not an invitation. Weird. He said, "Now I could say hey, my back hurts, my butt hurts . . . but I'm fantastic. And just for a minute, I am." Wow, guy. Awesome.
12/16/05
We had one of those . . . let's just call them CHOICE customers today at the register. She got to the front of the line only to find out that the book that was being held for her was at Customer Service, not Checkout, and got very upset when she had to go back there to get it and then stand in line again. When she went back to C/S she snatched the book out of my manager's hand and went stomping back to the cash register, where she laid into the sweetest, nicest cashier up there and totally tried to take her head off, hollering about how she can't be-LIEVE she had to wait so long and that we should have found some way to avert this. When the lady left the poor cashier was shaking. What's funny is she got hugs from the others and a couple customers told her how out of line that customer had been. It was mentioned that it's a good thing she didn't have a gun. . . .
And it's Perv City here at the bookstore--one girl was cleaning the men's restroom when a guy came in, and she apologized and said she'd be done in just a minute, and he just shrugged, said, "Okay," and went into the stall to do his business. How odd. Another girl, at the mention of this incident, told us about the time she was cleaning the women's room and found a guy in one of the stalls, who then steadfastly insisted that he was in the men's room and SHE was "wrong." Yes, because men's rooms historically have no urinals and five stalls. . . .
12/14/05
So here's a frustrating one. A woman came up wanting a book by a certain author, and she wasn't totally sure of the title so I tried searching by his name. None of the short list of titles remotely resembled her suggested title, so I told her it might be out of print. She said to try the title she thought it might be, so I typed that, and the list of titles didn't yield any that had an author remotely like her suggested author. I started reading her a few of the titles, but then she's like, "But that's not by him? But that one's not by him either?" Lady, I already looked up all the books in print by him. I'm not going to suddenly get another book that wasn't in that list just because I tried your shot in the dark title. I looked for the title in case you were WRONG about the author, so if it has to match your author this was a useless search. . . .
A girl called about a particular board game and we don't exactly specialize in such things (being, well, a bookstore), but we do have a small selection of games and I agreed to see if hers was one we carried. I searched the shelves but though I found two that were very similar, I didn't find that one. "Well, could you go check your inventory?" she suggested, and I had to explain to her that we didn't have anything hiding in the back and we only had one place where games and such are put. Please, please stop telling me to "go check" every time you don't like my answer. . . .
A woman wanted a book and I was out, so she replied, "Can you check and see if it would be anywhere else in the store?" Hmm, yes, because it makes sense for me to poop out halfway through searching for a book, but be jump-started by a suggestion from a customer that I should, ya know, check. I explained our system, and she said, "Well could you find out if you have maybe gotten some in?" I think that would classify as having it, lady. Listen, I know you want your book, but it doesn't make any sense for you to just keep suggesting I do my job. I don't understand why this keeps happening. Why do they think I need to be told to keep looking for it if there's anything else I could possibly do?
Wiccan Boy was back, but he wasn't really doing anything WB-ish, so I'll just write him up as a general Asshole. He came to buy his book that he ordered, but wanted to use a different book to exchange it for. The books were more than five dollars different in price, and yet he was like, "We can just swap them out, I don't care." I explained that WE DO care and it messes with our inventory if we don't do the return the way we're supposed to, but he kept going, "Well I don't care, we can just switch it, it doesn't matter to me." Returns have to be done a certain way, so just leave it to us. I asked my manager to handle the return instead of me because I didn't want to be near him.
My favorite annoying person today was the woman who wanted "Oprah CDs."
I have to make this clear. Knowing that we sell only books, I am generally thinking in book terms when people make statements about wanting products. Thus, when the woman came up and said she wanted to know if we had the Oprah series of CDs, I was perplexed because I didn't know there were any books on CD that had to do with Oprah, certainly not a series. After asking her a couple questions, trying to figure out whether she'd released a bunch of her book club selections on CD with a special deal from her or something, I asked the right question: "Are you talking about the actual SHOWS?"
She was.
I explained that we didn't do DVDs or any kind of music CDs, she gave me this look that can only be described as "oh YEAH??" and cocked her head while pointing to her right. "Well you have an AUDIO section," she said very pointedly.
"Yeah. It's books on tape and books on CD."
"Oh."
Why she thought us having an audio section meant that there were TV shows in the store is beyond me, but what's even more beyond me is why she'd challenge me with this prospect of Audio and expect it to yield secret information about where our DVDs were.
And this isn't an Asshole, just a funny. A guy with a sort of hesitant, polite English wanted me to find him the book Why Do Men Have Nipples? He continued to tell me in his sort of strained way about how the questions in that book are the sort of thing you can only ask after your third drink or something. We were checking a display table for it and he came across a Walter the Farting Dog doll and exclaimed how his daughter LOVED Walter. I just thought it was funny to hear "Ahh, Waltah thee fahting dog! My dahter LOVES Waltah thee fahting dog!!"
12/13/05
A lady came up and told me she was looking for a paperback book called "Aragorn," she thought. Making a face at her added mention that it had a dragon on it, I told her she must mean Eragon and went to take her to it. I told her that I disliked that book and she asked me why, and I said that my biggest problem with it was that it wasn't very original. She seemed surprised at that, more like disbelieving, which is odd for someone who just called the book by the wrong name and the wrong name she chose happened to be one of the main characters of the books the author stole so heavily from. Coincidence? I think not. Then I got to the section and she asked me if there was a hardback. Ohhkay, you opened by saying you wanted a paperback and now you're asking for the hardback? She claimed her teen was "funny that way" and might not want a paperback. Why the hell did she open asking for a paperback? Why the hell does anyone want to read that book anyway? I know not.
One of my coworkers was helping an incredibly vague woman who wanted "a gift for a seven-year-old boy" and when I walked by she subtly begged for my help since this woman was just not taking to anything she suggested. I fired my arsenal of kids' book knowledge at her and suggested that if she knew nothing else about the kid but age and gender, it's best to pick something that's renowned and popularly enjoyed like Magic Tree House or A to Z Mysteries. She zeroed in on Magic Tree House but then requested that we explain what these mysterious NUMBERS on the sides of the books meant. "That's the series number," my coworker said warily. The lady didn't get it so we had to kind of try to explain to her they were a SE . . . RIES . . . which is a bunch of books in a certain order? She then understood and promptly squatted to begin examining . . . the books beside those books, obviously thinking she was still looking at the ones I'd suggested. People who are so ignorant they need to have their hand placed on the book before they understand which one to pick up are so infuriating.
A woman who was the slowest turtle-lady on Earth was in my line today insisting on writing out the amount and adding up her finances in her bank book while standing at the counter BEFORE she painstakingly wrote her check and handed it to me. Finally after I'd completed her transaction she took a quick glance behind her and said, "Well, there's nobody behind me, I'll just do this now," and began further arranging her financial life at my counter, scrawling an explanation on her check, making notes to herself on the receipt, and generally taking very long to get all her slips of paper in an order that pleased her. Now what's weird about this is THERE *WERE* PEOPLE BEHIND HER. LOTS OF THEM. They just weren't right on top of her because one line was forming between the cashiers so that whoever was next could go to the next available register, kind of like bank tellers. Hello! What kind of sense would it make that all those fucking people are just randomly in line for the other cashier and you're not a roadblock? ::sigh::
We have this "pencil grip" squishy thing that can be slid onto a writing implement to make writing by hand an easier and less painful task for a sore finger. To help us sell it, we have one on our signing pen at the register right by the bucket of them for purchase. People exhibit a wide variety of reactions to the strangely textured rubbery cushion. Some don't like it. Some think it's the coolest thing since peanut butter and marshmallow. But one guy I had picked it up, looked at it like he was handling a small alien, attempted to get his hand on it comfortably, and said, "I can't figure out how to USE this!" and promptly whipped out his own pen to sign his slip with.
Okay, you can't figure out how to use a pen because there is a cushiony thing around its stem.
Anyway.
An elderly lady said to me, "Oh, are you a little elf today?" I said I was an elf all year 'round, but today I have a hat. Har.
12/12/05
There were no Assholes yesterday; I couldn't believe it. Especially since I was on the register and that makes me an Asshole magnet, and it's near Christmas so that turns up everyone's Assholeness a few notches. Eerie.
But I immediately got enough Assholes today to make up for yesterday's oasis.
I had the portable phone for a bunch of today and I was barreling down the aisle looking for a book for the customer on the other end of the line. As I was walking a couple leaped out and the woman called, "ExCUSE me, we need some assistance!" I just pointed at the phone with the crazed "hello, I'm on the damned PHONE!" look on my face, and she nodded and then just said, "Yes, we're looking for a book. . . . " You can't keep talking to me when someone's already got me! It's one thing if you didn't see the phone, but if you just blatantly don't care that you're doing something that isn't done, forgive me if I don't give a shit if you don't get helped promptly. You're not the center of the universe!
A woman wanted rulebooks for sports and for some reason expected there to be one book with all the official rules for baseball, basketball, football, and volleyball. I didn't find it under any of the titles or keywords she was saying she wanted, so I told her we could just look in Sports and maybe looking would ping something that electronic keywords could not. So we ventured to the section and I explained that it was divided up by sport, so all the books on each sport would be together. We didn't find anything, so the lady came up with this genius idea: "Well I'm going to look a little further down." I told her there were just other sports down there grouped by name of sport and then by author within each sport, but no, she wanted to go over there because . . . get this . . . "I'm going to try 'R' for 'rulebooks.'" Ahh, the sport of "Rulebook." I think they play it in Spain. I explained again that it wasn't organized that way, and she said, "Well it SAYS 'by subject' on that sign." I told her again that the subject is the sport. THERE ISN'T A "RULEBOOKS" SECTION. I promise.
In case you're wondering, she tottered down to look under "R" anyway. I just let her go.
A woman who was otherwise nice got right to the brink of buying Eats, Shoots & Leaves and then told me to cancel it because her discount card had run out four days ago (I'd told her that at the beginning of the transaction), she didn't want to renew because she is only in the area for six months out of the year, and somehow she was all shocked by the end of the transaction that she didn't get a magical 10% off anyway. "I don't get even 10% today?" she asked, and I said you had to renew to get the discount card price and she'd told me not to. She then said that because her membership was still good at Walden's, she was going to get it there.
This was all handled politely (if a bit dottily), but I have to wonder about a person who would spend time in the store, search out her book, all but buy it, change her mind, then take the trouble to drive to the mall, deal with mall parking, deal with mall crowds, and then go to another bookstore and just cross her fingers hoping the book is there . . . TO SAVE TWO DAMN DOLLARS. I'd have paid another three bucks to not have to go to the mall at this time of year. Damn!
A woman came to the customer service counter and bumbled about saying she wanted to do a return. I sent her to the register, explaining that all money-related stuff was done over there, and she went on her way. Then the cashier called me since I have newly reinstated powers of returning, and I had to do the lady's exchange. What was weird about it was I walked up there and the lady gave this sort of sarcastic laugh that I somehow knew to mean "SEE, here you are doing it anyway, why didn't you do it back there? Why'd you send me away if it was going to be you anyway? How silly!" Well, I didn't know they were going to call me for the return, it could have been the manager they called, but either way we would have had to go to the register to do it. Don't laugh jerk!
Our company is annoying and every holiday season around Thanksgiving we have to start answering the phone with something resembling "Happy holidays, this is so-and-so, how may I help you?" What with all the battles about whether you're allowed to call it Christmas now, I think my greeting came across to this lady on the phone as a challenge, because she answered, "Yes, well Merry CHRISTMAS to you!" Then she told me what she wanted. Wow. Okay, in case you're curious, my take on it is this: No one should tell you what you can and can't say to someone, but if you are representing a company with what you say, it's better to use general speech in situations in which you don't know the customer's beliefs. I don't think we should have to say anything at all, but whatever--my company wants me to, so I do. Now if you know they celebrate Christmas because of what they say or because of what they're buying or asking about, wish them a merry Christmas if it makes you feel good. But you know what? I have NO respect for someone who decides to be a snotbag over WISHING ME A GOOD HOLIDAY. Like, "Hey, it's not 'holidays,' it's CHRISTMAS, because that's what *I* celebrate and therefore it's RIGHT and it's what everyone should say."
I celebrate the winter solstice as my holiday. I don't think anyone but my family and my other Pagan friends has referred to it as "Solstice" or "Yule" and I really don't care--even on the day of the winter solstice I don't wish people a happy Solstice because they don't celebrate it regardless of the astronomical events. I understand that it's not their holiday and wouldn't dream of attempting to make them accept it or take offense if they didn't address my holiday by its correct name. These whackjobs who insist on "Christmas" as the whole name of the seasonal festivities for a multicultural, multi-racial, multi-religious population such as ours just need to GET BENT.
A woman and a man wanted Bill Bryson's books but the ones they wanted were in two different sections, because he has written one that's a travel essay and one that's a science book. They were annoyed when they had to go to two sections that were far apart from each other, and the woman suggested, "Well you should just have a Bill Bryson SECTION!" Of course, because it makes the most sense to organize it in the way that happens to be most convenient to YOU at this moment. Well, if you want all the books by each author to be next to each other, you're suggesting that the whole store be alpha by author, which would put The DOs and DON'Ts of Sex right next to Sarah's First Day at School and Everyday Prayers for Women right next to The Homosexual Lifestyle, just because their authors' names are next to each other in the alphabet. Brilliant!
When I completely disguised my frustration with that suggestion and laughed it off saying, "I guess some authors just write in too many categories to put them all together!" she said, "Well, then there should be a section of, like, interesting stuff. Like, intellectual matters." Another brilliant suggestion. The "stuff I like" section would work out swimmingly for every other customer who DOESN'T think like you or DOES want to hear about Bryson's travels but doesn't give a shit to know anything sciencey. I really wish they'd leave organizing the bookstore to us and accept that THEY need to learn OUR system, not the other way around. . . .
Had a customer win my Vaguest Customer of the Year Award™ today. She came up soliciting assistance in finding the perfect gift for her hard-to-shop-for friend. "She has a LOT of interests," the lady said when I asked what sort of book she might be looking for. "She likes to read." Well, that narrows it down. She asked for New York Times Bestseller List suggestions and I printed her out some lists, and she asked me what my suggestions were from those. I'd only read two on the fiction list and one on the nonfiction list for this week, so I wasn't too much help but I think she actually ended up getting the nonfiction one (which, incidentally, was Talk to the Hand by Lynne Truss, an awesome book).
But then she wanted to know what else would be "good." She kept telling me all kinds of vague things about the woman, like that she had a great sense of humor, and might like an inspirational book, or something about cooking, because she likes cookbooks, but she doesn't cook. Ohhhhkay. Then she said, "And you said you didn't have anything on Betty Boop?" Hmm . . . I didn't say that because you didn't ASK me anything about Betty. As we were walking to the desk to do that, she said, "Oh, and I also need The Giving Tree." Lordy! Thanks for mentioning that shit now that we passed that section already. I got it for her, got the only Betty Boop book we had, and then she started asking me if I thought it would be appropriate. How am I supposed to know? I know nothing about this woman. You know her, not me! "She's a widow. And she has a great sense of humor," she added, not helpfully. Whatever! I ended up dropping her in Inspiration after she rambled for a while about how hard it was to shop for this person and also how helpful I had been. ::sigh:: I hate being targeted as someone's personal shopping assistant when they don't even know what they want. . . .
A lady called looking for a book and the computer said we had one left at the close of business yesterday. We have this new inventory system that is still totally buggered, by the way--they're trying, but today I found two books in the store when the computer had said we had none of that title, so I know they're still working on it and I can't trust it. So I ventured to the shelf and there were none there, and I looked it up in our features and endcaps utility and also looked on the endcap it was placed for. No such luck. After reporting this to the customer, she replied, "Well, did you check in your computer?" WHAT?? Unable to quite form a response that politely told the lady to piss off telling me how to do my job, I just said, "What do you mean?" and she said, "Well you should check your computer and see if you have it." I told her we didn't have the ability to see if we physically had it, only if we carried it, which we do but it was not either of the places the computer indicated it would be if we had any. At that point she bounced back to being normal and asked me a few questions about finding it at the other store before hanging up, but it left me pretty baffled. Who in the world would think it'd be necessary to tell an employee to check their computer for a better way to find the answer? What did she think I was doing, wandering around forlornly hoping to run into it or digging in my ass?
A woman called about an etiquette book and didn't seem to know much about it but was very enthusiastic about wanting it. She asked me all kinds of questions about its appropriateness for age groups and I told her my answers, but then she'd ask the same questions again because I think she really wanted this to be the perfect gift for someone for whom it was really too young. She gave me the runaround because she didn't understand anything I told her about the book--I had been unwise enough to assume she would recognize my references, as I was trying to describe the book's diversity by saying it had everything from the story of Icarus to Amelia Bedelia, and she hadn't heard of either of those. Finally, after repeatedly asking me questions I had either answered already or couldn't answer without more information, she said, "Well . . . would it be useful?" No. No, it wouldn't. This book was written for no reason at all. It is not in any way useful. Forget it. Or just put it on hold and look at it your damn self!
And I had a man waving at the out door. I didn't see him because, well, as a cashier my back is to the exit, but one of my customers pointed him out and I turned around. He was holding a couple books and waving at me somewhat frantically, and when he caught my eye he just pointed at his books and mouthed something, and acted like he wanted a response. Sorry guy, come in the goddamn store and talk to me like a human being. I do not understand vague gestures and mouthings, and have little experience with situations where I would need to know something about the books you're holding from outside the store. Turned out it was something fairly simple, he was bringing them in without a receipt and wanted to make sure someone saw him with them before entering so he wouldn't be suspected of stealing them, but whatever.
12/10/05
This week I hate Christmas shoppers who want you to be their personal shopping assistant for approximately one half of an hour. Oblivious to the fact that many other customers are both lining up at Customer Service and clamoring for attention as I go by repeatedly with the same (often) old lady in a Christmas sweater carrying a bogged-down basket, they continue to ask vague questions and expect you to know the answers, and they expect you to not only tell them where things are but apparently follow them around and assist them in picking the very best book, complete with standing around languidly flipping through them and rambling. Hmm.
A lady wanted Great Expectations and the first thing I asked (since this is a school reading book) was whether she knew if there was a particular version required. Classroom teachers do that all the time, ask for a particular one for everyone to get. But this lady's mind couldn't handle that question, and she told me she wasn't looking for a certain version, that that made it awfully "technical," and that she guessed she just wanted "the original." I just sighed, accepting that she didn't understand, and took her to School Reading. There she immediately looked at the shelves of mostly paperback, cheap editions of school reading titles and said, "NO, no, I want a HARDBOUND one."
I think that information would have been good to volunteer when I asked if there was a version you wanted.
She later realized that my question had actually been to solicit that sort of information, but then when we got over there "version" was still stuck in her head and she wanted to know which one was "the one." I told her they were all the complete story. People are weirded out by that. When there are many books with the same title that look different but they can't figure out OH GOD WHAT COULD BE DIFFERENT ABOUT THEM????
And on the elf hat front, someone asked me if my ears were hooked onto the hat, which was funny. The daughter of that woman asked me where I'd gotten my "little ear tips," and so I told her I inherited them from my mother. Woooo.
12/7/05
A lady called and asked if she could look up a couple books' availability . . . at the worst possible time. I was dealing with a customer in the kids' section, had two more looking at me at the desk while I was trying to help the kids' lady, and then she called. I told her I'd be able to help her but it'd be a few minutes before it was her turn. I was nice about it and offered to take her information and get back to her since we had a line of customers who were in line for help before she called, but her response was, "Well, then why don't you transfer me to the help desk or something?" I explained that this WAS the help desk and it was here that we had a line of six people. She got the message and said she'd call back (instead of giving her information), but it kind of pissed me off that she thought prompting me to give her to someone who was available to HELP her wouldn't have occurred to me if I was busy myself. "Oh! Okay, yeah I'll get someone who ISN'T busy to take your call. I never thought of that, thank you."
A woman came in looking for a certain famous author's books and I told her we carried two of them usually. I checked the computer to make sure that they were carried where I thought they were, and I was right, so I took her up to Literature. Upon reaching the shelf, I found that there were no copies of either of the books, so I told her so and she responded by standing there looking at the shelf more and making statements about not believing it, such as "Wow. Of all the books he has you have NONE??? He is so famous and you don't have any. That is unbelievable." Well it's not like we're not supposed to. It's just that--guess what--you're not the only one who likes him! The way she was talking to me made it obvious that she thought I must be looking in the wrong place if there weren't any there. I reminded her that of "all his books" we only carried two anyway, and she gave up and went away. I would be very surprised if she didn't go find some other employee to pitch the same question to, because I KNOW she thought I didn't know what I was doing because the answer was "no."
A lady came in asking for "Um . . . it's called 'Etan's Frame'?" She meant Ethan Frome. It's always fun to see how garbled high school students can get their messages to their parents.
A woman wanted the book A Christmas Carol and the first place I took her was a display we have of Christmas books. "NO, not THIS kind," she protested, without really looking at the shelves. She explained that she wanted "a PROPER one for a ten-year-old to read." I guess that because a lot of the books there were large hardcover classics, she assumed I didn't know what the literature classic A Christmas Carol was or that it was a legit long book. So, not feeling like arguing with her and in her eyes proving myself further of an incompetent loser, I took her to Literature and showed her where we had other Dickens books . . . and there were only special editions of that one. Finally on a Christmas table I found her a paperback version and she got upset because it was a thin book and she was insisting it was abridged, that she didn't want a young child's version, she wanted the whole thing. I think she eventually believed me, but I had to tell her three or four times that abridgments say that they are abridgments on them and that A Christmas Carol is just not a particularly long story.
A woman asked me if we carried Sports Illustrated for Kids, so I took her back to the children's magazines and found it lickety-split. She rolled her eyes and said, "Of course, under MUSIC, that makes sense." There are little signs on all the shelves and the sign for "music" applied to the magazines above it, not below. The children's magazines had their own sign, but since they were in close proximity to the music magazines I guess she just figured that was the only sign she needed to look at and we are incompetent for mislabeling our shelves and then expecting her to figure it out, justifying her sarcastic comments. I explained it to her but I don't think she was interested in being told that her inability to find things wasn't our fault.
A lady had a list of about seven books that someone had written out for her to choose from. She only wanted books that were in the store, so I looked them all up at once and wrote down the ones we carried so we could have a single scavenger hunt at the end. What was FRIGGING BIZARRE about the whole thing was that she gave ME the list, put it by ME, had it upside-down to HER, and yet every time I gave her the news on whether we carried a book, she would attempt to READ ME the next title on the list. From farther away and upside-down. Far be it for me to overestimate my own abilities, but if I have been given a list and it is RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME, I don't need it read to me by a person who also keeps misreading things and attempting to SPELL THEM FOR ME. I got the message that she was going to keep doing that after like the third one so I attempted to be sneaky about when I was starting to look up the next one, but she would observe that I was typing again and leap to read me the next title as I was typing it. I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS GOING ON IN HER BRAIN.
And I had one of the more mind-numbing conversations I had this week; a boy who sounded to be late teenage called me and told me he was calling to settle a dispute between him and his brother. He had been in the store yesterday, purchased a book, and wanted to know how much it had cost him.
In the background I heard his brother yelling, and I could swear his words were exactly like those an employee might use any day to explain misunderstood receipts to an asshole Discount Card member who can't accept that they DID indeed get a discount.
"The book was $7.99. With the discount it came to $7.19. Add tax to that and you get $7.62!"
Wow, I thought. Big brother really knew his shit.
The kid who was on the phone continued to bumble around his words trying to explain that he'd lost the receipt and wondered if I could "look up" his transaction, and I asked if he just needed the price of the book, was that it? He said yes, and then told me he had the book in front of him. Ohhhkay, well prices are on book covers. But I humored him, and when he started rambling about it being a Star Trek series book, I decided it'd be better for everyone if I just attempted to get the ISBN.
After explaining where on the book the ISBN was, it took us four tries to get it in the computer. He read it to me and somehow only nine digits came out of his mouth. When I told him ISBNs have one more digit, he misunderstood and decided that must mean he should try to read me the UPC number under the barcode. No. I told him to read the ISBN again and he began with the 0 like many books do, then interrupted himself and gave me another number that started with 0 but completely different from the first one. I don't know how reading numbers could be so complex, but it is for this fella. Poor thing.
On it went. I brought the book up as a $7.99 paperback and said the book cost $7.19 with a discount card. Rolling on Brother's tip, I said that you'd add tax to that and you'd have what you paid for the book.
"Well how much is tax?"
I told him I didn't have an exact amount and that it was 6 percent here, but he didn't like that answer and asked, "Well can't you just ring it up?" I told him I could not in fact "ring up" stuff no one was buying, and he said, "Then can't you just do a semi-transaction?" A semi-transaction? What the hell is that? And does he even realize he's not talking to someone at a cash register? Incidentally, we're not allowed to have calculators at the desk and they took the calculator program off the computer even, so I couldn't just figure it out for him without doing it on paper and figured I was damned if I was going to do scratch work for a dickhead who's getting worked up over less than 50¢. (Why did he need the exact amount anyway?)
So then the kid told me he wanted to try it on a calculator and announced, "I'm going to put you on hold," and I ended up listening to silence. Umkay. Then he came back and told me that he'd tried to calculate the percentage of the tax but "this stupid thing messed up." Are you sure it was the thing that messed up?
The brother started yelling again and then my brilliant conversation partner said, "Thank you ma'am," and hung up, probably to go punch his sibling for claiming to be owed more pennies than he has in his piggy bank or something.
A woman called me and asked for a book when I was in the back room, which means I had a ways to walk before I could use the computer to find her info. She asked for a sports book. I looked it up and indeed we carried the title so I looked in the sports section. There were no copies so I went back to the desk, used a search utility to see if it was supposed to be on any of our displays, and found that it was indeed supposed to be on the "Gifts for Sports Lovers" endcap. As I was on my way to walk over THERE, the woman spoke up on the phone in my ear: "So do you HAVE a copy?"
What the fuck do you think I'm trying to find out, lady? Oh actually I was just waiting for you to ask me because I wasn't going to volunteer it on my own; I've been standing here with a copy in my hand for like an hour waiting for you to prompt me to speak, don't you know?
Yesterday someone came in looking for one of Perricone's books--the weight loss one. But because he was a fucking jerk, he had misremembered the guy's name AND wouldn't take my correction for an answer. He was convinced the dude's name was "Pisscone." He even spelled it for me, and paused amusingly after "P-I-S-S." When I told him repeatedly that there was no author "Pisscone" in the system and that the book he was describing matched both the subject matter and the recent media appearance for Perricone's weight loss book, he still steadfastly refused to even look at the book I was suggesting because he was adamant that it was by "Pisscone," not Perricone. Then today someone came in with a slightly less funny version of that same question, claiming the man's name was "Piccone" and also claiming that he had been "all through" the health section and then turned out to have not seen the entire Weight Loss Diets section. Also what's funny is I was standing at the desk helping him and when I went to come out of the desk (which involved briefly going backward even though the health section is forward), he attempted to "follow" me (something I hate) and said, "OH, it's NOT in the health section?" I said it was and rounded the corner to come out of the desk and go to Health. I think he must've expected me to either jump over or magically phase through the desk, because his brain couldn't handle me having to go to the exit first since it was in the wrong direction.
Last one. A man came in wanting a book he ordered and when I didn't find the book on hold for him I asked him whether he'd gotten a call (no) and how long ago he'd ordered it (he said "about ten days"). Sounded like a case worth investigating, so after I was unable to find him in the stack of people we couldn't reach when we tried to call, I decided to look up his order.
At that point it just got weird because he claimed we'd just scanned his discount card and gotten his lookup information from that. This is impossible because we do not have a scanner of ANY kind at Customer Service and you cannot order books AT ALL at the register. He must've been thinking of another time or something. I tried looking him up by phone number and had no luck, and while he was muttering about how I should just scan his card like last time I tried looking by name and finally found him.
His order had been placed FIVE days ago. On a Friday.
Our trucks come in the morning on Saturdays, usually. First of all there's no way we would get a customer's book the next day. The cutoff date is usually like Tuesday or something to get it by Saturday. If you don't make that you're bumped to the next week. And since today was Wednesday, he obviously had no chance in hell of delivery. Nobody would have told him it would be Wednesday either. I guess, though, if there's someone who thinks five days is really ten, we're not dealing with someone with a particularly good sense of understanding time.
12/6/05
I dealt with one of those ladies who wouldn't let me control the conversation even though she was asking for very simple things. She called wanting three books and she was doing everything she could to make getting them put on hold as difficult as possible. First she didn't understand that I could not stand at the customer service desk and tell her if we physically had her books, even though we carried them all, and when I told her three different times at her prompting of "well do you HAVE it??" that I would have to check the shelf to find that out, she seemed to think this was insurmountable. "Well, would it be possible for you to DO that?" she asked finally, and I told her it had been my plan to do so (um, of course!) as soon as she was done rattling off titles. Finally I got her to understand that yes indeed I was actually going to CHECK--that my saying "well I'd have to check" was not some kind of expression that I couldn't help her--and then she wouldn't stop reminding me what books they were. I explained that I had them written down and was going to go looking, and she responded by telling me which ones they were again as if she hadn't heard me. And then on top of all that she didn't understand that she could just hold while I checked; she was like, "And I guess I'll give you half an hour and then call back or something, would that be okay?" Well, I don't know in what screwy universe it requires half an hour to find three books, but since by that point I had two customers standing in line staring at me acting impatient, I agreed that calling me back was fine and helped the other people before going off to find her books and putting them on hold. I don't know if she ever called back because by that point the control of the customer service telephone had passed to someone else.
A lady wanting a biography was unhappy with the fact that the only version we had of the book she wanted was a paperback. Seeing her obvious disappointment when I pulled a paperback out, I went ahead and told her that paperback was the only thing the computer showed us carrying. "But well you don't have the hard book?" she asked. (Yeah, I hate when people call them "hard books." I'm not sure why.) Well I think that's kind of exactly what I was just saying when I said the paperback was all we carried. "Well do you know if they make it in a hard book? Does the other store have the hard book?" ::sigh::
A lady called about a book and we carried it. She asked for the price and I gave it to her, and she made a distressed sound and claimed that she'd seen it over at Walden's for only seven bucks. I told her there was indeed a $7.99 version of the book available, but that we only carried the large-size paperback which was $15.99. From there I had the longest conversation I've ever had with someone about book versions. She just plain could not understand why one version of the same book would be more expensive than another one if they were both paperback. No amount of assuring her that it *wasn't* a hardback and that it was normal for a larger, bigger-printed, more-quality-bound book to be twice as much money, she did not get it and could not picture it. Finally she asked me to put it on hold so she could come take a look at this mysterious expensive paperback. Yeah. 'Tis the season for people who NEVER BUY BOOKS to be buying books.
And finally, the romance series lady.
This woman came up with her silent partner (whose job was to roll her eyes, cluck disapprovingly, and sigh in sympathy for what her friend was going through with the bad old bookstore girl) and demanded a certain series of romance books by Harlequin. I found them in my system but they were listed as not being in the store. "But will they be here next week?" she asked, and I explained that unless I have ordered a book *for her* I could not track or predict what titles were going to be in the store when, and that I would be glad to order whatever she wanted but otherwise there was no telling if or when we would get them.
This answer caused her to just rephrase her question and re-describe her books, with the added information that she'd gotten LAST month's series romances with us and so she knew we carried them. When I told her that my computer gives me no info on whether or when we will carry a book and that it just indicates "not carried in store," she threw a sort of calm hissy, and began repeating, "Well yes you DO carry them, I just GOT them here last month, yes you DO carry them, but they weren't over there when I checked. But you DO carry them." With the friend sympathetically shaking her head of course. So, I explained again to her that if we were going to get them, there was no way for me to tell. They aren't some hot title that's just getting released. They aren't big name authors. They're just series romance trashy things that trickle in OR NOT, and unless you want to order one I think I've made it pretty clear that I don't have the information you want. After asking me if it was okay to just check next week, I said that would be fine and dandy, and that as I'd been saying if we got them we got them, if not I could order them.
And I had an encounter with Wiccan Boy again. If you've never read that saga before, go for it, and if you have and you just want to read the latest in his adventures, feel free. I'm not going to re-post it here when he's got his very own Page of Assholeness.
12/5/05
A teenaged kid with a skateboard came into the store and asked me how old you have to be to work at the store. When I told him eighteen was the age restriction, he looked dejected and said, "It's because I'm WHITE, isn't it." Hahaha. He then proceeded to play with our Force FX Lightsaber and comment about how cool it is and how well it would go with his "gothed-out" room (wait, Star Wars is goth?), and how he would pay maybe thirty bucks for it and that a hundred and fifty was ridiculous. Heh. Obviously despite his being under eighteen, he's very mature. . . .
Some dude came up to Customer Service asking for a book and told me that he had already looked for it but given up because he didn't know the author's name. So I looked it up for him and found it, and gave him the information. At this point he was just kinda leaning on the counter looking away from me, like he had not just solicited my assistance and was waiting for me to do something besides speak to him. So I just looked back at him and watched him stare into space, and prompted him with the author's name again. He was like, "Um, okay." And continued standing there. So I guessed that despite the fact that he'd been pretending to just need a little info to help himself, he was one of those people who needs to be walked to the book, so I offered to do so. He took my offer and followed me to Fiction, where I found no copies of the book. I had heard about this book somewhat recently so I figured it was possible it would be on Bestsellers, and told him so, walking up a few shelves to check there. As I was doing that he goes, "Are you out of stock?" Huh? "I'm . . . kind of checking that NOW," I said, as I hunted for the book and didn't find it there either. Look, you can see we're in the process of searching for the book, so do you really think I know that already? If I already knew we were out of stock, why would I be looking for the damn book? I checked one more featured spot and didn't find it, and he was still hanging around looking at me as if there was something I could do after I told him twice it looked like we were out . . . you know, as a customer it's customary to thank me for my help or ask me another question or something, but even after I asked if he wanted to order it and he refused, he kept just standing there. I think he was just one of those people who spends most of his life standing around expecting other people to tell him what the hell to do with himself.
Again I only got one comment about my elfitude, when someone told me I looked like a little elf. Er . . . it was kinda intentional.
12/4/05
A woman came in asking for a special edition of a Harry Potter book. Apparently one of the printing companies that associates itself closely with schools and whatnot has its own HP versions that are not trade paperbacks and have larger print or something. I have never seen or heard of this type of book, and told the lady so. She was one of those people who persists when the answer is "no," thinking that if she annoys the employees they'll be more likely to "check" somehow and find out they don't know what they're talking about. So I "checked" by searching for the newest HP book by title, trying to find out what formats exist. Predictably, there was the hardcover, the special edition with extra art, the CD and the cassette, but no "special binding" or anything other than those. I told her that if it is put out by that company, she probably can only get it from either their private catalogs or through a school book fair; that happens a lot. "Well WALDENBOOKS has it!" she said righteously, and stalked off after I repeated that I still had no magically appearing version that shows itself for tough and/or shrewd shoppers only. What I want to know is if she's so positive Waldenbooks has it, why she doesn't shop for it there?
A woman came up to me in the kids' section and asked to pick my brain. I had helped her with something earlier and she had been impressed with my knowledge of kids' books, so that didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was that she then asked me for opinions and information about a series called Gossip Girls, and said it was for children.
I told her I'd never seen or heard of Gossip Girls and that from the title I'd guess maybe it was a teen-section book or something. "NO, I JUST saw it," she replied, and began walking searchingly up and down the shelves of Kids' Series, hunting her phantom books. "I've never had something in here called that," I protested, and she continued to look, voicing her annoyance at having "just seen it" and then lost it. At this point I was also confused about why she would still expect my opinion to be helpful when I obviously didn't even think I HAD the books, much less have heard of them. I guess she figured she would find it, wave it at me, and my face would brighten with recognition: "Oh, THAT 'Gossip Girls!' Of course!"
Finally when she'd satisfied herself that the books she wanted weren't there, she said out loud, "Hmm, maybe I was in the Teen section when I saw it." What? I suggested that already and you've actually BEEN to the Teen section and you persevered in looking in Kids'? Okay, whatever. I went to Teen with her and bingo, we found Gossip Girls, and then she plowed on trying to extract information from me on what I think of it and what other people have been saying. I reminded her that a) I am not a Teen expert, I'm a Kids' expert, and b) I hadn't even heard of them, I had no info. After waffling and reading the backs several times and reading parts of the beginnings to me voicing uncertainty about whether it was right for her daughter, she finally said, "So you're just in charge of the younger children's books, huh?"
I swear she must be psychic, because I only told her that about eight times!
12/3/05
My first December work day was kind of hellish. People are serious lemmings. We had some Leap Pad stuff on sale and people were, like, stampeding. Good lord. Can't you just get the people you love presents all year 'round or whatever?
I was putting some stickers on some stuff when a mom and her two rather rude children came into the kids' section and started acting obnoxious. First the girl just came up to me and started staring at me. I thought she probably wanted something, but she didn't (well, not yet). She just stood there really close to me and stared at me--maybe a fourth- or fifth-grade mousy girl--and finally said, "What're you doing?" I told her I was putting sale stickers on shit. Then her mom screamed at her for wandering off and she went away.
Soon they were back, carrying one of those mini newspapers from an elementary school book fair or something. The mom prompted the girl to ask me for what she wanted, and she said, "Where's Pony Day?" I told her I'd not heard of Pony Day, and I figured she probably meant something else because usually people are annoying, but then she showed me the picture of the series in the magazine and it was actually the right name. I told her I hadn't heard of it and didn't carry it, and the mom seemed to think that meant something other than what I'd said.
"No, usually if they're in here they carry them," she said. I kind of looked at her in a baffled sort of way, surprised to basically be told that my answer wasn't the right one so I needed to do something else. After I repeated that we hadn't ever carried something called Pony Day, she just looked at the magazine again and started giving me the individual title of the book in that series that she wanted. I decided this was a lost cause and told her I would go look it up for her. People aren't used to competence; if I know the right answer off the top of my head, I'm suspected of knowing nothing at all because they don't LIKE the answer.
After humoring them, going to the computer, coming up with nothing, and telling them so, the mom accepted that we didn't have it and released me from bondage. But not for long. Then the daughter wanted something else, and when I led her to it I noticed she wasn't even behind me; she was off telling her mom, "It's over here, I FOUND IT." You found jack shit, kid. Then the son did a similar thing, just walked up and asked me for a book, and when I took him to where it would be and found no copies, he walked away without saying anything. "You're welcome," I muttered. Strangely enough, on her way out, the woman brightly said to me, "THANK you for helping my kids!" Er, no problem? Except that it was a problem, actually. . . .
A woman annoyed me a bunch while being helped. She wanted books that were in two separate sections of the store, so while in the first section she kept hanging around browsing when I couldn't leave until I showed her where the other section was. She found the two books she'd come for but was looking at the author's other shit, and found a book of quotes, which she promptly put back when she found out it was only quotes. "I like SENTENCES," she replied, and when I gave her an odd look, she clarified, "Well, I like sentences that lead to other sentences." I guess that's not the most eloquent way of putting the idea that you prefer your wisdom in a continuous narrative instead of in snippets, but I got her point.
But then we got to Christian Living and she really started to piss me off. "I already came here before looking for the book," she said, "but I got DIZZY, because this is SUPPOSED to be alphabetical by AUTHOR. And yet I see Myers EVERYWHERE." Well, first off it's Meyer, not Myers, that is everywhere, and that's one of those things that just annoys me, like people calling Stephen Hawking "Stephen Hawkins." But beyond that, she was so bamboozled by a little thing like there being subcategories of Christian Living . . . and they're LABELED, and yes, the alphabet starts again at the beginning of every subsection, because that makes sense, dammit.
So I go to find the book for her and it's not where it's supposed to be, and so I look around a bit but don't spot it and of course when I'm in the middle of explaining to her that we can order it or call the other store or whatever, she actually spotted it in the totally wrong place. Oops. "SEE, HERE it is," she said, and I looked at where she'd grabbed it from. "Oh, of COURSE," I said sarcastically, "in the 'M-A-N' shelf." The author's name was Martin, so yeah, it shouldn't have been there. "Well, SEE why I got dizzy?" she said, and she didn't seem to be being nasty about it, just sort of bubbly and shit. "That right there is JOB SECURITY for you!" Ohhhhhhkay.
Whatever.
And for those of you who may not have been following my Christmas season retail adventures for the last five years, I do this thing throughout the month of December to make things interesting (or at least a LITTLE less boring), and choose to free my inner elf. So I dress like one. Complete with a cute hat with a bell and my little pointy ears sticking out. And then I display any elf-related comments I get. 'Cause it's funny.
So the only "elf" comment I got was some woman I helped in the store who ended up checking out while I was also on register, so I got to help her twice. "You're the little elf that was helping me back there!" she said. Yup.
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