My Record of Work: The Annoying, the Interesting, and the Just Plain Weird--The Year 2005.

5/30/05

Some guy came in all confuzzled because he went into the cooking section and found only cookbooks and was like, "WHERE'S THE TRAVEL SECTION! YOU GUYS USED TO HAVE YOUR TRAVEL BOOKS UP HERE!" I wonder if he realized I was being a brat when I said, "Yeah, a YEAR AND A HALF AGO we remodeled, the travel books are back in that corner now." Odd that someone who hasn't been to a store in a year and a half expects everything to be just how he left it. . . .

5/29/05

I was coming back from lunch break, ya know, not dressed for work (no apron or anything) and this lady stopped me and was like, "Do you work here?" I was like er HUH and she's like, "You work here?" I told her I did but I was on lunch break and she's like, "Okay, well I'm looking for THIS book," and junk. Now what the fuck is that about? I say, "I'm on lunch break" and that still means she gets to ask me for help? I just bit the bullet and went to the desk and clocked in and helped her 'cause I was about to clock in anyway, but I thought that was just messed up.

We found something weird in the men's bathroom. Two books. One was a Penthouse erotica book. Not entirely unheard of, but usually they prefer the magazines. However, what was even weirder was that right there with it there was a copy of Chicken Soup for the Father's Soul. WTF?

Some weirdo on the phone said a book title and author and I looked it up and told her we had to order it. She replied by repeating the name of the book and spelling the author's name. I was like, "Yyyyes that's the book I was talking about, we'd have to order it," and went on to order it for her. I'm not sure why she thought I needed the information again.

And this annoyed me--a girl called and she wasn't talking very clearly or something, because it sounded like she was saying "Query Quarter" and she was saying "Clear Your Clutter." Anyway, she was giving me this title and I asked for the author and finally she goes, "I have an ISBN." Gee, that helps. So I used the ISBN and found that we carry the book, checked the shelf, didn't have it, told the girl we didn't have it but she could check the other store, and she goes, "This IS the other store." I said, "Why didn't you tell me?" and she was like, "Oh, 'cause it didn't matter" or something--but yes it does, because if you're the other store then you already know we carry the book, which means I don't have to go through stuff like looking it up on the computer and trying to figure out what "Query Quarter" means and then you can just tell me what section to go to, ya know? That just really irritated the piss out of me.

5/28/05

Some guy came up to my desk and wanted to know where we keep our Hemingway. I told him it was in the Literature area and asked if he needed me to take him there. "Is it in alphabetical order?" he asked, and from the way he was looking I knew he didn't know where to go, so I just said yeah it's in ABC order and offered to take him there. I walked him over and as we were walking he goes, "So you've heard of him?" I was like, "ERNEST HEMINGWAY? Yes, I've heard of him, he's only one of the pillars of Western literature. . . ." I show him the section and he goes, "OH," and then he pats my back condescendingly and says, "Well, I'm impressed." I shot back, "Yup, imagine that, it's my job and I can find books." Har. So then I left him to browse and he later came back and said he wanted to ask me another question because *I* was sharp. Then he wanted to know the name of an author who wrote legal fiction and was all impressed that I came up with John Grisham. If only the entire world was this easy to impress.

And in other news, how's THIS for a title?

5/25/05

My first annoyance of the day was a woman who, after ascertaining that we couldn't get the book she wanted, felt it necessary to say to me, "Well, I'll just call Borders now, THANK you," and hung up. That's just rude. I really don't care if you go to the competition, especially if I can't help you, but to pointedly tell me that you're doing that is just not good manners.

I helped a man who wanted to know why we didn't have any cosmology books. I told him we did and that they were in Science, and he wanted to know where that was so I took him over there. "Now WHY," he said, "is THIS section way over HERE?" I told him it was because it was part of the nature section. . . . Ya know, that makes sense. All the pretty green signs match even. "No," he said, "I mean why is it way out here separated from everything?" It's just part of the store like anything else . . . I'm not sure what his problem was . . . and then he added, "'Cause I checked over where it says SOCIAL science and there was nothing like this there." I said it was because SOCIAL science is like politics or--I was about to say current events and social issues, but he interrupted to tell me he KNEW what social science was and just wanted to know why Science wasn't WITH it. I don't know what his problem with it is, why he thinks we shouldn't be allowed to put our sections that are unrelated to each other wherever we want. I just told him that the science section is part of the "Nature Store" bit and so therefore it's here. I think he was just all offended that he thought he looked where he should have looked and wanted me to recognize that the reason he couldn't find it was that our store is ridiculous rather than that he didn't know where to look. 'Kay guy.

A new associate and I were helping a lady look for some stuff on Japanese writing, and we didn't have any on the particular type of writing she wanted except to order, so then she suggested another type of writing and misspelled its name to my coworker who typed it in the way she wanted and got a bizarre "correction" by the computer that led her into looking at Japanese swords. When I told her what spelling to use, the computer was not being particularly speedy so the lady got impatient and was like, "So nothing's coming up?" and my coworker told her it was just taking its time coming up, and she just kind of sighed and said, "All right, THAT's okay, NEVER mind," and started packing up her shit. My coworker said, "Are you sure?" and assured her that there was stuff coming up, but she was like, "NO, just never mind," and walked away. I knew she was mentally rolling her eyes and thinking we were incompetent. Well, she was the one who thought kanji is spelled with an o. . . .

And speaking of not being able to spell, this guy was looking for The Poisonwood Bible, but we were out so my coworker called the other store and told them the book was by "Barbara Kingsolver." The dude butted in and "corrected" her: "Kingslover." She apologized confusedly and looked at the screen, and so did I. I was like, "Uh NO, it's KINGSOLVER," and then I escaped because I was embarrassed that I wasn't very nice about correcting him back. Oops.

5/24/05

I had a girl come up and ask for a book, telling me it was "under" her first name. I figured, okay, if she's telling me it's under her first name chances are she just called and asked us to hold it. But there was nothing on the shelf under her name, so I asked if she left her last name. Undaunted, she gave me a last name, and of course there it was--and it had been ORDERED. I love it how people can just come in and be like, "Yeah I'm Mary, I'm the one who ordered a book?" Look, you have two names for a reason, and we ask for them both for a reason. Anyway that's small potatoes and I wouldn't have put it down, except that after that I gave her the book and she seemed kind of confused so I asked if it was the right book. She said it was, but it was the wrong VERSION--she wanted a larger size copy. When I told her (after researching it) that there was indeed another copy that was larger-sized (or so it seemed), she started kind of making these disparaging remarks about "the guy" who ordered it for her, saying that he "seemed CONFUSED" and "didn't know what he was doing." Yeah, I guess if you don't specify what version of a book you want and they choose the first one that comes up, that means they don't know what they're doing. Both the books were listed as "hardcover," too. Now I don't know how the person actually acted, but it annoys me when someone makes it out like one of my coworkers--most of whom I like--didn't know what they were doing. In fact, it irks me. It irks me enough to make her famous on my Jackasses page. So there.

I had a lady come up and demand that I show her where a paperback of a book was. I told her I didn't think it had come out yet and she replied, "You haven't HEARD of it??" Um . . . what the fuck does THAT mean? I told her I didn't SAY I hadn't heard of it; I SAID that the book probably wasn't in paperback yet. "Well that's what they said on the TEE-vee," she protested, and so whatever, I looked it up and helped her. She had been looking in the right section but the wrong part, and her husband was standing there staring at the wrong part too--and that always pisses me off because it shows me that they've got this idea that there's NO rhyme or reason to how this dump is organized. I hate it when they just wander around with this confused face and then come up to me to complain that they can't figure out what system we're using. And then the woman kept doing that horrifically annoying thing where she'd ask me how much a book was while holding it so only she could see it. When I found her another book and handed it to her she turned it over and looked at the part of the book that contained the price tag and said, "And how much is THIS one??" So I have to read to you now? I sure hope you can read the actual book, because if you want someone to read THAT to you you're going to have to shop in the audio section. . . .

Two older ladies mosied up to the desk, and I spotted them from afar so I scurried over to help them. But as I approached they drifted away from the desk and started slowly browsing the sale books without a care in the world. I was like, oh, maybe they DIDN'T need customer service, but I decided to stay and sort of herd-watch them, and sure enough one of them eventually turned around and said to the other one, "OH, there she is!" They came to the desk and began to release dipshittery upon me, making damn sure I got my recommended daily allowance of Vitamin Asshole.

"It's AMAZON," one of the ladies said, and kinda looked at the other one for reassurance. I just kind of stood there because "it's Amazon" doesn't tell me anything, and then they elaborated: "Amazon's the company who publishes it." I told them that I'm gonna need a little more than A PUBLISHING COMPANY. Then the lady goes, "Well, it's called . . . " and gives me a title. Oh, imagine that. I found a listing for it in the system but it said we didn't carry it and couldn't get it--some kind of special offer or something, maybe they only sell through their company's catalog or some crap. Well, in response to my explanation, one of the ladies began trying to explain to me in detail why the book was called what it was. Like, apparently she thought I was interested in the history of how this book got its title. I just kinda smiled and nodded, and the other lady let on that they had met the author (wow, that's special--they met the author of a book that no one can get! Awesome!), and then, "It's kind of a . . . religious book. So it wouldn't be in your religious section?" Gee well now that you mention it, even though I said we can't get this book if our lives, health, and managers' bonuses depended on it, maybe we ought to wander over to the religion section and take a peep 'cause it just might be there. Know what? Go for it.

This interaction kinda annoyed me too. This dude came up and wanted Asian literature. I explained that we don't have a section of Fiction that is separated out by any subject matter or nationality or anything. He seemed flipped out by that idea, and I explained that they were by AUTHOR, that's how we do it, one big happy family of alpha-by-author. He didn't know a particular author to look for--now who wants to bet that this is for a school project?--and he looked so confused at our inability to make his research easy that I went a step further and explained that the only part of the store that was separated according to subject matter was the NONfiction. He replied, "Okay, and that's back there?" Um, well yeah the whole back of our store is nonfiction. "But you kinda have to get a little more specific if you want to find anything, it's not 'the nonfiction section,'" I elaborated, and he said, "Well what I was looking for was like epic novels." I explained that NOVELS were not NONFICTION. After going on to say that the nonfiction sections of History and Travel and whatnot might have more information about Asian culture and stuff, he gave up. But I wondered what he expected me to do when he let on that he wanted epic novels. "Sorry, no section for novels on a particular subject. OH, wait, you want EPIC novels of Asian culture? Right this way!" Getting more specific when we don't even have a GENERAL section for what you want is not going to help unless you give me one of two things: 1) A TITLE; or 2) AN AUTHOR. End of story. And end of today's entries!

5/23/05

The other day a lady called in when I wasn't there and had a bizarre question about a kids' book, and no one could help her 'cause the title she was giving them wasn't in the system. She was one of those crackheads who has to give the salesperson a run-down of what the book's about once it's established that the title isn't doing any good. Yeah, 'cause that's so often successful. Anyway, whoever the associate was managed to wiggle out of the transaction by claiming that there was a kids' specialist she should talk to. She indeed called back today, and got me. Kids' Specialist Extraordinare.

Except her question sounded loco to me too.

When she told me what it was about I was able to recommend a similar title and she said if she couldn't track down this one she'd think about picking up that one, but then she started ranting about the person who helped her having "NO idea what they were doing" and how "talking to them was like talking to the wind" and shit like that. Yeah, because when you have some random question and you don't have all the information, it's our problem and we're incompetent if we can't conjure a book out of no information. Not to mention I hadn't helped her either and I've been a book specialist in kids' for half a decade, okay? So what the hell do ya expect?

A woman came up to the desk and told me that she wanted to know if her book was still being held. She told me she didn't have much hope for it, because she'd had it held a long time ago and then just never got out this way to pick it up but she didn't know the NAME of the book. Well, I told her that was no problem at all because when we put books on hold, we put them on hold by the PERSON'S NAME who wants it held, not the book title. So she was delighted and gave me her name, only to be shot down when she found out we indeed didn't have it on hold anymore. She apologized for not picking up in time, and then said, "So could you give me the title please?" [Crickets chirping] Lady, it woulda been no problem to not know the title if the book was still THERE, but if you just called us, had us hold a book, and you never showed, we put it back and didn't file your name away in a secret file in case one day you decided to drag your ass in. If you ordered it that's a different story (which of course she didn't), but even at the end of this it seemed like she didn't understand why I would have claimed to only need her name one moment and then all of a sudden I can't tell her the title. . . .

And lastly, our manager ended up having to explain the discount card to this one woman on the phone for more than five minutes. Our new customer service guy got her on the phone and within a minute handed it over to our manager because she was talking nonsense. And when the manager picked up the phone we just watched, waiting for her head to explode and being unable to believe it every time she had to launch into another slightly different-worded explanation of why she did not get cheated. The woman was upset because her receipt showed that the card cost her ten dollars when she bought it, and she was told it'd only be seven dollars and change. Thing is, when you get the discount card, you pay ten bucks for it and then you get a discount on your book, which is why the cashier said it'd cost $7.80 extra rather than $10 extra. You're getting a discount when you sign up that you WOULDN'T GET OTHERWISE. But this lady refused to comprehend that and kept yapping about how she got charged ten dollars, she got charged ten dollars, it SAYS ten dollars, well then why does it have a charge of ten dollars? Because we're not suddenly making the card cheaper for you to buy. We're letting the discount start working on the first purchase. So until you've bought a hundred bucks' worth of books, you're just knocking out the price of the card, right? Anyone got a problem with this math? Oh wait, I didn't think so. You're reading the Assholes page, you're not ON it.

5/21/05

I'd like to know what could have been going through this lady's head. She had two books on hold and I got them for her and then like a lot of people she put them down and pushed them at me so I would know I was supposed to ring her up. I tend to give people like that the benefit of the doubt in figuring out for themselves that my desk is not where they check out, by saying things like "Great, so do you need anything else back here?" or "You need help finding anything else?" When they say no and I kind of step away like I'm gonna do something else, usually that's when they look up and realize, oh, there's a register over there at a different desk. But not this lady. She responded by taking out her wallet and kind of pushing the books at me again and saying, "These two." So, playing the oblivious happy employee, I asked her if she did indeed need something else. "No, thanks, just these two," she said, and pushed them AGAIN. Fumbled with her wallet. Looked at me. I gave up the pretending and pointed to Checkout, but before another word got out of my mouth, she pushed them a fourth time and said, "I'll take THESE please!" I told her where to take them and pretended I hadn't known she wanted to check out. Mrr. (Not sure why I have such fun doing that. Probably because the red checkout sign is, just, SO gigantic. I should put up a pic of it sometime.) Now what I want to know is why people like this don't realize that if I could check them out it would be incredibly dense of me not to realize that I was supposed to start doing so. I have to say, though, that it's pretty rare that you pay at the same place where you collect whatever product it is . . . even fast food places usually have a separate line for ordering and paying and then another one for pickup. And if you don't have the common sense or the experience to know about this, THAT'S WHAT SIGNS ARE FOR.

Dad and son were shopping for school reading. Dad came to the desk to ask me for the book, claiming that every other book by the author was there but not this one. I looked it up, saw that we indeed carried the title, and told him if he looked in the right spot and didn't see it we're probably out but I'll give it a second look. I think after all this time in retail I'm developing a Book Sixth Sense--I seem to be able to tell from talking to someone whether they really looked correctly or if they just kind of wandered idly by the general area scanning random titles in consternation without any regard for ALPHABETICAL ORDER before coming to me and indignantly reporting that the book's not there. In this case, the Book Sixth Sense said he was the latter type. I went to the section with the guy and there was his son also staring at the shelf. When we got there he kind of spread his arms and dropped them in this exasperated gesture of "what the HELL man???" The author had a LOT of books and they were in perfect alphabetical order by their titles, even. I plucked the last copy of the book off the shelf and gave it to them. "Oh, we're just blind," Dad said, but I do really wonder sometimes. How can two people stare at a shelf for a reasonable amount of time looking for exactly one title and just not see it? He was like RIGHT in the right spot.

A kid came up and asked me for a certain book. (She was maybe an eleven-year-old girl.) I found her book in the system but we didn't carry it. I told her, "Oh, we don't have that book. If you want it I'll have to order it." She said she didn't want to, then said, "But it would be in the kids' section right?" No. Books we don't have would not be in any section. You can't make it appear there by tricking me into answering yes. I wonder if that Jedi Mind Trick stuff works on their moms?

And lastly, my coworker had a doozy yesterday. She went out to her car to grab pants to change into, because our boss wanted her to change light bulbs and, ya know, wearing a skirt is not the best attire for that. So out she went, still wearing her apron, and when she came out of her car there was a dude standing really close to her in the parking lot. "A creepy old man" was how she described him. He asked her if she worked in the coffee shop or in the bookstore. "The bookstore," she replied, confused, and then he said, "Okay, well will you help me find a book?" Maybe I should mention that she parked WAY out there because employees aren't supposed to take the prime spaces. Okay, dude. Either you REALLY couldn't find anyone in the store or you are fucking oblivious.

So in they go, she helps him with his book, and then proceeds to change light bulbs. The boss was helping her while she was on the ladder, and the dude returned. He walked right past the manager man to call up to her on the ladder, "CAN YOU HELP ME FIND A DICTIONARY?" Okay, first off, ask the guy whose feet are on the effin' ground! And secondly, who the fuck asks someone on a ladder to come down and help them? I would never, never, NEVER think of doing that. I won't even ask an employee to help me if their hands are full. Jesus! Heard of courtesy? Obviously not!

5/18/05

Here's King Asshole for today. First off he went to Café and asked THEM for customer service help, and when they sent him to us he's like, "Where's that?" As he rambled up to the desk I was already helping someone, and so just as he got to the desk I came around and started leading the lady I was helping to the health section. As I walked by him the dude called out, "You customer service?" I told him I was but before I could tell him I'd be right back he goes, "But YOU'RE leavin'." I told him I was HELPING someone and the lady I was helping goes, "She'll be right back!" I came back very quickly because I had known immediately what the lady wanted and was able to take her right to it and she didn't need anything else. So as I'm zipping back to the desk the dude calls out at me AGAIN like I'm passing him and ignoring him instead of, ya know, coming into the desk to MEET him. "But I guess if you're BUSY . . . " he said in a pseudo-threatening manner, and I just gave him a surprised/annoyed look and said, "NO, I was coming back to the desk. Now what were you asking for?" and he said AGAIN, "If you don't have time I can go somewhere else." I said point blank, "I never SAID I was busy, I never said anything LIKE that." He decided to ignore me and just asked me for what he wanted, and since our computer had temporarily fallen off the Internet I couldn't look up individual titles so I just took him to the section he would need to look in for his broad question. I ended the interaction by leaving him in the right section and telling him I didn't see anything that was specifically what he wanted but he'd be welcome to browse. I guess he didn't like that answer because before a moment had passed my manager had been roped into helping him. I saw her approaching the desk with a wildly pissed look on her face obviously coming from dealing with that guy, and she was like, "THAT guy is an IDIOT!" I told her I'd been "helping" him but he didn't like what I came up with and the database had been down which made it so I couldn't find a specific title. The database came back up and she was able to find some book that sort of had something to with what he wanted and tried to find it for him. I don't know what happened next.

A lady came in with a list of books that she wanted to find, but it wasn't your usual list. What she had was the names of books her daughter had READ, and she wanted "the next one." This proved difficult because a) The database is notoriously difficult with things like series, because sometimes the data-pluggers call something "Series_Name #7" and sometimes they just put the book's individual title with no clue in the entry as to what series it belongs to (so when an author has SEVERAL series you have NO way of filtering it so only the books in said series come up); and b) All the books seemed to be newly out and therefore there wasn't even anything on the horizon for "the next one." I should have known when I saw "Harry Potter #6" on the list of things she expected to pick up today. So on the ones I couldn't find a clue on, I told her that since the book the kid had read already and wanted "the next one" of had only come out a month ago, it's unlikely that there IS a "next one" yet. On the ones I did find a clue on, it always gave me just an advance order date, which she didn't like. Finally we got to the end of the list and she decided to launch into questions for which she had LESS information. Her next question began like this: "I'm looking for this teen series . . . or, kids' series . . . or, adult series, maybe. . . . " And then she had no idea what it was except for what she thought might be part of the author's name. I ended up ordering two books for her, and on the first one she said, "So about two weeks right?" and I explained when it would probably be in, and then on the next one she decided to order she said again, "So in about two weeks?" I'd already explained in detail how our shipping works so . . . FEH. Finally she was like, "Well, I've been up all night, so it's time to go take a nap." I kind of laughed because, ya know, more often than not *I* am up all night too, but I didn't say anything. She replied, "Sure it is!" Sure what is? Time for a nap? I didn't say otherwise. I dunno, I guess she thought I thought she was kidding and was all proud of the fact that she was up all night.

Some guy who apparently entered the store just to use the potty went into it, took one look, and came out to complain to the clerk that it was disgusting and left. She went in there and found--dun-dun-DUN--POOP in the toilet. Oh no, poop in a toilet. WELL, FLUSH. I'm sorry that the last douchebag who used the toilet--who, in this case, we think was one of the kids asking frantically for the bathroom a little bit before--was above flushing away their fecal matter with the touch of a button, but there is no reason you can't push the lever to flush away someone else's shit. After all, that's what we have to do to make it suddenly not disgusting anymore.

And for the final ass of the day, this dude was wandering around talking obnoxiously on his cell phone so that everyone could know he was having an important conversation or whatever. I was helping a customer and kind of glancing at the other guy being annoyed, and then all of a sudden the dude was . . . BEHIND ME. In the employee-only service desk. He just walked in to use our trash can to throw out his fast food shit, but still it was weird that the ass was suddenly back there. My customer pointed and said, "Hey, you got invaded." That I did. Then he mosied around talking more, and soon enough approached the desk like he was going to bellow some jackass question at me. He started jammering to the person on the phone that he didn't have a pen, and I anticipated his question and threw one at him. He thanked me, picked it up, and then . . . reached for a rubber-banded stack of Hallmark tickets for the reordering of cards. He pulled it toward him and looked at me and said, "Can I write on this?" Uh, noooooooo! I quickly supplied him with scratch paper. Okay, enough Assholes.

5/17/05

I had no Assholes today, but I got a note from a coworker about a lovely little incident so I decided to add it in. A girl submitted an application crediting herself as having a "Bacholars Degree" . . . in ENGLISH. (And creative writing.) Um . . . no explanation needed.

5/16/05

Oh my God, my pocket was full of Assholes today! Please tell me this isn't some kind of Monday trend.

Our opening customer Asshole actually happened before opening! I was coming up to the door and an older woman was standing at the door looking very impatient. I took out my keys because I use one of them to tap on the door and make the café person or whatever let me in. (I don't have keys--I'm not a manager--but I usually arrived a couple minutes before the door opens, and it's good to get the hell in, get my stuff put away, and clock in or whatever.) So the lady looked at me all snooty when I didn't OPEN the door with the keys I guess she'd thought I was going to use to do just that, and no one came to the door because apparently I was seeing a mirage when I thought I saw someone in the café. I decided to try the "out" door--one of our managers sometimes leaves it open for entering associates--but it was locked. So I'm about to go wait at the front door again like a good girl when I see the cashier inside, so I waved at her and she let me in. And of course the lady sees this and comes barrelling up and tries to get let in too. "I'm sorry, we're not open yet," says the cashier, and the lady's like, "When do you open?" and she says, "Three or four minutes." The lady replies, "BUT I'M IN A HURRY and I NEED TWO BOOKS!" "I'm sorry we're not open yet," she says, and closes the door. Jeez. We can't open the door before the store's open, ya know--the cash registers aren't all the way up, the coffee's not done, you know . . . plus we just don't want to let you in 'cause we don't like you. Ha. Anyway, after she finally got in she apparently spent like 15 minutes in the store wandering around and didn't buy anything. . . .

A dude came up and said there was a book on Sinatra he wanted. I happened to have seen one on a nearby endcap so I grabbed it and showed it to him, but he kind of crabbily told me THAT wasn't the one and he wanted a different one by this particular author. Oh, okay. So I looked up his book and it showed that the book was something we'd have to order, so I told him so. He didn't like that. "It comes out TODAY," he replied, and I was like, yeah, um, it says we don't carry it and he interrupts with "But it's ON your LIST." I don't know what list he means--maybe a list of release dates he saw posted in the store or on the 'Net?--but I explained that we don't necessarily carry every book even on its release date. He replied, "Well, but it comes out today!" Okay. Well, I had a weird feeling that he was wrong about that and checked my online list of release dates and oops, it's tomorrow. I told him that and he thanked me and went away, but it pissed me off. I happened to check in the back room and indeed there's a very small stack of the book with tomorrow's date on it, so I guess they'll change it from "Advance Order" to "Entertainment: Music" for the location of the book tomorrow (if they're up to frickin' date at that warehouse of ours, argh) but I just hope I don't run into the guy because I just am tired of the crap.

A lady had a small stack of books on hold and asked for them. I brought them out, about four books, three of the same title were tiny little volumes and one was a larger book. I went to hand them to her and she reached out and took one of the books out of my hand instead of all of them, so that the other books on top fell out of my hand. Oh, that's bloody brilliant. She hasn't learned about gravity yet and she's probably twice my age. Oblivious, she started leafing through the book and deciding she wanted it or whatever, and then handed me that book and grabbed the other three that had fallen and put them down on top of a book that had already been on the counter. She grabbed back the other book she'd given me and slapped it down on top and pushed them all toward me and said, "What do I owe?" and then instructed me that the bottom book wasn't hers, oops, but NOW, how much??? The register's OVER THERE, dammit--THEY will tell you, you don't have to frickin' prompt me because if I *could* check you out I would have known to start doing it. Grr. And then RIGHT after I showed her where to go, a dude came up right behind her and threw his books at me and demanded to pay also. I wonder why it is that the people who go to the wrong desk are usually really pushy about being checked out, like they think since we ask them "the wrong question" (like, can I help you?) then we must be a bunch of assholes and need to have books shoved at us and credit cards thrown at us and stuff.

I was up at the register wasting time chatting to the register girl and the customer she was checking out had written "SEE ID" on her credit card, but hadn't brought said ID. She sent her boyfriend out to the car to get it, and he ran out and we waited. The girl who was waiting stepped aside a little 'cause she was looking at something, and up comes a self-important lady waving a Hallmark card. She looked confused that she wasn't being asked the usual "I'm ready to take your money" questions because she didn't realize that the girl whose purse was still on the counter was still being checked out, so she's like prompting the register girl with "Hello??" The register girl replied nicely, saying that it'd be just a minute because we're waiting on one more thing to complete the transaction, and the lady started to look pissed and replied, "But *I* want to *pay* for this!" Don't bother to listen to the explanation or anything, chickadee, it doesn't apply to you.

Argh, and here's one of my pet peeves. I hate it when people need scratch paper and take like a bunch of our customer comment forms and scratch the info they want on the sides and the empty space on the back. There isn't much space on those things ('cause guess what, they're not FOR that!!) and we have to pay to get more if customers take them, which is annoying 'cause they're taking them for things other than what they are for. WE HAVE PLENTY OF SCRATCH PAPER, I promise, and we will give you some if you have not been smart enough to bring your own notebook despite the fact that you are doing research or whatever. Anyway, one lady who did that today was asking me for book release dates and grabbed a form to write them down (I replaced it with a piece of scratch paper before she could start), and when I read her the dates (we only get the month and year until it's pretty close, usually), she started making up information. "It's June 2005," I said, and she replied, "June fourth, okay." ::sigh::

Oh look, and another pet peeve. A woman asked me where the restroom is and we were pretty far from it but you could see "The Nature Store" printed on the wall from where we were (and it's right under that), so I pointed over at it and told her it's right there under The Nature Store, and she WOULDN'T LOOK WHERE I WAS POINTING and kept giving me this look of incomprehension like God I have no idea where this "Nature Store" is, why won't you be more specific. I had to instruct her to LOOK where I was pointing. Does she think I'm pointing because I need help seeing it?

Urk. Some lady called to make sure her books were still on hold, 'cause she was on vacation and our message that they were in was like a week old. I assured her that they were still there, and she started whining about how she wanted to make SURE because LAST time she ordered these books she waited for MONTHS and we NEVER called her and when she called us we said we'd sent them back and she couldn't believe we'd done that without ever calling her. (Oh, look who missed a message and then assigned herself a complete lack of blame--she's obviously completely incapable of making a mistake.) And then . . . wow . . . she said she just wanted to make sure because THIS time if we sent them back it WOULD actually be her fault! Har. (One wonders why in the several months when she didn't get her books, she didn't think to go, "Hey, I wonder what's up with my books? Gee, they didn't call, or maybe I missed a message! Maybe I ought to call and see what's up instead of letting MONTHS go by because that sounds so typical for a bookstore to take months to get a book after saying 'see you next week.'") Whatever.

Oh, and one of my regulars called to ask if her books were on hold still, and I told her what books were on hold. She said she might already have one of them and was like, "Hmm, let me check," and then went to the bookshelf and started reading me all her titles over the phone. Just standing there reading the titles. Okay, if it doesn't take long, go do it and tell me what's up. If it takes a while for you to go to the shelf and look at every title to make sure it's not the one you just ordered, then call me back or better yet just do it on your own time and then don't buy the book. On second thought, maybe figure out if you need a book BEFORE YOU ORDER IT. Whee!

5/15/05

Just one on the Wall of Shame today. This lady asked me for a book by giving me the author, and it turned out he was the author of a kids' series, not "books on dyslexia" as she said. Strangely enough when I told her the series didn't say anything about dyslexia, she was still optimistic that it was the right series and wanted me to "print that out." I asked her what she wanted printed, what information, and she was like, "Just . . . whatever you're looking at." After I explained that I was looking at a list of links to titles that was about 9 pages long, she agreed that she didn't want THAT and just wanted me to "print out the book" or something. But she changed her mind when she realized we were supposed to have it in the store and she could actually look at the book. (I told her we carried the books, but it didn't seem to dawn on her 'til the third time I mentioned that we HAD THEM HERE.) Anyway, I went to go get her one and put it in her hand, and told her we had the whole series over there in the kids' section. She asked me to point *where* because she might go over there for more later, and I pointed out "Intermediate Series" and told her in there the books are arranged by name of the series, and since she seemed to not follow too well I told her the name of the series so she should look for "H." And then . . . then she said, "Okay, so where in Kids' would I look, then--under what letter, roughly?" I'm like, huh? I explained again that she should go to the series section and look under "H." She left me alone, and then later on she came up to me and needed me to show her where in the series section I meant because she just could not find it. I asked her where she'd been looking and she said, "In the kids' series!" And indeed she had been. But despite being told twice that it's under H and having it called to her attention that it's alphabetical by series name, she hadn't been able to figure out "how it was organized." ::sigh::

5/14/05

OMG! Okay, so this one's not an Asshole, it's a funny anecdote. A woman asked me if I work here or IF I'M JUST DOING INVENTORY. (I was voiding the shelves with the little beeper gizmo.) First off I find that awesome, that the lady knew that sometimes people who appear to "work here" don't necessarily. She mentioned that she's seen inventory people at Publix or something. Now how much you wanna bet she inadvertantly asked one of them a question once and they informed her of their "I'm at work but I don't work here" status? (Or maybe she's just smart or understands such things, whatever--this isn't about her.) Anyway, it reminded me a LOT of what happened in my short story "Just Like Stephen."

Okay, so I'm an asshole who's making references to her own shit. Next!

My coworker who just started recently got his own absolutely unbelievable Asshole and he was in shock over it, telling the story to the whole store. Apparently a woman walked up to him and said she wanted a manual on how to do things. He asked what things, and she goes, "I don't know," and walks off. Hahah. Let me just take you to "Nonfiction," where we have "books on how to do things." Because that's only more than half the store. Neeext!

Had a dude ask for "Barron's." Well, I know them as a newspaper AND as a publishing company that puts out test prep books, and they're both referred to as "Barron's" by people who don't know about the other one, and since he didn't specify, I asked him to. That was his first clue that I'm fucking incompetent, apparently. He informed me that it was a NEWSPAPER, and I explained to him that there was also a book series that went by the name so he wouldn't think I was incompetent. Then I told him we normally get it on Saturdays (which is today) IF we're going to get it. I asked him where he'd already checked and he pointed to the back under the "Newspapers" sign, so I said okay and took him to a rack where we put some newspapers by the café just on the off chance that some copies woulda made it up there. He trailed me protesting that "the LAST time" they had been in the back, and I was like . . . well what the fuck do you want me to do about it? You said you already looked there, so you want me to go back there with you and point to the newspaper shelf and say, "Ohhhh . . . oh look you're RIGHT!" NO, actually, I'm going to try to take you to a DIFFERENT place where they MIGHT BE. But unfortunately God hates this guy and no Barron's copies were delivered today, so I explained to him that they're a bit dodgy over its delivery, some weeks we don't get it at all. That was part two of Salesgirl Is an Obvious Failure, because there's no way that actually happens and she knows her shit or anything--they're here somewhere! So without a word he spins around and stalks back to the "newspapers" sign--I guess to give it a second look--and I just let him go. You're welcome. I saw him stalking back up to the front of the store later, empty-handed, so I'm guessing he probably walked out muttering about how he knows they're somewhere and I just must not know, or something. No actually I know what's going on. I've been at the store for frickin' long enough to know, thank you. Neeeeeeeeext!

Oh yeah, the "phone doesn't work" guy. I walked up to C/S to help someone and this dude was molesting my phone. He had reached over the counter in an uncomfortable position to try to use the phone, and as I came up he hung up and then asked me if he could use the phone on the other side of the desk. I told him that was fine, but then he's like, "'Cause that one doesn't work." I asked him what he MEANT by "it doesn't work." "I dialed nine," he said importantly, "and the call wouldn't go through." Well that's 'cause you don't HAVE to dial nine. Generally speaking if you pick up a phone and there's a dial tone, that means you don't have to do anything special to get an outside line. If you don't already know that, then chances are you probably don't know your phone system shit and there's no reason you should be assuming dialing nine works for ALL THINGS CORPORATE PHONE. I explained that to him and left him to his business.

We did have some weirdo too, he asked me if I could call our competitor for him, but I made him do it and just read him the number. Barnes &Noble couldn't help him either, but when he was on hold he told me he wanted to ask me another question so I hung around while he talked to them. After ascertaining that they had no access to his book, he asked me if I knew when the letter J had been introduced into the alphabet. One of my coworkers walked up and he knows a lot of linguistic shit (more than I do) and volunteered that it was invented during the medieval period. (Weirdly, that coworker and I have talked about the invention of J before in another conversation, discussing how Hebrew has no J.) Anyway, this went into a LONG conversation where the dude seemed to be trying to test us--mostly my coworker--on our knowledge of language that involved early versions of the Bible and shit, like why was "Jesus" translated at all if it was originally Yeshua or whatever, who the fuck translates a name anyway? Okay, that's nice, but . . . why the hell are we having this conversation suddenly? It didn't evolve naturally from anything anyone said, the dude just brought it up. I asked my coworker later what he thought that dude's purpose or point had been. He said he thought he was a born-again Christian, because he was talking about how 95% of American citizens are actually Israelites who don't know who they are because the Bible says it's their curse to lose who they are and all this crap about a verse in Ezekiel and how everything has something to do with why USA has this creepy urge to always be on Israel's side in everything. I don't know what it is about our store where we have to attract all the weirdos. . . .

5/11/05

Here's my six and a half tons of Asshole for today.

First off, there was a kid. Usually I don't write up kids for asking ridiculous questions, but this kind of went above and beyond so I wanted to write about it. He wanted I guess those books you do tracing in, where they come with trace paper and stuff. I don't have any and I told him so. Then while I was at the desk he came up and asked my coworker, "Where's the . . . the TRACE books?" The guy had no idea what he meant and he repeated it, and I came over there and reminded him he already asked me that and WE DON'T HAVE ANY. It's not that I don't know where they are. We don't have them. Anyway, then later he came up again and asked if I could help him find a book. I said sure. "My mom said it was . . . near the comics," he said, and I told him again to tell me what he wanted. He said he didn't know what it was called or who wrote it but "I know what it LOOKS like." I told him to tell me anything he can tell me about it so I can help him find it. "Well it's sort of like I Spy, but I saw those already and those are for SMALL kids. Do you have any that are . . . not for small kids?" I told him that "books not for small kids" doesn't really tell me what it is, and he needs to be more specific, and so he said something to the effect of "Well I need to find stuff?" I don't know if that was the kind of book he was looking for (books where you "find stuff") or if he was demanding that I help him find stuff, but he just couldn't seem to verbalize what he wanted to find and couldn't even describe what it looked like except that it wasn't for small kids, and finally he said he thought it had something to do with math, so I had to tell him I don't know anything that sounds like what he's looking for and he can come back to me if he remembers anything else about it that might help, and I left him to browse the math books. See, I am a good kids' specialist and I have found books for people before based on cover descriptions and very vague discussions of what the book just might be about. But none of what he said made sense. Maybe it was just a little kid thing--he was maybe ten or something, though, and I've had kids half his age tell me what they want. Mreow. Again I don't like putting kids in here, but it's just frustrating when I'm standing there looking at a kid and they don't realize the only reason I can't help them is that their words aren't giving me an accurate picture of what they want.

A lady wanted a book and then every time she said its name it was different. First she said it was "On the Down-Low, On the Up and Up," and then when I got to the computer and asked for a repetition she repeated it in a different order and seemed unsure. When I got a computer listing I only had two separate books, On the Down-Low and On the Up-and-Up. I explained that they were not the same book and they were not by the same person (though according to one of the other employees these two authors are husband and wife even though their last names are not at all similar). Then the lady's like, "But the paperback of On the Down-Low isn't called 'On the Up-and-Up'?" I told her no, they were separate books, and she could not comprehend that On the Up-and-Up, a newer book, was only available in hardcover when she WANTED paperback but On the Down-Low was in paperback. She just wouldn't stop asking me to clarify it for her in a way that would make On the Down-Low's paperback actually "be" what she wanted. I'm sorry. It isn't. I can't make it happen. But if you want, you could buy both, glue one's cover to the other, and feel happy. . . .

I was randomly wondering if we had any messages from the corporate office regarding the book You: An Owner's Manual because it was on Oprah and we got them once and they were gone seemingly never to return under a landslide of people asking for it. So I looked it up on the computer. Then some woman came over and asked me for it, which was interesting. I told her the information immediately and she didn't seem to like my answer--I think she thought I was making it up so I wouldn't have to help or something, because she gave me this attitude and tried to interrupt my explanation without listening, and then demanded to know what the bookstore down the street was called and whether THEY had it. I made sure I looked taken aback and replied, "Um, I have NO idea what some other bookstore has!" and she hotfooted it out of there. I wonder when people will realize it's rude to ask people about their competition and make it very clear they're about to go there? Maybe when they realize we're not all the same store, and stop calling us and then going to Borders demanding their book, and when it freezes in Hell.

I was walking toward the desk when I noticed an older woman just casually strolling along behind our counter. She stepped down off of the big stage thing and approached me looking all happy to have found an employee--I guess she wanted one real bad since she was about to try to do our job for us! The story was that she had figured she'd just run back behind our employees-only counter and grab her book, but she just couldn't figure out how they were organized! (Our C/S shelves are even MORE confusing than our shelves--they're alphabetical with the actual ABCs posted next to each shelf!) I asked her to give me the name she put it under and she did so, and then started spelling her author's name because obviously I needed that even though I didn't ask. ::sigh:: I do wonder, though, what percentage of our lost customer orders are just because people like to walk back there and take whatever they want regardless of the name slapped on the sticker.

Oh God, this fun lady. She came up and wanted "children's poetry books," and so I took her to the kids' poetry section. She stood there in front of it and didn't even look, and she said, "And it CAN'T be Shel Silverstein OR . . . " and she forgot his name so she finally glanced at the shelf, then said, "Jack Prelutsky." I was like, okay, well then pick up anything else that's on these shelves and flip through it to see if it suits your purposes then. She didn't seem to get that and just kind of stood there looking shell-shocked. I might want to explain that the kids' poetry section is one measly four-foot section with four shelves, most of which IS taken up by Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky. But both of those fellas are pretty far down in the alphabet and the whole first two shelves are full of people who aren't them. And yet she just stood there looking stumped acting like she didn't know what to do, and started repeating to me what her assignment was, how she needed a children's poetry collection and all. So I also informed her that there was an adult poetry section she could browse if that wasn't enough for her, but there's no more kids' poetry in the store besides here. She reminded me it had to be KIDS' poetry so she wasn't INTERESTED in that other section. So I repeated that any of the books besides those she'd vetoed would do, and said, "So you want to just browse through these, or do you want me to show you that other section?" She DIDN'T RESPOND and just stood there with her mouth open looking at the section. So I prompted her for a response and she looked at me and then said, "Well . . . this is where it would be if you . . . had stuff?" Jesus! I agreed that that would be the place we'd have stuff (I love to use their words back at them so they realize how unspecific they are), and left her alone. And she continued to stand there without picking up anything. Later she came up and asked me for "that other poetry section." I took her there and left her too. I didn't see her again, but I was kind of halfway expecting her to attack another employee with the question since the stuff she wanted wasn't in the only section I showed her that would have stuff.

5/10/05

Oh jeezus. A dude came in looking for a book called "The Ville" or something and he decided to spell it for me and started with "T-H-E." HOLY MOTHER OF CRAP. Who is going to spell "the" for me? I couldn't help it: I snickered and said, "You just spelled 'the' for me." He didn't seem to understand why that was so funny and appalling. When I came up with nothing for his book, incidentally, he suggested maybe it was just "Ville." I informed him that my computer ignores the word "the" anyway. Good thing he knew how to spell it.

Our computer fell off the Internet temporarily (and we later found out it was because a cable in the back came loose after being bonked with a large book cart), so I was trying to look something up for this guy and all of a sudden our site wouldn't cooperate. I tried the other computer and still nothing. So then the guy goes, "Well which section would it be in?" Maybe it didn't occur to him that I WAS LOOKING IN THE COMPUTER TO FIND THAT THE HELL OUT!!! When I explained to him that I needed the computer to even tell me whether we carried the book, he reiterated that he just wanted to know where "books like that" would be and told me it was a true story. Argh. Well, let's see. Biography, World History, American History, Military History, Sports, Social Science, True Crime, Nature Essays, Religion and Theology, Travel Essays, New Age, Corporate History/Biography, and Literature all have true stories in them, so . . . if you want, you could just wander around half the store and hope maybe you find it. . . .

And lastly, a charming woman left a NOTE on one of our sale books after discussing this problem with our manager. She was appalled to see that a WAR BOOK was on the edge of a KIDS' SALE TABLE and demanded that it be removed to its correct section. My manager said she'd let the sale book manager know so he could decide where to put it, and that's when the woman took it upon herself to leave the note: "This is not a children's book! Please remove from children's aisle. Thank you." She signed it with her name and "A CUSTOMER" (underlined) below. Well, I guess she didn't realize that the book was actually in the small portion of the Kids' table that is reserved for Teen books, and the book won an award specifically for Teen literature (and said so on the back) so I'm betting the book is exactly where it's supposed to be and quite comfortable, thanks. . . . Did I mention that the customer is NOT always right and this website is ample proof?

5/9/05

My coworker was helping a customer when his phone rang as well. He called me over to take care of the call and told me what the lady wanted, so I looked it up and tried to find it. I checked two different spots on the shelf and came up with nothing, and when I got back I picked up the phone to give her the news only to hear a loud "click." She must've hung up just as I got there. The phone immediately rang back and I picked up, and this lady explained to me that she had just called but they put her on hold "just TOO long!" I estimate that she might have been on hold just over two minutes. I wonder how come that seemed like such a long time to her when most of my other customers seem to have no problem with it? I guess somehow hanging up and calling back and causing us to have to go back to the desk to pick up the phone and possibly getting a different person and having to explain the whole thing all over again somehow saves time and reminds us that you actually really DO want your book? Hrmmm. . . .

I got a phone call from a girl who said we'd called to say her book was in but she didn't know which of our stores she'd ordered her book to. I put her on hold, went to a computer, picked her back up, and asked her to give me the phone number she would have given us. She rattled one off. No orders found. I asked her if it's possible she gave us a different number. She gave me a second phone number and I tried THAT in the 'puter. NO DICE. So I told her that and she dutifully read off ANOTHER NUMBER. And THAT one didn't come up with anything EITHER. Finally she kind of hesitated and then thanked me and hung up. I wonder if she uses as many bookstores as she does phone numbers?

A lady with a big shopping cart was loading up on sale books and some other customer went up to her and just started asking her questions. It took them both a few exchanges to figure out what was going on: The lady with the cart had been mistaken by the curious lady for an employee. Heh. That just proves people don't pay attention to, ya know, what we wear (an apron) to identify us to the customers. . . .

I had a nice man ask me for a book, and he prefaced his question by telling me he really didn't want to look like a perv, but he wanted to know . . . if I could find him a book that was about having sex after having had back surgery. Apparently his wife was fresh out of the hospital from back surgery and his doctor had mentioned a book on the subject. Okay, I mean fine, and I didn't think the guy was pervy, but it made me wonder . . . the lady just had BACK SURGERY and SEX is enough of an immediate concern that the guy runs out to get a book on it, and there actually IS ONE?? It just boggles my mind. But then, I've never claimed to understand humans, or to actually be one of them. . . .

An employee who was just going to lunch--already clocked out and everything--ended up in the line of fire of a customer, so I stepped in to help. As I arrived, the dude was kiddingly chastizing the employee to the tune of "THIS is the kind of service you give me after I drive 50 miles?" I was like UH, can I help you, and the dude said he had a book on hold. I checked the shelf and there was nothing on the shelf under his name. I asked him if he ordered it or if he asked the other store to hold it, and he said it was the latter. As we were talking about this another employee came up and overheard what we were looking for and seemed to know exactly what book it was, and immediately reached and grabbed it for the customer. It had been put on the wrong shelf--the guy's name started with G but somehow it had been placed on the H shelf right below it. I was like, "OH, well that kind of explains why I didn't see it right away, you put it on the freakin' H shelf, dear," and the employee replied, "It's a different alphabet, DEAR." ::shrug:: Who knows what that means--in any case the letters are kinda hard to see so whatever, mistakes happen.

Anyway, the dude thanked us and told us that the other store had had a copy but it was beat up and smudgy. It turned out it was one of those Bathroom Reader things, and so I joked that theirs looked like it had already been in the bathroom. "A couple times," added the dude. And then he said something weird: He said he had wanted them to mark it down and sell him that one but they wouldn't and made him drive all the way over here. I explained we really don't do much in the marking stuff down category--if something's damaged enough for a customer to not wanna buy it, it gets sent back to the warehouse and we get a pristine copy free to us. We do discount up to an extra 10% but that's it and most people don't really go for that. But this dude was like, "Well they wouldn't even do that!" and started saying sort of weird griping things about how their manager is stupid. I was wondering who he was talking about since I KNOW those people and he kind of was acting like it was kinda personal, and he said he wasn't gonna say who it was because "They might get the NAACP on me." Okay, yeah, that's subtle. Guess what store only has one black manager. I guess since my name's on my front I probably couldn't be expected to catch this reference or understand what the NAACP is. But that didn't really bug me--I don't know how she acted to him so I can't judge. Anyway, then something really funny happened. . . .

He specifically asked for these alphabet bookmarks that never sell at our store. This is why that is funny: TODAY we got a memo that those particular bookmarks don't sell here and we have to transfer them to the Merritt Island store, so they had already been packed up. And then a dude comes in asking for that very thing! WTF??? So I went and got him one and when I asked him, "Are those what you meant?" he goes, "NO." But then it turned out he was kidding and he bought it. WEIRD.

5/7/05

A lady found a kids' book that was supposed to make a quacking noise but the quacker was broken. She wanted me to call the other store and see if they had one whose quacker worked. I called them. They had the book. Its quacker worked. And then I asked the lady if she wanted them to hold it and she said she didn't want them to because the book was too much money anyway. I'm so glad I bothered to call.

A woman asked me where the health books were that we "USED to have over THERE." So that means she walked back to Travel, looked around all deer-in-headlights-like, and said to herself, "My goodness, I'M LOST! These are not health books! WHAT IN THE WORLD COULD HAVE HAPPENED?" Because, ya know, it doesn't say "Travel" on the wall above the section or anything, and we didn't label the new Health section with "Cooking and Health" in giant styrofoam letters on the wall or anything. (And when I say "new," I mean we remodeled over a year ago.) So, just oblivious to the giant signs, she came immediately to me for help. Come on, people--I really thought you could read!

5/4/05

Just a weird annoying thing: I was helping some lady and she was talking on the phone to someone else while I was trying to find her book. The book she wanted was on a sort of broad subject, and I didn't find the specific book I had found in the computer, so I just started scanning the section for her. As I did this, the woman on her phone stood as close to me as humanly possible. I mean, I would lean one way and she'd move a little so she'd be closer to me! It was really annoying. I kept kinda moving over so she would stop being in my way and being on TOP of me, and she would again get so close that I couldn't move where I wanted to without her in the way. I decided to go to the other side of the bookshelf to start browsing there and hope maybe she'd just stand there and talk on her phone, but no such luck; she scurried around and resumed shoving herself into my personal space. It was just supremely weird and I don't want to know what made her do it.

In other news, it's time for more of "Weirdly Similar Book Covers" by SwankiVY™!

Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper	Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

Weird huh?

5/3/05

Been getting a lot of compliments lately. One person again told me I "know everything," and then while I was helping this lady she goes, "You're my favorite little girl. You always help me." Little girl? Jesus. I'm pushing thirty and I'm "little girl." Not that I don't appreciate it.

I was going into the bathroom to do my usual restroom check and I peeked in every stall to make sure they all had teepee. When I got to the last, the door was closed, and so I figured it occupied and went to wipe the sinks. The woman in it shouted, "SOMEONE'S IN HERE!" Okay, yes, I KNOW that. I replied (yes this is really what I said), "That's okay, you're allowed." She replied, "Urrghh, I ate some bad Chinese food." Okay, this is not a conversation I want to have with a random stranger in the restroom, but okay. . . . "Oh, I'm sorry, you gonna be okay?" She told me she would, but that she had Chinese buffet and now every time she tries to leave the bathroom the sickness comes back. I told her, "I hope you feel better." She replied, "You too." That doesn't make sense. I'm not sick. Anyway, I left, and later about 30 minutes after this I came in again to use the potty myself and she was still there. She didn't know I was a different person and started talking to me again, explaining that she had eaten bad food and gotten food poisoning and that she's "goin' at both ends!" She sounded pretty cheerful about it, oddly. I asked her if it was an emergency and if she wanted us to call someone. She said no and volunteered that a customer had brought her some water to drink. Hmm. Okay. She gave me some more details of how she was poopin' and barfin', and I was like, ohgodohgodohgod why are you telling me??? I tried to sound sympathetic and told her again that we could call anyone she wanted us to if she thought maybe she should go to the hospital, but she refused, and kind of cheerfully told me about how it's no fun feeling like she did. Okay. I wished her well again and left. One of my coworkers came out of there not too much later and told me, "There's a lady in there who keeps getting sick." I told her I knew quite well. When I left for the day another half hour later she was gone, so I guess she was okay. . . .

5/2/05

I answered the phone with my usual spiel and the person on the other end replied, "Yes, hello Jenine, I need to speak with your general manager please." I told her the manager wasn't working today, but I did wonder how she came to call me "Jenine" since my name sounds nothing like Jenine but we do HAVE a Jenine. I gave her to the assistant general manager, and later when I mentioned the incident to her my manager told me that the lady had been from Hallmark and kept mentioning our Hallmark girl . . . the mysterious Jenine, of course. I guess since that's the only person the lady knows, anyone who answers the phone must be her. I don't know.

Shortly afterwards, this woman called. She seemed determined to give me every detail I did NOT need in order to help her. First off she said she had "books on hold" that she'd forgotten to get and wondered if they were still there. I asked her if she'd called to have them placed on hold at the store or whether they had been ordered from the warehouse--that makes a big difference in when we return something. (If we pulled it in the store to hold for you, you get two days before we return it to the shelf. If we ordered it from the warehouse for you, you get two WEEKS before we return it to the WAREHOUSE.) But she chose none of the above and said, "I believe you ordered it from the VENDOR, actually." Okay . . . well, we kind of do that, but that would mean her books were a special order, but anyway. As I was coming very close to being at the desk so I could do the necessary checking, she started describing the books to me, explaining that they were about food carving, "Oh how do I explain this, it's like . . . " and kept going on about what the books' subject was as if if I got enough info about the nature of the books then I would be able to find them. Because it makes perfect sense to organize our customer holds by subject, not name.

Anyway, I got to the desk and said, "Okay, well let me just look your order up." She rattled off her name. That's not what I need. Let me ask. Shaddup! I told her to give me the phone number. She was unsure which one she'd given us but the first one she gave turned out to be the right one. I looked at the order. Yes, our store. Yes, about two weeks ago. Yes, two copies had been sent. Not ordered "from the vendor," but from my warehouse, just like usual. So I checked our hold shelf under the name on the account and there they were. "Yes, your books are still here," I told her. "Well, I'm going to be coming in to purchase them today. It will be on a purchase order. My PO number is . . . " and she started rattling off numbers.

Okay, so in what universe do you just randomly start giving someone information over the phone that they a) Haven't asked for and b) Obviously don't NEED if you think about it? What was I going to do with a purchase order number? She knows she has to come in and pay for it. All I could do is tell her the books were there to buy. So I don't know, maybe she thought I'd be standing there with this order log in my hand checking off the special purchase order list and suddenly and randomly needed a special number attached to some account that handles payment through her organization. I just don't get it.

A woman came up expecting to get John Grisham's newest book in paperback. "I saw it up there on bestsellers, and you had the HARDCOVER and the AUDIO but no PAPERBACK," she complained. Wow, well welcome to "how the world works!" It doesn't come out in paperback for a YEAR! I explained that to her, saying it usually takes ten months to a year for a book to come out in paper once it's released in hard. She gave me an unfocused look and told me her friend liked John Grisham and she wants to find other books, but please only the recent ones because the friend keeps up on such things and probably would have the older ones. She asked me to do a search to find out what's the most recently out in paperback, and I did that, giving her several titles that had been recently released. "But The Broker is not in paperback yet?" she asked again, and I said NO, it wasn't--it was out in January in hardcover, so she can expect it NEXT YEAR in paper. Finally I took her to the section to pick some up, and she picked up the newest one and hemmed and hawed about whether he had it, and in between she kept picking up The Broker and needling me for a paperback again! She'd consider another title and pick it up and hold it, and then pick up or point at the hardcover book and say, "So that'll be a couple months then?" or "So you don't have this in softcover?" I'm serious. She said it AT LEAST EIGHT TIMES in this whole interaction. I could not believe it. After the second time she did that I stopped answering her, thinking maybe she was doing that thing jerks do when they talk to themselves, but if I didn't say anything she'd actually TURN to me or look at me waiting for my ANSWER. I'd be like, "That's right. LIKE I SAID, it's not out yet" or "NO, not 'a couple months'--like I said, it came out in JANUARY, so we can expect it NEXT YEAR."

A woman called about reserving Harry Potter 6. I told her we aren't taking *reservations* but that we can let you pre-purchase one. She asked how it worked and I explained the pre-purchasing voucher system. Then she asked if she could just give me a credit card number and buy it over the phone. Erm . . . no, because then you'd have to come in anyway to get the voucher, we're not sending it out. Can't do it.

I helped a girl who was clueless but nice, ya know, just your average teen who needed school reading. We had a mix-up on one of her books because she wanted The Jungle and even though I had my suspicions that it was the Upton Sinclair one (the classic) I asked her if she knew the author because there are a lot of books called that. I ended up noticing in my scrolling that there was a weird coincidence--the book is by Upton SINCLAIR, and another one of the books mentioned in its list of authors SINCLAIR Lewis. I'm a dork and I mentioned that in my scrolling, and she seemed to think it was funny too. After I got her The Jungle and the other books, helped her mom, and got described as "knowing EVERYTHING," I went back to work with putting out kids' books. But soon she was back and wanted to know where the Sinclair Lewis The Jungle was. I hadn't looked closely at the entry so I hadn't noticed that actually he was just listed as a contributor to one version of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (probably wrote a foreward or something), so I just checked the shelf first and then found just a few random Lewis books. I told the girl we didn't have any The Jungle by Lewis, and she just gave me this amazing look of bald incomprehension and replied, "But it's IN the COMPUTER!!" I just thought it was really funny for some reason, the tone of voice and the sentiment that if it was "IN the COMPUTER" it couldn't possibly not be on the shelf! I explained that to her, looked up the book and got the full story and explained that to her too, and she understood, but still, I just thought it was an amusing story to tell.

I had a guy call claiming that he "didn't get his discount" when he got rung up. There was all kinds of mess with his gift card which he insisted on describing in detail, and I just listened. Ordinarily, when someone thinks they didn't get their discount, they actually DID and they are not paying attention to the receipt and can't read it, and they aren't keeping in mind the original price of the book. I got the guy to get his receipt and I asked him to read to me what was on the bottom, because if they DID get their discount it says like "You saved $2.50 with your Millionaire's Club Card!" or something, whereas if you DON'T have a card it tells you how much you WOULD have saved if you'd bought one. Surprisingly, what he read off showed that he really didn't get a discount. I asked him if the girl had rung in his discount card--I was pretty confused at this point--and he said he hadn't given it to her. I was like, huh? "Did she look you up in the computer then?" He said she hadn't; he'd given her the GIFT card but not the discount card. "Well, they're supposed to ask you if you have one," I explained, "but if you didn't give it to her to scan, I'm not surprised that you . . . didn't get the discount," I said haltingly. Then I asked him why he hadn't given it to her. "Oh, well I thought it was an automatic thing," he said. Ahh, mystery solved! You think a discount card is just a formality and that everyone should know you get a discount with your face! Now if it was "automatic," why would we bother giving you a card at all? Argh. I told him he could bring the receipt with him the next time and get it straightened out--that they'd probably do a return on it and then sell it to him for the discounted price and give him the change, but he misunderstood and was like, "No, I don't want to return it at all!" ::sigh::. . . .

5/1/05

A dude asked for help finding a book, and though the system said we carried it it wasn't actually on the shelf. "Did your computer say you had it?" he asked, and of course I'm internally rolling my eyes thinking, "Oh yeah, the computer said we DON'T, but I figured we'd check anyway." I explained to him that the computer could show us what we carry but not quantity, so we could have thirty or none of a book and the computer would just say "Yes, we carry this title." The dude made a weird face and said, "Well, if that's the case, how do you know when to order more I wonder?" He said it in a weird doubtful tone that made me think HE thought I just didn't know how the system operated and probably did have a way to check inventory that I'm just unaware of, like "Can't you see that having no inventory on your computer doesn't make sense? Now go find out." So I went ahead and explained to him that we replace titles based on when they get bought and scanned through the register. Imagine that! We do have a system!

I was talking to one of my friends standing in the kids' section when I heard a sound like books hitting the floor. We peeked out and there were a couple of Dick and Jane volumes on the floor, having toppled from the huge stack in the middle of the floor. My friend was kind of glaring at this woman who was retreating from the general vicinity, and when I asked him if he'd seen how these books had managed to fall he said that that woman in white had snagged the corner of one of the books while walking past. He said she glanced back to see what she knocked over, looked at the books, and just kept walking. "I guess she figured it's Sunday and God doesn't want her to work," he postulated as we picked up the books and set them back on the pile. All I can say is, what a bitch. There's no WAY she didn't know what she did there was WRONG.