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

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OCTOBER!


10/31/05

Both my Assholes for today were old women. Hmm.

The first lady was just kind of a doddering old soul who managed to come up with the information that her daughter really liked "The Lewis and Clark book" last year and she wanted to get "something like that" for this year and for the other two siblings or whatever. Then she refused to be specific about what constitutes "like," as in what in her mind is a similar type of book. "You know, like an adventure?" she said, obviously without much idea at all of what's going on. I took her to American History because that was where her Lewis and Clark shit was, but because she wasn't asking for something specific and because I had no idea what to tell her was "like" it, I tried to just drop her off to browse. (And also, she had been second in a line of three customers, and the third one was still standing there after having watched me help the two other people; I wanted to get back and help him too.) Well, this lady wouldn't let me drop her off; she realized that I was trying to leave her on her own and she blurted, "WELL, I really need some HELP!" ::sigh::

I told her I didn't really know what books would be interesting to her kids because I had not read the book and so I wasn't really sure what other ones were like it, but I would try to recommend some titles that I had seen others seem to be interested in if they liked Lewis and Clark stuff. A couple of the things I pointed out she vetoed because she thought her kids had already read them. (Surprise!) I pointed out a few other titles and also mentioned that the political section was a hot spot for fast-paced nonfiction, and after realizing that I wasn't going to be able to help her much unless she got more specific information, she said, "Okay, well, you go help your other fella up there, and I guess I'll just look and you let me know if you come across anything else." Shit, she even knew that I had another "fella" up there! (By this point someone else had helped him, but I pretended not to know that and just escaped.) I didn't end up having to help her any more, but I hope she found what she needed. . . .

The other lady was half deaf, and the first time I replied back to whatever she said, she said, "What did you say? I don't hear." 'Kay. I began to talk to her very clearly and specifically and slightly loudly from then on (ya know, without being patronizing), but I got the message very quickly that it wasn't just a case of being hard of hearing; it was a case of being hard of, well, attentioning. She didn't seem to realize that in a conversation, you generally have to pay attention to the other person in order to pick up what they are saying, especially if you don't hear well. So every time I spoke to her I ended up having to repeat it (though the second time was always good enough), and when we got back to the section she wanted and I found her book, she took it and thanked me. I replied, "You're welcome," and she suddenly grabbed my wrist kind of roughly and squeezed it and said, "WHAT? Did you SAY something to me??" I replied, "I just said 'you're welcome,'" and she was like, "Okay, well have yourself a good day," and wandered off. What the hell? Who randomly grabs people?


10/30/05

Some dude called and told me he had four books to ask me about. I said cool and asked him for the first title, which he rattled off quickly. I looked it up and told him that we did indeed carry it and I'd have to check the shelf before I could tell him for sure if we had any. But then while I was in the middle of explaining to him that since he had three more titles I would just write down the information and check the shelf for all of the books at once, he started rattling off the next title. I wasn't done writing down the first one and its store location, but the book he asked for was a well-known, popular one, so I immediately responded, "Well I know we carry that one, just a minute while I--" and he cut me off by rattling off the NEXT title! I was like, "Okay, whoa, hang on." He just repeated himself and it was another well-known title, so I said, "Well, I know we carry that too--" and as you might predict he responded by shooting off his last title. At this point I still have not written down all of the information for the FIRST one. "JUST a minute please," I interrupted, and told him I needed a moment to make a note of everything. I treated him to an out-loud recitation of every step I was doing so he'd shut up until I was damn ready for the last title's information. And then after I'd gotten it all written down and informed him that we carried all of them, he was rattling off his name and telling me to hold them, so I said, "Now I don't know at this moment if we actually HAVE any of them, before I know for sure I will have to check the shelf. Do you want me to just do that and put you on hold until I come back with news, or would you rather me just find what I can of them and stick them under your name?" He told me he just wanted me to grab them and stick them under his name, he didn't want to wait to find out if I had any, and he hung up. I guess it only serves him right that we only had one out of the four . . . I wonder if he pitched a fit when he came in, since I wasn't there. . . .

My only other mentionable incident for today wasn't even an Asshole; it was just a funny. A coworker came up to me and asked me, "Do we have 'Everybody Poops'?" I told him we did and went to grab it, and he claimed it wasn't in the computer. "That's because the title is actually EveryONE Poops," I explained, and got disgusted all over again at how picky our computer system is. I got to the baby section and noticed that I had both a hardcover and a softcover. I asked my coworker if the customer had a preference for hardback or paperback, and so since they hadn't followed us he just called over to them, "HEY, you want it HARD or SOFT?" Good God. I prefer my poop soft thank you. . . . Everyone was laughing like dorks after that. We're all just a bunch of children.


10/29/05

PEEVE OF THE WEEK!

People who give you the wrong information, which impedes the search for the needed item, and then act like it's still your fault when you find out the right information. That seems to happen a lot. In fact, it happens twice in today's Work Log! Read on.

A woman called asking for Cliff's Notes on Grendel. I told her I didn't think they made those, and she replied with a sort of dismissive "wow you're incompetent" laugh and said, "Well YEAH. . . . " So I told her I'd check. There were none in the section (not even a yellow board saying we were out), so I checked on the computer. No listing for a Cliff's Grendel. I got back on the phone and told her I didn't see a listing for one. Her response was to first *spell* "Grendel" for me and then ask if it was the one by Gardner that I was looking at. I informed her that I was familiar with the book. (C'mon, I tell you off the top of my head that I don't think we have Cliff's for it and you think it's just that I can't spell?) After that was out of the way she told me she actually wasn't even sure that Cliff's Notes existed for the book, thanked me, and hung up. Um, that's what I was SAYING at the beginning. . . .

A guy came up and asked me for the book Socks and he said the author was something like "Cleary Re-soos." I'm like huh? He showed me the paper and I kinda squinted at it and informed him that I knew of a book called Socks but it was by Beverly Cleary. Then I figured out what the "Re-soos" was--someone had written "Reissue" by "Cleary" to tell him to get the reissued version. He thought it was the author's name and tried to sound it out. Badly. Heh. Good thing I know kids' books or I would have been looking for an author named "Cleary Reissue" in the computer. . . .

A woman returned her MLA guidebook. When my manager asked her what the reason for the return was, she said, "Just don't need it." She elaborated that she'd gotten it for a class but couldn't understand how to use it, and then something changed so she didn't need it, and would never use it again because "I couldn't understand the book!" Well, "bibliography" IS a five-syllable word. . . .

A lady came up and told me she wanted to find out where in the store we had books by "Richard Dwyer." I had never heard of him so I asked if she had a title and went to the computer. After "Richard Dwyer" came up with nothing, I tried the title and got . . . you guessed it, WAYNE DYER. Ohkay. When I acted all confused about how the only author on that title was not Richard Dwyer but WAYNE DYER, she acted like she didn't know what the problem was and just wanted me to show her his books. I told her he resides in several sections of the store, so after confirming that the one she was most interested in was the one she'd named, we went to Self-Help. There, we found four Dyer books, and I mentioned that he's kind of a versatile writer and has some in Business and in Inspiration, I thought. After picking up a couple of the books and looking at them, she said, "And all of these are by him?" Uh, yeah, can't you see that from looking at the spine? And then finally she said, "So . . . is this the only place they'd be?" Well, maybe I shouldn't have tried to tell her twice that his books are in more places, because I think the information cancelled itself out. She also apologized for taking my time, and at this point I was in this huge race against time to try to finish what I was doing before my shift was over, so having to stand there and listen to her thank me for my time and blabber about how she was sorry to have interrupted me and how she really appreciated it--I mean she went on for a full minute--was very infuriating. Not that it wasn't NICE of her to thank me, but if you're apologizing for taking my time, shouldn't you stop wasting it?

A woman called and said she was looking for something called "The Many Faces of High School" by Katherine Cushman. As I was trying that title, she clued me in that it might be "The Forty Faces of High School." Unfortunately neither was the case, so I tried Katherine Cushman and still got nothing. I tried Catherine as an alternate spelling, and then I looked to see what Cushmans were in the system. "I see a Karen," I told her, and she replied, "I'll take Karen!" Okay, shots in the dark for 500, Alex. As I was looking at those I came across a Kathleen, and I told her that too. That sounded MORE like it to her, so I tried Kathleen Cushman's stuff and started reading the titles. The first was Fires In the Bathroom. "That's it!" she announced. I looked for some logic of this but nothing about faces of high school was even in the subtitle. . . . All I can say is, since "Cushman" was the only part of this that was even close to right and I found it by chance from that, this lady is lucky that her author's last name wasn't Smith. . . . And like a couple of the other incidents today, it seemed like she was totally unaware that her info didn't match the end result. "I want 'The Many Faces of High School.'" "We have Fires in the Bathroom by a different author than you mentioned. . . . " "Um, that's the one I WANT, obviously!" ::headdesk::

A woman and her maybe late-elementary-school daughter were looking for books in the kids' section and up they came to ask of the Kids' Goddess. "Do you have any books about pandas?" asked Mom. I noted that they had been looking in the kids' fiction area, so I wondered if they wanted a story about a panda or if they were changing their track and wanting nonfiction. So I asked. "Stories," said the kid, and I was like, yeah, let me take you to our plentiful STORIES FEATURING PANDAS section. I told her I didn't know of anything but maybe Kids' Nature would have nonfiction. After determining that there were books that involved pandas but were not entirely devoted to them, I suggested the adult nature section because they might have something a little more specific and even though they're for adults they tend to have nice pictures. "Do you think the adult nature section would have anything you'd be interested in?" I asked after explaining this, and then Mom asked me if stories about pandas would be there. Does anyone write "stories" about pandas for grown-ups? Umkay. Incidentally, it hit me later that they sounded like they might be shopping for a gift for a kid who likes pandas, and taking that into account maybe I should have suggested some STORYBOOKS rather than, ya know, chapter books that would have been appropriate for the girl asking. But hey, they gave me no information, so I guess I can't be perfect without help all the time.

I was babysitting the register for a coworker and up walked a woman who proceeded to ask me a weirdly phrased question: "I was wondering if they ordered in this book for me? It's called . . . " and she rattled off the title and told me what it was about. I didn't really understand what she was getting at--did she just want info on the book, or was she really unsure of whether she ordered it or something?--but either way I was at the REGISTER and couldn't help her. I began to tell her so and she interrupted me and said, "No, that's okay, I'm not going to go over there, but . . . " and then she kept going asking me about the book and telling me what she thought it was called and that it was a Jewish book. Okay. "This is the register," I explained again, "so if you need to find information on a book or status of an order, I can call someone to that desk over there for you, it'd be at Customer Service." As I was saying this she was already walking away toward the door, and she called back that she would just check later because she was "not in the mood right now." Okay! If you weren't in the mood to find shit out about your book, how come you were asking me but won't ask them? Mmyeah.

I had a really annoying last two hours of my shift, because I was near the desk and everyone kept ringing the bell or interrupting me as I was frantically trying to get to a reasonable stopping point before 4:00. And I'm talking I had Hello Kitty shit ALL OVER THE FLOOR and shelves pulled out and broken pieces of crap on the carpet and stuffed Kitties everywhere and papers of a planogram scattered around over three shelves and an endcap. I was a mess and I was having a bad day anyway and couldn't see well because my contacts were bugging me and was stuck in a funk because of some bad news from my family and had had a piece of shelving fall out of the wall six times while I was trying to put it up . . . you know. So I'm in this situation and people keep bothering me. I was nice to everyone because it is not their fault that I am busy and having a bad day, but I have to say I was about to kill this kid . . . a little boy came up and he wanted detailed explanations of how this toy rocket worked, and then later he came up while I was trying to pack shit away in boxes and said, "Excuse me, excuse me, um, 'scuse me?" I'm like WHAT and he goes, "Um, what's the COOLEST thing you have here?" I dropped him off in Boys' Creativity so he could look at the bug sucker-uppers and the mad scientist slime. Good stuff.

God, what a day.


10/23/05

Earlyish this morning, I was putting away kids' books and noticed a couple of older women walking around the customer service desk in a peculiar way. I thought perhaps they were exasperated that no one was in the desk and perhaps wanted to check around its back in a very stealthy hunter fashion. (Don't forget, these people are very cunning!) Anyway, I saw one woman kind of throw out her arm in an exasperated "Unh! Can't believe no one is helping me!" way, so I thought sure she wanted my help and started to go over there, but then I saw her talking to her friend and she made the same gesture, so I figured maybe it didn't mean that and she was just a weird rude snot.

I continued to go to the desk and when I got there I went up to them and asked them if they wanted help. The woman greeted me pleasantly and said she did, and crisply informed me that she wanted Blue Smoke. IN PAPERBACK. Umm.

Blue Smoke is a new Nora Roberts title. It was released September 2005. No way is there a paperback less than a month later. I told her so.

"No, it IS out, I KNOW that it is, I have SEEN it," she snapped, and I told her if that was so then it wasn't through the usual retail channels, because books don't fucking come out in paperback the same time as they come out in hardcover, especially for an author like Nora Roberts for whom the fanbase goes wild and buys anything her pen (or her ghostwriters' pens) can dribble out no matter how much it costs.

In short, she didn't believe me even though I read her off what was available for the book (regular hardcover, large print, CD, and tape versions), and she told me, "WELL then, it IS out, I have seen it online, so I will be ordering it from THERE, THANK you." If it is possible for a tone to speak so clearly, her message was actually "It is obvious from your inability to give me what I want that you don't know how to do your job, because I am infallible and you are just a lowly bookstore clerk. I will take my business to a company that knows what they are doing."

I hope she logs on to Amazon.com and tries to order it. She'll go there, feel all vindicated that there is indeed a paperback listed, and feel all superior about ordering it. I hope she enjoys her moment of glory, because assuming she can read, it will be killed promptly when she sees this:

[may 2006, asshole!]

Like I said, it's not OUT yet, asshole!

Run-of-the-mill Asshole: I answered the phone and the person said, "What time are you open until tonight?" I replied, "Nine," because it's Sunday so we close early. The response was this: "Nine? Nine tonight?"

Well, you said, "What time are you open until tonight," so it's safe to assume I'm talking about tonight. Either the person didn't know that I really meant tonight, or the person thought I might have meant nine in the morning (because so many bookstores close at the same time they open, or close in the damn morning). In other words, either this person was a jackass, or they were a jackass. Hah.

Yeah, I realize that sometimes words just fall out of your mouth when you're not really thinking about what you're saying. But when you add to this the fact that the person then waited for a response to "Nine? Nine TONIGHT?" as if it made any sense, I guess that wasn't the case. . . .

I got a person on the phone who didn't speak very well, and he asked me for something that sounded like "Chuma Drakla." I'm like, huh? From that point on he gave me his requests in an increasingly annoyed tone of voice like it is my fault he sounds like he's talking to me with six wads of bubble gum in each cheek. I don't have a problem with it if you've got a speech thing, but I do have a problem with you acting like it's my fault. I asked the dude to spell what he wanted and he wouldn't do it, he just kept repeating, though he did break it down for me. "You know, like Drakla? DRAK-a-lah???" I figured out he meant "Dracula." And eventually, EVENTUALLY, I figured out that "chuma" was "Tomb of." Tomb of Dracula. This would not have been so bad if I had not done the search, informed him that we'd have to order it, and then he just responded with silence. I repeated that I'd have to order it and followed with "okay?" and he's like, "Uh . . . okay," and put down the phone. You're welcome!

And this was just sort of batty: A customer came in as I was stocking something right at the front of the store and immediately asked me a bunch of questions about returning a book she'd mistakenly bought when she already had it. Then she said that I had been the one who'd helped her find it and she's like, "Remember?" I'm like, "No, not really." "YOU DON'T REMEMBER ME?? It was just a week and a half ago!" Okay. "You really don't remember that? We looked ALL over for it!" Yeah, because looking for a book in more than one place is not something I end up having to do every single damn day. Sorry to burst your special bubble, but our interaction wasn't memorable. You remember me because I was your only bookstore experience in the last two weeks. I'm afraid that from my perspective, you were one of several hundred people in your position in the last two weeks. 'Nuff said.


10/22/05

PEEVE OF THE WEEK!

What do I hate this week? People who, after hearing all the options for getting a book we either don't carry or are out of, reply, "But I need it now!" and then stand there expectantly like I can do something. Hey, clue-phone is ringing and it's for you! Expressing the dire circumstances surrounding your purchasing of this book does NOT change that I DON'T HAVE IT! I don't know if they think the options are suddenly going to change because they express how much they need it, but going into detail about your needs is not going to soften my hard heart to the point that I dig it up from where it is buried in my backyard!

So, this morning started out with a woman I can only describe as scattered. As I was clocking in for my morning shift, I got her on the phone first, and she opened the conversation by saying, "Um . . . wait, where am I calling??" Ahh, an auspicious start. That's okay, I haven't had my coffee yet either.

So. It begins. She told me a harebrained tale that I didn't entirely understand involving her being in the store a couple days ago, coming up to the register with three books but having intended to only buy two of them, and then leaving with the wrong two books. She wanted to return the one she didn't want and get the one she did want. Problem is, it was a book she ordered in.

Before I could even check to see if the book was on hold for her, she said she'd be in to take care of the return and everything, so I just hung up with her. I checked under her last name after she was gone to see if a book was being held, but there was nothing. Great, I thought. And I would have cringed even more if I had known how soon she was going to come, and what kind of hoops she was going to jump us through when she got here.

First she came to Customer Service. Asked for her book. I explained that it wasn't on hold and she's like, "Well I left it at the register, would it be up there?" I asked when this was and she said Thursday, so I told her it would not be there because we don't hold books at the register; we clean it out at least every night, no books just sit there lingering. But again, this was a special-ordered book with her name on the label, so probably what would have happened was the book would have gone not onto a shelf, but into a bin for unwanted customer order returns.

And that returns shelf was empty too, which means a manager had packed them up to send back to the warehouse very recently. I looked at the register too, in case it was by some unusual chance lingering there, but it was nice and bare like it should be at the beginning of the day.

In the quest to do everything we could to find the book, the woman demonstrated her scatteredness several more times; I told her I'd look for the book in the store and asked for the title, and she couldn't remember it and said she'd get it from her car. At which point she looked around and shouted, "WHERE are my keys??" Umkay. I decided to spare her (and us) the aggravation of her probably going to her car and not finding what she needed and ended up looking her order up in the system. I found the title of the book and even though it was one we don't normally carry I checked where it would have been for her, telling her on the way that I doubted it would be there because if a customer order is randomly left at the register, it wouldn't be our normal procedure to pull the label off and shelve it. Of course it wasn't there, and she said, "Don't tell me that!"

Sorry, but I'm telling you that.

"Well where else could it be?" she asked, and I told her that I'd checked everywhere that it could be except, well, in the shipment of books that were to be sent out with the returns. Which as I said was probably where it DID end up, since that is the logical course of action.

"But in just TWO DAYS they would send it away? They'd do it THAT FAST?" she pressed. I told her that we run a pretty tight ship, and I explained that if it was left at the register, it would certainly look to us like a customer had decided against purchasing an ordered book, in which case it would go in the returns bin, which would be followed by its being packed up to be sent out with the weekly returns.

"Oh no, don't tell me that."

Sorry, but I'm telling you that.

"And you checked all up at the register?"

You watched me do that.

"And you didn't see it, huh."

Would we be having this conversation if I had?

"If you can't find this book for me I'm going to cry!"

Ohhhkay.

She went on to say that she NEEDED it to be read by Monday, that if she hadn't had it read by Monday she would be in hot water, so we couldn't just order it again.

"THEY messed up, not me!" she crowed, and went on to describe that she had been waited on by "a sort of heavy-set girl with long brown hair." Which doesn't sound like anyone I know. I asked, for my own curiosity, how she'd ended up at the register with THREE books when she was planning to only buy two. She was vague in her response, but basically she admitted that she'd gone up unaware of what she was holding, told them in a quick manner what books she actually did want, and ended up getting charged for the wrong ones. "I guess it's my fault for not checking," she went on, "just like at McDonald's, if you don't check your bag it's your own fault if you leave with the wrong food."

Whatever. If you went to to the register holding what you want to purchase and not scattering stuff around and expecting people to put up what you don't want, this wouldn't be an issue.

"But it was a special order," she said, as if that would give me more ideas as to places to look. I made sure she understood that I knew that, and told her again what happens to special orders that don't get picked up or are perceived to be unwanted (which an abandoned book at the register seems to fit). I told her I was out of options unless she wanted to ask my manager if there was anything she could do. I felt really awful about putting this one on my manager because, well, it was obvious to me that this nut of a lady would be hard-pressed to leave without this book in her hand and I was equally sure my manager would have no way to help her, but I guess in a situation like this, that's what managers get paid extra for. ::sigh::

So in walks my manager, back from making the deposit, and the lady attacked. "I think YOU rang me up!" she announced, which is odd because, well, I would never have described her as having long brown hair (though as it turned out the cashier who DID ring her up did not have long brown hair either). So the lady launched into her story, and after confirming with me that I'd checked all the logical places, my manager agreed that it was probably in the shipment out, and that there was no way to get into it because it was on a skid in the back in a pile of a couple hundred unmarked totes wrapped in thick saran wrap waiting to go away in a couple hours. The woman persisted, which of course made my manager figure that she basically wanted us to go searching through our shipment (which of course had already been piece-counted and processed on inventory sheets too!), and even though she said she had no one in the store who could physically do it (she has back problems, and I'm, well, extremely short, I can't reach that crap!), the woman was single-minded. She was not leaving without the book.

According to my manager, the woman was "trying really hard not to get ugly," and later talked about her as being NICE, but I think the woman had a perception that the whole thing was entirely our bad and I don't agree. Perhaps the cashier didn't listen correctly when the lady said which books she wanted, and then the lady didn't check, but why would you come to the register holding stuff you didn't want to purchase and then put it down WITH the books (which is how she described it, she said she put the one she didn't want in the same stack, as if to explain why she could understand the confusion).

Of course, we are talking about a woman who, in the course of her conversation with my manager, changed her mind about "it was YOU who rang me up!" and described the cashier as having "long brown hair with bangs" (which my manager doesn't) and randomly moved the date of the occurrence from Thursday to Wednesday night. Obviously she was as scattered at the time it happened as she was right now, which doesn't leave much room for confusion as to HOW things got messed up.

The interaction ended when my manager called other bookstores and found that Barnes & Noble had a copy to save for her. By that point she had broken down and asked me to look in the wrapped shipment and see if I could tell if a customer order return box was near the top. I found one buried about three layers deep but it was reachable, so I'm glad I talked to her before cutting the plastic and hauling it out, because that would have been a lot of work for nothing.

Well. As if that wasn't enough blathering about today, there were actually a ton of Assholes--most of them in the morning for some reason. This will be going on for quite a bit longer.

Let's start with today's big rudie, who was handled by our backup cashier for the day. A man came up to the secondary register, dropped a premium paperback on the desk, tossed a twenty at the cashier, and barked, "TEN dollars for a PAPERBACK? That's ridiculous!"

Allow me to explain. What's "premium paperback" anyway? Well, some weirdo at some corporate office somewhere decided that they would make books that are as tall as a trade paperback, but as wide as a mass-market. I don't know why, but they say it is "easier to read." They end up costing more than a mass-market paperback--the ones that are usually from $5.99 to $7.99--and less than a trade paperback, which usually run from $12 to $15.

So, our cashier said that the bookstore doesn't set the price, that that was the publisher's price. He replied, "No, I doubt that. I sure hope you're enjoying your profits on that!"

She replied that the bookstore doesn't set the price, showing him that it's printed on the inside cover made by the company. "Well, you're selling them, so YOU take the heat! I won't be shopping HERE again." She persisted in explaining that that book will be the same price anywhere you go, and he said, "No, I'm sure it's cheaper in other places, you guys just enjoy the money you're making off me, I won't be back, I'm SORRY."

She was like, "Ohhhkay," as he walked out.

Why did he even buy it if it was so outrageous that it was ten bucks? If he was so sure it costs less at places other than our evil bookstore, why did he consent to support our filthy book-marking-up scheme?

What really sucks is if it's available he will probably find the paperback in a mass-market version somewhere else for less, not notice that it's a different version, and imagine himself vindicated. All I can say is in my research into the matter it appears that premium paperbacks get released before there is a mass-market available, so hopefully he won't find any but the premiums. What a dick.

A woman came up to me at Customer Service claiming that we'd ordered her a book and told her it would be in today. They had only just received the shipment of our weekly books an hour ago when she came in, and I know it takes a while to process the shipment before they even start opening anything. I explained this to her and she started grilling me for answers, like "How long will it take?" and "Can you find out if it's here yet?" and all this mind-numbing junk, all in an accusing tone of voice. I explained patiently that we did not lie, it IS "in today," but it TAKES a while to unpack and there is no telling whether the customer orders are going to be the first thing off the truck or the last. It just DEPENDS. When we get them all out, the first thing we do is send them on a cart to Customer Service and start calling people, but that stage of the game had not occurred yet. After hearing my spiel, the lady crossed her arms and leaned on the desk and said, "WELL, I really need this book." Oh, well that changes everything, why don't you stand there while I go get the fucking thing? She gave up after I told her there was no way to tell how long it would be but we would call her. Look, we never said WHEN on Saturday it would be here, so you have no right getting shirty with me.

A woman looking for something fairly specific was very unhelpful today. She opened with "I asked someone already but the other lady didn't really know," and then told me about the particular kind of brain teasers she wanted a book of. She'd only been able to find a book with one section of the appropriate brain teasers, and the rest in the book weren't useful to her purpose. There didn't seem to be other books with that subject matter, so she brought me into the mix.

I showed her the kids' games, the teacher section (because it was for brain teasers for a classroom), and then back to the games section, but in all of them she kind of just stood there without looking at anything herself and described what she wanted again and again and voiced her dissatisfaction with the book she had found. I asked her if she'd already looked through the games section since that was where she'd apparently started, and she said, "Well I glanced through it." Which I guess means she stood there staring without doing anything or picking anything up just like she did in the other two sections. Lady, I'm the salesgirl and all, but it would probably help if you didn't stand there like a lump expecting me to do your errand. Instead of "glancing through," how about you take an active role in your satisfaction, huh?

A woman came up and asked me what order the self-help books were in. I told her they were in order by author and she started walking back in there, but called back to me to please help her find her book since she couldn't. I countered with a suggestion that maybe we should look it UP first and find out if we carried it at all, and which section if we did. So, I looked it up and we did indeed carry it, in the relationships section of Self-Help, and when we got over there I started looking, pointedly taking note of what letter of the alphabet I was on as I searched. "Let's see, here's M . . . N . . . P--" and she cut me off as I was searching for R by saying, "WHAT order are you GOING by?" Ohhhkay. I guess maybe she was thrown off by the fact that in this section, as in any other section that was not JUST organized, there were some books out of place. It wasn't enough that you couldn't totally tell that there was a pretty good order.

A lady on the phone asked me to find a book, and it turned out there were a bunch in the series she wanted, all in the computer under just the name of the series. There were about 35 of them, so I was scrolling through trying to find out if we carried any. I told her up front that there were about 35 and that I didn't see that we carried them in the store, but as I got down to the bottom of the list and told her it didn't look like we had any, she replied, "But can you tell if you have it?" I'm still not sure where in there my "I don't see any that we have in stock" got translated to my being unsure of whether we had any. I was saying a definite no, not expressing uncertainty. Okay. I've found that people tend to rephrase their questions once they realize they're getting answers they don't like.

A dad and daughter wanted a Sunshine State Readers section, but we don't have one, so I asked if they had titles. The little girl knew one, and I couldn't remember who wrote it so I went to look it up. Upon finding it in the kids' section, I asked if they had any other questions and then the girl came up with a second title. The dad seemed slightly annoyed at the daughter for not thinking of asking me when we were already up at the computer, but I happened to know this one and another trip to the desk was not necessary. The especially funny part is, after chastising his kid for failing to think of both titles at the desk to save time, he answered my "anything else you need?" with a request for a book for himself. Hello, pot? This is the kettle. You're black!

A crabby woman came up and wanted A Million Little Pieces, which Oprah has apparently been hawking on her show again because this lady was the third to ask that before noon. I told her immediately that we were out, and I think that rubbed her the wrong way because in her mind I was probably just too lazy to help. Then she wanted to know where the "regecy books" were, and I didn't recognize that immediately but when she said they were romances I remembered where I'd heard it before. I took her to Series Romance and when we got there I asked if it was a particular one. She said, "I'm looking for the Christmas one." I asked if she had a title and said I wasn't sure we'd have gotten a Christmas one yet. She just looked at me and gave me one of those pursed "I'm so disappointed in you" old lady looks, treated me to a moment of silence, and then replied, "I'll look elsewhere. THANK you." Well thank you too, ass. I guess I should know better than to be so crass as to request information about what book you want, like THE TITLE.

Now some good customers and funnies:

This lady goes on my WALL OF FAME for good customers. She has the company of about five other people, amazing huh?

She came up to the desk asking for help finding a book, and she apologized for not having been able to find it herself. "I always look for them myself first," she said, seeming like she was really sorry to be bothering me. I was happy to oblige her, though. I told her we like customers like her and joked that I bet she didn't walk around shedding books either. She didn't know what I meant, but I described it for her, how customers sometimes walk around with an armful and then just kind of put them down wherever because they decide against purchasing them. "Oh, NO," she said, sounding almost disgusted at the idea. "I would NEVER do something like that. This is like a holy place, I respect and honor the bookstore!"

Wow.

How much you want to bet she's either been a librarian or worked in retail before?

Then there was a guy asking my coworker to help him find Aesop's Fables books. I helped her a little and they found one in the kids' section. Because I wasn't actually with them when they found it because I was helping someone else on the phone, I dropped by the section after I was free to make sure they were doing okay, and the man told me he had indeed found the book, with our help. "That's great, you're wonderful," I told him as I started to go away. "Tell my WIFE that!" he called back, and I told him to give me her number 'cause I'd call her! Heh. Later he was at the register and our backup cashier was trying to talk him into a discount card, and he asked if it works on the coffee too. She said it does, and my manager (who happened to be up there too), added to that, "AND cake!" The man's eyes lit up. "CAKE?? I'm just going to have to get one." Ahh, a man talked into a discount card at a bookstore because of discounts on cake. . . .

A dude looking for a "Where to retire" book went to the travel section with me and found a For Dummies book about Priceline. He picked it up and said, "Ha-ha, you know what? They have these for everything. You know what I SAW??? I saw one over there that said . . . " big pause, " . . . SEX for dummies! Ha-ha-ha!" I grinned and said it was kind of amusing that they had that, even though they now have them for everything. "It seems the human species has got that one pretty well figured out though," I agreed, and the man replied, "It's probably for MEN." Yeah okay!


10/19/05

A woman came to Customer Service armed with lots of wonderful information about the book she wanted. Well, except for little things like, well, title and author. She knew what it was about and figured if she told me a bunch of stuff about it--including the information that it was "a FABULOUS book"--then I would be able to find it. After I explained that I couldn't really do a "what it's about" search, that I needed keywords for either title or author, she began to realize that I couldn't help her, but then launched into a long description of how she'd read the book and liked it and wanted to buy it for someone else but couldn't remember what it was called. "Well where would books like that be?" she asked, and see, considering it was supposed to be an anecdotal story about some aspect of an educational program in some random school, there isn't exactly a "section" for that. I ended up parking her in Education under Social Science. It's always fun to listen to such in-depth descriptions about the content of books when customers have no actually useful information. . . .

So once we got to the section, she began to have incredible difficulty discerning where the books she wanted started and ended. Social Science is kind of an iffy area, with only a shelf and a half labeled "Education" before it goes into . . . ahem . . . "Lifestyles." I kind of wanted to avoid having this somewhat elderly lady browsing into the books about how to have satisfying gay sex and the issues of queer life, so I pointed it out immediately when we got to the section, showing her where Education began and ended, repeating for her that it was only a shelf and a half. Almost immediately--after describing the cover to me in an extremely helpful way, of course--she began to browse the shelves below, and I saw that she was doing that so I reminded her that Education was only this top shelf and the next part of the shelf below it. This did not help, because she was like, "Oh, okay honey," and then continued to try to search among the books about gay erotica and the proper use of anal lube. "The section starts right HERE," I insisted, "and ends right HERE," pointing to the sign saying "Lifestyles" again, "it's only this top shelf and part of the next one. Then you're into something else." She told me she understood and began just looking at the top shelf, but after I left I bet she wandered dottily into books featuring homosexual dating guides and fisting techniques. . . .

I was reorganizing my Thomas the Tank section when I noticed a man was kinda hanging around the customer service desk. He was right by the bell you can ring for service but wasn't ringing it, so I figured he probably didn't need help, but I decided to go up to see just in case. "Hi, did you need some help?" I greeted him, and he said he did, so I pulled a dirty trick and said, "Oh, I'm sorry for keeping you waiting, I didn't hear you ring!" Turns out he HAD seen the bell, but didn't ring it because he was "in no hurry" and figured sooner or later someone would notice him. Actually, watching you stand there and tap your foot is a lot more annoying than responding to an impersonal summons we made available just for that purpose. It's one thing if they don't know it's there, but this dude was purposely not using it.

This morning my manager called me to the back to help with something involving the stability of our back room counter, and while I was back there we got a delivery and I stuck around to find out what we were getting and meanwhile b.s.ing with the manager. But our cashier poked her head in and said there was a customer who needed service at the desk, and as I came to see what she needed the cashier warned me that she seemed "Cranky. Very cranky." Turns out she'd come to the desk and no one had come to help (as I was in the back), and when the cashier went by on her way to the back to see if she had been assigned any bathroom checks for the day, she passed the woman just as she was ringing the bell for help. The cashier told her that the customer service person would be right with her (since she's not supposed to do customer service when she's "chained" to a register), and that's when she came to get me. As we were walking up toward her the lady saw us and yelled out, "CAN I GET SOME HELP HERE PLEASE??" I was like, "We're COMING!" After that she was pleasant and even made a joke when we were searching for her book, but it irritates me that we were obviously coming TOWARD her and she still thought she had to prompt someone to assist her.

A woman wanted to know where we'd keep Louis L'Amour, so I told her it was Westerns and asked if she knew where that was. She didn't, so I said I'd come show her and pointed toward the front of the store. She saw me doing so but ignored me and started trying to walk toward the back of the store--this happens a lot because I have to go backwards to come out of the desk, which probably makes it look to them like I am going to lead them toward the back (and most of the store is behind Customer Service, not in front). That's why I POINTED. But she ignored me. Before I came out I said, "No, THAT way . . . THAT--Ma'am, it's THAT way!" because she was just merrily motoring her little butt toward the back of the store like she wasn't even gonna wait for me. And she still didn't listen to me until I came out and started going in the right direction, pointing and saying "THIS way, THIS WAY" that she finally turned her ass around. Blehhhh. . . .

And one funny . . . I had a woman ask me a quick question and get a quick answer, and when it was over she seemed to be about to ask another serious question, but instead she asked me about one of the pins I was wearing, which says "Muggles for Harry Potter" on it. "Now, MUGGLES, that means the non-wizards, right?" she asked with a totally straight face. I agreed with her on that point and then went on to help the next customer. . . .


10/18/05

A woman came up and said she wanted to order a couple books, so I said okay. Then she said, "Do you want me to give you the author or. . . . " Well, granted, I knew what the other frickin' choice was--not like this is rocket science--but I tend to like people to finish their sentences and she just stopped there and looked at me, so I replied, " . . . Or?" I suppose her choices were "author" and "or," because she didn't miss a beat and replied with the title. I just let that go and typed the title in, and after I'd hit enter to search for it and said "okay" while it was searching, she jumped in with the next title. Hey, that "okay" did not mean I was ready for you to ramble on with the next title, lady. Notice how I have not said anything about this book yet. Notice I have not said, "All right, that one's ordered for you, what's next?" Notice I have not said "I'm ready for your next request." Hey, really, I promise, I will take control of this situation and tell you when I want what information. YOU NO TALK NOW! Sheesh.

Our café associate was ambushed by a weirdo who talked her ear off for about an hour about the apocalypse. It's stuff like this that makes me thank my lucky stars I'm usually in Customer Service and can walk around freely, so that if such a thing happened to me I could conceivably pretend to be needed somewhere else and hide there. Somewhere like the supply closet. Yeah.

Ugh, and I had a repeated encounter with one of my pet peeves. This dude came up and he wanted books by "Stephen Hawkins." Why does it drive me up the wall when people call Stephen Hawking "Stephen Hawkins"? Whatever. What was really funny in this case is how many frickin' times he said it. And how many times I said it back to him correctly. When we were over in the section looking for the books he even made a random "hmm" noise and then said "Stephen Hawkins" for no reason. Is "Hawking" that unpronounceable of a name? DO YOU SEE A LETTER S ANYWHERE ON HIS LAST NAME ON THAT BOOK COVER? Jeeez guy!

Where's my Valium?


10/17/05

Today we were beseiged by two extremely BATTY-ass women.

My coworker and I kind of teamed up to help them, because A) She had never done a home-delivery order before and B) They were a goddamn handful and a half. So here we have two batty, slightly elderly ladies wanting to have this book shipped to their home. And they want to use a discount card, but the lady who is ordering it thinks her card might be expired. And yes, indeed, it expired two months ago. First she was disappointed that we couldn't get all of her name, address, and phone number information by "putting that through"--she thought the discount card could somehow be swiped by our computer. Which is, like, a regular PC thing, not a register. But I guess she isn't expected to know that; the thing is, WE are expected to know that, and we don't need to be told "Hey, here's a hint--do THIS thing that your machine doesn't do!"

So, after we collected the information, the woman's equally batty friend decided to let her use HER discount card so we could apply the discount. No problem. But then when we gave the card BACK after getting the info off it, they got them switched and freaked out. First the lady whose card was still good was looking at the expired date on her friend's card shrieking about how that can't BE because she didn't GET hers in August, and no matter how much we tried to drill it through her head that HER card was the one that was still good and didn't expire 'til January, she had to have a good minute-and-a-half screaming session of incomprehension over her expired discount card that we won't let her use when it shouldn't be expired in the first place. Lady. Please LISTEN. We're letting you use it and it's still good--no really! Shut up! I ended up having to pluck the card from her fist and switch it with the other lady's, and THEN she started wailing about how THIS can't be either because it says it's expired this last January. "No," I assured her, "YOUR CARD IS GOOD, it does not expire until JANUARY 2006." She insisted that it says 05, and we're like WE KNOW, the card says "member since," not "expires on."

Finally the batshit ass stopped freaking, and I discovered we'd made a very minor oversight. The computer my coworker had started the sale on is not hooked up to the printer, so we had no way to print the receipt from that computer. I hadn't wanted to leave my coworker alone with these weirdos, and as she processed the transaction I was trying to hold down the fort should they freak out again because I'm very good at putting our policies in simple terms, but yet again on this one I failed. I explained like this: "And we're going to print you a receipt in just a minute. I have to do it on this OTHER computer, though, because that computer won't print it. As soon as she puts it through, I'll print it off of the other computer."

This was too much for them.

"Okay, great," the woman who was buying the book said brightly, and then started walking AWAY. I called after her, "Do you not WANT a receipt?" She replied--just as brightly--"Yes, I do!" "Well," I said, about to explain again that she was going to have to WAIT while I got it from the OTHER computer, but she interrupted me: "Yes I need the receipt. So . . . COME ON!" and she started walking toward the register!

Okay, so now she's decided she can get her printout of the transaction we've just done on completely unrelated register computers. Lady, I don't mean to be a complete jerk, but LET ME RUN THIS, okay? You don't have two brain cells to bang together on the subject of how to do this, so how about letting someone who knows what she's doing deal with it instead of trying to prompt me?

I couldn't get her to stay. She said she was going to the register to check out and she'd be back for the receipt. She did indeed come back, after a little lull during which my coworker and I were able to discuss their batshititude. The woman came back, took my receipt, and went on her merry way.

But that wasn't the end of it. . . . Oh, no, not the end. . . .

A young man came up to us right after that and told us that he's been outside studying on the patio and has been listening for some time to the horribly pathetic yapping and howling of a small dog who is locked in a car with the windows up. He said it was a big white truck in the handicapped space. And he discussed with us what we should do about it. I said I'd make an announcement describing the truck and asking the owner to come to the desk for a message. I made said announcement while the student went back outside. No one came to the desk, and I was thinking about the poor dog stuck in the truck without even the windows cracked, in the Florida heat. I waited a very short time and then went outside to see if the people had maybe been coincidentally leaving just as I'd made my announcement.

There in the handicapped space was a big white truck occupied by the two batshit women. The passenger was holding a tiny chihuahua that was trembling and licking its nose.

The student (who was still on the patio) and I had a lovely discussion of what we wished we could do to those women--namely, lock THEM in a hot car for forty minutes--and decided that people suck and that we hoped they'd never had children. "Would they do that to a CHILD?" he postulated. "The sad thing is, they probably would!"

That poor little doggie.

I also had a kid come up and ask me for "Chobbits." I am familiar with Chobits, the Japanese comic and anime, and when I repeated back to him that we had some Chobits manga he corrected me: "NO, it's 'Chobbits.' C-H-O-B-B-I-T-S." I apologized and told him I'd heard of Chobits with one B but not "Chobbits" with two B's, saying maybe it was something different from Chobits and that I'd check. Well, of course there was no "Chobbits," and from there it got worse; he'd seen the other Chobits but we only had volumes he didn't need, he wanted number 3. I told him that if it wasn't on the shelf it wasn't in the store, and I could order it if he wanted, but he didn't. He wanted a third option which didn't exist: He wanted me to go check around in our back room for it, and when I told him we don't have backstock he pretty much asked the same question again in a different way, suggesting that I go get the replenishments from wherever they were if we were out. Ahh yes, maybe if you ask me in a slightly different way, I'll realize you really want this and I'll go get it from where we're hiding it. Our ploy to stop you from spending money in our store fails again!

I was on the phone at Customer Service and this woman walked up with just a perfectly cartoony "I have a question" face, like if she fed enough interrogativeness into her expression I might realize she needed help and hang up on who the hell ever had the balls to be monopolizing my help on the telephone. As if she realized she couldn't talk to me because I was on the phone, she started making weird gestures with a small stack of books, angling them at me held high over her head like she was attempting to hand them to me, still with that "eh? eh?" look on her face. Finally I guess she'd had enough trying to hold her question like a full bladder, and called over in a stage whisper (oh, it's so hilarious when they do that!), "Can you take care of me HERE? Or do I go to the register?" Good fricking God, lady, I'm in the middle of helping a customer and you want to interrupt me to ask if you need to go somewhere else to ring your shit up? When you already KNOW there's a register? Why don't you just go to it since you have no way of knowing how much longer I'll be? I mostly wrote this one down because her animated character was so interesting. I wish I had it on film.

A crappy husband and wife came up to me and one of my managers. They wanted "plans for homes that are like on a lake," describing the ones whose decks are on poles and whatnot. My manager had helped them once earlier, so she spearheaded the interaction, but almost immediately she got a summons to the back room to open the receiving door for a delivery, so she had to scurry and I attempted to continue helping them. I asked them if they were after books or magazines but by that point they were just involved in talking to each other, "Oh, she said vacation homes, maybe we should go try to find that," okay guys HELLO, I'm still here and I'm trying to help you. I asked again if they wanted books or magazines of home plans, but the woman kinda waved her hand at me and said, "Yes, uh-huh, thank you," and the two of them drifted away. All I can say is, that couple is probably one of the best-matched pairs I've ever seen. I wonder if they ever have jackassery contests? And I wonder whether you win if you're more of a jerk or less of a jerk? I'd ask them, but they'd probably ignore me.

Haha, this is a nice one. I had a lady call for help finding a book and I was elsewhere in the store helping a customer, so I had to answer on the cordless store phone I was carrying with me. She told me she wanted to ask me to look up a book and see if I had it for her, and since I was not at the computer I told her, "Okay, let me just get to the right desk to do that, and I'll be right with you." She agreed, and I put her on hold. I completed helping the customer I was with and hurried to the desk, where I picked her up. "Hi, still holding?" I asked, and she said yes, so I said, "Okay, what can I do for you?" There was a short silence that somehow conveyed annoyance, and then she said, "YES, I wanted to see if you had a BOOK." I replied, "Okay, yes . . . " ya know, waiting for her info like we talked about, and she snapped, "Well?? Do you HAVE it?" I explained to her that she had not yet told me what book she was even looking for, we hadn't gotten to that part yet. She apologized (to her credit!) and gave me the title. I searched and found it was a book we carried, so I told her I'd have to check the shelf and see. "I need four copies," she barked, and I said it said we carried the paperback, and I'd have to check the shelf and see how many we had in the store. "But do you HAVE it??" she demanded in a voice like "Look at what you people are putting me through!" I told her I WOULD HAVE TO CHECK THE SHELF, the computer was telling me I carried the book and the next step to finding out DO WE HAVE IT??? is to CHECK THE SHELF. She finally got off my ass and stopped trying to prompt me to help her, and later I got to meet her when she came in for the book, which of course was a pleasure.


10/16/05

A woman with a title but no author asked for help finding a book. I looked it up and found it, and it was a book we didn't carry so she wanted to look around and requested that I give her the author's name. "It's 'Waldman,'" I replied, and she said, "Okay, Waldaman." I corrected her and spelled it. She said, "Okay, Walderman. Walderman. . . . " ::sigh::

Ahh, and a café Asshole: Some dipshit was pissed off that lots of tables were taken up by studying students. Even though there were still open tables, he was annoyed because he said sometimes there isn't enough of a choice and sometimes it's just totally full of students, so we should post a sign saying they aren't allowed to do that except for a limited amount of time. And then he waved his hand over at the cooking section and the audio section and told us it would be a good idea to just clear out some of those shelves and expand the café, then we'd have room for more tables.

Guess what dude? We're not mainly a coffee shop, we're mainly a bookstore, with a café inside it for comfort and convenience. But by all means, genius, just tell us to remove all audio books and cookbooks from our store so we can have more places for people like you to plant their asses and spill fucking coffee on our books. Sounds like a plan to me. I'm submitting it as a Bright Idea tomorrow.


10/15/05

PEEVE OF THE WEEK!

People who don't know what they're looking for but expect you to find it anyway. They come in with some vague idea of what they want or who they want it for, but no book in mind, just "the right thing." For instance, today a woman came in wanting an appropriate present to give someone who was becoming a cop. She wasn't rude or anything, she was an okay customer, but she had NO clue what she wanted and expected me to fill in the gaps. She was also cool with it when I explained to her that without some direction as to WHO it was useless to look in Biography (yeah, let's try the "cops" section, that's sure to exist), and True Crime was mostly gory accounts of, well, true crimes, and Inspiration was mostly, ya know, gifty things that certainly weren't going to be cop-oriented. She wasn't satisfied with anything I suggested but at least she kind of wasn't expecting to find anything. I know I will be having a lot more of these kinds of questions as Christmas approaches, so I'm going ahead and getting my hatred of them started now.

A lady who didn't speak English very well--some sort of European lady--came up to me and my coworker and asked us for "tooth-brushing books." I couldn't think of any off the top of my head even though I am the kids' specialist, but I was about to go on break anyway, so I told my coworker to just try looking it up since I had no idea, and we both went about our business.

Come to find out that my coworker went to the desk and the lady didn't follow her, which is kind of a pet peeve among us workers because sometimes you find out information that you have to ask them about and they're just standing where you left them, requiring you to be a damn messenger. So she was already kinda annoyed at the lady, but she's always pretty perky and polite, so she ignored this annoyingness and returned to the lady with the news that there wasn't much of anything to order but if she wanted to get one of the available books she'd have to come to the desk to give her info.

"I can't go to the desk, my son is in here," she replied, even though she wasn't actually watching her son or anything. I guess she just didn't want to leave her kid. But then later, inexplicably, she did so . . . right up into the desk!

"Excuse me, ma'am, you can't come up HERE," my coworker protested, and the lady barked back that she'd come up because she'd been told to. (She said "come up to the desk," not "come up IN the desk!") C'mon now. After saying that she had come up because she'd been told to, she made it clear that she was now listening to whatever my coworker needed to tell her and tried to prompt her by putting her hand up to her ear and saying, "WHAT? What-what?" After explaining the situation about ordering a book, the lady had a little temper tantrum and told her to never mind, giving her a "talk to the hand" motion and stalking away. What the hell?

A woman came up holding a small stack of individual new comic issues and asked me to tell her what you're supposed to "look for" in a comic. I had no idea what she was talking about, and she continued about how she was buying them for a seven-year-old and definitely planned to get the Fantastic Four because they're popular right now and the Captain America because "it's an original." (Ohhhkay.) But then she wanted me to tell her "what to look for" among the others, and I told her I needed to know what the requirements were for whoever was getting them. She continued to be vague and wanted me to tell her just what the best ones are to get, and I told her it depended on the personal interests of the person who collected comics. She told me she was most interested in their "value," which I'm sure means so much to this seven-year-old, and even after I explained to her that no new comic was going to be worth money right now, she wanted me to explain to her how she could tell which ones were "going to be" valuable or whatever. Then she explained to me again that her choices of Fantastic Four and Captain America fit these descriptions. Okay, whatever. Unless it's a limited run or a special edition, it's just a damn sheet of tree with colorful crap on it, and I guess rarity is what makes it valuable. I don't know what her deal was but she still wanted info after I told her about the deal with limited runs and special editions, so I just ended up telling her I didn't know anything about comics and she left me alone.

A guy came up to me in the kids' section and said he wanted a Star Wars book put out by Scholastic. I told him I needed a little more info--was it for little kids, or what? Is it a kids' book? He gave me a sort of sarcastic response, expressing that it wouldn't be by Scholastic Publications if it wasn't for children. Which of course isn't true because they publish other stuff. But no, he knows all. I told him I needed to know a little more about it before I knew which section to show him, and I tried to ask him if it was like a nonfiction storybook or what, but he interrupted me and irritably informed me that it had been mentioned in a Star Wars-oriented magazine or something. Yes, that tells me so much. I gave up on getting anything useful out of him and told him there were only two places in the kids' section where we had Star Wars books, and that one of them was here in Beginning Movies. I showed him the section and he didn't even look at what I was showing him, seeming even more frustrated, and said, "It's just a children's storybook!" I told him the only other thing there was in Kids' was a collection of chapter books, and asked if THAT was what he was looking for. "I don't know!" he shot back at me, because it's my fault he has no words for what he wants. I showed him the books and immediately he pulled one book off the shelf and claimed that was it. I told him there were several different series in there that were put out by the right company, but he just ignored me and said, "Yes, THIS is it" to me again, in this tone of voice like "God, FINALLY, you got around to getting me what I asked for." People like this should learn that I only have what you give me for information; you didn't tell me whether it was about the movies or if it was a story, or a picture book, or WHAT, but then you go and act like I'm an ass because "Star Wars books by Scholastic" wasn't enough information. That's the best I can do if you know more than you're sharing with me!


10/13/05

Guest Assholes again! (Obviously, since I wasn't at work today.)

My manager was called to the register, and on his way up he was stopped by a woman who asked him if he was the manager. Before he could even say anything, she said, "Well, I'm not impressed with your management skills! Your cashier was standing outside talking to her boyfriend and then didn't even say thank you to me when I spent $35 in your store!" She didn't wait for a response and just marched on out the front door, and even though my manager went ahead and said, "It's appreciated!" to her he wasn't even sure she heard.

So he continued going to the register just to make sure that that was the only reason he was being called, and he got the full story: Our cashier was not "talking to her boyfriend"; she was giving a customer directions to somewhere when he asked her after he already left the store, so they were calling the directions back and forth through the door when the ass walked up. She put her stuff down at the wrong register and our cashier asked her to move to the right one, but the lady ignored her, ultimately forcing her to walk between the two registers so that she could operate out of her own register while still interacting with the jerk.

Now, what I don't get is, if the lady was going to not pay attention to anything that was going on and then assume the worst and whine about it--which is what she did when she chose to assume that the cashier was "talking to her boyfriend" instead of doing something completely legitimate--then why would she also insult the person she was complaining to? Everyone knows you can't make someone else look bad if you insult the person you're trying to get them in trouble with, because then BOTH of them know you're the one who's out of line. Even another customer who was waiting for service volunteered that our cashier didn't do anything wrong. What a rag. And I bet she thinks she's showed us, too!

Also, that same cashier had a hell of a day; some drunk grabbed her ass. He didn't buy anything and left immediately after that so there was no way to track him, but I would have loved to see our manager show him what ends up happening to HIS ass if he grabs another person's. . . .


10/10/05

Okay, so first a couple guest Assholes, again! Wow, they had a doozy of a day without me. . . .

Some dude had a discount card that had run out, so he asked them to renew him. He then went home and was informed by his wife that she had a card that WASN'T out of date, and she demanded that he go back to the store and get the whole thing undone and apply her discount card that was still good. So he did her bidding and came back, and got real pissy at my manager that we hadn't somehow psychically known that they had another card. "It should have been on there, the computer shouldn't have said it was expired if you looked me up," he said, of course not understanding at all that if you hand them an expired card and then don't argue at all about renewing it, there's no reason for us to think you might have, ya know, more than one freaking card in date. He was just adamant that we should have known it somehow, like expecting our software to know that his card was attached to some other card that was still in date without of course understanding at all how the computers were set up. Then, he was a dickhead to my manager about whether he was going to get charged twice. My manager assured him that he would NOT get charged twice but the customer wouldn't leave it alone, and of course also his wife called on the cell phone harassing him about whether he was "taking care of it." He just went on his pointless tirade for about ten minutes all upset that he thought he was going to get charged twice and didn't believe that it'd been taken out of the computer like it never happened. What do you think you're going to accomplish by accusing the manager of not doing his job, guy?

And then there was also this guest Asshole: Manga lady. A woman who did not speak very good English decided to misinterpret a sign that says "MANGA BOOKS, BUY 2 GET 1 FREE! Look for the label to save!" She was all over my manager demanding that the sign was misleading, saying so in her heavily accented English, demanding that ALL the manga books be buy 2 get 1 free since she hadn't bothered to read the whole sign. She was holding up the register line whining about this even as my manager assured her that it was only the marked titles, and even one of the customers in line muttered that she needed to read the fine print. She ended the fit by leaving the books there and storming out with her disappointed sons. Well you sure showed us! How dare we make signs that say . . . exactly what they mean?

Here're some of mine.

I was stocking a shelf at the end of an aisle, and some dude came and kinda stood at the complete other end and I had a feeling he was just staring at me waiting for me to come over and offer to assist him. I moved to the next aisle with my armload of books (because, hey, dickhead, either come over and ask for help or call "excuse me!" or something, but don't just stand at the end of the aisle attempting to trap me in or something without actually being civil!). He proceeded to just move to the end of the next aisle when I did and stand there, and I guess he realized that he was being a putz because he actually walked in and this time said, "Excuse me?"

I looked up and asked what I could do for him and he said, "Well I need some HELP here!" He didn't really say it rudely, more like he thought he might be talking to someone incompetent. I was like, "Okay, what did you need?" as cheerful as could be, and he told me what he needed. I looked it up and it was supposed to be in the self-help section of Christian Living, and so I told him so and started to come out to take him there. "So I guess it should be up front in nonfiction then?" he asked. I don't know what he thought he was going to accomplish by saying something like that since, well, I ALREADY LOOKED UP WHERE TO TAKE HIM AND WAS TAKING HIM THERE, but it was also screwy because our nonfiction . . . is . . . NOT . . . up front. . . . You know what, dude? Why don't you just follow me like a good sheep and stop trying to think, okay? It'll probably do us both good.

And now for my Dick of the Day.

This dude came in in the early morning and rang the customer service bell. I put away the book I was holding and ventured toward the desk, during which time he rang the bell again. Immediately I was made aware that I'd be dealing with a winner here. Well, at least I had some warning!

I showed up and the dude said, "I'm looking for . . . " and gave me the title of his book. I had heard something from another employee about someone wanting this book--I wasn't sure, but I thought I remembered her talking about the person who ordered it being a dickhead--and so I forewarned him that I didn't think we had that book since I remembered someone having to order it. "Well you SHOULD have it," he said, "because I ORDERED IT and they called and said it was in!" I just looked him in the eyes and said, "Well you didn't TELL me that part!" Don't just come and say you're "looking for" a book and then expect me to know that it's sitting on the hold shelf for you, jackass! Anyway, I asked for his name and he said to "try" a last name he then spelled for me. I went to the shelf and found a book with that name on it.

"NO, that's not it," he said, "I ordered that one the week before but I ended up getting it somewhere ELSE so I already TOLD them to dis-order that." (Dis-order??) He gave me the title again, getting pissed off obviously. Calm as a cucumber, I looked at the phone number on the back of the book that had come in and punched up any orders under it. There was a book ordered under that number that only had the dude's first name on it. I remembered more about my coworker's description of her previous encounter with this man at that point; she'd said that the bastard refused to give his last name for some jackass reason.

"Ah, well it shows here that you didn't GIVE your last name," I told him, "it says it was ordered under just 'Joseph.' I'll check that name." "Well that's FINE if it's just under Joseph!" he shouted. What the fuck? I handed it to him and then he kept going on about how if it was ordered under Joseph that didn't matter, he just wanted his book. Um, sorry guy, but yeah it DOES matter--to ME--what name you ordered under, because if you tell me your last name and you ordered it under your FIRST, it's in a different place. This is the Land of the Alphabet, asshole. I got him out of my face by telling him he could take it to the register, and he left me alone at that point, though he did return and piss off one of my coworkers as well by being really snotty while ordering a book, barking about how he just wanted the cheapest edition when she offered him several options of different editions of the title he wanted, and then just kept making her repeat herself at every turn because he wasn't listening to anything she said during the ordering process. Hey asshole, pay attention and maybe next time we won't inconvenience you so much in the process of helping you to get what you want.

Here's something cute now: A mom with three kids was shopping and her youngest apparently was confused as to whether we were a library or a bookstore because he thought you could borrow the books and bring them back. "No, you have to BUY the books," the mom explained, "and you don't bring them back." And then--this is the cute part--one of her other kids added, "Yeah, but you can bwing it back as long as you have the weceipt." Awww! Future good customer! I love it.


10/9/05

My Assholes today are all guest Assholes. I only had a couple of slightly annoying people today myself, nothing to really make the list. Both of them are from my managers too.

One was just from yesterday, my manager was calling people to say their books were in. This book was for a high school kid, and a young kid answered so she asked for the name on the label. She then heard the kid yell to Mom about whether the older brother was home, and so Mom asked who it was. "Who's this?" the kid asked, and the manager said what store it was. "Oh," my manager heard the mom say, "well we already got our book online, just hang up." What? The kid argued with the mom and she replied, "We already GOT it, just hang UP!" "But that's rude!" the kid protested, and insisted she get on the line. Mom finally picked up and said "hello" in an irritable way, and when she started talking Mom just hung up in the middle of it. Yeah, well I guess it's not worth being civil to anyone for ordering your book like YOU ASKED US TO because you already frigging got it somewhere else. My manager marked her book "Send back: R.B." The R.B. is for RUDE BUTTHOLE.

Some lady also told my manager that the kids' section had no order. She better be glad I wasn't there. Her head would not be in order with her body.

And a funny: One of my managers walked out of the men's room just as a dad and son were walking in. The son, who was about four, yelled out, "Is THAT a MAN??" Heh. He was thinking, Um, last time I checked. . . .


10/8/05

PEEVE OF THE WEEK!

This week I just hate crying kids. It's rare that I go a day without hearing some kid screaming like he is being tortured at being made to leave the entertaining train set in the kids' section. "Okay, time to go see Mommy." "NO! NO DADDY I WANNA PWAY WIF DA TWAIIIINS! WAAAHHHHHHH!" "Mommy's waiting, Mason. Let's go." "WAHHHHHH! WAAHHHNOOOOOOOWAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" "Mason, if you're going to act like this every time we have to leave, we're not going to come anymore!" "WAHHHNODADDYNOWAAAAHHHHHH TWAIIIIIIINS!!!!" Does it never fucking end? Well, at least it ends for ME when Daddy carries Mason out kicking and screaming and red-faced into the parking lot. Holy shit, am I glad I'm not going to breed.

A woman came up to me and a coworker and asked us for "A Million Tiny Pieces, the book Oprah's been raving about." It sounded really familiar but then she said, "I think it's a children's book," and that made me doubt that I knew what she meant. Well, I tried her title but there was nothing called that in our system. I asked her if she was sure that was the title and she gave me one of those "of COURSE I'm sure" looks and told me she thought that was it. I still had the feeling I should know what it was but I couldn't think of any books that were both children's books and were associated with Oprah. We generally have media-mentioned books--ESPECIALLY Oprah--on our Media Alerts page, so I glanced at it on the site and there was NOOOOTHHHING. I asked her if it was a while ago that it was mentioned on Oprah and she claimed it wasn't even two weeks ago, so I don't know why it wasn't on the Media page.

Anyway, after she left probably thinking I'm incompetent, I realized what she must have meant. I don't know why I didn't think of this, but obviously she was talking about A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, which is NOT a kids' book despite having candy on the front of it. It's for adults and it's a biography--her telling me it was a kids' book totally threw me off. I think I should have picked up the ball on that one OR the computer shouldn't be so damn picky that typing in "a million tiny pieces" like the customer said yielded NO results, but more than anything to save this transaction I should have listened to the golden rule: NEVER assume the customer knows what she is talking about.

Oh yeah, and on that one she told me that she thought the author's name was "Gray. G-R-A-Y." She made me type it in and do a search that way, which was pretty funny since A) It turned out it was Frey, not Gray, and B) She thought I was gonna be able to find this book based on maybe knowing the author's last name and it being something like Gray. (There were roughly 1,500 books by somebody Gray in the database. Not happening.)

Dammit, I really hope that whenever she does get a hold of the book, she realizes she had the title and author wrong, but I have a feeling she's going to be one of those people who doesn't realize she gave me the wrong information and dismisses me in her mind as incompetent. I frigging hate that.

A woman came in wanting me to get a book she'd put on hold more than a week ago. We clear them out after three days from the date on the hold paper unless otherwise noted, so her book was long gone. It turned out to be something we carry all the time, though, a school reading book, and then she wanted me to find the availability of her son's other book. As I was looking it up her cell phone rang. I almost immediately had news about the book that I needed to tell her--it wasn't available to us--but she just kept standing there yakking as if SHE was waiting for ME to do something (though she did have the courtesy to apologize for the interruption). I thought maybe she'd put the person on hold for just a second and listen to what I needed to tell her, but she just kept talking, and asking questions of the person on the other end so obviously she wasn't just trying to find a convenient break in the conversation to interrupt or end it. I made it very obvious that I was waiting for her--not looking at the screen, drumming my fingers a little, repeatedly looking at her and looking away again trying not to seem too rude, but guess what? I don't have all day to stand here while you have a conversation, and before I can get back to my shit I have to finish with your shit! So can you please shut up?

I went to the shelf to get her son's school reading book in the meantime, and when I came back SHE WAS STILL ON THE PHONE, and I heard her say something to the other person: "Well, you know, I'm here at the bookstore . . . oh yeah, they're waiting for me to get off the phone . . . yeah blah blah blah" and kept going! So she KNEW I was waiting for her and she just didn't give a shit! Jeez. At least it didn't take too much longer for her to finish.

These two kids who were too damn cool for themselves were sitting around in the train bullshitting. You could tell they thought they were soooo cool, both of them making loser comments and making fun of each other. I called them goofballs and they cracked up. Later I saw them with our toy fortune teller machine taking turns asking it if they were going to have a hot girlfriend and whether each other were gay. Such upstanding young men we're raising.

A woman came up to me and told me that she didn't think what we were playing on the television was appropriate. "It's fine if the older ones want to watch it," she said, "but for the younger ones--it's too scary. IT'S SCARING MY KIDS!" I asked her what was on the television that was scary--God, the scariest thing we have is Pokémon, and that's not scary in the traditional sense, though it's scary in plenty of other ways. She told me that she didn't know but that the music was scaring her children as they were playing nearby, that the music was "scary music." I walked over to the TV to see what was on it. It was Wallace and Gromit.

Okay, maybe I'm mistaken, but isn't Wallace and Gromit rated G?

I told her I wasn't sure what ages it was recommended for but I didn't think it was an objectionable movie, and she replied, "Well, you know, *I* think you should just stick to . . . you know, Donald Duck or something."

So I guess because there is exciting, suspenseful-sounding music accompanying an action scene in Wallace and Gromit it must be scary and inappropriate, and we can't have such things frightening your two girls as they browse the Barbie books. (Now WHAT is scary again??) Oh yeah, and the kids looked like they were like six and seven, not like little tots or anything.

Especially since Donald Duck is NEVER EVER scary.

[donald duck is scary.]

Oh, when I came in this morning some dude walked up at the same time as I did and saw me pull on the door--it was locked, and he'd seen that, but he said, "They're not OPEN yet??" I just shrugged and he said, "But the sign says they open at NINE!" I said yeah and he goes, "But it's like NINE-TWENTY!" It wasn't fucking nine-twenty. Shut up guy.

Over my days off there was a Mr. Wise sighting. (I know! Run and hide!) We again thought he hadn't bothered us in a long time so he must be dead, but there he was again on Friday, alive and kicking . . . and grumping and whining. And this time he got my manager at the register to ring him up. So she got her Mr. Wise encounter.

So he started his reign of assholishness by butting three women in line. I don't know how my manager ended up taking that off him but she ignored it and asked him if he had a discount card. He said he did but not with him, and barked out his name. She said it would be easier to look for him by phone number and he's all, "WHY do you need my PHONE NUMBER?" grilling her about what they were going to use it for. "To look you UP," she explained, and of course it didn't work, probably because whenever he originally signed up for a discount card he said the same thing and wouldn't GIVE it to them to make shit like this easier.

She eventually found him in the system and found he'd expired. He made some uncomfortable comment: "Oh yeah? It expired, like I'm about to expire. Okay, well, renew it." She was shocked at that, usually you have to fight with people like him about expired cards, they act like you're trying to trick them. Mr. Wise wasn't even in his pajamas this time. My manager said she loves dealing with "mean people" because she is so nice back and it takes the wind out of their sails. It apparently worked with Mr. Wise because he stopped trying to run her over with his attitude.

I was helping a customer and another customer walked up with her son, waiting for my help. Her kid reached out and rang the bell. "NO," she said to him, "DON'T do that, that's rude." He rang it again. "Stop it! She's RIGHT there, that's annoying." He rang it again. "Don't do that. Trust me, she HATES that." HAHAHA! The kid kept ringing the bell and I guess Mom put her hand around it so it couldn't ring loudly or something--why didn't she just take it away from him or hold it out of his reach? When I got a glimpse at them THE KID WAS AS TALL AS HIS MOM which meant it wasn't like he was a disobedient toddler or something. What a little jerk. I thought the mom was great, how she totally read my mind about people who ring the bell when I'm standing there. Haha!

Oh, this is funny too, I got a customer and he said, "Okay, well you remember the last time I was here?" The look I gave him must've said it all 'cause he replied, "Yeah, okay, you don't remember, you see a lot of people." Hahaha. When he started talking about what he wanted, though, I did remember talking to him a few weeks ago. I found him what he wanted and it was good.

And the most annoying customer award goes to this jackass.

Okay. So first, she called and wanted to know whether a gift card she had received was good only in the store, only online, or both. I told her it was always one or the other because each has their own exclusive gift cards, and then she wanted to know how she can tell which hers was. I asked her what it looked like and she said, "Like a regular credit card." That doesn't sound like our gift cards. I asked her if it had a logo on it and she said it was gray and had the store logo, so I was like, hmm, guess it could be ours. "Tell you what," I said, "I'll try its barcode number in a balance request in our system. If it's a card that was activated by our servers, we'll know it's an in-store card." Then she questioned me, saying she didn't think that would work because it had been bought in another state and sent to her. "Yes, it will work," I said tiredly. Yeah, because nobody ever buys gift cards and then uses them at, ya know, OTHER STORES. Yes, I often suggest solutions that don't work.

So here's the fun part. Now that I'm at the register waiting for her barcode number she says, "Okay, let me go get it." Why didn't you have it with you when you called anyway? Well, it turned out it was one of our in-store cards, so she then wanted me to check and see if we had any of the three books she was looking for. And then she made me wait on THAT one too--she had to go get her information. So why do people CALL me when they are not ready with the information they need to request the stuff they called about? Anyway.

We actually carried all of them, but upon finding out that books cost more in the store than on the 'Net, she freaked and didn't want the first hardback she talked about because it'd take up just about all of her gift card. She was interested in the two paperbacks, though, and though I told her we carried them she said she wanted me to check if they were in stock. I found them both and asked if she wanted to hold them and she's like, "No." I'm like, "What?" "Before I decide if I'm getting them I have to ask the person I'd be buying them for." Strike three! Now this is the third time this lady called me and asked me for shit and wasted my time when she wasn't ready for the service she called to have provided. Piece of advice to you, lady: Could you please get your shit together before you come to my toilet? Thank you.


10/5/05

A customer grabbed my phone book to look something up, and when I came to the desk to see if she needed help she was already helping herself. (She'd seen the book behind the counter and went and grabbed it, but I didn't really care . . . there was no one there, so she picked it up herself.) What was weird is then she asked me if I knew where Kinko's is. Well, I didn't know exactly and even if I DO know exactly I'm not the greatest at directions, so unless I know I can give directions I just say I have no idea. That's what I did in this instance, and she claimed that Kinko's wasn't in the phone book. She started pondering that maybe they were called something else--kinda like our bowling alley here, Alley Katz, is actually in the book under AMF Alley Katz--but I strongly suspected for some reason (let's just call it Annoying Customer Radar) that the entry was in the book and she didn't have the alphabet skills to find it.

How to suggest to a customer that maybe she doesn't know the alphabet? How do you diplomatically say, "Well, you might be so oblivious or lazy as to not be able to find something in an alphabetical list, so let ME try." Oh, I got it. I grabbed another phone book we had somewhere else and claimed that it was newer, and maybe it had the entry even if the other one didn't. I found Kinko's in it and it was on our same street so I told her how to get there, and then just to satisfy my curiosity I had to peek in the phone book she was looking in to see if there was an entry for Kinko's. Of course, there was.

While I was finishing up a phone transaction with a customer, two women walked up to my desk and waited for my services, amusing themselves by pushing one of the buttons on this godawful music sampler display we have. Unlike most customers who actually get surprised and then want to turn it off, these women were into it, and jived to the music and tried another selection after the first sample was over. Now, when I got off the phone I tried to help them but the woman talking to me was talking really softly right next to this horrible blaring music. When I asked her to repeat herself for a third time on something she said, she began to act frustrated as if she just couldn't understand why I was having such a hard time hearing her, as the other woman with her continued to push selections until she'd heard everything. Since the first woman actually seemed confused as to why I couldn't hear her, I had to explain that the music was louder than her voice before she would speak the hell up.

A somewhat foreign gentleman--something European apparently--came up with a very large book and said, "Can you make this look like a present?" I supposed he meant did I do gift-wrapping, and I said no, but offered him the Hallmark section for our selection of wrapping paper and gift bags. He actually got out of line and went to shop for paper, and presently came back with a big roll. Oh no, I thought, he's gonna buy the stuff and then ask me to wrap it for him! But luckily he didn't. However, the next thing he said made no sense: "Now can you please cover up the price with a sticker?" I told him I didn't know what kind of sticker he meant me to cover the price with, and he seemed very shocked that there was no generally accepted method of forever hiding the price of a book from the person it is given to. In this case the book was even wrapped in a plastic coating and had the ISBN, bar code, and price printed on its cover underneath the plastic, so it wasn't like I could have pacified him by just pulling a blank price sticker out of my apron and slapping it on, since with the removal of the protective plastic the price would show. "Well what am I supposed to do in this situation?" he asked, and he seemed extremely disturbed that the person to receive the gift would see how much he paid for it. I explained to him that prices are printed right onto nearly every book as part of the bar code and it's normal--there isn't a way to get rid of it without defacing the book. He ended up calming down and getting out, but I did wonder what they do in his country that he was expecting from me.

A woman called for two books: A book we don't carry, and "All the Narnia books in one volume." I told her a couple of things we carry feature Narnia in one cover, but for some reason she thought that meant I didn't understand what she meant and repeated, "But it has to be all in one book, all seven of the Narnia stories but in one big book, do you have that?" I re-explained to her that it was indeed one book that I was talking about, and then decided to simplify it by not telling her about the big hardcover gift edition and told her I had it in hardcover and paperback. She wanted prices and I read them off to her, and then she said, "And it's all of the Narnia in one book? All in the same cover?" I said YES and she said, "Okay, because I don't want them each individually, I know they're all separate stories. But this catalog I have says you can get them in ONE book. Is that what you have there?" WTF???


10/4/05

A woman called looking for a nursing textbook, and since we didn't have the book she wanted she just wanted to know if we had another book on the subject. I kinda got the impression that she needed something as soon as possible to help her with her homework or something. Anyway, I did a search for what she wanted because it was gonna be an hour's drive for her to come to my store, so after I couldn't find any copies of the one book she wanted that the computer said we carried, she asked me this: "Well do you have anything else on the subject?" I found a book with the subject she wanted as part of the title, and described that to her but for no apparent reason she rejected it. Then she said, "Is there anything else?" I told her I'd keep looking to see if anything else was sitting on the shelves, and she barked back, "Well aren't they in alphabetical order??"

After a beat I realized she thought that all the books on the subject would be together for some reason. I guess she thought they'd all be called the same thing--a single-word title of her subject--and that they'd therefore be sitting on the shelf in one clump.

"Yes, they're in alphabetical order," I replied, "by author." Doesn't help unless every book on the subject is written by the same author, does it genius?

Maybe that should give you a clue not to tell the bookstore girl how to do her job. Beeyatch!

A woman wanted to know what the latest Oprah book was, and chances are it wasn't even "the latest Oprah book club book" or wasn't very recently because we ALWAYS have a media alert on our page about stuff like that. I checked on the media page and there wasn't anything about Oprah, so I told her I had no more info. As I was asking her if she'd asked anyone else yet (ya know, 'cause sometimes our manager will know shit we don't--she's the almighty all-knowing all-seeing Trash Heap after all!), the lady responded by just walking away while I was talking. Totally ignoring me. Well, I guess it was silly of me to try helping. . . .

This is a petty one, but a woman came up and wanted a book she'd ordered, and she was one of those people who gave me all the info about the book itself but not, like, who they are (which is what I need to know to get the book). I waited for her to finish talking so I could say, "Your name please?" but she decided to keep rambling and then raise her eyebrows and gesture at the hold bookshelves behind me--like she was saying, "THERE, you incompetent jerk, check THERE!"--as though I needed to be clued in as to where we keep our held books. Argh. God, please, customers, I beg of you . . . let me control the conversation. You will be out of here much quicker if you just let ME ask YOU the questions that are pertinent. It's like when you call for pizza they immediately say "pickup or delivery?" and put you into a very efficient series of questions. We can't exactly do that because there are too many things you could want if you call or come into a bookstore, but still, just let ME ask YOU the questions! Please please please!

A dude came in and returned a damaged book. It was bound incorrectly, and to tell you the truth it was really bizarre--the first hunk of pages was bound in diagonally, with the parts that would have stuck out beyond the cover sort of folded in so it looked rectangular from the outside. It was really strange. I've seen books bound upside-down or with pages missing or out of order or sometimes even cutting errors so the pages are too long on the top, but never a hunk of pages bound diagonally.

Anyway, this book was his wife's first choice of travel reading material, and he'd bought it yesterday only to discover it was damaged. In returning it to the store, he hoped to pick up a normal copy, but we were out, so he went with his wife's second choice . . . which was a hardback whose price was nearly twice the first choice book's price.

Upon speaking to my manager (who came to handle the return), the man started whining that since he had to pay twice as much for the hardback and the damaged book wasn't his fault, she should give him a discount. My manager played oblivious and told him she'd be glad to order him a new copy of the damaged book and get him his first choice so he wouldn't have to pay for the hardback, but he said she needed travel reading quickly so that wouldn't cut it. Then he started pressing for the discount again. And again she played like she had no idea and kept telling him she didn't understand what he wanted, because she wanted him to figure out for himself that what he was asking for was so ridiculous and outlandish that it must be beyond her comprehension. I mean, it's not our fault that your second choice is expensive, and we are not going to compensate for that. What we WILL do is happily get you another copy of the book that was damaged, but we're not gonna do anything about the price of your hardback.

I think this one frustrated me the most, though: A mom and daughter looking for help on converting different units.

Mom had the sulky teenage daughter in tow and they were wading through the kids' workbooks. Keep in mind the girl was doing seventh grade work but they were in the kids' section . . . hmm, that's a little weird. I was asked to help them find help on how to convert stuff (they were talking about distance conversions) and as soon as I found out we were talking about middle school I took them out of the kids' section and into Study Guides.

There the woman explained that her seventh grade girl was encountering these issues with converting distance in her science work, and she can't figure it out, so she wants a book on that. There isn't going to be a book just on that one series of facts, sorry. So I suggested general application math books and started looking in their indexes. The mom decided to pretend to be helping by wandering further down the aisle and gazing at the test prep section as if she understood what she was seeing and rambling about how she could never find anything. The girl turned her back on us and stared at the Spanish section, obviously very involved in her own education.

So I tried helping and dug in a few indexes but I was having trouble finding anything, so I asked the mom what subject in science the girl was studying; perhaps a study guide on the science subject would include conversion tables and other applicable information. The mom didn't KNOW what subject she was dealing with but was so helpful to explain that it was these homeschooling packets called "Life Packets." Yes because that helps me so much, to know that she is studying from Life Packets. Then the mom asked the girl what subject it is that the conversions are in and she snapped out, "*I* don't know!" Like, why would she be expected to know what she's learning, after all?

Homeschool mom just began picking up books at random and thumbing through them, obviously having never heard of an index or a table of contents, murmuring about the content of the chapters she was encountering and expressing hopelessness. I suggested that if she was just looking for one lump of information it was probably better just to find a conversion table or a reference sheet on the Internet, but she complained that her 'Net access didn't work very well. Ohhkay! Plus she said she isn't looking for just one bit of information, it was several *different* conversions, like all the way from miles to centimeters. Yeah, I get it. But it's such a slim subject that YOU'RE NOT GONNA FIND A BOOK ON IT. That's just something you look up on the frickin' Internet or reference in the table that's undoubtedly in the back of your book or in the appendix somewhere.

And in the meantime I'm leafing through the books trying to find shit for her and she's standing there looking at books and putting them back without being useful and the daughter's still staring hatefully at the Spanish section waiting for these pointless adults to stop boring her with stuff that's for her benefit. I finally found a book she ended up taking.

And lastly, a girl at the other branch of our store annoyed me. I don't usually do stuff on employees, but c'mon now. This girl called me and asked me to help find a book that I was already familiar with, and I had the cordless phone so I went over to go look for it. Since it was a bit of a walk and our store is usually pretty social with their store, I asked the girl how things were going over there today. She didn't even answer. So I said, "Hello? Still there?" She immediately said she was still there, so I replied, "So . . . how are things going over there at you guys' place?" Again, she didn't frickin' answer! She just kind of paused and then said, "Uh-huh. . . . " in this evil tone of voice as if she was really annoyed with me. After that I was really short with her and got off the phone as quickly as possible. I don't know if she thought I was just standing around not checking for the book or something--maybe she didn't understand why I'd be making small talk when she wanted me to look for her customer's book--but just because you're a jackass who doesn't understand what's going on doesn't mean you need to be a jerk to me. Screw you!


10/3/05

I got called to the customer service desk while I was busy helping another customer AND I had one on hold on the phone. Fun. Well, I helped the first customer and then the customer who'd had me paged started apparently getting frustrated because she started wandering when she heard my voice and stood there in the aisle calling, "Hello! Excuse me, can you help me??" Well, sure I can. But guess what? YOU'RE THIRD IN LINE ASSHOLE! It didn't occur to you that maybe I was standing here talking to a customer who got there first? It really irritates me that people simply cannot just look at a situation and figure out why I might not need to be prompted in order to help them. Incidentally, my response to that was "I'll be on my way as soon as I finish helping THIS person!" After that she was cordial and everything, but again, it's the attitude of "Jesus, why isn't she immediately jumping over here to help me?" that gets me.

A woman called for "Baby Einstein sign language." I told her that I had the Baby Einstein books but nothing on sign language, though I did have OTHER baby books by other people on signing. (It's this fad for parents to try to learn a form of sign language with their kids before they can speak. There's all kinds of stuff on it, but not anything from the Baby Einstein company that I carry.) So I argued with this lady a bit because she didn't understand what I was saying (she seemed to think I was arguing that it didn't exist rather than saying I didn't have it--she kept saying stuff like "Well I know Baby Einstein has one"). So anyway then it turned out it was a video she was looking for--hey, surprise!--and I told her we don't have videos.

This launched into a frustrating attempt to help her figure out the next place she should try. I suggested FYE in the mall, and she kept repeating, "F-Y-E? I've never heard of them. What's that stand for? F-Y-E? Did you say F-Y-E? I've never heard of them." Then I suggested Borders and she said, "Okay . . . I've heard of them, B-O-R-D-A-R-S?" Jeez lady. I had to correct her spelling on that and then she said, "And . . . and F-Y-E???" again. I wonder why that was so hard to get through her head?

And finally I had Bible Lady--she wanted some version I'd never heard of . . . and on top of that my computer had never heard of it either. I told her that I couldn't find anything with that version on it in the system, and she replied, "Well, uh, well it's National Stan . . . well what do you have?" I asked her what she meant by "what do you have" and she just said, "Just . . . you know, what do you have?" What, are you asking me to tell you every Bible that exists in the store and in the system? Because that doesn't make any goddamn sense. When you're looking for a Bible you kind of need to say more than "What do you have?" I ended up convincing her that this special version probably came only through whatever weird catalog she'd seen it in, and she was one of those people who had to tell me six times that she wanted to order fifty of them for a church, et cetera. I finally escaped from her, but it was tight there for a while. . . .


10/2/05

Slow day. No real Assholes. Though I did get a coworker's Story of Asshole. Apparently she got a pen thrown at her by a customer.

We have a pen that has a squishy, rubber finger cushion around it, and so when my coworker put it on the counter it bounced a little bit. Her customer grabbed it and lobbed it right back at her. She thought to herself that perhaps the lady had picked it up and been spooked by the feel of the rubber or something, so she provided the lady with a different pen and said something to the effect of, "Didn't like that pen much, huh?" "NO," the lady replied, "That isn't it, I just don't like to have things THROWN at me." My coworker told her she didn't throw it at her, but you could tell the lady had her own beliefs. I still don't see how a pen sitting on the counter that you have to pick up can be said to have been "thrown," but some people have to make an issue out of everything.


10/1/05

PEEVE OF THE WEEK!

This week I am detesting people who tell me things that are obvious. Say I've got a lady browsing in the kids' section and she sees me and stops me. "I'm looking for Baby's Bright Blessings," she says, and then as I agree to go look it up for her and start walking, she helpfully adds, "It's a children's book." Well, if you were browsing for it in Biography, I imagine it's a biography. If you were browsing in Computers, I imagine it's a computer book. You don't have to tell me crap like that. It's just pissing me off.

Someone bought a good book and I was all happy and chatted with her about it, and then the guy she was with bought Eragon in a separate transaction and put it in the same bag. It made me kinda want to hurl.

No real Assholes today. A woman kinda annoyed me on the phone because after I said my spiel she replied, "Hello?" Then she said everything in a long drawn-out manner: "I bought these two books for my granddaughter who was getting a horse. But now she is NOT getting a horse. So would it be possible to return them?" Imagine each word said at about two miles an hour. . . .

And also, I encountered a baby shower planning book with about ten pages RIPPED OUT. The jerk just decided to grab the section she needed and left the rest. I always hated it when they did that in the phone book, but when they do it in a book you actually have to pay for? Give me a break! What a huge jackass! Let's just hope she wasn't the one having the baby, because people like her should not be parents.

It is things like this that make me wish to start eating people's livers for fun.


On to November!


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