My Record of Work: The Annoying, the Interesting, and the Just Plain Weird--The Year 2000.

8/29/00

I found a very funny graphic in the newspaper, with like "user's manual" instructions on how to read a book. Some of my customers need this.

On Saturdays we do Pokémon League, and this time we had a rather rowdy bunch in the store. I was doing my usual customer service thing and then I heard behind me an insistent "'SCUSE ME!" I turned and there was a kid standing there, I figured he had a question . . . well, what he said after that was unexpected. "Um, 'scuse me," he said again, "um, he's touching me." Indicating another boy. "Those guys keep following me around and one of them punched me in the back." Let it be known from now on that I am not the customer service chick . . . I am the referee and babysitter. All righty.

8/23/00

A lady walked up and requested that I find some books that should have been on hold behind the counter for her school. I was not familiar with the title and hadn't seen the book she was talking about, and gave her a confused look. She seemed a bit annoyed until she looked at the paper she was holding, and then said, very loudly, "Oh, SHIT! It's at the other store!" I apologized to her even though it was obviously not my fault, and heard her say, "Ahh, FUCK" rather quietly. ::grin::

8/16/00

While cleaning the kids' section of the store, I noticed that someone had put a movie into this out of order VCR in a kids' display. I knew I had to get someone to turn it off when I heard the line "This man is a homosexual . . . and I love him!" coming from the middle of the kids' section. Welp.

Also, I found this book in the kids' section that is supposed to help your toddler with toilet training. Apparently some of them are intimidated by toilet training because of the sound the potty makes when flushed. This book helps overcome that fear by allowing the child to push a button which *plays* the flush sound, along with the sounds of a baby laughing. I found this so amusing that I showed a couple of my coworkers and giggled along with the recording.

8/15/00

My manager asked me to make sure an order of Pooh books was complete for some elementary school. I couldn't find a list attached to the order that itemized how many of each title were supposed to be held for the school, so when I was asked by my manager if I'd finished putting the order together, I told him about the problem. I told him that there were lots of pieces of paper over there with numbers and book titles on them, but that some of them looked like invoices (not master lists) and others looked like single title order forms. I saw no single list that showed everything the teacher wanted. When I gave this information to my manager, he gave me a confused/annoyed look and said, "Well all you have to do is LOOK!" He then proceeded to work on the order himself as I'd become busy with another task. Not too long after that, I heard him calling the school and leaving a message for the teacher, saying that he needed to get in touch with her to confirm the quantity of each book that she wanted, as the master list had apparently been misplaced . . . oh well, I tried to tell him. . . .

8/14/00

Got my first prank call at work. I don't know who it was from, but when I answered, the person said, "Hello, I am a very lonely man. Would you like to have sex with me?" I replied, "Not particularly," and he answered, "Okay, then, goodbye," and hung up. HA.

8/8/00

Some lady asked me to help her find a book today. That in itself isn't unusual, of course--it was just that she wanted me to find "the book with the alligator and the apple on the cover." Uh-huh. She told me it was a children's book, which helped a WHOLE lot. Yeah. I politely told her that I had no way to search for a book by what is on the cover. Later when I was reshelving "strays" I found a children's first dictionary book with an alligator and an apple on the cover. Weird.

8/3/00

One of my managers who is usually pretty quiet was up at my work station today looking through some of the books that had come in. He was apparently very amused by the fact that we'd received several copies of a book called Everyone Poops. He read some of the pages out loud to me and showed me the pictures. It was hilarious. There were actual drawings of doodoo on there. I'd seen the book before but now, after hearing it be read to me by my soft-spoken manager, I think it's very amusing.

8/1/00

Had an irate customer today who got mad when I couldn't find a record in my computer of a supposedly well known author. He specifically spelled the last name of the author to me (Frazer) and was frustrated when I told him I had no record of any Frazer in my list of what we carried in the store OR the books-in-print CD-ROM. When I suggested perhaps the name was spelled differently (he seemed pretty sure), he just banged his hand on my counter and said, "OKAY, thank you" (you could tell he didn't mean it) and began yelling for his wife and saying, "We're leaving!" Later when I was doing something else he came back up to the counter and asked my manager for something. It turned out he was asking for the same book and that is an indication that he thought I was just incompetent. Turned out the name was spelled "Fraser," with an S not a Z, and I was right about him spelling it wrong. Too bad he was too proud to accept that the first time or I could have helped him get his book quicker.