My Record of Work: The Annoying, the Interesting, and the Just Plain Weird--The Year 2001.

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DECEMBER!


12/30/01

A guy asked me how I was doing today while I was ringing up his purchase, so I said, "Okay." He said, "Just okay?" and I said "Yeah," because that was how I was feeling. He responded, "Hung over from last night, huh?" and I was like, "Uh, NO. . . ." He gave me a knowing look and replied, "Oh, yeah right, I know how you college students are." I told him I was not a college student. He amended his statement: "Oh, well then, I know how you GRAD STUDENTS are. . . ." I said I was also not a grad student. He knew when he was beaten and stopped accusing me of being hung over, and began to joke with me about other things. It was great because the whole time he was pretending to be a jerk, but was probably my best customer all day.


12/24/01

At the register today I asked a guy if he got everything he needed. His response? "Well that's a ridiculous question, so I'll just say yes." I asked him why he thought it was ridiculous while I rung up his stuff. He said it was pointless to ask that because why would someone come to checkout if they didn't get everything they needed? I informed him that sometimes people think we're out of something and we're not so I can make another sale if I happen to know where it is, or that some people want discount cards, gift certificates, or Pokémon cards and forgot to ask unless I prompted them. He was basically like "Ehh, whatever," and then was unable to wrap his mind around the concept of the discount card: "It'll cost $1.50 extra if you get it today because the card usually costs $5.00 to get but you'd save $3.50 on this purchase." "Okay, go ahead and do that, it saves me money right?" "Overall, you'll pay an extra $1.50 for it today." "But how much does it save me?" ARGH. I just told you! And *I'm* the one asking ridiculous questions.


12/23/01

Right at the end of my shift some lady wouldn't stop asking me for stuff but refusing to listen to my answers, so everything she wanted to know I had to answer at least three times. And I think she basically wanted me to do her Christmas shopping for her. She wanted audio tapes. Stuff on knights. Where's your audio tapes? Kids' stuff on sports? Okay. And do you have any audio tapes? Do you sell the CD of the Beatles? Is it cheaper at Wal-Mart? What about N*Sync? Is this the newest one? Where's the Beatles? I need stuff on kids' medieval stuff. Oh, and audio books, where are those? And the Beatles? She did thank me at the end, at least.


12/19/01

A woman had me go through all the steps of direct-ordering something with a credit card over the phone, and when I gave her the total she freaked out and told me to hold on while she called Barnes & Noble to see if they could get it cheaper. Guess they couldn't 'cause she called back to finish the order, but jeez, it was a long involved process and I gave her the prices and shipping costs along the way . . . oh well. 'Tis the Season.

Also, one of my co-workers was walking around for much of the day with two velcro-arm monkeys around his neck, saying he had a monkey on his back. Hehe.


12/18/01

A disturbing trend has occurred at work: More and more often, people are blaming me for their own mistakes. Today, while we were looking for a book for another customer, a lady at the counter yelled "YOO-HOO!" and waved emphatically. (Of course, it was supposed to insinuate that WE were the jerks for not standing there with a grin ready to help, when we were busy with another person.) I went to help the lady, and she just wanted to pick up a book on hold, but when I gave it to her, she already had her credit card out and informed me that she wanted to pay for it right at Customer Service, which is impossible since we have no register and no credit card machine. This did not stop the lady from requesting to do so again and insisting that it wasn't fair that she'd already waited in the checkout line once. (Apparently she'd been expecting to be able to get her book there.) After assuring her that I could not physically take her payment at my counter, she started yelling, "THAT'S NOT FAIR! You're telling me I have to wait in that line again??" Jeez, it's not my fault she went to the wrong place and waited once already. I told her the only registers were at the checkout and in the café and she was welcome to choose either one but she was going to have to accept that we were busy, it being a couple weeks before Christmas and all. She just marched away mumbling how it wasn't fair. Whatever. Interestingly enough, when the other customer service person came back to talk to me, she asked if that lady had asked to pay here. I said yes, and she said, "Oh, she always does that." So that made her even MORE WILLFULLY IGNORANT, seeing as how she must have already known she couldn't pay at the Customer Service counter!


12/16/01

A lady called on the phone and asked if the One Day Sale advertised two days ago was still going on. People amaze me.


12/15/01

Some whiny lady saw the sign that says "Our manager will issue you a $10 gift certificate if our cashier does not give you a receipt." She asked to see the manager and claimed the girl in the café last night "didn't know what she was doing" and also forgot to give her her receipt, so she wanted to get the $10 gift certificate. The manager wouldn't give it to her, because it was last night that it supposedly happened. Well, first she said that she had paid with a gift card and couldn't she "look it up on the gift card" whether she had been given a receipt? That made no sense--what, she thinks the gift card number is attached to a video record of her transaction? What the hell? Then she said that her daughter was with her at the time and could verify it. When the manager still said no, the lady fumed and started walking around mumbling to her daughter how she was going to write the company a letter because there was no sign that said you had to point it out at the TIME that it happened. Yeah, sure . . . "Hey, about three years ago, I was in here buying coffee and, well, I didn't get my receipt . . . where's my free money?" Shut your cakehole. (She also misread a sign and thought she deserved a discount that you don't get without a discount card, which the sign plainly says . . . she just wanted free stuff.)


12/11/01

Some lady who wanted to do a return kept acting offended with every routine policy. First, as per company policy, I had to get a manager to approve it. Her eyes got big with indignation when I called him and explained that we had to wait for managerial approval, and she's like, "Why, it's JUST a return!" I told her we do it for every return and received the response of a giant miffed sigh. So he came, studied the receipt like he's supposed to, and she's like, "What's the big deal?" and he's like, "Nothing, I'm just supposed to note all the circumstances, our corporate offices require it," and she's like, "Ohhhkay . . ." and I thought she was going to explode when I told her I needed her license. I typed in the info I needed, and when I asked for her phone number, she gave it to me and then said loudly, "I'm NOT giving you a blood sample if that's next." News flash lady: Returning something is a privilege. We've made a sale and we have your money; we don't "have" to give it back if we find any reason why we shouldn't.


12/9/01

Yesterday I got my break really late, so today one of my managers tried to get me to take my break at 11. Two hours after I got there, when I had six hours to go. WTF?

We had a promotion going on to make any regular-priced book 30% off with the coupon. One lady came up with two books and asked to use the coupon on both books. I pointed out to her that the coupon said "one coupon per customer per visit," and she said that wasn't fair because she wanted it on both and it was the last day of the promotion. I told her I couldn't do it, and she said she just wanted one and would just be going to the other store to get the other one at a discount. I had forgotten which book she was keeping at the end of the transaction, so I asked her about it, saying, "Okay, so you're taking this one and putting this one back?" I guess she misunderstood my phrasing because her response was "NO, I'm not going to put it back. I'm going to leave it here." And then she asked for the coupon back because she wanted to go to the other store! I told her we keep the coupon and she threw a fit! What the hell? She said they had just photocopies of the coupon over at the other store. I guess if that's so she should have gone there first.

Oh yeah, and can't forget the kid who asked, "How much are your comics?" I told him they're different prices like the books are. And so he repeated the question. ::shakes head::


12/8/01

Evil children acted appalled that they couldn't sell unwanted Pokémon cards back to us today. It happened twice! And the second time, the children also wanted to know if ten dollars was enough money to buy all kinds of overpriced crap, about a third of which they could afford, and when I told them so one of them replied, "Well, can't I just give you all the money I have and then you pay for the rest?" This kid was like twelve. He knew you can't just ask people to pay for your stuff. Maybe his mom pampers him. I mean I've heard of "give a penny, take a penny" but "give twenty dollars, take twenty dollars"? I think not.

Oh yes, and the rude man. I had a customer who whined that there were no computer terminals where he could look up the info he wanted to know. When I cheerfully offered to look up anything he wanted on my computer, he just kept whining that he could have done it himself and not had to WAIT if we had supplied him with a computer terminal. In the middle of my answering his comment, he just cut me off by starting to spell the author's name. I was glad we didn't have his book, though he seemed to take it as a personal insult that we'd have to order it, like I was persecuting him. If only we'd had a computer terminal he could use, I'm sure it would have said the same thing.


12/5/01

Several annoying things today. We were understaffed, and as a result the Customer Service counter was extremely busy. One woman could NOT accept that there really was someone working there, because every time she went back to the desk and looked, no one was there. Unsurprising, since our policy states that unless the customer requests otherwise, we are supposed to take them to the section and attempt to put the book they want in their hand, so the C/S person leaves a lot. This lady just kept coming back to the register, like three times, insisting loudly that I was the only person in the store (running the register with a line of like six people), and that I therefore had to help her. I told her she just needed to go to the desk and wait like everyone else and that the customer service person WAS working, but she just kept whining, as if that would make things better. I guess she either got tired of it and left or actually swallowed her inner asshole and accepted her status as a customer no better than everyone else in the store who wanted help.

Two young men wanted "Tupac's book," so I showed them the poetry section and they found it. Then they found me again, and the one who wanted to buy it said to me incredulously, "This says this book is twenty dollars!" And I was like, "Yes, it is." And he looked at me like I was bizarre and said, "WELL, is there any way I can get a discount?" I asked if he had a discount card, and he laughed like I was incompetent and said, "NO. . . ." I said, "WELL, then there is no discount, it would cost five dollars to buy the discount card and then you'd only save a little over two bucks so it wouldn't be worth it if that's all you're going to get." And so he asked again if I would put a discount on it. I was like, "Um, NO" and walked away. What, people think they can just get discounts by asking for them? What was going through his head? That's what the freakin' book costs, I can't just change the price. (Later a manager told me he would have told them they had to know the secret word to get the discount. Heh.)

As an added bonus, today I slammed one of my braids in the register drawer. Ow.


12/4/01

I love it when people are ignorant but they treat you like you're the one who doesn't know anything. "I need a book about Dale Earnhardt's life," a woman said, "but it isn't a biography." This seemed like a contradiction to me. "If it's about his life, it would be a biography," I replied, and began to lead her to the bio section. She planted her feet and shook her head, gave me a withering look, and said, "It can't exactly be a biography, can it? I mean, don't you know he's dead?" Things clicked for me, and I realized she thought a biography was the same thing as an autobiography. I informed her of the difference and explained that people write other people's biographies all the time. It was enough to make her go to the freakin' section with me, only to complain that the autobiographies should be separated from the biographies. Whatever.


12/1/01

One of my managers and I have both seen that "Gonads and Strife" video online where a squirrel repeatedly yells "WEEEE!" Now we are always yelling "Weee!" in the store. It is fun.


On to 2002!


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