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

2/19/01

This lady was talking to me in the checkout line about how she wished she worked in a bookstore because it would be worth it just to get the employee discount! I joked with her, saying I needed to just tell my boss to pay me in books. But then when I'd finished ringing up her stuff, I saw she was spending over fifty dollars. In our store, there are discount cards available that allow you to get ten percent off your purchase, and they cost five dollars. Therefore, if you spend over fifty dollars, if you have the discount card you save over five dollars, beating the cost of the card. Translation: whenever you spend over fifty dollars, a discount card is free; it pays for itself. I explained this to the lady who'd just talked about how much she wished she worked in a bookstore just for the discount. And the lady REFUSED TO TAKE THE FREE DISCOUNT CARD. Now call me unreasonable, but if you just talked about how much you buy books and wanted to WORK at a bookstore JUST for the discount, doesn't it make sense that you'd take a FREE discount card?

2/18/01

A dude in the checkout line was kind of rude to me about his discount card, and when he left, the customer who'd been behind him told me, "I have to commend you on your customer service . . . I don't think I could handle it if I had to deal with that!" I was a little shocked since that guy wasn't even rude enough to make my notable list, but this customer was apparently pretty impressed . . . funny how there's no pleasing some people but others are so easily pleased that you please them without trying!

2/16/01

Grr, I had a rude customer today. I came up to the register to run it while Diana, the cashier for that day, ran to the café to get some tea. And a lady standing in the Nature section (right near the register) yelled "Ex-CUSE me!" in our direction. We didn't know which one of us she was talking to, and so we exchanged a glance, and then I looked at the customer while Diana took off for the café. The lady seemed offended that we weren't both at her disposal, but I just looked at her and said, "Yes?" And she goes, "Um, I need help." And I said, "Okay, what do you need help with?" and she looked exasperated and said, "NO, I need help . . . HERE!" pointing to the ground, showing me she expected me to trot from my position over to her. Well, it wasn't busy, so I decided to humor her and went over to help her. She said, "I HATE screaming across the store!" (Um, it was RIGHT there. . . . )

"Anyway," she said, "I need something on butterfly gardens." I told her I wasn't sure if we had any, at which point she said, "Well do you even know what that is?" and I said that I did indeed and owned a couple of butterfly garden seed packets even. I told her I didn't think that we had any in the store but that her best bet was to check with the lady at Customer Service, since they actually have a COMPUTER they can look stuff up on. She goes, "Is that the lady that just turned her back on me?" talking about Diana, and I said, "No, that's the cashier, she just went to get some tea." I told her they could look up what we have and what we could order on the customer service computers, but she just gave me a snooty look and told me she didn't want to bother and was going to go to the MALL instead. I told her "good luck," and she said over her shoulder as she walked away, "I don't NEED luck, I just need the BOOK." Gah! Why do people think they can be rude to me just because I'm on the clock and they're not? ::sigh::

2/13/01

This one guy told me he'd already been all through the Christian section and could not find a single book in the Left Behind series. I told him that that was because they were all on a display table called "Left Behind Headquarters," and showed him where it was. When he saw the table, he said, "Well I'll be damned!" I couldn't help breaking out in giggles, just because my brain works in a funny way and I was thinking, "I thought you became Christian to AVOID getting damned! HAHA!"

2/12/01

So, today this weird dude wanted to buy an R. Kelly CD (which cost $19.98 plus tax) and when I told him the total he was like "What? All I got's a twenty!" After explaining to him that it was over twenty dollars because of tax, he went away, and was back shortly thereafter with ANOTHER CD . . . and this one cost $19.48. Okay, now if you were really ignorant or foreign or something I could see forgetting that tax existed the first time, but the second time it's just obliviousness I guess, 'cause he must've noticed there was over a dollar's worth of tax on the previous CD. Anyway. I told him that if he still only had a twenty this one would put him over too, and he complained and asked if there was anything he could get! I showed him some of the cheaper CDs and he finally got one, and then didn't understand why he couldn't use his Camelot $5-off coupon at our store! He didn't understand the concept of "THIS IS NOT CAMELOT!!!" Gahh!