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

3/26/01

A dude buying a Bible told me today that he liked to hide his money in the Bible because "thieves don't read the Bible, so they wouldn't find it." HAHAHAH!

3/25/01

A customer known as "Wig Lady" made her first appearance in my life today. She has very fake hair, hence the name, and apparently is rather sick. She asked if she could use the phone because her car was wrecked. Well, she made a BUNCH of phone calls and was asking me if I knew anyone with a body shop, which I don't 'cause I don't drive, and she seemed really annoyed with me that I didn't know and demanded our phone book. Then she ripped pages out of it, after loudly paging through it muttering "where the fuck is it??" I would have said something if we didn't have four other phone books. Then she asked me if anyone had a cell phone because ours wouldn't dial long distance! She wanted to dial long distance on our phone? She tried? Jeez. If your car's wrecked okay fine, but at least ask before you presume you can do shit like that. She then went to the café and started asking other customers if they had phones. I think she left. After talking to the café manager, I found out the story was much more bizarre. Her car wasn't wrecked at all; it was similar to the café manager's car, except the café manager's car has a draggy bumper, which is exactly what Wig Lady was describing. But she had details of the accident and everything, and was describing them tearfully to the people on the phone. Um. But she just drove off in it! What the hell? According to my co-workers, this lady has also done things like go around telling other customers that she likes to wear shorts, and has bought, returned, and bought the same books in the same couple days, refusing to show ID. Someone has suggested that she is on drugs, which is sad if it's true.

3/17/01

Today I was rearranging the Kids' baby books and one of them, a Thomas the Tank engine book, began to play annoying music when I squished books against its "start" button. I glared at the shelf and was surprised to see that a book title summed up my sentiments exactly: Stop, Train, Stop!

Also, in the same section, I was replacing a book called Peek-A-Boo! on the shelf when some lady elsewhere in the Kids' section said "Peek-A-Boo!" to her kid. Weird.

While helping a customer on the phone today, looking for his book on the shelf, some lady came up to me and held out a book to me. I didn't know why she wanted me to pay attention to this book, especially while I was helping someone else, but then she started wiggling it at me like I was supposed to take it or know what to do with it. I kind of ignored her because I don't have to take shit from people when they just need to wait their turns. Finally she just shoved the book at me and yelled, "Here, just TAKE it!" and went away. I was like, uh. . . . Later she stopped by the counter and hastily told me that she had found this book about Prozac in the sports section and didn't think it belonged there, and just wanted me to reshelve it. That was odd.

3/12/01

A lady buying a $25 book agreed to get a discount card today, which would charge her five more bucks and then discount her $25 book 10%, so she'd really be paying only an extra $2.50 or so. But then when I quoted her the price, she freaked out and yelled at me, saying "I already wrote my check for twenty-five dollars!" I pondered that for a second and realized she assumed the register display, then displaying the price of her book, was the final total. Somehow she decided I had "told" her that was the end total and was trying to trick her into paying more because of the discount card she'd agreed to buy, and I told her, "Ma'am, I didn't quote you a price yet--your book would have been more than just $25 just with tax." I pointed out that the sticker said $25.00 on it and reminded her that tax added a couple bucks. She still maintained that I'd misinformed her, refused to get the discount card, and paid the tax in cash while giving me the $25 check, scowling at me like I was still trying to trick her. I don't get it.