7/30/03
Today I dealt with a lady who probably can't pick her nose without help.
I thought this would be easy; she just came to the desk and asked me to help her find a carbohydrate counter. I took her to the Nutrition section and handed her two of them: the one that's for Dr. Atkins's diet and then this other one that said on the front that it counted calories, fat, and carbohydrates. Should have been the end of it. Not so.
She began flipping through the calories, fat, and carb counter and became confused about what the little code (reading "C, F, CB") stood for. I told her that since it was a calorie, fat, and carb counter, it probably stood for "calories, fat, and carbohydrates," but she just kept talking about how confusing it was and looking for a legend to tell her. Then, when that was confirmed, she started flipping through getting all confused that the only chicken entries they had were in fast food, when she was only looking in the specifically fast food section. Well, I grabbed another copy (because I didn't want to snatch it from her and introduce her to something called the TABLE OF CONTENTS), and I found where the chicken entries were and told her the page number. She said, "Oh, which book is THAT?" thinking I was looking in a different book, so I told her it was the one she was holding. I went to put the book I was holding back, and when I looked back at her she was looking for that page number in a DIFFERENT BOOK, confusedly murmuring, "Canned . . . corn . . . ?" Apparently she had been holding this other book under her arm and I hadn't seen it, and when I said "It's the one you're holding" she thought it was the OTHER one she was holding, despite the fact that the one I'd been holding was tiny and the one she was now holding was huge and a different color. So I straightened her out and then she couldn't find this and that and couldn't figure out how to read it, preferring to flip through the book page by page and whine that she can't find anything instead of figuring, "Hey, maybe there's a better way of finding specific information than looking at every page!" I ask you, how does she figure out how to even open the packages of food? Maybe she just chews through the plastic.
My coworker got this lovely one: Some lady said she didn't have a discount card but she was a teacher. No problem, we give discounts to teachers . . . if they have some kind of teacher ID. Well, the lady was like, "Oh, okay, I have something," and started going through her wallet, and began offering various cards that had nothing to do with her being a teacher. She held out her Blue Cross card triumphantly to the cashier, "Here! Blue Cross!" Lady, yes, you have medical insurance. So do I and I ain't no teacher. We did not say "alternate card in your name." We said teacher ID. :P
Had someone on the phone asking for something I think was called "The Spontaneous Omission" or something. I wasn't sure I heard the customer right so I said, "Omission, like leaving something out?" She said, "Yeah, it's spelled o-m-m-i-s-i-n." Sure it is.
This morning on my first trip through the Kids' section to clean up, I encountered some magazines and put them away. Then as I was coming back, some lady with a little kid asked me if I saw where the magazines had gone. I told her I'd put them away because I'd figured someone just left them last night. She was like, "Oh, no we just went to the potty." She got her magazines again. And then after she left, she just left them there. THANKS A LOT!
7/29/03
Some lady asked me if our kids' Christmas books were just really buried or if she was looking in the wrong place. Okay, so maybe she doesn't really know much about retail, but HELLO, IT'S JULY. No store is going to carry a bunch of Christmas books year 'round, because we focus on what people actually want to buy, and shelf space is kind of an issue. In case you didn't notice, most retail stores are now promoting "back to school." It's just a thing. Anyway, I told her the book she wanted could probably be ordered, so she decided to repeat the title for me in that very precise way, as if I am not a veteran of speaking the freaking English language. I must need the two-word, three-syllable title delivered to me with strict elocution, because otherwise I just won't get it. It was out of print anyway. Good luck, lady.
A lady came up and asked me how long it takes to get a book in if she orders it, and I gave her the terms. She responded, "Because you don't have Louis Sachar's book Holes over there." I said we actually did; we had a ton in fact, and she replied that she already looked and we didn't. I guess she decided to "prove" her point by going to the wrong section to show me how not there it was. I showed her the right section and got it for her. It's not that she was rude or anything; it was just weird how she automatically assumed we were out because she couldn't find it, instead of maybe asking me if we had any first. I mean she was set to order it and stuff.
I found a copy of the book for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in my section, and it wasn't supposed to be in Kids'. So I took it to Fantasy, and as I was walking I skimmed the back cover and was disgusted to find they'd misspelled Quatermain's name in the freaking blurb. Okay to make mistakes, but jeez, this is the damn synopsis, on the COVER. I'll be writing to them.
Some girl called me for a book on her school reading list. I had it, and put it on hold for her. Then she called me back and told me her mother would be going to the other store actually, and would that be a problem?
Hold up there.
I mean, I had to check my shelf for you to make sure we had it, and I put it on hold for you. So somehow this translates to it being the exact same thing as talking to a totally different store? What're we gonna do, somehow beam it to you if you go to the other store and they don't have any? Don't worry, any bookstore in the nation will have a school reading list book sitting there with your name on it, because physical availability of copies doesn't matter in the least.
My coworker mentioned to me that he'd just had someone ask him to mark a book down for her because it cost too much. Yes, it's the random "ask and ye shall receive" discount, and it applies by simply asking, "Could you make this cheaper?" Grr. He related for me a story of when he worked at another store and some lady went off on him because the books were not as cheap as at the flea market. Surprise! Heh, and I heard him talking on the phone to someone who didn't seem to understand that we didn't carry music or DVDs. I must have heard him say we didn't carry ANY about four times, but it wasn't getting through their heads. We're a bookstore, and a bookstore only. You can ask if we carry those things, but if we say we don't, asking us if we have Pink's CD is not a good course of action, nor is it likely to yield positive results.
Yeah, and my boss's kids are at it again. The boy came up and told me he ordered a book and he wanted to know where it was. I asked what name it was ordered under, and he told me to check under his last name, but it wasn't there. Then he was like, "Well I've been waiting a LONG TIME. Can't you FIND OUT??" Well, I asked him if he knew his phone number, and he said he didn't. Then he just kept asking me if I could find out. I said that if his dad ordered it for him (as he claimed), then he could ask his dad what information was attached to it. He was like, "Well can you find out if any CAME IN?" and I said, "You mean like regular copies for anyone to buy?" He goes, "YyyEAH . . ." like I'm unimaginably ignorant, and so I asked him if he knew where they normally go. He said he did. I asked if he checked there. He said he did. I said therefore we don't have any. Well, he told me again that he'd been waiting a really long time, and I said that wasn't my fault and to have his dad deal with it. When I mentioned it to Daddy, he admitted that actually he never ordered the book. He was hoping his kid would forget, that it would be a passing phase, because it's just some piece of junk book that his kid didn't need. And according to him, "a long time ago" translates to FOUR WHOLE DAYS. Daddy told me that if he bugged me again just tell him "Your dad's handling it," and to ignore his kids. Heheh . . . well, I try!
And according to one of my other coworkers, the boss's son went up to her one time and said, "Could you get my dad please? And . . . NOW?" She said that his dad was busy and that SHE was busy, and to go sit down. He did so. Hehehe.
7/28/03
Ooh, weird, yesterday my coworker found this book cover that had a dude on it who looked exactly like our manager's kinda-sorta-boyfriend. I mean, like, down to his wannabe pseudo-mullet hobbit hair and his annoyed expression. He showed it to me and I agreed, and we showed it to the manager, and she agreed, and then she showed it to the boyfriend. Now usually when someone tells you "this looks like you" or "you look like so and so" they're like "no, no, it doesn't." Not the case in this; it freaked him right the hell out. Haha! Weird!
Some lady asked me to help her find these two kids' books because "I just can't find them." I've got a loudly ringing cluephone for this chick: If you're looking for Judy Blume and Thomas Rockwell, it's a good idea to look for them somewhere other than the Beverly Cleary shelf. Actually she didn't seem to know the authors, and didn't seem to understand that wandering aimlessly around the Kids' section with a blank look on your face, hoping two tiny little books will hop out and bite you in the ass, is probably a bad idea. People just don't get that knowing "it's a kids' book" is not enough information to just walk into a store and find it. Do your damn homework.
Well, just when I thought I'd only have one Asshole today, I had to help on the register, and that always brings them out. I guess this lady has a SOMEWHAT legit complaint, actually, so I'm not going to cross that line and say she's in the wrong, but she still annoyed me. When I asked her if she found everything she wanted, she said, "NO, and I'm mad with y'all!" So I kind of jokingly said, "Aww, what did we do?" She explained that we did not have an African-American Fiction section, and that means "I can't know if the author's black and I don't like that!" She went on to tell me that "Y'all need to put that section back the way it was" and that she will now be shopping only at Waldenbooks and Borders. See, yeah we did used to have a section like that but along with Classics and Literature it all got incorporated into one big "Fiction" section, and now, God forbid, you have to know which author you want. Considering every other type of fiction was getting integrated, it would have been . . . peculiar if the only one that stayed segregated was the black fiction, eh?
7/27/03
Ooh, I heard tell that one of my boss's kids is now responding to all attempts to control him with the phrase, "My daddy can fire you." Don't you love children? Mmmm. As if they're allowed to just be hellions and then go up to Daddy and say, "She told me to pick up the french fries I threw all over the floor, so fire her now!" The world does not quite work that way, sorry kid. Daddy is a bookstore manager, not the Grand Master Lord of All, or whatever. I don't care what you see on cartoons!
I was sitting in a kind of tight spot on the floor, right in front of one of those spinner displays. I had to be able to reach the books on the low shelves so I was just sitting there, and some lady came there with her kid and wanted to look at the stuff on the spinner. "Excuse me," she said, which means "move." I told her it was okay, the display spun, so she could see everything on it from where she was. She replied, "But if I spin it it will hit you."
Think about this for a second. If it's rooted to the floor and I'm already clear of it, I just don't get how it could hit me just because it's turning around. In any case I guess it was nice that she was concerned about hurting me, so I thanked her for caring. But damned if that isn't ridiculous.
7/26/03
BUSTED! IT'S CONFIRMED! It WAS my boss's kids--both of them actually--who were putting the balls behind books. I was kind of amused by the weirdness of it even though it was annoying, so it bothers me that actually it was just part of a game where if you passed one it meant the bomb blew up and killed you. Of course, they don't clean it up afterwards. My manager caught them doing it and told them, "UH-UH." I don't think so! So apparently they won't be doing it anymore. Especially since the balls have been damaged out.
Grr, we got all these damn boxes from another store that died, and now we have to keep all this crap. On my day off, someone took a bunch of stickers from one of those boxes--I know because they're stuff I've never seen before--and put them out on my sticker racks in places they don't go. Now it's one thing when customers aren't paying attention, but my own freaking coworkers? Come on! By the handful, these new stickers were in the wrong places! I mean yeah, who cares, it's just stickers, but I freakin' do care; I spent forever making sure all the Pooh stickers were together and whatever! I wrote a nasty note at the Customer Service desk saying that any employee who assumed something had no order in Kids' was WRONG and that if they could not or would not look for the order there, I'd rather they just wait for me to get there to put the product out. I don't like doing work twice. I have plenty of customers to screw me over without my own fellow employees doing it too.
Today . . . I got the PERFECT phone call. The person was polite on the phone when I said my spiel, was specific about the information, didn't try to volunteer all kinds of crap I didn't need to hear, didn't cut me off while I was talking, wasn't snide or anything, and actually listened to what I was saying and responded in perfectly understandable complete sentences. I got off the phone feeling happy about it, then annoyed that when a person acts civil and intelligent all at once, it's cause for celebration because it's so rare.
7/23/03
I found out today that my boss's daughter sat in our store wheelchair, and when she was asked to vacate it for someone who might actually need it, she replied, "My daddy's the boss! I can do whatever I want." Heh . . . well, on the few and far between occasions that people have talked to El Bosso about his kids' behavior, he more or less tells us to not let them get away with stuff, not the other way 'round. Also according to one of the other associates, the daughter was demanding attention while he was trying to work, and he was kind of giving the disinterested "that's nice" to her, and finally she said, "You know, my daddy is your boss." "That's nice," he replied, and walked away.
My coworker was helping a customer at the desk when another lady came up wanting to know how much a lap desk was. Even though it was obvious he was with another customer, she got mad that she wasn't helped right away, and replied to his assurance that he'd be right with her with a frustrated, "NO, that's just fine" and threw the package on the counter, walking away. The punch line? The price was written on the box already. ::snort::
Some lady wanted some help and I was helping someone already, so I told her I'd be back in just a sec to help her. She replied by shouting the name of the book she wanted and saying, "Just point me!" ::sigh:: I have to look it up first . . . just WAIT. . . .
Some guy got an attitude with me in the Sports section. He asked me, "Excuse me, what does 'alpha' stand for?" I was like, what the hell is that supposed to mean? And he pointed at the sign that said "SPORTS--alpha by subject" and I told him that "alpha" meant "alphabetical." He asked me what that meant--do the books go THIS way or THIS way, and I told him where the section started and that they were alphabetical by their subjects. So this is where the attitude comes in: he started asking me to explain to him (you know, in that "well then you explain to me why THIS!" way) why there was a letter Y in the middle of the shelf. I had to explain to him that he was looking at titles, not subjects. Those were all wrestling books. "Well then where's tennis?" he asked, and I told him it would be under T, because all the tennis books were together. "What, just that one book?" he asked, since the sign was under one tennis book that was faced out. By this point I was like, what the HELL is he talking about and what the HELL is his problem? I said the sign was the beginning of the category, and he was like "Then just that book and a few others?" I dunno, twenty-five or so titles on tennis, not too shabby . . . guess that's only a few others. This whole time he had this really annoying attitude like the section was totally fucked up and he wanted to take it out on me, reprimand ME for the section not being to his liking. Dude, that section is pretty well-organized at the moment, for once in its life.
Some dude was looking for those free real estate magazine thingies. I told him we didn't keep them here, and I guess (again) that that was customer-ese for "I don't know what you're talking about, since I said we didn't have them I must just not know what they are." Because he began telling me what they are and ended by saying that they usually have them at grocery stores, completing his tirade with a blank stare at me as if I am now supposed to reveal where they are, now that I have been enlightened, of course. I told him we didn't have them. Again. But of course we should, since, ya know, the GROCERY STORE has them and we historically carry all the same things grocery stores do.
Some customer pissed off our new customer service guy by calling about Harry Potter on audio, then getting annoyed over the price. "They have it for $40 at SAM'S!" the customer protested. Then get it at frickin' Sam's. They're not a retail store, first of all; they're a warehouse. AND . . . we don't charge you $35 in the first place to shop in the store. So there.
7/22/03
Some guy asked me for help, and I helped him and came back to what I was doing. I had no sooner sat down on the floor to reach the bottom shelf than some lady walked up and asked for help too. Not that this was a problem, but it was funny how she asked for the help: "I know that other guy just grabbed you. I don't mean to interrupt you." And then she took a breath and asked her question. Well if you don't mean to interrupt me, why did you do it? Hehehe. Another person right after her was extraordinarily polite about asking me for help too, seeming really sorry to bother me. I wish more customers cared about me.
A guy came into the store wearing no shirt and leading a DOG on a leash. Well, my manager swooped down immediately and told him he could not have the dog in the store. The guy replied, "Well, that's fine, if you don't want my money." My manager explained that there was an insurance-oriented policy against animals in the store, and the guy kept being snotty with him, talking about how he had just been at Sears and they chose to ignore his having a dog in the store because he bought $400 worth of tires. Now that attitude really pisses me off. There are actually very few places you can go indoors with a dog unless it is a seeing eye dog or something, and that dude KNOWS it. The whole concept of MONEY being the reason to ignore rules is really, really abhorrent to me. What a dork.
A guy asked for To Kill a Mockingbird and when I got it for him he asked if we had it on audio. #1, why didn't you ask for it on audio first if that's what you wanted? #2, why can't you just do your school reading? I kinda teased him a little, saying, "So, ya need someone to read it to you, huh?" He said he just doesn't comprehend what he reads. I sympathized, saying in college I used to read my textbooks out loud to myself so I could understand better. After it became apparent that we did not have the book on audio, he asked, "Well is there anywhere that would have it?" Dude, I didn't even know if WE would. But yeah I happen to know off the top of my head what other stores carry. Blah.
My boss's kids were in again. The little girl was walking around asking customers if they would give her a quarter to balance stuff on her foot. People started giving her money just to placate her, I think. She was entertaining (somewhat)--a lot better than her brother, who yelled at me. (And according to my manager Diana, the first time those kids were here they wrecked the Kids' section and threw McDonald's trash everywhere and stuff. She held the kids' Happy Meal toy for ransom until they helped her clean it up.) Anyway, according to the little girl, if they're not running around the store, they're with their mom at HER job. D'oh!
I unintentionally made fun of some teacher today because she was looking for books on the tall tale guy John Henry, and she had spelled it "John Henery" in two places on her list. I was like, "John Hen-e-ry??" and she was like, "Oh, you're giving me a hard time," and told me it was "John Henry" and she just spelled it wrong, and so I just pretended like I thought it might be something different. Hehe.
7/21/03
Got a good one from last night. Apparently some customer walked up to use the phone, and it rang before she could pick it up to use it, so she just answered it. When the customer started requesting books and stuff, she just said, "Um, I don't work here. I can get you someone who does. . . ." Um, why the hell would you just answer some business's phone? Dipshit.
This one's not too bad, just annoyed me because I was in my surly "It's Monday and I don't want to deal with you" mode. I was walking back from putting something away, and this guy walked past me and kind of waved his book at me, like it was supposed to be some kind of signal. Well, I didn't understand the signal, so I just waved my void scanning gizmo back at him in exactly the same way and kept walking. He turned as I passed and said, "Um, do I pay YOU for this?" I told him to go to the cash register and the cashier would ring him up. Dude, that is weird. I don't just go to the grocery store and walk up to people working in the butcher shop and wiggle meat at them and ask them if I can pay them, I go to the register. (Besides, I don't eat meat anyway.)
Someone asked me where the bathroom was, and when I told her she was like, "Oh, it moved." I was like, "It moved?" and she said, "Didn't it used to be back there?" I told her that wasn't the case and she admitted she must be thinking of the other store. I wonder why people think this so often? Do you know how much of a chore it would be to MOVE a bathroom? I mean it's not like it's a display and we can just pull the J-hooks out of the walls. It's also not even as easy as uprooting a section of books and putting it somewhere else, or moving a sale table. You'd have to remodel everything, re-tile, re-do all the plumbing, and I don't even want to know what else. But no, you're right. We moved the bathroom. For no reason. (Heh, just so I don't feel bad about this one, this lady was nice and everything, polite and stuff. I just thought "moving the bathroom" was a funny notion.)
Some guy asked for help finding GED books. When I showed him the Test Preparation section, he was like, "Oh, it was HIDDEN!" Yeah, hidden. Under the Study Guides sign that you can see from the aisle. We like to "hide" things so no one can find them, because we don't like money and we would really prefer to go out of business.
7/20/03
I had an encounter with a woman who didn't speak English well. This was aggravating, but it does not qualify her for mention on this page, as I of course have no problem with people who don't know English and are trying to communicate with me. The main problem here was that in order to try to communicate with me, this lady kept saying the same thing over and over, and after I got her gist and told her we didn't have what she was asking for, she attributed my negative answer to mean I hadn't understood her, and kept repeating the question.
FUN, I know.
She kept saying things like "Book . . . with more question . . . fifth grade?" and basically she got across to me that she had already purchased a workbook for fifth grade math that her daughter was about to finish, and she wanted one with harder questions. She first off wanted me to point out one place where all of the type of book she wanted were grouped together. Well, that's not how it works. You find a series of workbooks, and then you look for grade 5 within each one. I don't have just a bin of 5th grade math workbooks. After explaining this to her and getting her to accept that she'd have to look for a fifth grade math book in any series that interested her, she started opening them and then telling me she wanted "more different question of harder," so I suggested that maybe she might want to try sixth grade books if the fifth grade weren't hard enough. She said no, sixth grade books have different things in them. Well, that's as may be, but fifth grade math will only go so high; it isn't going to get "harder" without moving up a level. Then she asked me at least like eight times if there was anywhere else to look in the store. "No, they're right here," I said, feeling like maybe there was a string coming out of my back that someone wouldn't stop pulling. Then when I ordered a book for her (she'd found a style she liked but it was for grade 4, so I ordered the grade 5 one for her), she acted weird. I took her name but then she was like, "When I should check?" and I said we'd call her, proceeded to take her number . . . and then when she wanted to know when it'd be I told her it'd probably be in this next Sunday truck and she was appalled at the fact that it would take SEVEN days. We get a truck once a week, lady, so if you want it faster do it at the website and pay the shipping and get it two days sooner, because I don't care.
Some smartass at Customer Service gave me the name of a book that is unavailable. When I told him that, he asked if I had any other books by the author, and I told him which ones were available and then that there were several others that we couldn't get. "Why couldn't you get a book?" he asked, exasperatedly. "I don't understand that!"
"Why couldn't we get a book," I repeated, and then gave him plenty of reasons why it might not be available: The publisher might not be selling to retail warehouses, or it might be out of print, whatever . . . the guy backed off after that but I thought it was funny how the attitude there was "What do you mean there aren't infinite copies of every book ever published?"
Here's an example of me giving bad customer service.
I was in the zone just scanning barcodes of books in the Kids' section, and this lady came up and stood really close to me, leaning her elbow on the shelf. I didn't look directly at her but it seemed she was staring at me, just basically waiting for me to turn and ask her if I could assist her with any book-finding or ass-kissing.
Well none of the above happened, because I'm rude.
I just ignored her, thinking all she had to do is say "Excuse me," make the first move, ask for assistance. But no, I guess she was above that. I timed the wait at approximately one and one-half minutes: Me just going about my work, her standing there looking at me waiting to be approached. Finally she lowered herself to my level and asked for my help. It was funny.
One from the trenches, I mean, the cash register: My coworker was asking about whether a lady had a discount card. She said she didn't have it with her, and he offered to look her up but didn't find her in the computer. The next standard question came up: "Is it older than a year?" Surprisingly, she answered that yes it was; usually they insist that it isn't anywhere near a year. That's the end of the line there: If the card is older than a year, it IS expired, because they last one year. But when he said, "Then it's expired," she said, "No it's not." And even though he tried to explain, she just said, "Just look it up in the system. I'm in there." Um, well we already established that you're a) not in the computer, or else we wouldn't have gotten to this point and b) you admitted your card's over a year old, which EQUALS out of date. Period, dammit! Urgh.
And our manager got asked if we do gift registry. She thought that was pretty funny. I just thought it was odd. Odd like the time some lady thought we were a drugstore, and when I told her otherwise, she asked if we had such and such a medicine anyway. Heh.
This one happened a while ago but I recently remembered it, and decided that I did indeed wish to write about it on here. Some lady wanted me to tell her if we had "any books with 'Taylor' in them." I was like, huh? Taylor? So she explained that she wanted me to find her books that had a little girl in them by the name of Taylor, because that is her granddaughter's name and she thinks it'd be cute if she could get the child a story about a girl with the same name as her.
What's worse is that after I told her I didn't know any off the top of my head and didn't have a way to find something like that out, she said, "Well, you know, books with 'Taylor' in them. Would you have anything like that?" I seriously think that when people hear answers that they don't like, they just ignore them.
This one wasn't that bad, but it's a pet peeve. Someone on the phone asked for one of the American Girls books and she pronounced the J in Josefina's name. Those books are all about learning about the time and culture of the protagonist, and all the Josefina books explain that the J sounds like an H in Spanish. Still I hear people pronounce the J. Argh.
This guy wins for today, I think.
The dude walked up and asked for a book called 55 Rules. I asked him if he meant The Essential 55, since that's a popular book and there can only be so many books with the number 55 in them. But he said no, it was 55 Rules. So I looked it up and predictably it had no hits in the computer. So I told him he was probably looking for The Essential 55 since 55 Rules was apparently a book that didn't exist or wasn't available at all. Well, he launched into a story about how he was from another city and he was here a month ago and they told him we were going to order some but he didn't know if he missed them and blah blah. I told him that we didn't have anything in the computer under "55 Rules," and asked him to tell me what the book was supposed to be about. Well, surprise . . . it was about the same thing that The Essential 55 is supposed to be about! Coincidence? APPARENTLY, because even when I told him that he told me he didn't want The Essential 55, he wanted 55 Rules. So I gave up and told him we didn't have it. This story gets funnier because when I went up to mention this amusement to my pal the cashier, he said something like, "Oh, that guy who bought The Essential 55 and a nudie magazine?"
We have a winner.
Still I wonder who the hell showed him the right book and how he finally changed his mind to figure out we were probably right.
Sadly enough almost everyone who comes up to ask about this book has the title wrong, the only unifying factor is that it has the number 55 in the title.
7/19/03
Some lady on the phone asked me for a book, and then every time I was telling her something, she'd interrupt me to ask the exact question I was answering. I was telling her we were supposed to have it when she asked, "Do you have it?" I was telling her I could go check and see if it was on the shelf when she interrupted to ask, "Could you go check?" So finally, I put her on hold, found the book, and came back to tell her the good news. I said, "Hi, still holding?" and she said she was so I told her we had it. Her response was "The one called . . ." and then some shuffling as if she was looking for the title again. I supplied the title and she was like, "Yeah." Um, what was that all about? Was I going to show up with some book she HADN'T asked for? She thought she needed to make sure I wasn't bringing her Everyone Poops? Anyway, I took down her name to hold it and right before she was about to hang up, she asked me to tell her the price. "Thirty-five," I said. There was a silence, which I just waited through, and finally she said, "Thirty-five?" I confirmed that that was indeed what I'd said, and she said, "Well, it's $24.50 on Amazon.com!" I explained to her that any book is going to be cheaper on Amazon because they are not a RETAIL store. People don't seem to get this. The price you pay for getting the cheaper book is that you a) Have to pay shipping (usually) and b) have to wait. Oh well. She chose the Amazon option and I put the book back, and put her on my page of dorkiness.
Some guy called me and asked for a book, and he said he couldn't pronounce the author's last name. Then he spelled it for me: "P-L-O-W-D-E-N." That's not exactly like he's Chuck Palahniuk or something; that's one most third graders would try to sound out. Anyway it turned out it's not a book that's released yet. Its release date is in August, but the guy told me he'd "check somewhere else." I bet you will.
7/16/03
So, first off some lady comes up to the register and she's holding her discount card in her fist, not letting me have it. She put all her stuff down and when I was about to ask if I could have that discount card, she looked at me and said, "Um, it's three things. . . ." I said I could see that and could I have her card. So I rang her up and she began to have the same problems counting her money as I imagine a first grader might. First off she unearthed a quarter and looked at it like it was a frog, and said, "I don't know WHAT that is." I couldn't help it, my response was "Um, it's a quarter." She didn't seem to understand. Then she began counting with another quarter as 50˘, and I had to tell her that when she came out to the 84˘ or whatever that she didn't have 84˘. When I pointed it out she kind of laughed and said, "Ohh, all these NICKELS!" Yes, nickels are really, really mind-boggling. Finally she came out with the right change but didn't seem to realize she was still short a dollar. ::sigh::
I had a lady who wanted a certain book, but she seemed to think that her bits of information (e.g., "I saw it at another store" and "The front section has an index of problems you can look up and find the solutions in the rest of the book") were helpful in finding it. The problem was that she just had this vague idea of what the book was--some health problem diagnoser--and when I just told her without a title the computer was no help and this was the section she could look in, she decided to describe the book to me more. Why do people DO that??? Yes, you've mentioned that the front section's indexy thing is slightly discolored, and I just don't understand how that helps me find it. As if I'm gonna go OH, THAT book, the one with the index! I am not exaggerating, she told me about the index six times.
A guy at the register told me that he shops at our store because of its location, and that he likes our employees, but that the store is inferior. He said that last in a sort of confidential whisper. Ooh, yeah. It's not like I really give a rat's ass whether my store is "inferior," but that's just silly. What good does it do to tell the damn cashier? Can you imagine doing that?
I had a lady tell me she wanted the book Holes today. You would think, since I obviously recognized the book and went to help her get it, that she would assume I understood her. Instead, she repeated the title in this very precise way, and then spelled it for me. (You know, in case I need a random pop refresher of kindergarten words.) I got the book for her and went back to the register, and then she came up and said, "Oh, one more thing" and asked for a book I knew we didn't carry. I told her so, and so her response was to . . . REPEAT THE TITLE again, and look at me expectantly. Okay, so I'm a computer and I've given you Bad Command Or File Name, so you hit Retry? I repeated exactly what I'd told her the first time and she didn't seem to understand this whole concept of me knowing the answer. Apparently if I tell her exactly what the deal is and it doesn't involve me putting the book in her hand, she just asks again immediately. I really wish I could have known what she was thinking at that point, but the problem is, I don't think she WAS thinking.
7/15/03
I only have one for today, and it wasn't even mine. My coworker had to deal with this one. She was helping some people at the desk and this other lady walked right up and butted right in, interrupting the interaction between her and her other customers to ask a question. When my coworker looked up the book she wanted, it looked like we were supposed to have it, but we were out. When the usual suggestion was made that she order the book, the lady replied, "Oh no, I don't need to do that. I already have it on order at the other store." Then she walked off. Perfect.
7/14/03
What a day! Ya know, I wish it was Asshole hunting season. Anyway.
First off, my boss's kid yelled at me. Apparently there are times when the boss brings his kids in and lets them hang out in the store, and usually they mess up the Kids' section; that's something I heard from the Kids' Department Head at the store this manager used to work at. Anyway, apparently the kid's sister was bothering him, so he called across the store at me for me to get his daddy for him. I asked him what he needed his dad for and he told me that his sister wouldn't leave him alone. So, I went to Customer Service and asked him to call the phone, since I didn't know where he was.
The phone rang, and just as it was ringing a customer picked it up, wanting to use it to make a personal phone call. Since it didn't have a dial tone, she pushed the hang up button and disconnected my boss, having no idea what she was doing . . . blah . . . so anyway then he made an announcement for Customer Service to call Café. Ahh, that's where he was. So, I called and finally got him. I told him that his kid wanted him in the back of the Kids' section; apparently his sister wouldn't leave him alone. He told me he'd take care of it.
I helped some customer and then I noticed the kid running up to Customer Service and bugging the other associate to get his daddy. Well, after she said she would, I went up and told her not to bother, because I'd already talked to him and he would be there as soon as he could. He was trying to deal with some crap in the café, apparently. Well, I walked back to Kids' to do my thing and the boy came storming out, saw me, and shouted, "I TOLD you to go get my dad!! Why didn't you get him?" Heh. Oh no you don't, kid.
So I said, "All right, listen. I already TOLD him to come over here, and he'll come as soon as he's finished with whatever he's doing." The kid replied something along the lines of, "Well I need him to come over here NOW, so go get him!" and I said he would come when he was READY, because he had a STORE to run. Then I told him not to yell at me and walked away. The kid called after me, "Well where is he?" and I said, "Don't ask me that. I don't know where he is," and left it at that. I asked the boss about the situation later and he was like, "Oh, he gets like that, he was just freaking."
After the kids left, I noticed the huge pile of puzzles he'd built in the back of the section. It looked kind of like a little fort. I figured he'll probably do that every time he comes in if he has the chance (and from what the other Kids' person says, he comes in often), so I went ahead and took the puzzles out of my section and put them on a toy table. Damned if I'm going to let him screw up my stuff.
I had a lady at the register who had already been told our manager wouldn't accept her return without a receipt. She was kinda sulking about that as she bought other things from me, and I told her to just try the other store, because our return policy is stricter now because our returns are too high. She asked if it would do any good to talk to the manager, and I said that well, he was the one that made the rules, so we can call him over here if she wants to try. "But is there a chance he'll take it?" she asked me, and I told her it's totally up to him, so of course she rephrased her question and asked me if there was any chance he would accept the return. Lady, I just told you over and over it's his call. Your call is whether you want to speak to him and try. This isn't the dog track; we can't take bets on the chances of him taking your return based on odds I calculated this morning. Sheesh.
I had a freaking lady on the phone who couldn't understand my directions. Granted, since I don't drive directions are not my best subject, but she told me that she was coming from Lake City on I-75 and wanted to know what to do. Well, that is actually quite easy, since we're like RIGHT off the highway; I gave her a landmark and told her our side of the street, but then she started being weird. She started asking for clarification on stuff she thought I'd said but apparently got mixed up, and asked for where we were in comparison to our other store, and if the two are close together. I told her we were clear across town from them, and then ten seconds later she asked me if we were close together again. Somehow somewhere in there she determined that we were the one that is actually across town and wanted to know where the one by the mall is. After straightening her out that we ARE the one by the mall, she started asking me what would happen if she took such and such an exit, if she could get to the other store that way, which one was closer to her (though I'd already told her we were RIGHT by the highway and the other store was CLEAR across town), and finally when I told her I did not know any exit numbers, she asked if she could speak to anyone in the store who actually knew where we are. ::sigh::
I got a phone call from a woman who wanted to know if we had a book (yes, I know, unusual). I looked it up and it was a book we didn't carry and couldn't order. I told her so and then my other line started to ring. I figured this would be quick, since I'd already told her I couldn't help her, but then . . . she started TALKING. And my other line kept ringing. She told me all about how the publisher was so-and-so and there was a phone number on the back with a 609 area code and that was where her son lived and maybe she'd ask him and then there was an Internet address with w-w-something, but she doesn't know how to work that Internet thing, and she paused to ask me if I really meant it that I couldn't get it. "So you can't order that?" No, actually I can't, which is what I said thirty seconds ago. So she launches again! "I thought that book would be such a good Christmas present, I was going to try to get one, and it does look good, and the publishing company has this phone number here, maybe I can call them and they can give me some information, so you can't get it then?" Argh. I told her that that was indeed the case. AGAIN. And finally, "Oh, well do you think your other store would have it?" Yeah, lady. I can't even get my hands on a book by ordering it from the publisher anymore, but my other store has it on the shelf. Blargh.
Ooh, some lady called and apparently someone else had told her husband to tell her to get this book that she wasn't sure of the title but it was in the Automotive section. Then it became clear that "it was in the Automotive section" is kind of a guess because she thinks that the friend told her husband that it was something we had to order (which makes me wonder how she came to tell me it was on my shelf). I tried looking it up but the only title I got was a Chilton manual, and she said her husband said it was not Chilton. Well, we've established what it's not: It's not Chilton, and it's not in my store, and it's not easy to find. Finally she told me she'd get the title from one of them, and hung up. Three or so minutes later she rang up again, and told me that actually according to her husband it WAS Chilton. We had the book on the shelf. Go figure.
7/13/03
I had a lady ask me about a book, and it happened that I had read that book myself, so I knew exactly where to find it. Except that it wasn't there, because none were left. Because the book lands in Social Science in the General category, I decided to check the next category over (Current Events), because sometimes bookstore workers don't pay attention and shelve those books wrong. But there were none there either. I told the customer that unless someone plucked it off the shelf and put it God-knows-where, we were probably out. She made this face like what are ya, incompetent? and said, "Well could you check?" I'm like, check what, and she explains she wants me to check the computer and see if we HAVE it and where it would be, since obviously I don't know what I'm doing (well she didn't SAY that, but that was the insinuation--I didn't look it up, so therefore I'm just guessing). I explained to her that I'd read the book and enjoyed it, and that I knew where it would be shelved but it just happened we were OUT. She decided to go away I guess.
Very similar situation with this next lady: She asked me for a book that was supposed to be our #2 bestseller this week, but when I checked, the bestseller holder for that book was totally empty. I told her it looked like we were out, and she goes, "Well should I ask someone?" I told her, "You just asked ME." Damn, I mean since I am giving her an answer she doesn't want, that means I'm not "someone," or I am not in a position to be asked? I told her that we could check back in the Nutrition section for the book in case there were any there, but she said she'd already looked there. ::sigh:: I'm just not good enough because I know stuff off the top of my head. . . .
Some lady was buying Harry Potter 4 in hardcover--she's been to the store many times and is always talking about Harry Potter--and she purchased the book in the café and then complained that she was not charged the right price. I found this out when the new café girl came running up to me asking me to fix it and what she should do, and when she pointed out the customer I was like, oh damn, it's HER. (She's the dotty lady from 5/13, by the way.) I came over and saw that there was nothing at all wrong with what she'd been charged. She was complaining that she didn't get 20% off plus the 10% with discount card, and so I showed her that the original price on the BOOK was almost 26 bucks, while her receipt was showing it at a base price of 20 something. After I explained it all to her, she said, "Okay, now could you explain this to me?" Jeez. Anyway, it just boggles my mind how people never look at the actual freaking price sticker on the BOOK before they start freaking out that their receipt shows they got unjustly charged. Look at the damn price tag! Then look at what you paid! It's a lot less, isn't it! YES!
And when I wound up my day, I went out to get on my bike and some ASSHOLE had thrown a can of pineapple juice and some trash into my bike basket. I don't understand why they thought that was any better than throwing it on the ground . . . suddenly when they're done it's no longer their problem. Assholes.
7/12/03
One of my coworkers got harassed by some asshole who wanted specific information on national parks. He wanted to know where our books on national parks were, and she showed him the travel books but he was like, "No that's not specific enough," and she said maybe there'd be more photographic and nature-oriented books up in Wildlife or whatever, but then he responded with some crap about, "Well can't I get someone to help me with this?" insinuating that she wasn't doing enough. Dude, if you want a book, come to us. If you want to do research, go to the library. If we don't have a book that has what you want and you don't know the name of one we can order, we're just not gonna be much help.
Some guy asked me for a certain book; he had the ISBN and everything, which is usually a good sign. Unfortunately when I punched it up it was a book that wasn't available, so I told him so. His response? "Well why not?" I said, "Well it just says that it isn't available." He says again, "Why not?" I said I guessed the warehouse just didn't have any. Now this response: "Well I don't know why not, because you have loads of OTHER travel guides by this company on your shelves," and he just looks at me as if this impeccable logic will force me to stop pretending and pull this particular travel guide out of my behind. I did notice that it was a guide from like 1999, which means they've probably made a new one since and that was why this old one wasn't available anymore, but when I searched for a newer version of the same there wasn't one available, and he was all, "Well why not?" again. So, if anyone has any idea why the Moon travel company stopped publishing guides on a particular island in Hawaii, please do let me know.
Now for one of the weirdest things I've ever seen in my whole life.
We have this little pen of bouncy balls that have pretty much made my life hell in the Kids' section for the like two years we've had them. People rarely buy them, but kids REALLY like to throw them at each other, at shelves, down the aisles, and leave them all over the place. Anyway, imagine my surprise when I was cleaning up the Kids' section, and I noticed a ball on the SHELF, as if someone thought it went there. Hmm, I thought. Little did I know, weirder was about to happen.
I went on cleaning, coming to my Kids' Fiction area. I noticed that one book was faced out and sticking out rather far, as if there were many other books behind it, except I knew I didn't have that many copies of that book. I moved it . . . and, lo and behold, behind it was . . . A BALL!
Someone had taken great care to place this ball on the shelf and then put a book in front of it!
AND THEN IT GOT WEIRDER!
I found this same occurrence no less than SEVEN other places in Kids' Fiction and the Caldecott section. Sometimes it was two books faced out hiding a ball behind them, like a cute little barn door, and other times it was just the one. SEVEN TIMES someone did this. And without exception, every one of the shelves concealing a ball was horrendously messed up, with books lying horizontally on top of the row of books, and most of the time those horizontal books were from entirely different sections. It would have been kind of funny if it had been just the balls, but apparently someone was just being a total ass. What they hoped to accomplish I do not know.
Oh yeah, and a very humdrum one: Some guy found out I'd have to order a book, and as soon as I told him so he just hung up, like he thought he was talking to a machine. He hung up really hard, too, so my ear hurt. Yeah, that'll show me for not having the book! I was like, "OWW," and the customer who was waiting at the desk bantered with me about rude people while I helped her. Hehe. All I could think if was, Yeah, dude, you just couldn't be bothered to thank me for my help or at least mumble a civil parting as good telephone etiquette dictates; as a result, you have earned a spot on my page of Assholes. Congratulations to you.
7/9/03
As soon as the store opened, the phone rang, and it was some woman demanding to know if her book was in yet. I asked her if she'd heard from us, since we always call people if their book is in, and she said no, so I asked her when she'd ordered it. "At least two weeks ago," she said, and of course that sounds like it could be a problem. For some reason, though, instead of assuming that something had gone wrong, my first inclination was to think, "No way. It wasn't two weeks." Well, I decided to try and confirm my suspicion. I looked up her account, and sure enough . . . the book was ordered on 7/1. I told her so, explaining how if it was placed on July first, it wouldn't have had time to get here yet because of the shipments only coming once a week. (A lot of people don't seem to understand that it isn't going to arrive in the middle of the week; if your order makes it in before the cutoff for that week's shipment, you get it that week, and if it doesn't, well you get it NEXT week--they're not making a special delivery every day of customer orders. Anyway.) The lady was all weirded out by my revealing it was not anywhere near two weeks (if today didn't count, she'd waited exactly ONE week), and began to doubt that my information was right, because she knew it was longer ago than that. Umm . . . no. I don't think the computer has any reason to lie to you. But I do guarantee that because of the information it's giving me NOW, you'll have your book this week, when the shipment comes in. ::sigh::
7/8/03
Some lady came to another employee at Customer Service and got referred to me because I'm the kids' book person. I was informed by the employee who referred her to me that the computer "said we had it," but it was a book I hadn't heard of, so I doubted it. After we checked for it and came back with nothing, the customer said, "Well on your website, it said 'in stock.'"
Think for a minute, people.
Are websites the same address no matter where you type them in?
The answer is yes. You can find us on the Web.
Is there anywhere that you entered your zip code or which store you're wanting to access?
Nope. Not at all.
Then why in God's name do you think looking on a WEBSITE is going to tell you whether the book is physically on the shelf at whatever store you happen to go to?
Ahh. The famous "in stock" dealie.
Guess what they're talking about? That's right, THE WAREHOUSE. Because the website is connected directly to the warehouse. "In stock" means that they have some and they are selling them. It does NOT under ANY circumstances mean that you can walk into any of the retail stores and expect it is sitting there. How the FUCK would the website know?
Moving on.
I had a weird interaction with a lady today. At Customer Service, I was talking to her and I guess either she zoned for a second or I wasn't clear, but after we found out that her book would have to be ordered, I said, "So are you interested in doing the order thing on this one?" and she said, "No," and then in the same breath said, "Well could you go ahead and order that for me?" Heh. This wouldn't have been particularly mentionable, actually, but then later she said something strange to me. Turned out she'd also been called with a message about her books being in, and when I checked there was only one book and there was supposed to be two. I said I'd check to see what the deal was, and according to the computer, one of the books had shipped (the one we had) and the other was still coming, because it had been packaged and set to ship for the next shipment (this coming Sunday), even though they'd been ordered at the same time. I told the lady that news, and she said, "Well I'm going to be going out of town on Sunday, and that was the reason I needed it." Ooh, sucks. I told her I didn't know why that had happened and that there was nothing I could do to make it come faster. She replied, "Well I wasn't insinuating that there was anything you could do." I was like, huh? and she repeated herself. I was mystified by that. I just told her that because after she told me she needed it for Sunday she just looked at me, so I thought maybe she hoped I could hurry it up. I wanted to make it clear there wasn't anything I could do so that she didn't think I just didn't CHOOSE to do so, but I guess she took it the wrong way. In any case it was just a weird interaction.
Some guy with a thick accent asked for help with finding a book. I helped him find the one he was looking for, and then he had a second one, but I did not understand at all what he was saying! It sounded like "de neckad end dett." I was like huh? and what? and finally could you spell that? He tried to spell the first word but I wasn't understanding the way he said his letters either! I was getting N-E-C from him, and some garbled letters, and finally he started getting all frustrated and asked to write it down. Here's what he wrote: The Nacked and the deats. Oh, great. We're still not speaking English. I tried to translate what he must mean, telling him which words I did not recognize, and he pointed to the first one and he goes, "nacked, nacked, like you are nude!" "Ohh," I said, "Well there's the problem, it's not spelled with a C." After that it was a small step to figure out the second word was "dead," and then he was trying to sort of apologize by explaining to me that he had a thick accent. I told him I knew that.
Oh, and our manager had a fight today, but not with anything conscious. One of our dumps (that's what you call those annoying cardboard displays that companies send with books in them and some annoying logo above, promotional crap, you've seen them) came with crappy instructions and did not go together in the usual way. Pat was having a fit! She could not get it to stay together and finally she just lost her temper and started kicking it, and said "FUCK YOU!" to it right in the middle of the store. I tell you what, it is sad when you get beaten by cardboard. I couldn't stop laughing for like five minutes. (Eventually she DID get it together.)
7/7/03
A lady came up to Customer Service today and rattled off the title and author of a book, followed by, "Supposed to come in today." Since I knew the book vaguely and knew it wasn't one of the ones getting RELEASED today, I asked her, "Are you talking about a book you ORDERED?" and she said yes. "Well, then I need your name," I told her, and she gave it to me. Nothing was there under her name, of course . . . isn't that always the case in these situations? And don't they always utter the same sentence and look at you expectantly, as this woman did: "Well, I was told it would be in today." So. I asked her if she got CALLED about her book and she said she did not, but said, "Well I've been out today, so maybe they called me this morning." Dude, if they'd called you this morning your book would have been waiting on the shelf. Anyway, I found her book in the pile of people who hadn't been able to be reached. But first off it pissed me off that people ever give an exact date to customers, because nothing is ever "guaranteed"; you never know when someone might fuck up. And secondly, usually it's the customer misunderstanding or twisting the facts, because they do that a lot. And lastly . . . I just REALLY frigging hate when people can't wait until they've been called about their damn book, and that this lady just walked up and gave me the name and author of her book rather than telling me, ya know, that she ORDERED it. How would I know the difference between that and someone just looking for the book in the store? They just think there's, like, one book that got ordered and everyone will know what they mean when they come up.
Scarily similar was this fuckin' guy. There were three of us standing at the desk because we were trying to figure out our lunch breaks. A man walked up, pointed over his shoulder, and opened with, "Did she tell you?" We're like, huh? and he goes, "Well is one of you here to help me?" My manager said there were three of us here but none of us knew what he wanted. At this point he broke into a laugh. This sort of patronizing laugh like, "Oh my, they don't even know what I want! Such miscommunication!"
So. The guy says, "Well the girl said that you would have the book I wanted." My manager's like, "WHAT girl," and he pointed over his shoulder again, and said, "That girl, the one at the other store." We all just kind of looked at each other, and I said to him, "This is the first time any of US have talked to YOU, and we don't know what you're talking about." So he tells us he doesn't remember what book it was but maybe if we called the other store they could tell us what it was. He also didn't remember who he talked to at the other store but they said we had it. So, putting two and two together, I said, "Did someone from the other store call us and ask us to put aside a book for you?" He agreed that that was the case, and from there I got him to give me his name, and we gave him his book, and after philosophizing about whether it was indeed the "right" book for a while, he pronounced the book to be "it." We were glad, and continued our discussion of breaks as he leafed through the book.
Finally he kind of put his hands down on the book heavily and said, "Yup, that's the one I want," and then he's like, "Can I pay for it here?" We told him to go to the damn register, and he's like, "I can't even get you to take my money, huh?" in this sort of haha voice like this is amusing to him, that anyone he throws a credit card at can't accept his payment. I told him that if he gave any of us money we'd probably just run, and directed him to the FUCKING CASHIER.
Apparently, according to my coworkers, the best part of this interaction was the obvious bored rudeness I displayed in dealing with the man. They imitated me later, "Yeah that was great, 'We have no idea what you're talking about' while me and her were just looking at each other not sure what to say." Hehehehe. I like confronting people with their own obliviousness.
Here's one. After I got a book for a guy, he went away and presently came back to the desk. He said, "Can I pay you for this?" and I told him no. And then he was like, "Well does ANYONE work in this store except you?" I told him either the café or the cash register could check him out, and he said, "Well I've ALREADY been up THERE, and there was NOBODY there." He stormed off to the café, and I shrugged and looked over at the cash register. Indeed, no one was standing behind the counter. I moved over a little and spied the cashier straightening sale books nearby. My assumption is that the guy did what I did: just glanced at the desk without actually GOING there, and assumed no one was watching it. Well, dude, when someone walks up there, that is a signal to the cashier, who is under orders by management NEVER to walk out of sight of the register (and she hadn't!), to go meet the customer there. Of course, he couldn't actually be bothered to go to the correct place and wait, could he?
Some guy asked me if I could help him find a book of answers--just some book of general knowledge he vaguely recalled seeing in the store. He asked if something like that would be in Reference, and it sounded like it, so I took him to Reference. I showed him a couple books that had general knowledge randomness in them, but then he's like, "But this is like TRIVIA. That's not what I want. Don't you have anything with, like, general knowledge about how to cure colds, medical things, you know, like that?" I was like, "So now you want medical reference books?" And he's like, "Yeah," and so I start to show him that, and then he says, "and maybe it should have, you know, tells you how to do martial arts, and things like that." So I asked him, "Are we talking about medical books, or general knowledge?" And he said he wanted something that gave him all the answers to medical knowledge, but "Everything else too." I just gave up and left him in Reference. I imagine he was disappointed to find we didn't have a book that would teach him, in depth, how to save lives and do all forms of martial arts, while containing "everything else too."
7/6/03
A guy got all snotty with me because our manager changed our return policy. Our returns are WAY up and so he decided he won't accept anything without a receipt, and this guy was just wanting store credit but I knew my manager wouldn't go for it. Well, I told the guy I could call him out here and he could ask the guy who made the policy, but instead the customer just wanted to go off on me and made sure to tell me to deliver the message that we'd lost us a customer. Dude, as long as I live I will never get over how people think mouthing off to associates has any purpose whatsoever. Oh, I should probably say any constructive purpose whatsoever; it does serve the purpose of wasting both of our time.
Twice today! People tried to walk into our back room!
One was just a lady who strolled in thinking it was the bathroom, but the other was a jerk. We had already encounted her (well, the cashier and I had encountered her) at the front of the store, where she was demanding to know whether we had Harry Potter 5. We were due to receive it on our truck, and maybe twenty minutes previously our truck had arrived, so they were unloading it. (The unloading process takes a while, and even then we don't know what's in what box, out of, ya know, a few hundred.) The lady wanted to know when we would get them out of our shipment and we said it could be half an hour, it could be three hours; we had no way of knowing because we can't just run around opening every box to see what's in it without, ya know, stacking things, opening plastic, blah blah blah. We get to it when we get to it, all right? But she was like, "I'm on the road and I can't wait!" so we were like, well, sorry then. She walked away.
Some time later one of my coworkers was wandering around with a Harry Potter book in her hand, looking for a customer. She told me this story of how a woman who claimed to be "on the road" burst in to the back room and said, "Hel-LO!" and demanded attention, and then required information about when we would be taking Harry Potter out of the box. My coworker was like, "We JUST got all the boxes--we don't KNOW," and the lady started whining about how LONG would it be until we knew and blah blah blah. For some reason my coworker told her she would find her a book if she gave her ten minutes. I cannot imagine why she even let that lady get away with walking into an employees-only area and demanding shit, but anyway when she emerged with a book the lady had already taken off!
What I was stuck wondering was, if she was "on the road," why the hell did she need the book? Was she going to read it while driving?
7/5/03
My manager came in to work and was greeted by the sight of a kid on roller-shoes entering the store and just skating on in. As he was telling the story of how ridiculous that is, I had to think of the time I'd done that myself when I got roller-shoes, but then again that was not during hours when we were open or anything. So anyway, the manager kind of swooped down on the kid and told him he wasn't to skate in our store, and it turned out Mommy was nearby. They got in an argument with him about how "no one ever said anything before," and the mom was like, "Well, is there a manager around?" Well, my manager got to tell her that he was in fact the highest authority in the store.
Anyway, the lady kept arguing with him! My manager insisted that the kid either leave, put on different shoes, or take the shoes off, because it was dangerous and made marks on our floors. Mommy kept arguing with him, saying, "Well I don't think it's very sanitary for him to walk around with no shoes on!" and he was like, "Well you should have thought of that before you tried to come in a store on roller skates!" Finally, guess what happened? The mom told her son to just pop the wheels back into the shoes. They have a button that lets you do that. My manager was like, "The wheels pop back IN?" and she said yes, and he goes, "Well then what was this whole problem about?" God, it's not "sanitary" and all that crap, and then it was just a simple matter of putting the wheels back in. Yes, lady, it makes perfect sense that your kid should be allowed to skate around indoors when he's not at a roller-skating rink. Whatever.
Jeez, how do I even explain this one. Diana and I were in the back room (she was doing manager crap and I was boxing up some overstocked books), and first the intercom announced that I needed to go to Customer Service, and then maybe ten seconds later it asked for Diana to go to the register. Well, we complained and got up together, and I made it out the door before her. On my way to the desk I ran into an old man who stopped me and said, "Are you Diane?" I said I was not, in fact, Diane, and went on to the desk, where no one was waiting. Well, the old man kept standing where he was, and when Diana came past him he stopped HER and said, "Are you Diane?" She's used to people thinking her name is Diane so she said yes, but found out that that guy had some weird misconception that "Diane" was the lady who had been called to help him in the middle of the aisle. Apparently "go to Customer Service and I'll call someone to help you" was too much for him to remember, and on top of that he got our names confused.
So anyway. He came over to the desk and he was STILL confused about who was supposed to help him, asking me if I could, and I asked him if he had a customer service question for me or what. Then my phone rang and I answered it, and put the person on hold . . . and the old guy was still standing there, and when I asked him what his question was he said, "No, no, go ahead . . . maybe she'll be able to help me," gesturing toward the register where Diana had gone to accept a return or whatever. Finally I convinced him that HE COULD ASK ME A QUESTION, telling him the register girl had called ME for HIM and DIANA for someone ELSE, and he pulled a bunch of crap out of his butt about our coin collecting materials. This is where it got FUN, I tell you what.
He started rambling about why don't you have this and that and how come you have this for the 2001 quarters but not 2003, blah blah, and I just explained to him that there was no way to find out what sort of H.E. Harris merchandise we were going to receive when, because those decisions weren't made at store level and they just send them out to us when we're ready to carry them. We can't order them or anything. So THEN he started going through them and explaining stuff to me about how THIS one has the P and the D but this OTHER one doesn't, and this one carries these quarters in it, and then this other folder has all this stuff but doesn't have the P and D, isn't that weird, and he felt compelled to try to explain to me the difference between a P and a D quarter (I already knew that). Finally we come to the point: He thinks that because one folder costs more than the other but it holds fewer quarters, I should discount it for him.
When I explained to him that you buy what you buy and it doesn't matter what doesn't make sense to him, he was like, "Oh, so you don't price, huh?" No we don't just randomly change our prices because you didn't find one that had all the features you liked! Jeez. When Diana and I got back to the back room she said, "What'd that old man want?" and I told her, and apparently he'd hit the register chick with the same hooey, trying to get her to change the prices for him. Whatever.
A guy called me and asked me if our prices in the store are the same as the ones on our website. I said no. Then he asked me to look up a book for him and tell him the price. I did so and told him it was a regular $24.95 hardcover. "It's $16.00 on your website!" he shot back. Well, we've already discussed how that's irrelevant because our prices aren't the same, didn't we dingus? Anyway, I told him that was normal, and he was like, "Really?" and finally he confusedly hung up. Is it not common knowledge that website prices tend to be cheaper EVERYWHERE??
7/2/03
Here's a nice one: I got a phone call and I looked up a lady's book, and the answer was, "Sorry, we don't carry it; I'd have to order it." She said, "You'd have to ORDER it?" I said, "Yes," and the next thing I heard was a dial tone. It's not like it costs money to say, "Okay, I'm not interested in that; thank you for your time, goodbye." Sorry, I'm too above that, I don't care that I'm talking to a human and not a machine. *Click!*
Here's one from a coworker. She said that yesterday some lady was asking for help to find "Some book about . . . Tom Sawyer?" Um, are you really that ignorant? She handed it to the lady and she started examining it and asking if this was "the only one," wanting to know if there were other books about Tom Sawyer that it could possibly be, since she'd never heard of this book and didn't want to get the wrong one for her son. My coworker replied that there's only one The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (though that's not the only Mark Twain book Tom appears in), and the lady noticed that there was a different version, you know, a different cover, on the one next to it. She was like, "Well that one next to it looks different!" and demanded to know which one was "the one." Lady, there are a billion versions of classic books because their copyrights aren't the same anymore. I hate people.
7/1/03
I had a lady preface her statement on the telephone by telling me that this book might be out of print. I looked on the computer and could not find any record of it existing so that was probably the case. She asked me if I knew anything about how she would go about pursuing it, then; would giving me the publisher's name help? After I told her the publisher wasn't part of any search we could do, I suggested perhaps she could do a used book search online somewhere. Then she told me that maybe I could do something with this, and offered up the name of the publisher. Since I'd already told her knowing the publisher did not help AT ALL, I replied with a confused silence, which she filled by saying, "And they're in New York." Ahh yes, that book by that publisher in New York. That's all the info I need. It just strikes me as ridiculous when people won't LISTEN TO ME.
Here's a GOOD one! I mean, an actual nice one! Some lady came up and said, "Excuse me, my daughter just grabbed this off the shelf and I can't find where it goes!" I showed her where it went and praised her for her good customer-osity. She responded by acting like it was just common sense: "Well, I didn't know where she got it from!" I thanked her again and went back to my work. It is so weird how some people (like me!!!) just can't even imagine being a jerk in a retail store.
Some lady was creeping me out big-time in the Kids' section. She had her young sons playing with the train set and she was just sitting in the big train benches, watching them. Since I was doing an overstocking project nearby I had to listen to the sickening things she was saying to her sons. It was in this sing-song baby voice, things like "I love you soooo much, soooo much. You're soooo cute." Just random praisey things she was saying, in between instructing them to share and not grab trains away from each other. Finally she made me want to club her when she added, "And Jesus loves us too!" Eventually she had to leave, though, when one of her sons bit the other and they were no longer in the mood to play; she took them out to the van, scolding. I wonder if Jesus loved that?
On the phone I had a customer who wouldn't shut up. She kept making small talk about every single thing she said, and she had a list of like fourteen books to look up. Before each book she'd say the list of things she didn't know: "I don't know who wrote it, or if it's in paperback or hardcover . . . I think it's a mystery but I'm not sure . . . anyway it's called. . . ." And then as I was looking for the books she'd give me all this horseshit about why she liked that book and how similar it was to so-and-so's writing. I had some girl standing at the desk waiting for me to help her, too, and I couldn't just shut this lady up because she had MORE stuff to ask. She claimed she had just been in our store but hadn't seen any of these books, and just to be sure I checked. There were over thirty titles by this author (we had ALL of the ones on her list), so I told her she probably looked in the wrong place. In the meantime she told me that they were nice light reads, so much less demanding than Danielle Steel. She went off on a tangent about how in order to get through a Danielle Steel book she now has to take antidepressants and drink a lot, because they're so depressing now. Imagine that . . . LESS demanding than Danielle Steel. It was an amusing conversation, to be sure, but I wish it hadn't happened when people were waiting for my help.
Some lady asked me for this early learning book that had been issued by the Dr. Seuss educational press thing. (They're not official Dr. Seuss books, but they use his characters and style and teach other things in rhyme.) I looked it up and the computer showed we would have to order it, so I told her so. She said she'd just look elsewhere, but then she said in an aside to her husband, "Maybe we SHOULD just order it. It seems like it's pretty popular." Apparently this lady was one of those people who thinks that a bookstore automatically carries every book in print. Lady, we don't have that book on the shelf because we don't CARRY it, not because we're just out. It's a crappy little early learning book about your first 100 words, and it was published five years before I was born. I don't think the problem is that it is too POPULAR.
Some freaking lady asked me for help on her school reading list. I could not find the first one on the list. It's one we usually carry but it wasn't in Literature and it wasn't in either of the places we usually keep school reading list books. I found her the three others on her list, but then she kept coming back to the first one. First she reiterated, I guess in case either of us was hallucinating, "You don't have this one?" Well, since I ran all over the store to three different places looking for it, came back empty-handed, and TOLD YOU SO, I'd say there's a good chance of that being the case. And then she pressed on: "Well are you going to order it?" I told her we normally carry it so it's just out right now, we don't "order" more copies of books we carry. She asked me again if I knew when it was going to get ordered. I explained in more detail that we do not ORDER books that we carry; they simply get replaced whenever they're bought, depending on when they're bought. And then more! "Well when are you going to get some more?" I told her I didn't know. "And you can't find that out for me?" Argh! No I can't! I told her I had no way of knowing when they were bought. I expressly explained that she could certainly put in an order specifically for that book to come in just for her, but she declined and said she would shop elsewhere. Yeah.
I hate when people come up to the desk and give you all the information that doesn't matter. "Yeah, I'm looking for a book," was one guy's genius opener. "It's nonfiction, I think it's new, kind of a religious book. . . ." Well. For so many words, did you ever think maybe you're not giving me ANYTHING I can use? So I was like, how 'bout a title buddy? Oh, oh, right, and he gives me the title. If you had the title why didn't you open with THAT? Anyway. Just gets worse from here.
We went to the section and looked for the book, but it didn't seem to be there. I told him that according to the computer, that book didn't come from our warehouse and therefore replaced slowly if it was bought, so maybe that explained its absence. He looked at me and said, "Your computer doesn't tell you if you have it?" No, genius. It doesn't, hence that explanation I just gave you. He asked me if I knew how much it was and whether I could order it, and I told him I hadn't caught the price but we could get it from the publisher the same as our store gets it from the publisher, but it can take a while. Then he goes, "So you don't happen to remember what the price was offhand, do you?" Oh, of course I do. Which is why it's awfully mysterious why I didn't tell you when you asked me three seconds ago. I told him if he wanted to come back to the desk I could tell him what the screen said. We did that, and I quoted a price, and then he said, "Well is there any way you can order that?" No, what gave you that idea? The part where I offered to order it before? I was lying when I said that. Anyway, I told him that because of the aforementioned publisher restock and slow replacement, it might not get in for up to five weeks. He looked taken aback and changed his mind about ordering, thanked me, and left. I swear this world would be a much better place if people asked questions when they were ready for the answers, and listened to those answers to boot.
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