My Record of Work: The Annoying, the Interesting, and the Just Plain Weird--The Year 2003.

10/29/03

I helped a lady who was looking for books on how to decorate a baby's room. She seemed really, really grateful for my help for some reason, thanking me a lot for my assistance when I went through a whole bunch of books in the interior decorating section looking for appropriate volumes on nursery décor. We found two she wanted to look through, and I left her to do her thing. I was really, really surprised when I found one of the books just laying in the aisle, as if she'd just dropped it on the floor and decided she was above picking it up, and the other one just thrown on a random endcap elsewhere in the store. Why do people think this is appropriate behavior? Why do people who are civil to your face turn into scavenging animals behind your back? Why??

Early this morning an older gentleman came in and asked me if I could look up the book "Turbo Can." I repeated, "Turbo CAN? C-A-N?" because I'd never heard of anything like that. He replied that that was what he said, and then while I was searching for it in my computer he added, "It stands for 'Computer Assisted Drawing.'" Okay. So if it stood for "Computer Assisted Drawing," how could the last letter be N?? How could you know what it stands for and still think that's an N? (Considering I looked it up later and it actually stands for "Computer-aided design" or "Computer-aided drafting," he's wrong there too, but still, "DESIGN" and "DRAFTING" DO NOT START WITH N.) I've heard of TurboCAD and AutoCAD or whatever, and what's funny is next he asked for "Auto Can." Yeah. I told him that what he was probably looking for was "CAD," not "Can," and told him everything on those programs we'd have to order right now. Then he decided to ask me for another book, and said, "I'm looking for that book by Franken. 'Rush Limbaugh is a Stupid Ass'?" Yeah. Just so you know, the title of that book is Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. But don't worry, actually knowing the title of something isn't important.

Oh, just so you people don't get the idea that I've gotten sour in my old age (yeah right), I'm usually really nice to people and sometimes go out of my way to help them (like the lady who thanked me by throwing the nursery decorating books wherever she wanted, for example). Today some lady told me I was "sweet" because I was helping her so much. That is a nice feeling.

This happened to my manager . . . a guy came up doing this "I'm really important and shouldn't have to wait for service even though someone else is already being helped" stance. When my manager finally got to him, he was like, "Yeah, my wife ordered two books. I'm here to pick them up." She got the name and dug them up, and first of all she hadn't ORDERED them, just called in and asked us to hold them, which slowed down the process of actually locating the books. But get this. When she found the books and gave them to him, he replied, "I'm not finished shopping yet. Could you just hold them here until I'm ready to go to the register?" Okay. So why the fuck did you just waste your time and ours to come here and demand the books when you weren't even ready to take them yet? Then you have to come BACK and get someone ELSE to waste their time on you. This sucks!

Ugh. I was helping a woman in the store and being annoyed by our Christmas music. The thing that really, really pisses me off about it is a lot of it isn't Christmas music at all. It's straight gospel songs, songs about Jesus, and not in any sense of the word geared toward the holidays. I'm sorry, but I shouldn't have to listen to gospel music at work when I am not employed by a "Christian" company. I am actually a little offended that I am being subjected to this religious propaganda when I cannot get away from it. Songs about Santa Claus, jingle bells, reindeer, the season of winter, Carol of the Bells, even songs like Silent Night, okay, I can deal with this. But when the lyrics of this gospel song are like "Yes, Jesus! Jesus is his name! We will praiiiiiiise him, yes King Jesus is his name!" I start to get annoyed. This is not in the "spirit of the holiday," thank you . . . not to mention that it's not even Halloween yet. But anyway. I was with this customer and I commented, "Wow, that's the third straight gospel song they've played in a row." The customer just looked at me, all glowy, and said, "OH, I KNOW, I LOVE it!" and started talking about how she loved inspirational music written for God. ::sigh:: I just can't get away from it.

I just have to hope that this year they decided not to play the "Santa Baby" song. It's this really awful swanky song where this woman wants Santa to come down her chimney in a big way. It is really fucking sick and if possible more offensive than listening to church music in my retail store.

Hehe, a cute little girl told her mommy that my hair looked just like Rapunzel. ::grin::

I helped a woman who was hovering around the Baby Books section, looking for Rosemary Wells books. I showed her where to find them (Beginning Readers), and she thanked me, but then threw in a little aside 'cause I guess she wanted a place on my site . . . "They've moved . . . they used to be over THERE," indicating where she'd been looking. I just told her, "Nope, not these ones anyway," and walked away before I got into an argument with her. I've seen these people before; they don't realize they're talking to the person who's been in charge of the section for three years and they think it'll make them look less oblivious if they act like they knew what they were doing until we pulled the rug out from under them by CHANGING where we shelve things. Beginning Readers has always been on the wall, and Rosemary Wells has always written Beginning Readers books. If you think otherwise, your memory is telling you the wrong thing, because I would have been the one to move them and I really don't think so.

I don't remember what day this was, but I wanted to mention it; it's kind of similar to the above entry. Some woman was looking in the Beginning Readers section and found the four or so books I have by P.D. Eastman, and asked me, "Do you have any other Dr. Seuss books?" I asked her "other than WHAT?" and she pointed out the P.D. Eastman. I explained to her that P.D. Eastman wasn't Dr. Seuss; those books were written by a different author so they were in the Storybooks section, while books that were actually BY Dr. Seuss were in a special section that is all Dr. Seuss in my category called "Favorite Characters." On our way there the lady informed me in a sort of snippy tone that P.D. Eastman is one of Dr. Seuss's names that he wrote under. I shook my head and told her Seuss wrote under Dr. Seuss and then his real name backwards (Theo LeSeig for Theodore Geisel), but she just insisted it was a pen name and that Eastman was also Dr. Seuss. I just let her think whatever and left her saying they weren't the same, but I'm sure she just figured I was ignorant. Sorry. P.D. Eastman and the other writers who have their names on Dr. Seuss-esque books (e.g., Al Perkins, Michael Frith, and others) were just staff writers who wrote for the same series. There are Dr. Seuss-ish series called Beginner Books and Bright and Early Readers or something, and those other writers were indeed ACTUAL PEOPLE. Imagine that.

10/28/03

I know this one was a kid, so I won't out-and-out say that she was out of line, but she was kind of old enough to know better than to do this--somewhere between ten and eleven maybe. I was sitting in Kids' and the girl came up and said, "Hi. My mom needs you." I said, "Okay. Where is she?" The girl replied, matter-of-factly, "She's back in the books." I couldn't resist. "In the BOOKS, ahh. Can you show me?" The punch line is, the little girl couldn't find her mom either. She went where she saw her last, then began walking around going, "Moooom? Mooooom?" I told her I'd be at the Customer Service desk if she needed me. I remain amused by the idea that I was supposed to just go find some random woman who needed help "in the books."

I finally got the other Harry Potter question. Back when Harry Potter 5 came out, I predicted that within a week I would be asked a) Where's the paperback? and b) When's book 6 coming out? It was released in hardback on June 21 and on June 23 someone asked where the paperback was, fulfilling one of my suspicions. But today was the first time someone asked me when Harry Potter 6 was coming out! I can't believe it took so long!

I had a lady ask me if I could look up a "very old" cookbook. She had the book's author (but wasn't entirely sure of the author's first name), and I tried looking for it but found nothing close. She replied, "Well, then, can you try looking under 'Cookbooks'?"

I'm not even going to bother explaining why that is FUCKING RIDICULOUS.

A college-ish girl came up to the desk and said, "Hi, I'm here to pick up a book?" I said, "Okay." Her response was to just look at me, and then when I didn't do anything else she just kind of turned her head sideways and smiled, and kind of giggled a little bit, in this way that said very obviously, "Well come on, give it to me, why aren't you getting it?" So. I pitied the poor girl and leaned on the desk toward her, and said, "You called us and asked us to hold a book?" She said, "Yeah?" and I said, "Well, what is your name?" She gave it to me, and I gave her her book. I love it when people come into the bookstore and think if they say they had a book held we'll know they're "the" one. There's around three hundred books on hold at any given time, incidentally.

10/27/03

Some lady came up and told me she wanted to know if O'Shaughnessy came out with a new book. Um? I asked her to clarify since "O'Shaughnessy" is not someone's full name and is not an immensely popular author or anything (I would have understood if she came up and asked for Grisham's new stuff), and she just repeated the lady's last name and waited for me to answer. ::sigh:: I made it clear that I needed a first name as well and we went from there.

Woo. I had a lady ask me where the Lemony Snicket books were, and said she'd already been through Kids' Series and hadn't seen them. Uh-huh. So I took her to where they were and she said, "Yeah, I even LOOKED right at those and didn't register that they were the Lemony Snicket books." Ooh. So she told me her daughter wanted the latest one and she picked it up. I said the series was really good and she said, "That's what my daughter tells me." Yeah, of course. I told her she should read it and she said, "Well, I was thinking about doing that. But . . . I don't know, I just can't seem to bring myself to read children's literature." I wish slapping customers wasn't illegal, because she deserved to be popped one. Anyone who's read Lemony Snicket knows it's entertaining for adults too, not to even mention that a LOT of children's books are perfectly good for grown-ups too. She later said she had read and enjoyed all the Harry Potter books, but she said this like this was something to be ashamed of, as if half the Western world hasn't read those damn books.

Okay. So this guy came in with a bucket and asked our café manager to dump the used coffee grounds in there instead of throwing them away. (Apparently he likes to use them to dump in the dirt of his worm farm--something about enhancing the soil.) She agreed to do that and left the bucket there for most of the day, and added grounds whenever a pot of coffee was finished brewing. Well, the guy came back to get his bucket, and FREAKED OUT when he saw there weren't all that many in there. He cornered the café manager behind her counter so she couldn't get out and started YELLING in her face about how it just wasn't enough and where are the rest? All the café customers were just kind of frozen staring at him, and everyone in the store could hear the commotion he was making. He was screaming in her face about how she didn't save them and he'd TOLD her to save them and he demanded to look in her garbage. There he found some used grounds that had been thrown out by the girl who'd done the manager's break; I guess she forgot to mention it to her, but it's not like it was that big a deal. He freaked out AGAIN and screamed at her about that, at which point she escaped and tried to get another manager to throw the guy out, halfway to tears. We weren't sure if we were going to have to call the police or what. The guy came out of the café counter and sat down at a table and started yelling, "HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY!" at the top of his lungs until someone came to deal with him. Weirdly enough, the other manager went up to him and let him rant until he was done and then told him they'd continue to collect the grounds today. I don't know what got into her, usually she would kill someone if they gave her that kind of attitude, especially over something we were doing as a FAVOR for FREE--it wasn't like his order was fucked up or something. Anyway another manager came in for the next shift and she was shocked when she heard how the café manager had been treated, and said that if she saw that guy in the store again she would tell him to take his bucket and get out, and he would not be welcome in this store ever. She put his bucket outside. The guy hasn't been back, though, and the bucket is slowly filling up with asshole people's trash.

Today our cashier and I were talking and she gave me this anecdote. She said that some guy asked for her help and she sent him to Customer Service, and then he came back and picked up a book and pretended like he was reading but really he was staring at her when he thought she wasn't looking. (She said, "I mean, I'm not stupid. I could tell he was staring at me.") Then after a while the guy came over and told her that he hoped she didn't mind him saying so but she was really cute. She thanked him, and then he asked her if she'd be interested in going out sometime if she didn't mind "older guys." (She described this guy as having been old enough to be her father, at least, not that it would have been any less creepy to be hit on by a young guy that way in my opinion.) He guessed her to be twenty-two and she said, "No, I'm nineteen actually," and he said that didn't matter to him. Well, apparently it matters to the cashier. Because guess who didn't get a date.

I had to pry teachers out of my ass with a crowbar this morning! Two teachers called me within five minutes of each other, and actually the first one was on hold on the other line when the second one called. The first teacher was fine but the second one was really annoying. She wanted to know some information about the books she'd ordered but I couldn't find her order. I mean, I couldn't physically find any books in the store under the name of her school or herself, and I couldn't find an order that had even been made in the computer. She gave me about six different phone numbers to try to track the order, and I came up with nothing. She told me she was going to give me a phone number to reach her at and then I could just call HER when I found her books. Uh-huh.

So. First off, I called Barnes & Noble and Borders to make sure it wasn't one of their stores. Considering she wasn't particularly knowledgeable about what information she'd given us (even though she insisted she'd placed the order herself), I imagined she might not remember where she ordered from. But they had no records of that. So I called my other store and they had no order for this woman either. I asked my manager what I should do with this.

Well, my manager took over; she called her friend at the warehouse, asked her to find out if they'd shipped a certain quantity of the book to any store in our district recently, and we were able to locate the order on our computer. Turned out the order was placed under the school's name (not the teacher's) and it had some corporate number for the school listed instead of any of the phone numbers the teacher had given me . . . and on top of all that . . . it wasn't even our store, it was in fact the other store.

I really wanted to call her and tell her the reason we couldn't find her books was that she ordered with the other store (I mean, she really was pretty snippy with me and all but told me I must be incompetent), but my manager told me, "No, it's the other store's order, so it's the other store's problem." ::sigh:: I wonder where they put her books, since they couldn't find them when I called?

10/26/03

I had a guy ask me where books on cars were, and as I was taking him to the Automotive section he revealed that he actually had a specific title he wanted me to look up. So we went to the desk. He gave me the title of "Upgrade or Rebuild Your Motor." I found nothing, even though I tried the various keywords. He did, however, remember the author's name (after some memory jogging), so I typed that name in. In the meantime, he stepped to the side of the desk and peered at my screen, and remarked, "You guys have to get on the Internet to look things up?" I explained that it was not the Internet; it was just an intranet, and did vaguely resemble our website but it was not the same thing. Then the author popped up, so I clicked on him and up popped two books. I scrolled down to see their availability and the guy reached over and tapped the screen and said, "THAT'S the one I need." He hadn't actually tapped an entry. So I asked him, "Which one?" and he tapped the middle of the screen again. I scrolled down to an actual entry and pointed to it with my mouse, saying, "THIS one?" He agreed, and said something about how he was surprised it was cheaper than where he'd looked for it elsewhere. Strangely enough, the title he'd given me and the title that popped up only had one keyword in common, so that explained why I had trouble getting it to show up during my first attempt. (I suppose "Upgrade or Rebuild Your Motor" is vaguely similar to "Rebuild and Modify Your Engine," but it certainly makes it difficult for a computer to find.)

I replied, "We'd have to order that." He goes, "Well how do you know?" Okay, well he's standing there looking at the same screen as I am and can obviously see it well enough to do things like drool incredulousness about us being "on the Internet" and what the book's price was, so I wondered why he suddenly couldn't read. I highlighted the part where it said the book was available in the warehouse, and explained the situation. He asked how long it would take and I told him another date that was right on the screen. In the middle of my explaining that we get shipments once a week, he started . . . LAUGHING. Yup, laughing. What the hell? So I said it. "What?" He said, "Well I'll just get it from the guy's website. You'd think you guys would be competitive, where I could just take it off the shelf." Uh-huh. So I said, "Well, you can't have everything." I hate it when people don't understand the concept that their book is not a hot-selling title, especially when it's some obscure book about rebuilding engines for Pete's sake. Boy, we sure are lacking in our inventory since we don't have one particular book; I mean, what a disgrace, right? We don't keep every book in print on our shelves! Shame! Just not very COMPETITIVE, are we?

Some guy came up to my coworker and me at the Customer Service desk, and asked us if we had anything on "Occupied Japan." I asked if he meant like stuff from World War II. He said yes, and then he said, "The figurines." Oh. "We don't sell stuff like figurines," I told him, and he said something about how "Occupied Japan" was a type of figurine again. So I told him again that we don't carry things like that, and he responded with, "I'm looking for a BOOK on it, they're little figurines, it's pretty simple." Oh, now I get the picture; "Occupied Japan" is the name of some obscure kind of figurines that some company made that are now collectible, and he wants a book on their values or something. (The computer said we had to order anything in existence on the subject.) But don't you think by how he phrased his opening that it sounds like he's asking for figurines? Obviously I did, but then obviously I'm an ass because I don't know he's looking for a BOOK on this oh-so-common-knowledge concept of "Occupied Japan Figurines," after all it's pretty simple. Just like me!

10/25/03

Oh, our cashier got name-called today. Some lady asked her to open her drawer and change a twenty. As many people commonly know, you can't open a register without a sale in MOST retail stores. When our cashier told the lady this, she made a disgusted face and said, "You're PATHETIC." She also said it loud in front of a whole bunch of children. Uh-huh. THE CASHIER is pathetic because the company has programmed the register computers to not open without a sale. Sure.

Some lady came up this morning as I was helping someone else, and she yelled across the store at me, "I just have a question! Where's Barbara Bush's new book?" I told her I didn't know offhand and I would be back to help her, and true to my word I returned promptly. She opened with, "You know, EVERYWHERE BUT HERE, they have it!" I was thinking, um, how exactly have you established that we don't have it? Just because I didn't know offhand and you didn't see it blinking in neon lights when you walked in the door? I told her she was the first person to ask me for it so I didn't know immediately where it was, what it was, or if we had it, and started looking for it on the computer. Immediately she started in with, "Well, now, that book is all over the television, on Larry King," blah blah, and I just looked at her and said, "I don't have a television." (I do, but it has no cable. If it did, I wouldn't watch it. Everything that's interesting to you is not automatically headline news, lady.) Anyway, she said, "Well I can't believe you don't have it!" I said exactly what I was thinking: "I haven't said we don't have it. I'm still looking for it." (Barbara Bush has apparently written several books. It took me a sec to find the most recent one.) Anyway, I found the title and it said it was brand new, so after checking in the Biography section (where it should have been), I figured it would be in features if I had any and indeed I was right; it was on an endcap she'd walked past to come tell me how appalling it was that we didn't have any. It's weird how people open conversations already pissed about being disappointed when they haven't even let you disappoint them yet. Let me disappoint you first, dammit!

10/22/03

Some lady came up and said she wanted a certain book in paperback, and that she already looked in the "Fiction and Literature" section but she didn't find it. I told her that if it was a small paperback it'd be at the back of the store on the small shelves, but if it was a large-sized paperback it would have been shelved in the same shelves where she'd been looking. I looked the book up to find out which size paperback it would be, and was surprised to find that it was indeed only available in the large size (trade paperback). When I told her this (which basically meant if we had it, she overlooked it), she said, "But it's not a LARGE paperback! It's only like. . . ." And then she made the outline of a box with her fingers, tracing a shape that was roughly from the top of her shoulders down to her PELVIS. At my confused look, she just did it again, and said, "Only like that!" Um? If I have any books in this store that are TWO AND A HALF FEET LONG, I somehow doubt that they would be in these shelves . . . not to mention that, well, THAT IS HUGE, and there you are suggesting that it's "only" that big and could never be called a "large" paperback. Deciding to just shake off that weirdness, I took her over to where it should be. On the way over I spotted a book that was a mass-market paperback size and showed her the difference between "trade" size paperback and "mass market" size. She said she understood now what I meant by large and small paperback, but then when I found her book and it was the large size, she said, "Oh, but that's not large! That's very small!" Okay. Whatever. I told her it was one of the large size paperbacks and she could SEE that and was HOLDING it and somehow still arguing with me that it wasn't large. I think she was trying to make me think that we'd put the book in the wrong place--some weirdness like that.

I had two people today who answered my "Hi!" with "Fine, thanks, and you?" I wish people would, like, listen, instead of responding to what they expect to hear.

Ack. I had to do a break at the register and I had this lady buy like four of these cute stuffed animals that had 40% off stickers on them. Actually the sticker said 40% off plus 10% with discount card. That was where the problem lay, because after I rang her up she left and then came back complaining that I didn't give her her extra ten percent.

First off came the expected comment that she didn't get her "full fifty percent," and I explained that it didn't say 50%; it said 40% plus 10% with discount card, which is two separate discounts. Then she said it didn't show her getting the 10% off anywhere on the receipt. That's because it does it automatically if I've scanned a discount card, so it only showed how much she saved overall (four dollars) instead of the itemized amount she saved on EACH item. She insisted that I hadn't taken any extra 10% off even though I told her it was impossible to NOT give her that extra 10% if I scanned the discount card.

To illustrate, I told her to pretend she didn't have a discount card and I'd show her how her stuff would have rung up without it. Each little animal was about a dollar more without the discount card when I did a pretend sale on the register. But she still didn't believe me! She went into a diatribe about how "40% plus 10% seems like it should be 50% to me," and I explained AGAIN that if it was just a STRAIGHT fifty percent it would be written on the sticker as "50% off," but it's separated into two discounts on the sticker so that you'll understand that extra ten percent comes off only with a discount card. It comes off the ALREADY DISCOUNTED PRICE, which I explained to her again, and she decided to make it sound like I was being oblivious by saying, "Well, to me it seems like 40% plus 10% should be 50%. It doesn't figure out when you do the math," and just left shaking her head still not understanding and obviously thinking either I'd ripped her off or those stickers were advertising falsely. I should have called my general manager because he has a way of explaining things to people in more detail than they could ever hope for, and I think maybe that was what this lady needed to assure her that she hadn't been ripped off. Oh well.

A lady asked me for a book while I was at the register. I told her I couldn't look up books at the register because the computer is incapable (my stock answer, hehe), and told her she could go to Customer Service and I would page someone to help her. She replied, "Well will there be someone back there?" Um, I just said that. I repeated, "I'll page someone to help you." She said, "OH, okay," and then . . . just stood there. I had to prompt her again to GO to the desk . . . I think she thought I was just going to summon someone to come up to the register and help her even though I'd told her more than once that the Customer Service computer was going to be needed to answer her question. Some people just don't get it. It strikes me at times to wonder whether I'm misunderstood so often because I'm unclear or something . . . but then again, nine times out of ten people don't seem to have any problem with my directions and instructions. Oh well.

10/21/03

I didn't have any Assholes today, but our register chick did. This lady came up and she whined about how she couldn't find anyone to help her. The cashier said she'd page someone, and the lady repeated, "But there's nobody BACK there!" (I was supposed to be running Customer Service, by the way.) She told the customer that I was probably just helping someone else, and the lady replied, "No she's not!" How the fuck do you know what I'm doing? And what the hell does it matter since she said she'd page me? But anyway, the cashier did something I wouldn't have and gave in to the lady a bit by asking her what she was looking for, just in case she could help her off the top of her head. The lady wanted something that our cashier told her would be in Biography, and the lady said she already LOOKED there but didn't FIND it. When she told her that the books were in order by who they were about, the lady whined, "Well they're just not in any kind of order, I can't find anything." The cashier paged me to Customer Service, but I never dealt with the lady; I got to the desk and other people were there so I thought I'd been paged for them, and she never approached because actually she went to the Biography section herself and found what she was looking for. Surprise. The section makes a whole lot more sense if you read the signs everywhere on those shelves that say "alpha by subject." Blah.

10/20/03

I have a new pet peeve. See, sometimes when people write checks I need their driver's licenses, and one of the pieces of information I need is the expiration date of the license. People with old licenses have a little update sticker on the back. But that update sticker only has the expiration year, while the front has the month as well. When plugging in the information from an old license, I have to get the month from the front and the year from the back. So, it is my pet peeve now that whenever I study the front of the license to get the month (always double-checking to make sure I'm not entering the birthday month instead), the person decides to prompt me: "It's on the back."

I know that, goddamn it. And if I have any questions I will ask you. I'm not confused. I know what I'm doing. Yeah you have no idea that I've been doing this for three years, but that is no reason to try to prompt me. So this particular instance of prompting is my new pet peeve, though being prompted in general is high on my list of things I hate.

10/19/03

Some lady asked me where the thesauruses were. I told her it was aisle thirteen and asked her if there was a particular kind of thesaurus she wanted, since there are special thesauruses elsewhere for, say, insertion in a notebook, or for children, or whatever else. She said, "No, just a regular thesaurus." So I took her over there, and as soon as we were in front of the section, she said, "Do you have any in large print?" Okay, so I asked for any sort of specificity on the request and I got none, and then as soon as I've MADE the damn trip NOW I'm getting specific requests that require journeys to other sections (i.e., the LARGE PRINT section). Grr. But we didn't have one anyway. So blah.

10/18/03

THEY STARTED PLAYING CHRISTMAS MUSIC TODAY.

Why, God? It's the middle of OCTOBER.

I dealt with a lady who didn't seem to be in the same dimension as me. First off she had the wrong title for her book, but it was close enough that I knew what she meant. I took her to the section and she kept asking me what the differences in price were when they were written on the books, and then she wanted this box set of some other thing and was like, "How do I tell what's in it?" when you could SEE the spines of all the books through the side of the package, and kept asking me which box set was "best" to get for her granddaughter or whatever. How do I know which ones the kid has anyway? The best set to get is the one that has books she doesn't have. They're all the same; they're all box sets with books in the same damn series. ::sigh:: Oh well. I just got frustrated with her because she kept on asking me all these questions that either had obvious answers or asked for information I could not have possibly had. Poop on that.

10/15/03

My manager was running the register and some guy came up and asked her if a book was 30% off, when the sticker said "20% off plus 10% off with your discount card." She told the guy it was not 30%; it was 20%, plus if you have a discount card you get another 10% off THAT price, so it doesn't equal out to quite 30%. He replied, "Well, that's FALSE ADVERTISING." She shot right back at him, "Well, no it isn't. Is there anywhere on this sticker that says it's 30% off? It says exactly what it means. How is that false advertising?" I don't know what else happened. I assume he either bought the book or left without doing so, but either way, he shut up. The end.

10/13/03

I was standing in the Kids' section organizing some shelves and this lady walked near me. I figured if she wanted help she'd ask me, but all she did was clear her throat annoyingly and apparently she was trying to indicate that she wanted help. So, I looked at her and gave her a little smile, but all she did was smile back and go about browsing without seeming to actually be looking at anything she picked up. I was like, okay, if she wants to be that way, whatever. She began to make weird little "I'm confused" mumblings under her breath, and then finally she started looking at a paper she was holding and saying, as if to herself, "Hmm, I don't know if this book is intermediate or what. . . ." So I said, the hell with this, and said, "Do you want to ask me?" She just looked at me and said, "Well, it's a book that came out about a year ago. . . ." And nothing else. She stood there just looking at me as if I could do something with that. "Yes, it came out a year ago." "Oh yeah, THAT one, of course we have that!" What did she think I was going to do with that? So I said, "Well, do you know what it is?" She had the title and author and everything. (It was a book we didn't carry, so whatever, but I don't think I'll ever understand why some people behave the way they do.)

Some lady came up and asked me if we had "tapes for the deaf." I asked for clarification and she said she wanted videotapes for deaf people. I said we don't sell videos at all and she went away, without saying "thank you" or acknowledging my help, by the way. Then later on I had to help with a long line at the cash register and that lady was in the other cashier's line, and I heard her ask her the same question. I guess I'm not qualified to be believed when I say we don't sell damn videos.

Here's my favorite from today. I heard a crashing sound in the aisle and I just put my fingers in my ears boredly until I noticed that books had stopped falling. Then I peeked my head out of the aisle and there was a maybe college-aged guy standing there looking appalled, by a huge wreck of two trashed displays he'd knocked over while apparently not looking where he was going. (One was a wire rack of Gatoropoly and all these other mock Monopoly games, and the other was a cardboard display of Junie B. Jones books.) I watched the guy try to pick up the cardboard display; he righted the bottom part of it and then I guess decided it was hopeless, because then he just dropped the other piece of cardboard right onto the floor, turned, and RAN AWAY, right out of the store without looking back. There's a real winner! And so unobtrusive, RUNNING away from the area of the store where EVERYONE heard a crash. God, if you don't know how to put it back together at least tell us it's broken or something. I fixed the whole thing in under a minute. But if you think nobody knows it was you, think again. I saw your face. Run, Forrest, run.

10/12/03

Just one dork today. I got this woman on the phone and she wanted to order a book. I asked her for her name and as soon as she was done telling me her name, she said, "And my number is 331--" I cut her off because I wasn't ready to take a number yet, actually the name-taking and the number-taking are on two different screens. I said I wasn't ready for that yet, and then I told her that the phone had beeped during her spelling her last name so I asked her to repeat it. (That was true by the way; it interrupted me.) She spelled her name again, and then said, again, "And my number is. . . ." I told her again, "I wasn't ready for that yet." She replied, "Oh, that's okay. It's 331. . . ." What was it about this lady that made her think I was ready for her phone number before I said I was? WHY DO PEOPLE PROMPT ME? I know what I'm doing! I just gave up and wrote her recitation down on a piece of paper so I could plug it in when I WAS ready. ::sigh::

10/11/03

I saw a woman was buying a book I love so I asked her if she had read the prequel to it. We talked a little about it but she hadn't read the prequel so I thought it was weird that she was looking for the sequel. But anyway I convinced her to buy the first one and put the other one on hold or whatever. Soon she came back after buying the first one and told me she thought she needed the other book instead because she was convinced IT was the first one (because the book I'd said was the first one began by saying it was in 2038 or something; somehow that necessarily means it's the sequel). I was like, look, I've read them, they go in that order, I don't care what order her random other titles are listed on the inside of the book, this book is about Lauren and the other book is about her DAUGHTER so I think the Lauren one comes first . . . especially considering the first one came out a long time before the second one and I read the first one before the second one was out. She finally ended up believing me but I thought it was weird.

And I had another regular run-of-the-mill customer at the register when I was doing a lunch break, who came to the empty register, put her stuff down, and stood there waiting to be checked out. Why do they do that? Go to the frigging register with a PERSON at it. Do you load your shit onto a deserted conveyer belt at the grocery store and then look at the cashiers at lit-up lanes, expecting them to come help you? Oh wait, I bet you do.

10/8/03

I had a guy wanting to return something today but he had no receipt. After I told him I couldn't do anything without a receipt, he said, "Well, I'm a Millionaire's Club member," and I thought he was going to rant about how I need to let him break the policy because once he paid five bucks for a card. But that wasn't what he said when he continued: "So can't you pull it up with that?" Grr. I dunno if maybe what he was asking was reasonable, but honestly I can't imagine a crappy register computer having full access to all transaction records. We just don't have the computer's processor speed and memory to waste just to save some jerk from having to bring his receipt in.

My manager asked me if I had any kids' science workbooks for middle school age. I don't have anything for that level that's a workbook, so she asked me to get on the phone and tell the customer so. I did that, but it turned out this woman didn't speak much English and figured that if she asked me for the same thing in the same words over and over then maybe I'd change my mind and say yes one time. It turned out she'd take anything on science for that age, but normally after elementary school the science books become kind of specialized (e.g., biology books, science project books, chemistry or whatever), so they don't say what grade they're for on them. I tried to explain this to her a few thousand times but she just kept coming back with "Do you have . . . science book? Middle school? Science book." ::sigh::

This lady gets a gold star in Ignorance today. Oh my God. SOOO ridiculous. See, I did not interact with her very much at all, but somehow in our brief conversation she managed to mispronounce at least six or seven words. Simple words. (Nope, she wasn't foreign either, though normally foreign people don't use the kinds of words she was mispronouncing anyway.) She started by mispronouncing her author's name, so much so that I didn't know what she was talking about. She was saying this name very fast so that the first name ran into the last name, and did not seem to think it was an odd name even though I could not make heads or tails of what she was saying, so I asked her for a title by the author so I could nail it down. She gave me one, I pulled up an entry about the author, and I swear I almost died when I realized what she had been saying.

The author's first name was Penelope. She had been pronouncing it "PEN-a-lope," with three syllables. Pen. A. Lope. Pen-a-lope! Holy shit! And then she was all weirded out when another author she wanted wasn't in the same section (Christian Fiction), because the other author wasn't writing Christian books, but she was just so floored by this when I took her to Fiction: "But THIS is Fiction, and THAT'S Fiction; why are they all over the place??" This whole concept of, oh, having an obvious religious theme in the book did not seem to justify to her why we would give it its own section. Then in pronouncing a book title that had "Amethyst" in the title, she called it "Am-es-tiss," and she said it several times. I have no idea what Amestiss is but I think I'd rather not know.

Some guy called me asking for a book, and we were out of it. He then asked me to put him on hold and then call the other store for him. I didn't understand that. Either way he is going to be on hold, and if he just calls the other store himself, it will free up my line and my time. Grr.

Some old lady was with some kid who was probably her grandson, and they walked by our new display of manga books. The grandma said, "Oh look, it's Yu-Gi-Oh!" The kid stepped over and said, "No it's not." She looked very confused. "What IS it then?" she asked. "It looks like Yu-Gi-Oh!" See, anything vaguely Japanese anime-looking MUST be Yu-Gi-Oh!, as everyone knows. ::snicker::

10/7/03

Some lady was standing at the desk so I came up to help her. I asked if she wanted to ask a question since she wasn't saying anything, but she said she didn't and just kept standing there, so I said, "Oh, you're just using the counter, then?" People do that. She wasn't, though. She just pushed her books toward me. OH, she wants to CHECK OUT and doesn't realize she's in the wrong place. After I directed her, she started to go in that direction but then backed up and said, "What's your corporate discount?" I told her I didn't really know all the ins and outs of corporate discounts, at which point she picked up the pamphlet that was sitting in a holder at the desk (obviously that was what made her ask the question) and . . . get this . . . she just turned the pamphlet around and showed it to me, displaying its "Corporate Discount Program" logo. Okay, so all of a sudden I'm supposed to start spouting out information now that you've showed me that we have a pamphlet? It's not like I didn't know that we had a corporate discount or something, it was like she was trying to prompt me by showing me what she meant. Catch is . . . why is she asking me if she's standing there HOLDING THE PAMPHLET? I just told her to read it.

I also had someone go to the wrong register while I was doing the cashier's lunch break . . . she went to the wrong counter, looked at me pointedly, and said, "Are you open?" (Translation: COME HERE!) OR, you can come to the register that's open, like, the one that the employee is standing in front of. Jeesh. Do you people do this at the grocery store?

10/6/03

That rude dick from 9/1 and 9/17 called me again. He must hang up on a lot of people because now he's hung up on me three different times. This one wasn't as bad as the first time he called but it was worse than the second. Here he is.

So the guy calls me and I answer, and he says he's looking for books of popular songs with the words and the music. So I asked him if he meant piano music, since it varies widely what sort of music accompanies song lyrics. He replied, "Well, I don't know what you mean, but I already told you what I want." Okay. . . . So, I replied, "I am asking if you want the book of songs to be accompanied by piano music." "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, sounding even more grouchy, "but I just want a songbook that has the words and the music." So. I'm not sure why I bothered to keep walking in a circle, but I attempted again: "I'm asking if you want it to be piano music. You said you want words and 'music,' do you want the music to be piano music?" Silence. So I prompted, "Do you understand what I mean?" "No, are you saying that shadow music is another name for piano music?" This time I was the one who paused. Then I said, "I didn't say anything like that." "YES you did, now I need a book with words and music. . . ." "Okay, so you do mean piano music," I said. But that's when he just hung up on me mid-sentence.

I wonder if he ever gets ANYTHING he wants? Because he never makes any sense, can't seem to extrapolate the meaning of a simple sentence, and then tries to blame the confusion on the other party. Like I said before . . . he must hang up on a lot of people.

I helped a guy in the store and then we went on our merry ways. Much later he found me in the store again and walked up and said, "I am ready for you." Uh, what's that supposed to mean? So I asked him: "Ready for me to what?" "To pay," he replied. I directed him to the checkout, shaking my head. That's weird. How often do you just find a random employee and tell them you're ready to pay? I don't know any stores that do that.

Here's a funny guy. I was helping him at the desk and a sentence or two into the conversation he got a load of my necklace and said, "Are you a witch, seriously?"

I just said matter-of-factly that that was the case, and he asked if I was Wiccan or just a witch or what. I said I wasn't Wiccan, just the general type, then I said, "I'm mostly just a kitchen witch. Bake you a magickal pie." He laughed and said, "OH, well isn't that somethin'." I then helped him find a book on leather stamping, and he was all happy about it and then said, "I want to take you home in a box!" I was like, "Yeah, well just in case you need a book found." And he said, "No, I need a wife!" So, that's like the sixth marriage proposal I've received at work. . . . Ahh, wonders never cease.

Some lady was at the register and her kid knocked over one of the displays. The kid started picking it up but the mother said, "No, you should let her do it," indicating the cashier. "She probably has nothing better to do so you might as well let her do it." Heh. When the cashier told me this story later she added, "Yeah, I have NOTHING better to do than clean up after people." Yup! You're doing her a favor!

I had a lady come up and look embarrassed, and she opened her query with, "Okay, now I don't want you to be offended." I laughed at this idea of ME being offended. "But this is the title," she went on, and I figured it'd be something sexual. Nope. "It's something about a . . ." she drops to a whisper, "farting dog." Hehe. I knew right away of course, it's Walter the Farting Dog by Kotzwinkle, and I had two copies. :) Cute book.

10/5/03

I was helping a lady and before we even went to the section I told her that we were probably out of that book (because it seems like we always are, and we hadn't gotten a shipment since the last time someone asked me for it). I found it in the computer and ascertained that I was thinking of the right section, and took the lady over there. After I noted out loud to her that it wasn't where it usually goes, I suggested that either the books we had had already been bought or else maybe someone picked it up and put it down somewhere else. She replied, "Well, but shouldn't it BE here?" I asked her what she meant. "If it's in your computer, shouldn't it be here somewhere?" she asked. ::sigh:: Maybe I should open conversations like this by explaining that we don't have perpetual inventory, so that they won't expect me to be able to tell by the computer whether we "have one."

10/4/03

Got a genius asking us "Where's nonfiction?" today. My stock answer to this is, "You see that shelf in front of you that says Fiction/Literature? Well, nonfiction is everything else in the store." I wish people would tell me what the hell they're looking for.

Some guy wanted a book and said if I didn't have it he wanted me to call the other store to see if they did. Well, I looked it up and it was a book that would have to be ordered from the publisher, so there was no sense in trying to look for it at either of our stores. I explained the situation to him simply, saying that our warehouse doesn't stock this book and so the only way we can get it is trying to make a deal with the publisher to see if they'll sell us a copy. He said in this condescending voice, "Now, what do you MEAN?" Jeez. I MEAN, we don't HAVE it and it's hard to GET it. I explained it again and he finally pissed off. I got the idea he thought I was jerking him around, doing my best to be as unhelpful as possible. Screw that.

And in other news we had a rude woman talking on a cell phone while at the register. Jackasses.

10/1/03

Had a Time Rudie today. First off he was mean to our cashier. He went up to her and asked her for a book (coming to the side of the register so he could interrupt her interactions with a customer, of course), and when she didn't know off the top of her head where a book was he sighed disgustedly and rolled his eyes. And you guessed it; she told him the proper place to go for a question about a book was Customer Service. Guess who was running the desk? And guess who already had two phone calls she was dealing with? Yup.

So. I'm dealing with Lady #1 on the phone and she wants God Don't Like Ugly so I'm in Fiction, and on his way to the desk he sees me and tries to flag me down mid-sentence to the woman. I just pointed to the desk and tried to indicate that I wanted him to just meet me there, and he walked in that direction so I assumed myself understood (especially since the cashier had had me paged to the DESK, so hey, he should know). Anyway, after I finished with my first phone customer I went to the desk and the guy wasn't there, so I took my second call and was helping her on the computer when the guy walked by again. He pointed to his watch and looked at me, and then kind of paused and made an "oh whatever" shooing motion at me and walked away. Yeah, "oh whatever" indeed. So away he went and I figured he probably just got disgusted with the idea that he wasn't the first person to always get help, but I wasn't that lucky. After I finished helping the other lady on the phone, the guy came out of the bathroom and stopped me.

"Did you need my help?" I asked before he could start. He said, "Well, the lady at the front sent me to YOU," and I said, "Ahh, yes, I know. I sure wish that hadn't happened while I already had two people on the phone." Guess what he said? "Well, you know the people who are actually IN the store should be your FIRST PRIORITY." HAHA! As if! I bet you anything it'd be a different story entirely if HE was the one on my phone and I just kept putting him on hold to deal with someone who walked up. What the hell sense does that make? And you people know me pretty well by now I imagine, so you can bet I didn't let that lie and told him exactly what I thought: "NO, they called me first!" Oh yes, I was cheerful about it and everything, but fuck that, someone on the phone is in line just like you are. So anyway I helped him find his book and he chose one and went to the cashier.

She rang him up like usual (politely ignoring the fact that he almost threw the book at her instead of setting it down like a civilized creature), and then of course he insisted on writing a check, so when she was taking the necessary information and feeding it into the machine, it wasn't even done printing on it yet and he was already tapping his watch and saying, "Well, are you finished? Are we DONE here?" If you want speedy checkout, try not using the most time-consuming payment method possible. And in the future, if you don't have TIME to shop, then DON'T.

That was my only mean person today, but someone was mean to the cashier too. She acted just like a short-change artist, except I don't think she was. First she pulled out a hundred-dollar bill to pay for her purchase, and while the cashier was keying it in she added money to it, wanting to put in the change. And then she fumbled for MORE money and was talking all the while so that the cashier had trouble concentrating (she's fairly new anyway), and then handed her like seven more dollars and said, "Oh, add that to it," and then when she gave her her change the lady said, "I don't think you did that right." So she got all confused and called our manager about it, and the manager straightened it out, but then the lady said, in front of other customers and to the manager, "I think SHE needs a coffee break." Well, if you'd decide how you're going to freaking pay before you change the story three times while she's trying to calculate, we'd all probably be less in need of stimulants to keep us competent.

I also thought I'd mention these funny people. I had a wife and husband at my desk and the woman was looking for a book on something she said was "Hurried Woman Syndrome." She said she'd seen it mentioned on TV or something, and I was looking for it, and the guy leaned up to the desk and said jokingly, "And you better hurry up!" HAHA! I told him to stop giving me a syndrome or I was gonna tell. ::giggle:: I love when people play with me.

Now it's time for Disturbing Books with SwankiVY!

A whole circle of the pig's body falls out through the back of the book. His whole ass falls off, tied onto the book by a little ribbon. Inside the chunk that fell out, it says, "Don't worry, children. This only happens to NAUGHTY LITTLE PIGGIES." On the back of the butt that fell out, it says something about "UH-OH!" and how Piggy should have listened to his mother, naughty naughty.

There is something really fucked up about a book where disobeying your mother causes your ASS to fall off. Especially since everyone was being jerks not telling him what would happen, and on top of that what if my child now thinks that poking yourself in the belly button will kill you? It's a self-destruct switch! Let's just hope Little Billy isn't suicidal.

How about this? I somehow found myself reading the back of a Hank the Cowdog book and my eyes fell upon a disturbing sentence. The same one is featured on Amazon, so check it out: