10/31/04
I had a kid with whom I just couldn't communicate. Another associate handed him off to me when I was about to go on break, so that caught me off-guard and I had to ask him to explain from the beginning what I was getting for him. He said, "Any of them." Which doesn't really help from scratch, does it? He produced a list and I asked him what level this was for, and he said, "Oh, any of them," which makes no sense because where we look is dependent upon what grade this kid is in. I asked him what GRADE it was for and he again said it could be for any of them. I just kind of paused and spelled it out, asking what class it was being used for. I received back the response, "It's for my gifted class." Gifted? Jeezus! Since it was now obvious we were talking about him, I asked what grade HE was in and he told me eighth, and we went from there. ::sigh::
A lady came up and asked me, "Where are the books for third and fourth grade?" Since I don't have any "third and fourth grade section," I asked her what we were looking for and she just pointed at her kid. Yeah that helps. I explained that there was no section divided up by grade, and she just didn't seem to know what to do with that and was acting like sort of mildly appalled, like I'd just told her something ridiculous like we don't carry books by people whose names start with H. I hate that, when they're asking for something non-standard and then expect that our merchandisers will have been thinking the same way about how to organize shit.
A lady asked me for a couple popular children's books and I told her they were in the baby section. "I already went there and I didn't see them," she said. I took her right to them (we had like a billion copies of both), and she was like, "Oh, I didn't look on THIS side." Now, she wasn't rude or anything. But this always pisses me off because that means she just wandered up to the signs that said "Baby" and didn't realize there was an order. Guess what? The order is excruciatingly perfect alphabetical order by author's last name. She knew the author of the books, too, so it just didn't occur to her that maybe there was rhyme or reason to my section. I work so hard on making things easy to find that it pisses me off when people don't even begin to try.
10/30/04
My first customer on the phone today asked about a book and I found it quickly on the computer. It was a book we'd have to order and I told her so. Then she paused and said, "Well, THAT'S funny, because the one that's the prequel to is in your store." I just repeated what was on the screen and offered to order it for her, but she declined. The sense I got from it was that this girl probably thought I didn't have the information on my screen at all because of how quickly I brought it up and because I didn't ask her any questions about spelling or ask for repetitions. People seem to get bugged out when you do that, when you actually understand them the first time. Especially since this author was weirdly spelled, but I was familiar with the author so I knew how to spell it. I think she thought I just didn't want to look for the book or something. And by the way, y'all, at least in our bookstore the fact that we carry one book by an author has nothing to do with whether we'll carry the other ones. I hate when people challenge my authoritahhh!
10/26/04
I was at the Ocala store today, so none of the usual Assholes, but I overheard one lady using the phrase "mute question" when she meant "moot question." What's a mute question anyway?
Oh, and a weird guy was following me around. An older man was complimenting me on my ability to carry large loads of books ("Wow, you can really carry some weight, do you work out??") and constantly commenting on my size ("You can really bustle around, can't ya, ya little squirt?"). I tried to be sort of brush-offingly friendly if you know what I mean; "Yeah yeah that's nice but I'm busy" sort of thing. Eventually it worked but not before he'd made comments about me being a little cute thing and offhanded mentionings of making "my husband" take me out to dinner in lieu of asking me if I was attached. Weird stuff.
10/25/04
We hadn't heard from Mr. Wise in a while so we thought maybe he was dead or something. Nope. A few days ago he called with another one of his usual ridiculous requests. But THIS time . . . he was up against one of our associates who doesn't take no shit from nobody. Observe.
I don't have all the details because by the time I got the story it had faded a bit from memory, but the basics are that Mr. Wise called and asked for a book, and it was one of those titles that several books had, so our associate asked him whether it was a fiction or nonfiction book. After a lengthy pause that necessitated a prompt, Mr. Wise responded with "Well what the fuck do you THINK it is?" And my coworker responded to THAT by hanging up.
Soon enough he was calling back and protesting the hang-up, but after screwing with his head by putting him on hold and making him wait, my coworker got back on the phone and told him he'd help him but he wasn't gonna take it if he wants to cuss at him. Mr. Wise said, "I don't appreciate your attitude, son," and he replied, "I don't appreciate YOU being a crotchety old bastard, sir." Har har har. After my coworker had some more fun putting him around in circles, he gave up and hung up. And see, no one can get in trouble for talking bad to him because there is this long list of documentation of him being a total ass. Us 1, Mr. Wise 0!
10/24/04
My manager came up to me and told me she'd just cleaned the bathroom and she was annoyed that she'd had to flush every toilet. We discussed how ridiculous it was that people can't be bothered to flush away their own waste with the touch of a button and how even cats have more dignity than that. Shortly after that I encountered a woman who must've been in the bathroom just before my manager got there, and she righteously informed me that I should know the bathrooms were "foul," and that because of this she just can't stand it and now has to find somewhere else to go pee. Now, I agree that it's ridiculous that people can't flush the goddamn toilet, but does that really make the bathroom "foul"? You also can flush the toilet. And an unflushed toilet does not make the bathroom foul. You might as well come to us and tell us our bathrooms are unacceptable because they smell like poopie that someone just did. Are we supposed to stop people from dumping? In the bathroom? Hi. This is where we make pee-pee and poo-poo. It is not that big a deal.
10/23/04
Some guy asked if we have "Audio CDs." I wonder why he didn't understand when I asked for clarification? Because I bet you can think of a couple different things that could be "audio CDs," can't you? (He meant music. I figured.)
Some lady called and wanted to know if a certain customer was in the store. "She's in a red shirt," she told me. Okay, yeah. It was a parent of one of the kids who was there for Yu-Gi-Oh!, so when I told her I didn't see any ladies in red shirts near the kids, so then she started telling me who the son was like I know these people. I explained to her that I did not know who any of those kids were and asked if she wanted someone paged or what. Heh.
10/20/04
My suspicion that "Do you work here?" is not an actual question but rather an announcement that the person uttering it is about to ask you a question regardless of your answer has been proven true today. I finally got to answer that question of "Do you work here?" with "no," and then people still asked! They still asked me after I told them I didn't work there! I had to repeat that I did not work at that store and in fact had no idea where the almanacs were. Sheesh. I'm just rebuilding the freakin' kids' section arright? If you're gonna ask me if I work there, why aren't you listening to the answer?
One of the guys who works at that store gave me one of his Assholes today. He was putting away magazines and up walks this couple, but they didn't ask him anything, they just stood there and looked like they were kinda browsing-but-not-touching. Finally the woman approached him and said, "Are we just gonna have to come back?" He was like, "Well what do you mean, are you looking for something that I might not have put out yet?" and the woman said, "NO, it's just you're STANDING right where WE want to look!" His first reaction was just to apologize and walk off, but then he got mad and came in the back room talking about how he wanted to kick that Yankee couple's ass. Like, you can't say, "Oh, excuse me, could I please get in where you're standing?" Instead you just stand there expecting the person to move and when they don't you throw a little verbal fit? Jeez!
I was shelving some stuff kind of spacing out in my little world of Hell and I heard a woman interrupt me with something that sounded like a question. I snapped out of it and said, "Sorry?" She repeated what she'd said: "Blessed be."
Ohhh. I laughed a little and replied, "Oh, sorry. Blessed be! I was in my own world." We started talking and I helped her find something for her son, but I wondered later if at first she thought I just didn't know what she was talking about and maybe I was one of those assholes who wears a pentacle necklace for a fashion statement. That would have sucked if she thought that about me.
10/19/04
Probably I won't have any Assholes for a few days because I have been assigned to the task force helping another store with its remodel in another city. I'm not supposed to have to help customers. Today was my first day doing that remodel junk and I have to tell you, it is HELL.
10/18/04
I had a lady looking for a certain kind of bookmark. After a couple questions I figured out exactly what she meant and went to look where I had last seen them. What I found was a new display in the process of being built; obviously this one was in transition and I had no idea where the manager building the display had put the old product. As I looked around to see if it was anywhere obvious (ya know, in case I could find it before bugging her), the lady started describing them to me some more and then telling me how she knew she got them here. I told her I knew, and told her I knew what she was talking about, I recognized the product she meant and I had seen them too. After we looked on all the little knickknacky areas and didn't find it, the lady started going, "I KNOW it was this store, I distinctly remember seeing the name on the receipt," and it seemed like she was going to go on in this manner when I interrupted her and explained that she did NOT have to convince me that we had them. I remembered the bookmark. I know we had them. I know she got it there because I too had seen them. It is just a question of finding out where they have been moved to. ::sigh:: (I found out that the manager had temporarily stored them in a couple plastic boxes and shoved them under the employees' side of the register. Not something obvious to find, but certainly not difficult to unearth. I don't have any idea why the lady thought the problem lay with my not knowing what she wanted.)
I had a funny return today. Some guy had one of those books from the For Dummies series and he was returning it, and when I asked (as per the return ritual) why he was returning it, he said, "Well, it's just, I'm not a dummy." Haha! He's returning it because he got it home and decided he's not a dummy. The language was a little too laid-out for him, guess he needed something a little steeper. I told him I had only ever had one funnier reason for returning than that one: The lady said she was returning it because "The book sucked." Hahaha.
10/17/04
I heard a man's voice say, "There a bathroom somewhere in here?" I looked up, assuming he was probably addressing me, but this man was not looking anywhere near me and was walking away, looking determinedly at a fixed point. I figured he must be talking to someone he knew, asking THEM where the bathroom was, because normally one does not ask someone a question and not look at them and be walking away. But when I didn't answer the guy slowed down, turned around, and looked at me, and then kind of made this prompting motion with his hands, repeating, "Is there a BATHROOM?" I told him where it was, but the whole thing really confused me. (If you know my store at all, I was standing in the Nickelodeon section and he was asking me from over by the TRAIN. Weird.)
I wasn't involved in this one, so I received this secondhand from other employees. Apparently some guy came up to a group of them who were talking in an aisle and asked if Customer Service was "open." When one of the employees said he could help and asked what the guy wanted, he said, "I want YOU to go to CUSTOMER SERVICE and help me." He countered that he should hear the title before they walked all the way over there because maybe it would be something he knew offhand and would be close by. No such luck; he wanted just books on some general subject, and when my coworker asked if it was sort of a psychology-related subject, the guy replied, "I don't know, YOU'RE supposed to know that." Uh-huh. So after everything was settled with getting the book, the guy kinda jokingly asked where the exit was since we've gone and moved everything around. When he pointed out the exit, the guy said, "Well, it USED to be OVER THERE," pointing at the front door, which is also an exit. My manager told him that (since she happened to be standing nearby) and the guy started spouting about how we shouldn't have moved everything around and it was a ridiculous idea and "someone on the low end of the intelligence train" made that decision and it's ridiculous because we're just gonna move everything again in four months anyway. (Considering the remodel we did do was in the works for a couple YEARS, I don't think so.) I hate when people think we just move things around for the hell of it. No, there can't have been a REASON we did it! We didn't just need to put our shelves in a certain pattern so we could fit more bookshelves into the store, did we? Please.
One of my coworkers got a call about a book and it turned out to be one of those limited availability books that can only be sent to a private residence. "It's only available for home delivery," said my coworker, and the customer on the phone replied, "What's that mean?" "It means we SEND IT TO YOUR HOUSE," he replied. What's up with people not talking English?
10/16/04
It's starting to look a lot like Christmas. Fools in every store. . . .
It was unusually crowded today. Not to mention that even after a MONTH of not having Yu-Gi-Oh! duel dates I am still being confronted by children showing up expecting it and becoming aghast if they don't get it. One kid demanded, "Um, WHERE do I sign up for the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel?" and when I told him we weren't having it he's like, "WHAT? WHY NOT? I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS!!!" Right, how dare we sometimes allow you to come to our store completely free of charge and be loud and obnoxious and make a mess . . . and then sometimes NOT DO IT because we're shortstaffed and don't have a volunteer? (It's usually run by some girl who's never even worked at the store, but she hasn't been available lately and God knows we can't spare the manager.) I know they're kids, but it really gets on my nerves when they get upset that we're not giving them something for free just because we used to.
I was cleaning the kids' section in a fairly crowded aisle; two other people were in there shopping at other spots besides the one I was cleaning. Then an older man stepped to the edge of the aisle and just stood there. I'm used to that but I don't like it. Just standing there and not moving usually means they're waiting for me to come up to them and ask what they need help with. Eventually he kind of moved closer and just stood there, and I just kind of kept doing what I was doing and mildly acknowledged him. Finally he goes, "Are you the only one working here?" I said, "Excuse me?" and he asked again if I was the only person working in the store. I told him I was not. Then there was silence. Finally he was like, "Oh, well I can't find anyone else, can YOU help me with something?" Well of course I can. And it's not like I'm a last resort, either--just friggin' ask! And ask what you want to ask instead of beating around the bush!
Oh my God, I am in no shape to go into the Christmas season, with my reaction to THAT one.
A lady called on the phone to ask if we were having Yu-Gi-Oh! I said, "I'm afraid not," and she goes, "Oh, okay. So . . . you're not?" Does "I'm afraid not" mean something else to other people? Because I don't see where I was vague there.
A lady came up to me and claimed that someone had told her we were having Yu-Gi-Oh! today. I don't know why anyone would have told her that because we've had a sign up in our back room about it forever, advising the employees that we are NOT having it until November. But apparently someone told her that, so I don't know. Anyway, then she told me she'd ordered a book "three, four weeks ago?" and no one ever called her. I checked on her order and it was sitting in the holds pile, with the usual note on it describing when the customer was contacted. She was called on 10/2. I told her so, and she said, "NO, I WASN'T, but that's all right," and took the book. Yes, that's how we do it--we entice you to order the book, it comes in, and then we don't call you and say we did. I suppose it's possible that somehow someone made a mistake and did not call her despite the fact that they put a deliberate note on the book saying "called 10/2," but I think it's a lot more likely the message got missed, erased, or left with a forgetful snot-nosed kid. Guess that's our fault too. Golly.
Had a lady come in and tell me that she wanted these books in a series for kids. And here's the punchline: THAT WAS ALL THE INFO SHE HAD. She told me her grandson was ten, and that he wanted these books, and it was a fairly new kids' series. She came up with one more scrap of information: "The name of the series has three words in it. I THINK." For some reason I had this itching suspicion that she meant A Series of Unfortunate Events. So I told her that I'd just take her to Kids' Series and let her look, and when I took her there I pointed that series out and said, "This one is very popular," and she goes, "THAT'S IT!" Amazing what a good kids' specialist can do with no information. . . .
Did I mention I rule?
10/13/04
Some lady found a book that had one of our 20% off stickers on it. The sticker says 20% off and then underneath it says "+10% off with your discount card." The lady came up and asked me if since she had the discount card it would be 30% off. I am never going to get caught on this one; I told her no, it was 20% off, and then if you have a discount card you get 10% off THAT discounted price. She gave me sort of a condescending look and said, "SO . . . that's thirty percent." I had to explain to her that 10% off a price that's already 20% lower than it was before does not end up 30% off the original price, so we can't say it that way or it's false advertising. I think she understood at the end, but I don't understand why she would think I'd give her some whopping other explanation if the answer really was "Yes, it's 30% off."
10/12/04
I was helping a lady and this guy came up trying to get my attention while I was still helping her. "Yes ma'am," he said in a weird insistent fashion, and that was his "please help me" phrase for some reason. I told him I would help him after I finished helping this lady, and this did not displease him, except that he then began following us around as I helped her and kept clearing his throat like he was trying to remind me he was still there. It was WAY WEIRD. Finally I helped him and we didn't have his book. (Later he came back with his wife, ordered it with another employee, and then called us back and told us to cancel the order because he found it elsewhere.)
Grr. We were out of something and this girl asked if there were more in the back. I just generally hate that question. Period.
A lady wanted a book and our computer showed that we didn't carry it. "Would the other store have it?" she asked, and I explained that if we didn't carry it it means the chain in general doesn't carry it. "But does the other store have it?" she asked, and I had to say it again. Then she replied, "But this flier SAYS 'Available at area bookstores.'" Seriously, did she think that was a guarantee?
10/11/04
Some girl called asking, "Is there any way I can get someone to look up a title for me?" I told her yes there was a way. Hehehe. No sorry we don't do that!
A girl came up and asked me for "an employment for application" today. She didn't correct herself or appear to notice that she was talking backwards. Let's just hope she can fill the thing out in the right order. Heh.
And for once, something good! This guy wanted to know if we can mail things to prisons. I told him that we can do that, but if he wants us to send it for him he can buy the book(s) any way he wants but he'll have to pay the postage in cash. "Why can it only be in cash?" he asked, sounding upset, and I told him that it's because we take your money to the post office and send it that way, can't exactly send your credit card with the manager or anything. The guy replied, "Oh, okay, that makes perfect sense, I understand now," and left me alone. I was surprised. Because no one seems to understand anything and always would rather come up with ways we could theoretically do whatever impossible thing they're expecting so that their lives will be that much easier. It was a pleasant surprise to encounter this guy.
Oh, and Christmas music started TODAY. Frigging October eleventh and the Christmas season is upon us? Christmas is ONE DAY. I could even understand if they started after Thanksgiving, but even Thanksgiving is the END of NOVEMBER and we're in the MIDDLE of OCTOBER. GOOD freaking LORD!!!
10/10/04
I hate when my fellow employees make me look like a jackass.
I don't know who told this lady this, but apparently this customer had been told we'd get more of a popular book by today. But of course, she hadn't ordered it for herself, so she had no claim on any copies. She had just "been told" that we'd get copies today. See, now, our truck delivery was kinda late yesterday anyway, but even if that hadn't been the case it's very likely that by the next morning we might not have unpacked everything. It's a HUGE shipment. So when someone (this elusive "she") tells a customer "yes we'll have some" and then a customer comes in and says, "Well you SAID you'd HAVE some," I'm the one who looks ridiculous trying to explain why it makes perfect sense that we don't KNOW if we have some yet. After she self-righteously asked me if we didn't have a shipment packing list and told me that she'd now been waiting for two weeks to get this book, I told her the best way to guarantee that she would get one was to place an order specifically for herself. As I was doing this for her I told her this was just a safety measure, because it's very likely we WILL receive some in our shipment and she can feel free to call us and have us cancel this if we happen to get it sooner than the "specifically-for-her" order comes. I told her we would have all our shipment out and know everything that came by at the latest the middle of the week. "It takes you THAT long to get all your totes out??" she asked in astonishment. I told her sometimes that was the case--we'd receive and sort the shipment Saturday, begin to organize and put it out on Sunday, and by Wednesday (but usually Tuesday) it's all on the shelves. "*I* can do six hundred totes a DAY. And we only have three people," she said. Well, I don't know what kinda job she's talking about, but somehow I doubt that these are boxes that can have more than a hundred different pieces in them which all need to be put on a shelf in alphabetical order, and somehow I doubt that she is also having to deal with any of the dozen other projects we have on our plate, most notably helping customers. Being understaffed, overburdened and BUSY sometimes causes a slight delay in getting things onto the shelves, so I must apologize that our "things-done-immediately" wand is out of commission . . . urgh, I just can't stand when people say b.s. like that, because there is NO constructive reason for her to have said it.
Some lady wanted the book Cashflow Quadrant and I knew what it looked like, so I volunteered to help one of my fellow employees by jaunting over and seeing if it was on the shelf. It wasn't, and by the time the lady got there I knew that. She tried to argue with me that it was probably there somewhere because "I see his books all over the place, like this one here, and this one here," but she was, like, pointing to a real estate book by the same author that was in the real estate section, while the book she was looking for was a personal finance type one and would have been with, ya know, the OTHER personal finance books. I explained that it would be there or in the nebulous realm of the misplaced (which could be anywhere, of course), or of course out of stock. We have no way to tell which is the case, except for, well, seeing that it's not where it GOES. She just kind of looked at me with this weird "Oh my God you're so incompetent" look and walked away. D'oh.
10/9/04
Ugh. We were a tad short-staffed so when my manager went to the bank (with another associate, as per our goofy rules), we just had two people left; the café person and me. In that situation we put up a sign at the register until the people get back, and it informs the customers who come to the register that the café person will check them out. They never frigging seem to see this sign. I was asked three times today in varying tones of voices and various states of rudeness if I would please get my butt up there and check people out, only to point out that there was a SIGN up there that told them to go to the CAFÉ. At first I thought, damn, did they not LEAVE a sign? But they had. I've said it a jillion times but wouldn't you think people in a bookstore could read?
I got some fun stories from my manager today! She keeps getting all these complaints. Mostly from Yu-Gi-Oh! parents. We haven't had enough staff to run the tournaments lately, and someone got all up in her face about that, and then another parent complained that TEENAGERS were back there (um, we always have a wide age range for this game) and that she didn't want her son trading with him because he would get ripped off, so someone should be back there to protect the kids from these predators. (My manager replied to her that if she wanted to make sure her son didn't trade with that kid, she was welcome to pull up a chair and WATCH HIM--last we checked we AREN'T a babysitting service!) And then some other lady claimed that those older boys were pedophiles and that she knew they were pedophiles because she hadn't seen them before. (Okay, yeah, see pedophiles always hang out together in bookstores in plain sight to prey on little boys.)
Also, she got a complaint through me as well--some lady went into a hissy while I was watching the register. First off she came up and stated in a very sure fashion that her discount card had the wrong date on it, and I had to explain to her that it says "Member Since" and the day she GOT the card rather than, say, "Anniversary Date" and the day it EXPIRES. Then her information was wrong in the computer--for some reason it had a completely different last name and no address information at all. I was as mystified as she, but she started ranting about how "this sort of thing" always happens when she comes to our store (um, what?) and that she is FED UP and she wants that researched, how the wrong information got in the computer. I told her there's no way to do that--there's no way to find out who signed her up or who typed this in or why. (And I had my suspicions that it's likely her high-strungness inadvertently caused some cashier to not want to bug her for her information while renewing the card, or something to that effect.) So she started telling me about how she wanted me to "print that out" or whatever, to show her that the correct information was in there, and even though I assured her that I was putting it in and updating it, she decided that wasn't enough and she wanted to call our corporate office to complain. (None of this seemed to actually be directed AT me, it wasn't like she was yelling at me, but she just seemed . . . disgruntled for NO reason. Like, why is it so huge that her name was wrong in the computer? I'M FIXING IT.) So I called my manager over the intercom so that she could tell me what number to give the lady, and the lady responded, "NO, I want to call CORPORATE," like I was attempting to avoid this by getting my manager. I explained that to her and after that there was nothing, but still . . . I do wonder what she's going to say to the corporate office, like what sort of legitimate complaint she will make. You can't just call corporate customer service lines and say things like "Every time I come to that store there is something I don't like. They had my NAME wrong in the computer and I DON'T KNOW WHY." I mean, what can they do? Call us and order us to make sure we never hire anyone who fucks up?
Another one: The other day it came through the grapevine that some lady wanted to complain about something regarding rudeness in the café (or something), but when she came up to complain she decided that my manager "looked rude" too. Odd how she could sense the rudeness from twelve feet away. . . .
Speaking of rude, I also heard this funny one from one of my days off. A book is now being promoted by a popular ex-quarterback of our school's football team, and this lady came in asking about it. One of our infamously (but amusingly) intentionally rude associates made a joking comment about it: "Why's HE writing books? What's it about, how to suck at football?" Needless to say, the woman was quite offended and turned around and walked out. Bizarre.
And speaking of that book, we had two copies this morning and our local newspaper did an article mentioning it so of course the copies got bought early. The third woman who asked about it said, "So I assume you'll be getting more in--or should I NOT assume that?" Yeah. I explained how our store is part of a semi-national chain, and the fact that a book was mentioned in our local newspaper is unlikely to get them particularly on the ball to ship many copies out to just two of their stores in that area. They actually suck quite a lot in non-national publicity dealies. So . . . since we do not control our inventory at the store level, yyyyeah, let's order you one. Hehe. Our store sucks. (By the way . . . we were asked for that book at least ten times today.)
Some guy asked me where the psychology section was. We don't have one. I told him so and then explained that books we did carry on psychology would be in Self-Help if they were more the pop psych kinda stuff but if they were more medical or science related they'd be . . . by this point in my explanation this guy--who was pretty old actually--was making it obvious that he was disgusted with my answer of "there's no psychology section" and when I started this bit about medical and science he actually ROLLED HIS EYES AT ME. Like some disrespectful teenager. Get over yourself, man--YOU asked ME a question!
Some girl had a political book of some kind on her school reading list for college and called me requesting Cliff's Notes for it. Heh. Sorry, they don't make those. You'll have to read the book.
A girl wanted to get a version of the Kama Sutra for a friend's wedding gift. We mucked about in different versions for a while and finally I said, "Well, suppose they're IDIOTS," and grabbed The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Kama Sutra and she busted up laughing. I bet she ended up getting that. I don't know 'cause she went over to consult her sister before deciding.
10/6/04
Some lady wanted a book and thought telling me in very vague terms what it's about would help. She said, "And it's by Kelly" several times. I asked her, "WHO Kelly?" but she seemed to not hear me. I point-blank asked her, "Yes, but WHO Kelly, what's their FIRST NAME?" and she just kind of looked blankly at me and kept saying stuff about what the book was about and that it was by Kelly. Finally I just took her to the biography section since she seemed to be telling me that it was about someone's life, and she happened to spot the one she wanted. It had a sticker on it for a discount, and she goes, "How much is it?" I'm not a calculator, so I opened the book and looked at the price and told her it'd be 20% off that, and then asked if she had a discount card so that I would know if she also got another 10% off THAT price. "Just tell me how much it is," she replied. God. I had to explain to her that THAT depended on whether she had the DISCOUNT CARD (which she did), so I did an approximate calculation and told her if she wanted the exact amount we'd have to visit the register. Grr.
I got in a fight with one of our regulars again, the same lady who argued with me about Harry Potter on 9/13. This time she had a bunch of stuff on hold and she was hollering for customer service like she always does, so I came over to see what she needed. She said she had stuff on hold and said, "It's some calendars," but there was a bunch of stuff there other than calendars so I asked if she wanted everything that was on hold or just the calendars. "Just the calendars," she replied, so I took out the pile, un-rubber-banded it, and handed her the calendars from it. Then she just stood there, looked at me, held out her hand, and said, "AND? Come on!" I just looked back at her and finally said, "Come on what?" and she goes, "Gimme the REST of it!" I replied, "You said you only wanted the calendars." She goes, "Oh, BALONEY." So I said, "That's what you SAID, you said you only wanted the calendars." I gave her her stuff anyway and she just picked it up, glared at me, and stalked over to the café. The café has weird acoustics and I could hear that she was telling the manager over there that I was being "funny" with her. I hate it when she's like this. She's always giving me some kind of frigging grief.
10/5/04
A guy came up early in the morning asking for books he'd ordered. He gave me his last name and I found the books immediately. They were three books that were rubber-banded together and I had to take the rubber band off. While I was doing that the guy called over, "It's three books," and I told him I knew and that I already found them, and then he called back telling me the book's title, and I was like Jesus, is he not comprehending that I am not having trouble finding his book? He could SEE me from there. Anyway, I turned around and gave him his books and asked if there was anything else, and he said there wasn't and I told him if he needed anything else let me know. I started walking away and he goes, "Well, I need to PAY for them," and he's holding a check. I explained that he should go to the checkout to pay, and he did. Then like two hours later he called me on the phone and told me that the cashier had "inadvertently" slipped his check into his bag. I explained that we had an electronic check system and we always give the check back (and I'm sure the girl explained it to him and he just didn't get it), but then we went back and forth with him arguing that NO, she GAVE me the CHECK back, I still HAVE the CHECK I paid with, and I'm like, "NO, she MEANT to do that, REALLY, yes I DO know what I'm talking about." He's like, "Oh, did they get my bank account number?" and all this. Finally I got him to believe nothing catastrophic had happened and he goes, "So I don't have to come back in?" Jeeeeez.
"I'm looking for that Gilbert Morris," said an elderly customer, and I asked him if he was looking for something in particular. "Well, it's a book by Gilllll-berttt MORRR-isssss," he said, emphasizing the name as if the problem was that I could not understand the name. I clarified that I wanted to know if we were looking for a particular item. "A book," he replied. Oh, you don't say? ::sigh:: It turned out to be a book that wasn't even out yet.
I was called to Customer Service. I went to the desk and stood there. No one came. Then I was paged to the desk AGAIN. So I called the cashier, who was the one paging me, and asked her what was going on, why was I being paged to the desk and then no one came to be helped? She said that the lady had requested me and then came back to her saying no one was at the desk. Well, I was there, so I know no one even came to the desk. I stood there for a while longer and no one ever came. I figured I had better things to do than just stand there waiting for someone who doesn't understand that in order to be helped, she has to GO to the desk she has the help paged to. Yeah. I never found out why she never came, either.
I had a lady tell me she wanted something called "Heavenly Midas." (Well, that's what it sounded like she said.) I said, "Midas, like the king?" She said she guessed so. Then she spelled it: "M-I-D-I-S." Oh. MIDIs. Like, those cheesy music files. I thought it was amusing that she wanted it and she didn't even know what a MIDI is. Hehehe.
A guy called in about the book The Boxer Book today. I repeated the title back and he said, "Yes. Um, a boxer is a dog." I know that a boxer is a dog. Jeez.
Another dog-interested couple wanted a specific dog breed on a calendar. It was a breed I'd never heard of before. The woman spelled it for me: "K-E-E-S-H-O-U-N-D," saying it was spelled like "keys-hound." And when I typed it in the computer corrected my spelling so it was actually "K-E-E-S-H-O-N-D." Hrmm. So much for the easy way to tell people how to spell it. I did a search for calendars on said dog and there were none, so I broadened the search and all I got were books. I said, "Well, all I'm getting is books," and the guy of the couple said, "NO, CALENDARS," like I didn't understand that even though they were both harping on it and giving me the "Well I BOUGHT one HERE last YEAR" story (which of course necessarily means that I MUST have one THIS year). Bleh.
10/4/04
Just a frigging annoying lady early in the morning. I'll show you our conversation and then let you listen to my brain.
"Do you work here?"
No, I just like to dress up in an apron and get down on my knees fixing books for fun.
"Yes."
"Can you help me find a magazine?"
"Yes. Which one?"
[Silence from her as I get up, and then she points toward the back of the store where the magazines are.]
Yes, I am aware that the magazines are over there. You still haven't told me which one.
"Which one are you looking for?"
"It's called Where To Retire."
"Let me check and see if we carry it first of all. . . . "
"You do. My friend bought one here."
"Okay. Well things like that are kept in the Travel section, so we'll just check."
[We get to the section and I start looking.]
"Don't you have a COMPUTER that tells you where to look?"
Oh gee why didn't I think of that?
"The computer just tells me if we carry it, then it just tells you to look in the magazine section."
"Well is there someone who's in CHARGE of the magazines?"
Because somehow my help isn't good enough? You have to have the person who is the expert help you?
"Yes, there is, but she isn't here--she works at night."
"WELL, that's not very CUSTOMER-FRIENDLY, is it??"
What the fuck are you TALKING about, lady? The fact that there is a specialist does not mean that the rest of us don't know anything about the magazines. I've been at the store for over four years. I can find a magazine with NO trouble.
[We found the magazine and then she treated me to no further comments regarding my possible incompetence. What a priggish little brat.]
A guy walked up to me and said, "Um, can I ask you a question?" I told him he could and he goes, "Well I wanted to ask? If you have? Like, a book?" Good God. I looked up his book on the computer, took him over to the section where it'd be if we had any, and saw that there were none on the shelf. "Do you have it?" he asked. God I hate that. I told him we were kind of in the process of finding that out, now weren't we? Ugh.
We had the roofers tearing our freaking ceiling apart today. No joke. There are like four places in the ceiling that are LEAKING. We lost an entire four-foot section of fiction books to water damage when one of the leaks started. What the hell? Anyway, so they're making a racket all day tearing shit up, and this girl sitting at a table sees me walking by and goes, "Um, do you know if it's QUIETER up front??" I told her I didn't know if it would be quieter up there and if so how long it would last. Get over it. They're repairing the roof. You are going to have to deal.
I forgot to mention that on Friday someone pooped under our train. Glad I wasn't there to clean THAT up! Yup, someone just took a BIG messy dump on the carpet underneath the children's play train. I want to know WHERE WAS MOM????
Some guy wanted me to call Borders for him and I thought that was kind of rude. Meh. At least ask to borrow the phone book and the phone and do it yourself, ya know?
Heh, *I* was kinda oblivious today . . . I got a call from the register guy and it sounded like he said, "Do you know if there's a Krystal's or Rox here?" I had never heard of Rox, but I know of a Krystal burger restaurant, and I have no idea where it is. I asked him if he wanted me to bring up the phone book for whatever customer wanted to know that, and he said okay so I brought it. Then it turned out that actually the guy was asking if we had "crystals or rocks." (The cashier had said, "Do you know if there's, uh, crystals or rocks here?" I thought he was saying "a" when he was just "uh"-ing.) We used to sell polished rocks and crystals about three years ago. Long gone! Sorry buddy! I got a big kick out of laughing at myself over that one.
Some lady wandering around Customer Service looked vaguely like she needed help, so I started walking that way but she kind of walked around the desk, turned around, grinned at me, and then turned back to examining the display on the side of the desk, so I figured, oh, guess she DOESN'T want help or she would have said something. So I went back to my shipment but then she wandered BACK to the front of the desk and sort of started standing there expectantly. So I came over and said, "Do you need help?" and she's like, "OH, yes, SORRY," and turned out she wanted something that you do at the register anyway so I got to send her away. It drives me up the wall when people won't just stand at the desk and wait so that I know they want help.
I went into the bathroom to do the 3:00 cleaning and some lady came out of the first stall and announced to me that the last person who'd used that stall had peed all over the seat and she'd sat in it. I couldn't imagine that she'd be telling me this if she wasn't kinda looking for someone to blame, so I was like, "Oh, that's disgusting, I'm sorry, I wish I'd gotten here to clean ten minutes ago or something," but she was like, "Well it isn't YOUR fault, *I* should have checked before I sat down but I was in a hurry," and then she just went on into detail about how she sat in it and got pee all over her leg. And how could someone do that, pee all over a seat? I agreed with her that I didn't understand how it could have happened--after all, most people who use the ladies' room generally pee from a point blank position, yeah?--and she just talked about sitting in pee a few more times and left. I thought it was odd that the sitting in of the pee happened because she was in a rush, but she had time to give me a play-by-play about it when she couldn't even afford a backward glance to prevent such things. Okay.
Some lady wanted to know how much a CD case was and I had to go on a wild goose chase to find out because the price tag had been ripped off its loop and it had no bar code. When I finally came back and told her it was $9.95 she was like, "Okay, thanks, I was just curious," and left. Then I noticed her baby had spit on it and there was drool all down one side. I wonder if she was thinking about getting it as a chew toy? Thanks lady.
A lady came in and told me her nurse told her to get this book, "But she told me 'They won't have it on the shelf--they NEVER do, you'll have to tell them to check in the BACK.'" I told her I didn't know where the nurse got that idea because there AREN'T any books that just live in our "back." If we carry them, they make it onto the shelf within three days of being shipped to us, generally. There's no secret supply. The lady told me she thought it sounded funny and that she thought it was the craziest thing she ever heard, she didn't know where the nurse got that idea either. I postulated that maybe we had told her once that we had it "in the warehouse" (because it's a book we don't carry and can only order), and maybe the nurse just assumed that our "warehouse" is, like, a magical room tacked onto the back of the store. Whatever.
10/3/04
I had a lady on the phone who was telling me her title, and I missed the last word of it because her other line beeped and made a silent pulse on the phone. When I asked her to repeat that last word of the title, it turned out to be "excellence," which she said and then SPELLED like she was talking to an illiterate employee rather than to someone who couldn't hear her. I assured her that I knew how to spell and told her why I hadn't heard the word. Bleh. I HATE when people spell words at me. It's just a pet peeve.
I had a lady ask for a book that we usually carry. I took her to the shelf but none were there. She replied, "But didn't your computer say you had it?" I always wonder about these people. Am I supposed to go, "OH, yeah you're RIGHT, the computer DID say we had it--let me go get you one right now, because I didn't remember until you reminded me that ya know we ARE supposed to have it." Like this changes my mind or the situation, ya know? I'm always very careful about how I phrase what I say, too, because I hate this situation so much. When the computer says we carry something I NEVER say "we have it," and I always tell them on the way to the section, "The computer says we carry it, so we'll see if we have any left." This is just me being whiny today because I don't want to go to work.
10/2/04
Back from vacation! And of course I came back to a huge pigsty of a kids' section! I cleaned it all day and it still isn't done. Horrifying. And of course as I was cleaning, people were messing up what I just cleaned. I spent an hour in Workbooks only to come back over there to help someone and find shit all over the floor. Oh boy is it fun to be me!
Some girl called me and said that our number was on her caller ID. She said she was returning our call. "Did we leave you a message?" I asked. She replied, "I didn't check my messages yet." Brilliant, don't check the damn answering machine but start returning calls anyway. You just call every number that shows up on your caller ID and ask, "Hey, you called me, what'd ya want?" C'mon!
And today the girl working cashier told me that some lady got pissed at her for not allowing her to use an expired coupon on a book that the coupon didn't apply to in the first place. It's not make-your-own-discount day, lady. It's a coupon. I don't go to the grocery store and whine that I can't have soy burgers for two dollars because this coupon from December 2002 says two-dollar hamburgers. Listen to yourselves!
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