3/30/05

This lady came up to Customer Service and said, "I'm looking for something. Decorative crocheting?" I asked her if she'd looked in Crafts and she said she had but she hadn't seen anything. As I was walking over there to help her look, I asked her if "Decorative Crocheting" was like an exact title or if it was just the subject she was looking for. She said it was an exact title, which kinda peeved me 'cause I really should have asked her that when I still had the computer in front of me, but actually the crocheting area is really small so I figured I'd be able to just glance through and have a yea or nay quickly. Unfortunately when we got to the section I ducked into it and THE WOMAN KEPT GOING. She stopped shortly after, gave me a look like I was weird for where I stopped, pointed at the back of the store, and said, "It's a magazine," in this "wake up you incompetent fool!" voice.

Boy, sure is a good thing you TOLD me that!

So I just said, hell with this, and I took her back to the desk and looked for it on the computer. There was no magazine in the system named Decorative Crocheting. "No, y'all have it, I get it from y'all," she insisted. Okay. I told her it wasn't in the system. She replied to that by explaining that it is even published by our company (I don't know how she knows THAT, but whatever). I told her I show no titles called that in my system. Then she asked what I got for crochet magazines, and I did another search and came up with quite a few. One was called Decorative Crochet. No "ing" on the end. Ahh, it was being picky again.

I tried to explain the situation to the lady, trying to, ya know, jokingly explain that since she hadn't given me the EXACT title then the computer was totally clueless, but for some reason she interpreted my words to mean I still hadn't found it and started suggesting weird possibilities for how to find it. She also seemed to think the "-ing" I mentioned went on the end of "Decorative" instead of "Crochet," because she kept denying that it was "Decorating Crochet." I gave up on making her understand the nature of the problem and just went to the crochet magazines with her.

Finally I found the mag for her (it was kind of hidden behind another one so she hadn't seen it), and after I handed it to her she felt it necessary to explain to me why this crochet magazine was superior to all other crochet magazines. She said she liked the way the pictures were laid out rather than it being mostly devoted to *describing* the crochet craft steps. She flipped it open and said, "See, I need to follow the PICTURES. I can't read a book!" Hahaha. I knew what she meant, but still, "I can't read a book!" in an indignant tone while standing in a bookstore. Ahh, irony.

Some lady wanted a certain book and she insisted that she only wanted the "pocket book." (She meant paperback, I found out as I quizzed her to find out what the hell she was talking about.) It turned out the book she wanted only came in trade paperback and hardcover; there was no mass market paperback for it. I informed her of this and said the book is $12.95, and went and found her one and everything. Then she was like, "It's twelve? Ninety-five?" She informed me that "pocket books" are much less expensive and that she would wait until that came out. (It's not on the horizon or anything, but I suppose anything could happen.) "They're about $2.95," she explained. Okay, see the last time I saw a book for $2.95 was used books on frickin' Amazon. Things have changed a lot since you last bought a book, lady.

A couple came in and they had been listening to NPR really late at night, and while they had been shifting between different states of consciousness, they'd THOUGHT there was a book with this title by this author. I found what they were talking about as far as the author goes, but he hadn't written anything remotely resembling the info the customer gave me. So he said he probably heard it wrong because after all he and his wife had been falling asleep off and on throughout the program. Brilliant! Let's look for a book using information you gathered while you were frickin' asleep. Wonderful. (Eventually they gave up that I'd be able to find the mysterious thing and decided to try to get the real title.)

I saw some lady walking toward Customer Service as I was going away from it, so I stopped and said "hi" to her so that I could save us both a walk if she needed help. She glanced at me and kept walking like she hadn't heard. Fine then I thought, and then I noticed she had gone to the desk and was now just standing there expectantly. ::sigh:: I had to go over and help her. It was irritating.

My coworkers were screwing around chatting and putting away religious books, and I happened to pass near them so I went over to touch base. I said something about not liking to put up religious books, and I made like I was going to pick up a book and then pretended that the book shocked me. One of my coworkers announced that the books were protected from my "little heathen ass." Hahaha.

3/29/05

Okay, first of all I have to tell you the story of getting attacked again by Harry Potter lady. She's, ya know, not exactly all there and I don't begrudge her that at all. But what I don't like is when she oversteps her boundaries, and I definitely felt like she did that today. See, she's obsessed with Harry Potter and a couple weeks ago she was (yet again) practically salivating over the fact that I had a purple pin that said "VI" on it (it's sort of a cryptic advertisement for HP VI). I was nice and found an extra one for her and made her quite a happy lady. But today, she saw on someone else's apron that there were two new ones: One with a silhouette of Harry where you can only see his glasses, and the other a sort of reprint of the cover art. I was coming out of the back room and she was standing there in the corner outside as if in wait, and she POUNCED. Literally.

As I was walking to the kids' section to resume work on my shipment, she kept babbling about the buttons and "what do I have to do to get one, how much how much?" (even though they're promotional for us to wear, not for sale and she knows it), physically getting in my way and not letting me walk, breathing on me and stuff. I kinda didn't know what to do, so I shrieked and ran away. She followed me and cornered me in the kids' section, standing right in the way of where I needed to be so I could put out my books. I assumed a position where I could do it but upside-down, and she kept harassing me about the buttons, I swear she was licking her lips like she wanted to eat them. I told her they weren't for sale and weren't MINE to give (we kinda just got them and we're not sure everyone has theirs yet), and she kept pressing and breathing on me (eww).

So I keep sorting my books with difficulty because she's in my way and I told her she was starting to scare me. At this point she's laughing wildly and a coworker noticed things were seriously not right in my little world. He came over all cool and stuff and greeted her, and started flashing his pins at her and saying, "Fifty bucks!" I was kind of kiddingly saying, "THAT'S not nice," and he said, "Ya know, grease my palm and I'll grease yours." Finally he took his pins off and gave them to her and said, "Well, I can tell you really REALLY like Harry Potter, a lot more than I like that little rat. I only think he's OKAY, but you REALLY like him, so that beats thinking he's just OKAY." I think he was trying to goad her into sparring with him, but she was too dazzled by holding her new pins. She kept saying, "THANK you, THANK you" to him and breathing heavy and getting tears in her eyes. I told her if she gets this excited about advertising pins I really don't want to be anywhere near her when the actual book comes out because she might glow and explode. She started like halfway crying and talking about the great party that was going to come when HP VI comes out and how people are going to look at her like "What is WRONG with that woman?" I think that already happened, m'dear . . . quite a long time ago.

Dear lord. What I put up with for this job.

And speaking of which. . . .

I had to clean the men's room this morning and I had my first lovely experience of having to fish porn out of the trash can. Playboy's College Girls was just thrown in the trash and I had to pull it out with a rubber glove and a garbage bag and put it in damaged. Gross. Animals. I have to say I have NEVER found any kind of magazine in the women's room. And what's gross is, the bathroom with a toilet and stall is out of order in the men's room, which means whoever took the porn in there just wanked right out in the open.

Also, now there is a sign up in the men's room because of my coworker having to clean piss off the floor twice on Easter. It says to use the urinal, not the floor. Someone wrote on it "don't be an ickey pisser," and then someone else wrote "We would mind standing closer if it was clean." Yup, you read right, "would mind." Can't even insult us right. And there was nothing wrong with the urinal either. It's just a urinal. It's not clean enough to eat out of. It's a piece of equipment that people pee on all day long. You don't have to put your goodies in contact with it or anything. Just pee in the damn urinal, you animals. And wank at your own frickin' house if you've gotta do it.

Annoying. Some lady asked for a self-help book and picked up a book she'd ordered, and then she started flipping through the coupon book she'd been given as a bonus when she'd bought her discount card last time. After finishing her first flip-through, she looked at me and said, "They really don't give you any coupons you'll actually want to USE, do they." My answer was carefully constructed to look like I was agreeing with her and to actually send the message, "You stupid bitch." I cheerfully said yeah I guessed the only time anyone would actually USE those is if they were people who bought CHILDREN'S books or COOKbooks or TRAVEL books (which is what the coupons in the book right now focus on). As we know there isn't anyone who actually buys those. Jesus. Yeah we just put coupons in there we know no one will use.

Heh, and another cute thing: I found out that two of the café employees were talking about me in my absence, trying to figure out how old I must be. The consensus from one of them was that I LOOKED at latest early twenties but that I was probably older and couldn't be older than twenty-five. The other girl said she agreed but suspected I was older. "She's just one of those ageless people," one of them had said. Heh.

Does this look like twenty-seven to you?

3/28/05

I actually have no jackasses to share today, so instead I will show you some disturbing book covers.

And also I had a laugh/scoff at a bunch of books I hate yesterday, during boredom on Easter. We were looking up a book for a woman and it was kinda funny, and it reminded me of some other books that were funny in the same way, so I started bringing them up on the computer and showing them to everyone. I came up with A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality--"Hope for all those who seek for their children a healthy heterosexual identity!"--and Resurrection Eggs and Resurrection Rabbit--somehow these stories are trying their best to provide b.s. religious reasons for why fertility symbols left over from the Pagan rites the Christians incorporated are still used in Easter today. And of course, Mommy, Why Don't We Celebrate Halloween? This book's answer is "Because it's EVIL, sweetheart! A long time ago people did all kinds of celebrations that had nothing to do with God as WE understand them, so they must have been about THE DEVIL, and if you dress up in a cute costume and collect candy it will LOOK like you are worshipping the devil too, and then Baby Jesus will cry." Yup, that's pretty much it. What did YOU do on Easter?

3/27/05

We had some funny mishaps with mislabeled books today. I found one about time management in my kids' box, so that was weird to begin with, but then its sticker was wrong too and ALSO wasn't Kids'--it was a book about horses for the pets section. So this book was like seriously lost, like it had gone through a dimensional warp or something. Anyway, I brought this to the attention of one of my coworkers, who in turn clued me in on a really big flub by the company: ALL of the copies of the new Omnibus edition of the A Series of Unfortunate Events books were labeled as a book that goes in the sexuality section. Somehow I think not.

One of my coworkers observed that some asshole teenager was in the manga section looking at books and then turning around and carelessly throwing them on the OPPOSITE bookshelf, like taking an extra step to put them in the political section or whatever. He went up and he asked the guy to please put the books back where they came from. The boy responded by taking several comic books and throwing them on the floor. My coworker asked him to leave the store. He walked away but nobody made sure that he actually left. What a snotty little prick, Jesus!

3/26/05

It's amazing. I've discovered a medical miracle that has somehow been overlooked for all of time. Did you know that some people can actually REMOVE THEIR BRAINS FROM THEIR CRANIUM and then go about their day doing normal activities such as going shopping? I met just such a miracle today.

First off she wanted a book called Runaway Bunny but had only seen a version she didn't like--I think she wanted the itty-bitty board book version. I went to the section with her, where she pointed out the big lap edition and righteously whined about there being no small edition. I grabbed her one from the next shelf down. You see, all things in the entire bookstore do not fit on one huge shelf; somewhere, they have to break, and yes, I happened to have just that very thing happen right there in the middle of Ms. Brown's books. The alphabet continues on the next shelf down. Not complicated. So I handed her the book and then she wanted some other book that I hadn't heard of. I went away and looked it up, then came back after having found that we didn't carry it but we carried its sequel. I brought her the sequel and she seemed interested, and then all of a sudden she wanted to know if I had any cute little stuffed animals from "this book." She was holding Where the Wild Things Are. And then her husband (I guess) walked up holding one. (I seriously have only ONE little monster character from the book, the rest have been bought and I never get more.) She seemed happy but wanted to know where the rest were because she didn't want just the monster, she wanted the main character too and I didn't have it. I told her so and she responded by sort of absent-mindedly trying to put the monster character randomly on a shelf among like Sesame Street dolls. Not happening! Weirdly enough her husband stopped her and she realized she was doing something silly and said, "Oh, where did you get this?" He replied, "It was right next to where you picked the book up." Yup, it was. So somehow, just like with Runaway Bunny, she had been standing right in front of something and not seen it. I'm sensing a theme. And finally, as a nice little wrap-up to this story, I went about my business and later found that sequel book I'd given her stuck on the shelf in the baby section, just like face out on top of a bunch of unrelated stuff. YOU'RE WELCOME!

Had another kid ask for Eldest today. This is what happens: A kid comes up, asks for Eldest, I tell them it hasn't been published yet, and they either contradict me (because they think I probably just don't know what book they're talking about when I know all too well) or they express surprise. I have to say I have never encountered this phenomenon with ANY OTHER BOOK. There has never been such a widespread misunderstanding. Perhaps it has something to do with the mentality of the people who like that sort of drivel. . . .

This was amusing. I found out about this incident the next day, because one of my coworkers was kind enough to leave me a note describing the interaction.

Some guy called my coworker to ask if there were any books on Roman numerals. Umkay, yeah, a whole frickin' book on Roman numerals? Anyway, she couldn't find any in the store and he replied, "Well do you know Roman numerals? I just need to know what they are for one through five." She proceeded to explain to him what the numerals were and he asked her if she was sure, and she said yes. Then he said that was his only question and that he might come by later. Ummkay. Weirdly enough, he DID come in. He asked about the books that might have Roman numerals, and she repeated that they didn't have them in the store but could order them. He then asked her whether she was absolutely sure about those numerals. She said she was. He asked, "Where did you learn that?" "In school." "Are you still in school?" "Yes, I'm a Master's student." He asked when she had learned the Roman numerals and she replied, "Late elementary." He said, "Oh," and walked away. Almost an hour later he was seen to be still sitting in the chair he'd acquired, staring into space not reading or looking at anything. Just staring. Everyone who was working that night agreed that he was extremely creepy. ::shudder::

Heh, I had a woman get frustrated that we didn't have a book and commented, "That sucks ass!" Lovely.

A guy came up to me and asked where I have books on weightlifting and strength training. I told him to come back to the sports section with me and I'd show him Exercise and Fitness. He responded in a weird snotty voice, "NOT body-building. WEIGHTLIFTING." Did I indicate somehow that I was taking him to body-building? Is he insinuating that he's sure I don't know the frickin' difference? Know what? Eat me.

And on a lighter note, I made a little friend today. A young boy--I'm not sure how old he was, could have been maybe nine to eleven--came up to me asking for books about the new Phantom of the Opera. He admitted to being obsessed with it, and as we were looking in the Film section to see if they had any picture books or whatever I sort of kiddingly started singing the opening song to the play. He looked at me in surprise and was like, "YOU like it TOO?" I was like, "Of course!" and we started chatting about it. I told him I wanted to sing the song Christine sings in the beginning called "Think of Me," and I launched right into the number and he joined in, actually even singing in my octave. It was awesome! And even better we were looking at songbooks to see if they had any of those and he kept pulling out stuff for other Broadway plays and he said he loves Cats and Chicago and, like, everything. Man! That's so cool. He said he wants to be on Broadway really bad. He said he'll be the first in his family to go into theatre. Good luck to him. Yaay!

3/23/05

A woman came up and wanted books for her six-year-old grandson to read to her three-year-old granddaughter. "Where are books like that?" she asked. So I'm supposed to have a section of books little boys can read to even littler girls. I told her she needed to be a little less vague if she didn't want me to say, "Well here's the kids' section." But she wouldn't file down her terms at all. "Oh, see he's six, and he loves to read, so where are the little storybooks that he could read to his sister?" ::sigh:: I dropped her off in First Readers because not many (though some) first graders are into chapter books yet but the storybooks on the wall are probably a little too elementary for a kid who's learning to read. She found exactly what she wanted, which was nice, but it still really irritates me when people come up with such a vague idea of what they want and I'm supposed to fill in their ignorance.

A woman came up to our daytime cashier early in the morning and claimed that our bathroom was in a "deplorable state." Since the cashier was a guy and this was the women's room he called me to take care of it, and I went in there. Apparently "deplorable state" is two unflushed toilets. Yeah, it was poop in there, and yeah, it looked pretty gross. But don't insinuate that we have offended you with our filthy bathrooms when it's the fault of some other dipshits who couldn't be bothered to flush their own waste with the touch of a button.

A woman wanted help finding the books on I Ching, so I did a search and found them mostly residing in the philosophy section under Eastern Philosophy. I took her over there and she pored over the few there were, and then she looked at me and said, "So are they all basically the same?" Okay let me get back to you on that one after I've read and analyzed them for you. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Each author has a unique slant on the subject I'm sure. I hazarded that probably they all gave a nice introduction but I doubted they were "basically the same." She decided to do some research before purchasing. I wonder about whether if I had said, "Yes, they're all the same" she would have grabbed and bought.

A woman came up and asked me if I thought I was out of a certain book. As I searched for it she blabbed about how it was a bestseller and I was probably just cleaned out but she'd seen it "at the competition." (Imagine this last spoken in a conspiratory whisper.) After pulling it up I found it was a book we don't even carry. She looked surprised, then stated, "Well the competition does!" Know what? GOOD FOR THEIR ASSES. Now you can go over and ask them for it if you don't want to order it.

Someone on the phone wanted to know if I could get a book and it was listed as this horrifically unavailable book that even my warehouse couldn't get if they wanted to. I told her that not only did we not have it in the store but our warehouse doesn't have it and can't get it. I discussed with her how it was pretty unavailable for anyone to get except possibly used and how it was probably out of print. "One more thing," she said, "do you think your other store would have it?" HAVE YOU BEEN LISTENING TO A DAMN WORD I SAID? Look. We have been talking for at least two minutes discussing how difficult it is to find this book and how its own publisher is out of it. But no problem, jaunt down the road on your way to Wal-Mart and pick up a copy at the magical OTHER store that has insanely rare books. What the hell.

3/22/05

A grandma and a kid were sitting in the train watching TV at a really high volume when I got back from lunch break today. I didn't want to be a jerk and go over there and turn it down pointedly, but it was really invasive, so at a point between cartoons I went over and pretended to discover something: "Ahh, I KNEW it sounded like that volume was above 12!" I turned the volume down and explained we're supposed to keep it at 12 and below (though I'd just made that up). "THANK you," the grandma said, and I did a double-take. "We were trying to turn it down before, but we couldn't figure it out," she said. And she thanked me again. Okay. Now maybe I can excuse Grandma--perhaps her vision isn't good and she can't see the labels for the buttons, even though there are only TWO sets of buttons on our television and one is for channel and one is for volume. But the kid? He was around nine. And obviously they knew enough about the TV to know how to switch it on. Between the two of them neither could figure out how to get the volume down from rock concert levels? Sheesh!

A woman called and said, "I'm looking for The Indian in the Cup-Board?" She pronounced "cupboard" like two words, cup and board. In trying to find the book for her my manager referred to it as The Indian in the Cupboard and the lady broke in with, "No-no . . . CUP BOARD." Heh. Haven't heard anything like that that's as funny since a woman corrected Jeaux at the other store, telling him to pronounce "Les Misérables" as "less miserables."

I had a girl ask me for help finding a book. It was supposed to be in Fiction and Literature and she said she'd already checked there, she thought. "But . . . for some reason it just ENDED at the letter S," she explained as I stared at her, dumbfounded. The author we were looking for started with W, so of course it would have been kind of troublesome to end at S, but . . . THINK for a second. The rest of the alphabet is somewhere. No bookstore just ends at S. Maybe you should walk around the bookshelf and see where it goes next? That's just so preposterous. (It also turned out she'd been looking in the wrong section. I don't know. Maybe she was on dope.)

A lady came up looking for her son's reading list book. "It's about ninety pages," she began. "The author's last name starts with S." And besides the name of her son's school, she didn't have any more information. I started to try to explain my inability to help her: "I'm sorry, just knowing the name starts with S and how long it is--" She cut me off to reply, "Oh, it's about ninety pages."

Great, 'cause I was just in the middle of explaining how THAT INFO ISN'T WORTH A PIG DONG, lady.

Weirdly enough there was a little bit of garbled information from her son that actually helped me track the book down! (He said it was about a Russian woman named Evan. It turned out to be about a Russian man named Ivan. Go fig.)

I had a husband and wife team of jackasses today. They were just dense as rocks. I felt bad for them because looking at the two of them I honestly can't tell which one takes care of the other. Christ.

First off, they were there "to pick up a book." I looked under their name and there was nothing, but one of them started yammering about how they didn't order anything except they put their name on the Harry Potter waiting list and that obviously isn't out yet. "What did the message say, then?" I asked, wondering what they were thinking they were gonna pick up if they didn't even expect to have anything to pick up. "We didn't get a message," the guy said, and it turned out they don't have an answering machine, just caller ID. They saw our number on the machine and assumed that meant they'd better come out here and pick something up, even though neither could remember asking us to do anything.

I extrapolated from that that they must have been called by someone informing them of the fact that Harry Potter VOUCHERS are now available for pre-purchase and it is now the only way you can guarantee that you'll get a copy at our store. I explained that to them and got exceedingly blank looks from both, and then the woman said, "I think you lost us there!" So I had to explain again.

Then the dude started going on about the discount card. "Last time I was here, they TOOK mine away," he said. I asked him if it had been expired. He said that it had but "I don't know WHAT they expected me to do if I wanted to buy anything in the meantime!" Huh? So somehow he thinks that he's high and dry and unable to have a discount card until Harry Potter or something. Obviously he's had his brain addled. I explained to him that discount cards are available to be purchased any day of the year and he's free to update his now if he wants as well as buying a Harry Potter voucher. "And you do all that at the register," I explained.

"You know what, it really ticked me off, 'cause last time I bought one they said I couldn't use it 'til next time!" he rambled. I told him that was impossible because there are two modes of sale: "Discount card" and "Not discount card." If you buy one, it automatically switches to "discount card" mode and adds ten percent off the purchase. No matter what. I told him maybe the cashier didn't make it clear (translation: YOU COULDN'T GET IT THROUGH YOUR THICK HEAD) and maybe she was saying the cost of the card was kind of counterbalancing the price of purchasing the card for the year. That the "actual savings" would start next time. Whatever. I don't know the situation. I just know he's not making sense.

"Yeah, that really cheesed me off," he went on, oblivious. I assured him that if he bought a discount card today it would begin working today, though it did cost ten dollars to join. Finally they had to be pointed to the cashier again to do all that and they disappeared. For a little while.

Then the woman was back asking questions. She said our science fiction and fantasy section was "REALLY small!" and that she couldn't find what she was looking for. And on and on about how she can't BELIEVE we don't have ANYTHING by this PROLIFIC author, I mean you'd think we'd have a TON, et cetera. I told her I have NEVER heard our SF/F section described as "small." I took her over there, thinking maybe she just saw the series side, the last little flap of it that wraps around another bookshelf.

"Yes, this is where I was," she said when I took her there, and then I announced that the entire other side of the bookshelf was also SF/F and moved to take her there.

"No it isn't," she said.

"It . . . it is," I said. "This is the rest of it, right here."

"I already checked and it wasn't," she said, confused. She stepped over and saw the same thing the rest of the world sees: Approximately forty-eight feet of science fiction and fantasy. "OH, I didn't see THIS," she said. No shit! I helped her find what she wanted. Then later I was back at the desk and the couple returned and the man advised the woman that I could "take care of" her purchases for her. I reminded them both for the THIRD time that purchases are made at the register. Please, please, please, leave my store . . . or I may end up slamming my head against the wall until I'm making zero sense too. . . .

I helped some guy look for a book and came to the conclusion that we didn't have any left. I sometimes make little jokes and when customers don't get it I often regret it. This time I said that either we were out or someone took our last copy and dropped it off in the pet section or something. The dude was like, "Well, you think it might have been misplaced?" after we'd been staring at the shelf a while. How am I supposed to know that? I already told him we didn't have perpetual inventory; in other words, he knew I'd said there was no way to even tell if we physically had a copy in the store, much less WHERE if it wasn't where it was supposed to be. Anyway, after that, he just looked me in the eye and said, "Well, it wouldn't hurt to order one more." Let me get right on that. Except that's not how it works. We don't just notice we're out of stuff and order it. It's totally automatic. But no, good thing you tipped me to replenish our stock, guy.

3/21/05

I got a lady on the phone who had an ISBN, and that was a welcome surprise. The problem was, she had no idea what an ISBN meant, and after giving it to me she made it clear that she wanted a different version but she thought they all had the same ISBN. It was a certain Bible concordance that she wanted, which makes things difficult; Bible stuff is pretty hard to hit exactly right sometimes since, well, they all pretty much have the same title. I was not finding what she wanted and she kept offering up weird explanations for it, like "Oh I bet the one with this ISBN hasn't come out yet." I explained to her that the only one I could find was the one she'd given me the ISBN for; if there was a new, updated concordance of the same type, it wasn't out yet. "Well I think it's Zondervan that puts it out. Check under Zondervan."

Do you have any idea what happens if you check under "Zondervan"? It's only one of the largest publishers of religious books on the planet. I'm sure with specific keywords bringing up nothing, I'm going to find it by typing in the publisher's name.

And then--THEN--she started telling me I should quick do a search "on the Internet" and find out what Zondervan's offering on their Web site. "We don't have Internet access," I told her. Big pause. "You DON'T?" I told her we had an intranet but a password-protected firewall prevents employees from connecting to anything but the company site. After a suspicious silence and a statement of "Hmm, I thought bookstores would HAVE Internet!" she finally left me alone.

3/20/05

I'm going to go to the copy shop and get copies of this certificate made:

The dude comes up to Customer Service and my manager starts helping him because the other customer service guy is already occupied with someone else. He asks for a book that he says he ordered, and apparently we called and said it was in. Except there was nothing under his name. He got fidgety immediately. "Well a girl called me last night and said it was in."

We had two people calling our customers last night. Both are guys. Both are unlikely to be mistken for women on the phone based on typical expectations. No girls were doing the calling from our store.

My manager asked him if it was possible he ordered it at the other store and he immediately said no, that he had called US to order it and then we had called HIM and assured him we were the one on Newberry Road. Okay. She checked the employee holds, the section where we keep books that belong to people we can't get a hold of, under the desk, even got me to look in the kids' section to see if someone had SHELVED it by mistake. (This is how I got brought into the mix in the first place.)

I asked the manager if she'd checked to make sure it was this store. She told me the story she'd been through so far, but when I got to the desk, there it was on the screen: His order, placed at the store across town.

"It's at the other store," my manager told him.

"No," the man replied. "I did not call them, I called YOU."

"It's the other store. I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do," she said.

"I did not ORDER it at the other store. I called YOU. And last night the girl SAID it was the one on Newberry Road!"

Err . . . we still didn't have any girl calling folks last night. . . .

"Well, on my computer it says store 397 and that's the other store. It's over there, there's nothing I can do to get it here today."

"I don't CARE what your computer says. Computers mess up sometimes. I came from fifty miles away. . . . "

Et cetera.

Then it got worse.

The customer being helped by the other customer service guy decided to get her little self involved.

"Oh, I'd be mad too," she tossed out. "I'm with you, buddy."

"I can SHOW you what number I called!" he hollered. I wonder why he didn't? I wonder why my manager didn't demand to see it under the polite guise of trying to get this all straightened out?

"I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do," my manager repeated. "It's at the other store. You'll have to pick it up there if you want it today."

"You know," the nosey woman butted in again, "the LEAST you could do is tell him you're SORRY for the inconvenience!"

"I DID, I'm SORRY," my manager sputtered back, bewildered. She'd apologized three times by then, not that the lady had bothered to listen before she accused her. Meanwhile the guy was ranting about how he'd come fifty miles and now he has to go across town because of our incompetence, and the woman's telling my manager how she thinks all that poor man wanted to hear was an apology.

On second thought, let me give the woman one of those certificates too.

Because, you know, "computers screw up sometimes." The possibility that it screwed up by performing a task it's not programmed to do is so much higher than the possibility of that old man's brain being fallible. No possibility that he could have made a mistake or remembered wrong. Nope, it's our computer, shocking us all with its impossible digital acrobatics. And my manager owed him four apologies since she was responsible for him placing his order at a store he didn't plan to come to.

Jerk.

The café had some annoying customers today. A dude came up and asked if he could get the cinnamon-raisin bagels without the raisins. Sure buddy, let me just bake you up one. Do you have any idea how long it takes to make bagels even if you HAVE the equipment (which we don't)? So the café girl said, "No, sorry, we can't do that," and she asked him if he wanted something different. The dude said he didn't want to change so she just made him the bagel as always and handed it to him. In a second he was springing back up from his table.

"YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO TAKE THE RAISINS OUT!!!"

What? What the FUCK are you smoking?

The dude wanted her to pick the raisins out for him? That's weird and frigging disgusting. What a moron. YOU pick them out, asshole!

And in the café we also have this coffee spoon that's been decorated with blue Sharpie and taped to the stem of a pen. It sits in the pen holder by the register so people can grab it and sign their credit card slips with it. Some dude had other ideas. When his coffee came up, he immediately grabbed the spoon pen--the ONLY spoon-looking thing that was there--and began to STIR HIS COFFEE WITH IT, commenting that it was the weirdest spoon he'd ever seen.

"That's because it's not a spoon, it's a pen."

The dude turned a little green but didn't ask for another coffee. Apparently he realized he had just stuck something in his drink that countless other people have touched and he knew it was his own fault. Heh.

3/19/05

A woman called me and she prefaced her question with a ton of pointless crap: "I'm looking for this book, the very FAMOUS book, it's called The Purpose Driven Life." I told her that I knew we carried it but that I would have to check to make sure we had some on the shelves. (Ya never know, and in this biz I know better than to promise without checking, 'cause no one's gonna make a liar outta me.) As I was telling her I had to check on the shelf to make sure, she started TALKING OVER ME asking her next question. So I'm sure she didn't hear me explaining that I was checking the shelf. After she finished talking over me she said, "Ma'am?" and at first I thought she was using it as an all-purpose "would you repeat that?" since she'd no doubt realized she'd interrupted me, but then--no! The "ma'am" was to shut me up, because then she asked her next question again. It was like she thought I was interrupting her and she was reprimanding me asking me to listen. And the next book she wanted was The South Beach Diet. I told her I'd check for that too. She replied, "And how much are they?" I told her I'd check that when I found the books but I didn't have them in my hand yet. I told her I thought The Purpose Driven Life was normally around $19.95 but I didn't know if it was on sale and I didn't know the price of The South Beach Diet. As I was telling her this I was walking with the portable phone going to the books. Right after I finished telling her what I knew about The Purpose Driven Life, she replied, "Okay, and how much is the OTHER one?" And she sounded exasperated. Lady, if you would stop and listen for a second and let ME take care of this conversation, things would really be better. Actually, I know how to do that. "I'm gonna go check on the books for you. I'll be right back." Click! You're on hold, bitch.

I gathered the books free of her yammering and price-checked them on the register. As I was doing it I described to the cashier what a nimrod this lady was. When I got back on I was speaking very very clearly so she wouldn't try to jump on the misinterpretation train again. "Yes. We do have both of your books. The Purpose Driven Life is normally $19.99 but it's on sale for $14.99. The South Beach Diet is normally $24.95 but it's on sale for $17.47." After that, she made me repeat everything I'd just said and then grilled me about why "$17.47" was such a WEIRD number, why would we put it on sale for THAT number? I told her it was a percentage off the original and that was just what it worked out to. Jeez. And finally: "And you're the one right there by Bed Bath & Beyond, right?"

Nope.

She didn't like that answer. I filled the silence telling her we were by the mall and that she was probably thinking of the other bookstore. "Well what store is THIS?" she demanded in a weird hysterical I-don't-get-it voice. I told her which one we were. Finally she left me alone. The cashier was cracking up listening to me say "No. No we're not. No, you're probably thinking of the other bookstore, we're not over there. We're by the mall." Heh.

Someone told me, "Well you're SUPPOSED to have this book!" after checking for it and not finding it. When it turned out it was a school reading book no one had given us a clue-phone for, she was like, "Well LOTS of people are going to be COMING IN for that. You'd better get some soon!" Aye-aye, captain. Shit.

A younger man with this fake distinguished air came up asking about business books. "I checked where this book should be and it looks a little cleaned out. Could you look it up?" I looked his book up, and strangely enough we went to the shelf and yes, there was a hole. But when I informed him that if there was a hole then they were gone, his eyes about popped out of his head. "What? You don't keep backstock?" I told him we put everything we have on the shelves. There is never a case of extra product just sitting around in the back waiting to fill in--that's not how we operate. "Oh, I didn't know you don't keep backstock, I'm sorry," he said, apparently realizing that it made no sense to make me walk over to a hole he'd already found just to tell him there aren't any and we don't have more. I told him that when we sell a book, the warehouse sends a replacement. But then he started looking at me either suspiciously or incredulously. "But how do you keep your shelves stocked if you only get one at a time?" I told him I didn't know what he meant by we only get one at a time. Another misunderstanding: He thought I meant we'd have ONE, and when it sold, we'd get another ONE. When I tried to explain how things work in the rational world it sounded like a train wreck, and I think he walked away assuming I didn't know how the store operates. I wonder if he asked someone else for help?

A lady came up to the register and said, "I have a REALLY WEIRD request. Can I borrow your pen?" That's not a weird request, lady. What's weird in your world? But then it turned out she actually wanted to take the pen and trot over to the bank and use it to fill out her deposit envelope. That IS kinda weird. Heh.

3/16/05

We had another really busy day today and didn't quite have the staff to deal with impatient people, so this man was out of luck. I was helping another customer in the bookstore when I was called to Customer Service by the register chick. I saw the man's bald head as I was walking up. I was on the phone as I approached, so I kept talking, and pretty much AS I got there the man walked away in a huff. I had been called to help a young woman who approached the desk a moment later, so after getting off the phone very shortly afterwards I helped the woman and then heard myself paged a second time from the register. Turned out Baldy had gone up there to demand more help, even though he saw me at the desk before--guess he couldn't handle that I was already involved with someone and wanted to put in a request for me to clone myself or pull more workers out of my behind. Look, I don't sigh and stomp my feet and roll my eyes and glance at my watch when I walk into Waffle House at prime breakfast hours and there are no seats available. I'm the one who went there during the rush and if I want their food I'll deal; I CAN SEE THEY'RE BUSY. It drives me up the wall when people act like they're the only customer who matters and that if they aren't getting service immediately we just don't have enough people. Finite resources, ya know. Anyway, so I'm talking to my woman customer and Baldy starts motoring his little way back to C/S all pissed off, and he happens to encounter the guy who's supposed to run the register when he gets back from break. (He was coming back from his lunch break when Baldy found him.) And of course, Baldy accosted him and said, "Are YOU Customer Service?" Weirdly enough he replied that he was (even though he was supposed to go to Register) and started helping the guy. And then he wanted something really obscure: Some mythical book of all blessings over stuff that Irish people say. The closest thing my coworker could find was a book called Irish Toasts, and the dude was like, "NO, Irish BLESSINGS, Irish BLESSINGS, well just take me to THAT, they'd be in the same section WOULDN'T THEY?" And this toast book wasn't even in the store so he had nowhere to take him, and the dude was just getting more grumpy as I went off to take my own break. I don't know how that one ended up but chances are it didn't come to a conclusion with the man walking out with a favorable opinion of our store. ::sigh::

And so then I was stocking in Family--in sight of the C/S desk--and some woman walked up there and yelled, "HELLO-HELLO, anybody WORK HERE?" Someone else crossed nearby and called back to her, "Well I GUESS NOT!" and they were both like acting like, "Ooh, how dreadful, look at what a sorry state this place is in, nobody WORKS here." Bitches.

A guy wanted a book that should have been easy for him to find since it was a regular fiction title and he knew the three essential things: Author, title, and where in the store we store our fiction. He claimed he had already been there, so I assured him we could conceivably be out of it but that I'd help out and take a look too. When I came out of the desk he tried to like go in a different direction . . . I don't know, maybe he knows a secret passageway that leads from Hallmark to Fiction? God only knows. I figured that meant he'd been in the totally wrong section before when he'd "checked," but when we got to his author's shelf he was like, "Yeah, I already checked here, and it wasn't. . . . " Well, he didn't have to finish the sentence because I had picked up the book and handed it to him by then. He joked around that it had been right in front of his face and he couldn't believe he hadn't seen it. Guess what? I can believe it. I'LL BELIEVE ANYTHING NOW.

Some all-knowing old jerk informed me that our map section USED to be right THERE, which it did, a year ago when we remodeled. These kinds of comments have really started to die out as more time passes from when we remodeled--very few people who know our store well enough to know where shit used to be have not been here to see the changes in a year or whatever. But this dude was all indignant about it, and then he informed me that the grocery stores and Wal-Mart do "this" too, because they want customers to get confused and wander and look more closely at things instead of going right where they know to go; it's "good business sense," as it is a marketing strategy to capitalize on impulse buys.

If only, if only, if ONLY our company had the kind of money where we didn't mind dealing with the extra man-hours, equipment, and annoyance involved in a remodel just so that we could capitalize on a temporary confusion of the public to make people BUY MORE STUFF. Actually, we increase novelty by changing our endcaps every couple months. We don't need to move the travel section from the front to the back of the store--including moving many books, bookshelves, and letters on the wall--so that you might linger a little longer in what is now Cooking and decide you need a nutrition counter now that you think about it.

You got it all figured out, old man.

Some guy asked for my help with some medical books and he claimed he was only interested in what was in the store today. So I didn't look anything up and went to our small medical section with him, only finding one vaguely related book that wouldn't help him. So I asked him again if he was interested in what we could order and then all of a sudden he was, asking, "Are there a lot?" even though he KNEW I hadn't done a search. So I had to do a search and it had really annoying terms that couldn't be filtered very well so the search brought up all kinds of unrelated titles, and of course as soon as I found one to tell him about HE GOT A PHONE CALL. And he answered his cell phone and started talking to the person on the other end about his upcoming Vegas trip and all kinds of unimportant crap, seeming to think he was just waiting for ME to do something. Dude, I'm waiting for YOU to stop talking to another person in the middle of our interaction so I can TELL you what I'm finding. My shift ended at 4 and this happened about 3:15 and I still had crap to do, so this was not a very favorable situation for me. Anyway, I tend to get sick of such treatment right quick so I started pasting titles into a Notepad document and just printed it out and handed it to him since he refused to peel himself off the cell. That got his attention and he got off, and then he told me he wanted me to order one of the titles for him. I said okay and started clicking to get to it and then he just kind of patted the desk and STARTED TO WALK OFF like this was settled. Okay, now I'm ordering a book for you. WHO ARE YOU? HOW CAN WE CONTACT YOU? I think I kinda made him feel silly when I had to summon him back to the desk and alert him that he needed to tell me who I was friggin' ordering for. At the end it was kind of fun because I was razzing him bigtime as I processed the order, saying like, "Yeah, he's that one guy who ordered a book . . . wearing a green shirt, backwards baseball cap . . . " and he laughed with me. It was goofy.

A dude had an advertisement for two books, like on a special deal from their distributor. Weirdly enough when I looked the books up, they were available, but one was being sold from our warehouse for a lot MORE (the ad said it was $45 and we were selling it for $60) but then other had it available for LESS (his ad said $20 and ours said $10). The thing is, on the second one we weren't a hundred percent sure it was the same book because my screen had as a subtitle what his ad had as a main title. They were listed as by the same people, though, and the title was one that just COULD NOT have more than one in existence. (I can't reprint it here because who knows, the dude might search for it on the 'Net and find my page talking about him!) Anyway, he wanted me to order the one that was cheaper than his ad, and after I went through the whole ordering process he said, "I really want that other one too. Tell you what, can you GET it for 45?" I just had to blink in amusement. Yes sir, let me just change how much the book costs, or call the warehouse and promise them a sexual favor. Yeah sure I'll just lop fifteen bucks off the quoted price. The retail slave at the desk always has the power to change those kinds of things. What the hell was he thinking? He made me order it anyway. I hope I'm there when he picks it up because I want to see if he tries to bring in the ad again and claim to the cashier that she should make it be 45 bucks. That would be hilarious.

A lady wanted a certain kids' book and she said, "I already looked all over there but I didn't see it." As I was typing the book into the computer, I asked her if she knew the author, since Kids' Fiction is organized by author and it's awfully hard to find a book if you don't know the author. She said, "No, I didn't know who it was by . . . but it's kind of an adventure novel, so I figured it'd be over there by the Narnia and Redwall books, and it WASN'T." Okay yeah that makes lots of sense. We'll just stick the Overlander series over there by Narnia and Redwall books. Narnia and Redwall don't happen to be near each other because one is by Lewis and one is Jacques; they're near each other because ya know they're kind of about similar stuff. Maybe that's how things work in your world, lady. The Overlander series turned out to be by Collins. C isn't near J and L. Sorry.

I'm really getting sick of the sale book signs that say "Recent Bestselling Fiction" and "Recent Bestselling Nonfiction." They're confusing all the customers and it's really annoying trying to explain to them that it's for sale books only and does not comprise the entirety of our stock of fiction and nonfiction. (You'd think they'd figure that out since it's ONE ROW OF BOOKS and I really don't think all of a bookstore's fiction and nonfiction would fit on one row, but this involves asking customers to think and that doesn't often happen.) Anyway, a woman came up and told me she'd come to me having given up being able to find James Patterson because she'd "already looked in the Nonfiction." That made me give her two sideways glances because 1) She was pointing at that infernal sale book rack and 2) James Patterson doesn't write nonfiction. I kind of repeated what she'd said back to her and she was like, "Oh, no, I mean Fiction," but then I told her James Patterson WAS in fact in the fiction section and she had probably just perused that sale book junk only. I took her up there and found her a ton of James Patterson, and then she wanted Sandra Brown. Since of course she had to be one of those people who asks their questions AFTER we're away from the computer, I was on my own there unless I wanted to go BACK to the computer and BACK to the section either dragging her or trying to find her again. I know Sandra Brown is popular but I could not remember whether she was considered fiction, mystery, or romance. (I've never read her. Derr. I dunno.) So first I went up to check general fiction, and I only found good old Mr. Dan and a few of his less prolific Brown kin. On the travel up to the B's the lady lost me twice and called, "Where'd you go?" in this bewildered voice. (Jesus. I'm going to the B's. If you walked too slow to see where I disappeared to, maybe it'd help if you figured out I'm following the alphabet. Besides, I was coming back if you didn't find me first!) Anyway, I told her I guessed Ms. Brown wasn't general fiction and asked whether she was mystery or romance or what. "Oh, they're mysteries," she said, so I jaunted to Mystery and lost her again, goddamn it. And of course, no Ms. Brown, because as I was to find out in a moment, she writes romance. When I found her again and told her I was gonna check Romance, she was like, "No, that's all right," in this put-off tone like "Ya know, it's just too much trouble to deal with you because you don't know what you're doing." Well you're the one who asked me a question without the computer, and you're the one who said she writes friggin' mysteries. Anyway. I finally found a ton of Ms. Brown in Romance and directed her to it, and had to explain several times that she (unluckily, of course) happened to be on the cusp of the shelf and therefore the books started *HERE* but ended on this next bookshelf over. She must have thought we were the worst-organized bookstore ever and that I was a harebrained nitwit. I guess if one does not comprehend the alphabet, everything looks like a mess. . . .

3/15/05

How odd. Some guy told me I looked very "organic" today. Is that a compliment?

It seemed today was a day of impatient customers. First of all, it was a day when we weren't exactly understaffed, but like just-barely-staffed. We had a manager and then one person each at Customer Service, Register, and Café. Until noon. It shouldn't have been too bad since we had mid people and were only open for three hours before they got there; mornings are supposed to be slow. Not so today.

So I had been answering a lot of phone calls and helping a lot of people in the store all morning and then finally I sat down to have some carrots about twenty minutes after I usually do. I was nibbling away and unfortunately about halfway through my snack I got a phone call. I answered it and it was a guy wanting to check on the status of a book, but then it got weird.

"I'm standing here at your customer service desk," he said. "I've been walking around the store for fifteen minutes and I have not seen ANY employees." I was silent for a second and then realized what this meant--HE WAS CALLING FROM WITHIN THE STORE. He had actually used the customer service phone to call our own number and make my portable phone ring. Heh! I expressed a little disbelief at that--"You're calling me from our own phone?? Haha, THAT'S weird!"--but then I went out to help him. What weirded me out was that there were two other employees out there--Register and Café--who he could have gone to and asked for a page. I thought it was funny that he said he walked all around the store but didn't think to ask either of the other people behind a desk, like, what to do. Unfortunately sometimes I have to leave the friggin' desk to help people or, oops, have breakfast. And even though he wasn't rude or out of line to expect that there'd be someone to help him in a reasonable amount of time, I still thought it was beyond "wrong" for him to pick up our phone and try to use it to summon me. That's like if I was at the grocery store and no one seemed to be manning any of the registers so I piled my groceries on one and started calling for help on their intercom. I'd go to the service desk and ask if either they could help me or if they could get someone to. Come on.

Then, not too long after this happened--incidentally, about five minutes until we got our mid-shift people--a woman walked up with a sort of blank wild look in her eyes as I was helping an older gentleman and barked over at me, "Are you the ONLY person working here today?" I told her we had ONE manager, ONE café associate, ONE register person, and ME until the shift change in five minutes. She didn't reply but kind of wandered off nearby like she couldn't handle being next after the old man. I finished helping Mr. White Hair and somehow the whiny lady had radar and reappeared to be served. I helped her very quickly and put the book she wanted in her hand, and then she held it out to me and said in this sort of mix between sarcastic and resigned (think "I guess I can't expect any better than this from you low-lifes, so I'll deal with it the best I can"): "And you're the one who SELLS it to us too I imagine?" I told her that wasn't the case, I don't have a register. I told her both the café and the checkout have register computers. "Well is someone THERE?" she asked, and I gave her a confused look like, "Um, why wouldn't there be?" and said, "Yes . . . I guess I'll call and CHECK . . . " but she was already off and running toward the checkout. I rang the register anyway and the checkout girl seemed confused as to why I'd call her and say, "Hey . . . are you standing at the register?" Jeez.

A woman asked if we had GRE books. I told her we had a bunch of different kinds and started going in that direction, and she goes, "And how much are they?"

I always wonder what those people would do if I said "A nickel" or whatever. I wonder if it would make them think for a second and realize they are asking for a single answer to a question for which a single answer would not make sense. I told her it depended WHICH GRE BOOK SHE GOT. They kinda have different prices. And she got this confused look on her face. At this point I'm thinking, "Please tell me it's not HER who's taking this test, because I do NOT want to think this concept is challenging to college graduates." I had to explain that prices vary depending on the company who puts it out, how big the book is, whether it comes with a CD, et cetera. She seemed to understand then, but it's situations like this that make me wonder if I'm dealing with people who HAVE NEVER BOUGHT A BOOK BEFORE.

A dude from some Christian bookstore called and he wanted to know quantities on a particular book in our store. He gave me the title, and I was already punching it up with no problem when he started rambling on about how if I waited just a sec he could get me the ISBN and author and lalala. I told him I didn't need anything else because a title was enough in this case; I read him the author from my screen and asked if that was the right book. He said yes and I said, "Well, I don't need any more info, you're fine. I pulled it up on my screen." Then, instead of listening to me about what I was about to say (oops, we have none, can't order it either, probably out of print), he replied, "How many?" 'Scuse me? I didn't say "I have it in the store." I said "I pulled it up on my screen." As I explained this to him I found myself thinking if he worked in a bookstore he should know this kind of crap. In response to my saying it wasn't in stock, he replied, "Thank you," and hung up immediately. You're welcome, prick.

A lady wearing one of those annoying headset-cell phone gizmos walked up apparently talking to herself, and at that point there were two of us at the desk. We waited for her to stop standing there having a conversation and then she addressed us with a question. I started giving her information as per her request when suddenly she just without warning started talking to someone else again. And then without a beat she was again talking to us. Lady, you're not in an IM. And you're not putting us on hold when we're speaking to you face to face. When she did that the second time and started talking to us again, my coworker did a sarcastic double-take and said, "OH, are you talking to US now?" Heh.

People need to get some frickin' manners.

On the bright side, I met this lady whose daughter and daughter's best friend are like obsessed with the play Wicked, and even though I didn't have a coffee-table book to sell her or anything about the play to get for her kid's birthday, we still had fun talking about it and stuff. Yay. I love when people have good taste.

3/14/05

A lady in the kids' section wanted books for a granddaughter, and all she was giving me was that the kid was five. I asked if she wanted a particular subject or particular type of book because that's awful vague, and she agreed with me but then whenever I tried to show her something or ask her something or, like, SAY anything, she kept INTERRUPTING ME with MORE vague blather that didn't help define what she wanted. She said things like "Well I want it to be a GOOD story, with nice artwork." Because you know how mostly otherwise I would prefer to point you to a shitty story with shitty artwork. Anyway, I just stopped talking because obviously she wanted control of this interaction and wanted to ask a bunch of questions that lead nowhere before I actually get to start helping her, so finally she's like, "Now is there an area of books that have won awards?" and I said there was and took her to Caldecott. I told her she'd probably be familiar with some of these titles and she's like, "Nope." Okay. I pointed out Where the Wild Things Are as one of my childhood favorites, and she picked it up and leafed through it and said something weird . . . "Oh, the story, well it's just a little too YA KNOW. . . ." I do? And then she looked at me and said, "Well, she's BRITISH, you know." No, I don't know that your granddaughter is British, especially since you don't have an accent. And what does her being British have to do with Where the Wild Things Are not being appropriate for her? I left her browsing in Caldecott after that because it was pretty obvious there was no way to help her.

Some girl filling out an application was oblivious to the fact that her lack of information is not our problem. She kept asking questions about the application and when she got to the part about previous jobs she was like, "Well I don't KNOW their phone numbers." And then she's like looking at us like we're supposed to tell her what to do! And she's like, "Our phone is off and my dad doesn't have a phone and I don't know his cell phone number," and it's like well what do you suggest WE do about that? We need a way to contact you if we want to give you a job, which is looking quite unlikely at this point. Especially since she was like, "I was in the military but it was only for like a month, WHAT DO I DO?" What you do is fill in the military rank. She tried to dig up phone numbers for previous employers in the phone book and had difficulty with the alphabet, ultimately unable to come up with the number for one of the places she'd worked, and she was all like, "Oh what do I do?" I said she could turn it in to me incomplete OR she could take it with her, find out, and bring it the hell back, ya know? Jesus. When she finally did turn in the app it said she had dropped out of high school. I am assuming she wouldn't pass the test we give you to work in the bookstore half since it requires understanding of alphabetizing. Welp.

Some lady pronounced the word "trilogy" as "tree-ology" again today. I think I had her before. This pisses me off way more than it should. When she told me some book was part of the Irish tree-ology, I must have given her the craziest sharp look in response, because she responded, "Oh, so you already knew that," like I was getting mad at her telling me things I already knew. I told her I hadn't known. Later I made a point to say "trilogy" around her. I doubt she noticed.

A guy came up to C/S to ask about a book. I looked up his title, but he was unsure if it was the right book (he wasn't sure of his info). He told me it was a religious book, and according to the screen it was a current events book about conservation or some crap. But he was undaunted and wanted to see the book. I told him it was back in the current events and politics section, and I asked him if he wanted me to take him back there or if he knew where it was. (I was walking him in that direction and addressed him with this to see if I should keep going.) But it was weird, he didn't answer me, he just said something else about like, "So it would be in that section?" I was like, okay, obviously dealing with someone who doesn't hear well or refuses to listen, so I kept walking him over there, and then he was like, "Well you don't have to waste your time, if it's this aisle I'll find it, I know you've got better things to do than stand around with me." (As a matter of fact, I really wanted to get back to that pencil doodle I was doing. Not. I was really bored today.) It seemed weird that I had offered him the chance to look for it independently and he just didn't answer, and then when I left him he was looking in the totally wrong place even though I'd pointed out the right place. I think these are the kids who need us to slip training wheels on their bikes when they're not looking.

Oh and a kid asked for Eldest today. It seems that fans of this book are plagued by not-knowing-what-the-hell-is-going-on-itis; the book isn't released 'til August, and there's been no hype about it or anything. The book's prequel, Eragon . . . if you don't already know how much I hate that book with a passion, you probably haven't been reading this page very long. Anyway I hate that book. So back to the interaction. I told the kid Eldest wasn't out yet and he gave me that suspicious "I bet you're blowing me off" look that I get so often when I know what I'm talking about without consulting a computer, so I gave him the rundown: "Yup. Christopher Paolini. Sequel to Eragon. It's not out yet. The cover's going to be RED." See, I friggin' know! And then we found out for him the release date and he was hanging his head like we denied him a cookie and he was all, "I've been DYING to read that book!" I made a face and said, "WHY??" Then I had to say "just kidding," 'cause ya know, that's rude. God I hate that book.

3/13/05

This ass who's been on my evil customers list before came to the register and my coworker rang him up. He was buying a single book. When she asked him if he wanted a bag, he replied, "Of COURSE" in this assholistic way. She took it well, saying what I would say, "I dunno, some folks don't," and I chimed in, "Yeah, I've even seen people walk out of here with a whole stack and 'No I don't want a bag!'" Sorry ass, but us asking you that question ISN'T ridiculous. Next!

A kid came up to me and asked where we have the new Harry Potter. Har. I told him there was no new Harry Potter--jeez, announce a release date and everyone thinks they can have it already. The kid replied back to me that there was SUPPOSED to be a new one and I told him there hadn't been a new one in over a year and that a new one was DUE in a few months. He left it at that. Heh. It's so funny how someone who is interested enough to ask about the new book has no idea that it isn't going to be available until JULY. . . .

Oh, and I heard a mother talking to her kid about how she's gonna get him something for Christmas.

3/12/05

Some lady asked me for a book and it turned out she'd been wandering around in the right section but--here's her problem--"I have NO idea how you have these organized!"

Now maybe I went into a hardware store and I asked for a particular bolt or something and some guy thought I was incompetent because I had no idea that that bolt fell under the category of nuts. Or maybe I went into a CD store and checked Pop/Rock for my favorite artist and couldn't find it and upon asking found out it's shelved in Folk. Big shit. But if you go into a bookstore, I really think it's common knowledge that books are arranged by author. It's the damn alphabet, people!

A lady asked for books on an obscure subject, and I dutifully did a search. I came up with two books in print in the whole world. I opened my statement by saying that none of the books that came up were carried by our store, but then I told her what they were called. "Do you have that one?" she immediately asked. Ya know, I don't ask for much--but I do think that when you go to the Information Desk to get, ya know, INFORMATION, that maybe you should be listening to the things the clerk is telling you, because sometimes they're important. Not that it was a big deal that I have to repeat myself and say they're not carried by our store (which I think answers the question of "DO YOU HAVE IT???"), but still, if you're not listening to me who the hell am I talking to?

Some guy came up looking like he wanted to ask a question and when I asked him "What're we looking for?" he said, "My wife." I joked, "Is she in the computer?" He didn't seem to get it and sort of started gesturing at the phone. Okay, I guess I can play charades. "Do you want me to try paging her?" I asked, and he was like, "NO, I just want to USE THE PHONE!" Okay, so I should know that's what you want when you say you're "looking for your wife"--usually that means she's in the store, not that you're going to CALL her. And what's even funnier is I let him use the phone, he called her, and she WAS in the store--he called her cell phone and she met him at the desk! Ugh.

I was helping a lady and her kid or granddaughter or something came up and started walking into the employees-only area behind the C/S desk. I waited for the lady to stop her but she didn't, and eventually the kid kind of realized it's not very interesting up there and waddled on back. Imagine my surprise when after giving the lady some information she was no longer on the other side of the desk, but had unexpectedly WALKED AROUND and was now STANDING BESIDE ME. Just lookin' at the screen like she's allowed back there. Jeez. I just let her look because I don't really give a shit, but it weirds me out when people think they can go in the C/S desk.

And here's the last one, it's funny. Some lady came up and said, "I'm looking for the Koran . . . the Koran books, you know?" I knew and my coworker knew, and my coworker went ahead and took her to Religion. In just a moment I saw her walking back in front of the desk--with the woman trailing--coming back and neither of them carrying anything. "Did you find it?" I asked, and my coworker said, "No, she said Koran is an AUTHOR." The lady started babbling about how she THINKS it's K-O-R-A-N or maybe two R's or something, and we're looking at each other like jeez what a crackhead, but then all of a sudden she said something that gave us a clue to the root of the problem: "She's the one who writes those Mitford books." Oh, Jan Karon. Well, if you have issues with letters, we do have audio books. Hehehe.

3/8/05

Some guy called and asked for the café. The way our cordless phone works is, if someone's on hold and another person in the store needs to pick up that line, it has to be "released," it can't be still on hold or that person can't pick up. So after I alerted the café girl that she had a call, I picked the call back up so that I could just hang up when she got on the line. I guess the guy was disturbed by the switch off of hold music and then no one talking, 'cause he said, "Hel-LO?" real belligerently. I decided not to reply to that and just held the phone, waiting for her to get on. The guy was like talking to someone else while holding, and he mentioned to them, "Looks like no one wants to answer the phone over there." Be patient, jackass. Ahh, it's amazing what people will say about you when they think they're not being heard. Anyway, it turned out what this guy wanted was to have the café girl toast his bagel and then he'd show up and buy it; he wanted it toasted ahead of time because he didn't want to wait for it to toast while he was already here. Jeeeez.

A couple asked me for "The Woodall's." When I asked them which one they're like, "It's an RV guide." I had to explain to them that I was aware of what Woodall's was and that there were a ton of different TYPES of Woodall's guides. Anyway, we carried some of them and I told them it's usually in Travel under U.S. Travel. The lady looked all surprised and said, "Oh, well we didn't try THERE." Ya know, 'cause the travel section isn't the place you'd normally go to look for books on RV vacationing. I asked her where she'd already tried since earlier in the conversation she said she'd looked and found none. She said, "We looked in Hobbies." Yeah that makes sense. Argh.

3/7/05

My manager spent like ten years with the same guy trying to order a couple hard-to-find books for him. After it was over, she left and tended to some other business, and I noticed the dude was still just hangin' around the desk. He stood there so long I went up and asked if everything was all right, if he needed anything or if he was just waiting or using the counter or something. It turned out that he was confused about whether he'd already bought the book he'd come to the store to PICK UP--that was totally separate from the orders he'd JUST MADE, which were charged onto a credit card and were due to be shipped to his house. He didn't understand that he now had to pay for this unrelated book he'd ordered a few weeks ago, and he was insisting that he thought he'd just paid for it. I explained several times that if we order a book and it comes to the store, you can't pay for it ahead of time, it isn't possible for us to take the money for it. What has me the most confused is that if he thought he'd already bought that book, why was he still standing there awaiting further instructions?

Some lady was a space case today while looking for the book Hoot. It's out of stock like all over town because no teachers bothered to let any bookstores know that they were ALL assigning the damn thing. (Okay, okay, it's a good book. Whatever. Give us some notice!) Anyhoo, this lady got handed off to me by another person, and I called the other store for her but they didn't have the book either. When I told her the news she just stared at me, and when I shrugged and apologized (again) and began to go about my day she was like, "BUT . . . well . . . do you know where else would have it?" I told her I hadn't known whether my own store would have it until I checked my shelf and called my other branch; she would have to check. "What about . . . would the library have it?" I told her it's unlikely since everyone else already thought of that, lady. And then she wanted me to tell her what I thought she should do, all of it in this bewildered "why aren't they making this easier for me??" voice. I told her her best bet was to check around and if she never found anything I'd be happy to order it to come in next week. "That's too late," she said, and I told her there weren't any other options I could offer her and she just kept STARING at me. It's like, what the fuck do you WANT?

A lady came in and told me she wanted the new Red Hat Society magazine, its first issue came out this month. We don't carry it, according to the computer. She told me to check and see if we carried two other magazines by the company, and we carried those, so she proceeded to have a logical argument with me: "Well if you carry THOSE, you carry magazines by the company, why wouldn't you have it?" Because our distributors haven't decided to pick it up yet? Because it's brand frigging new and not every damn magazine in the whole world appears in every store at its debut? I don't know. She then proceeded to give me a lecture about how the fact that there was a Red Hat Society meeting scheduled here in April should assure us that the magazine would sell, and that we'd "better" get it. Luckily my manager, who possibly has powers to do things like that, was nearby and told her generally if it's not in the inventory there's "not a whole hell of a lot we can do," but she wrote it down and told her she'd pass it on to the likeliest person. Maybe someday people will learn that talking to the bookstore clerk about store policy or merchandise carried is completely useless--you're not talking to someone who can change anything, okay?

3/6/05

Someone needed help in the alternative health section, so we were digging around looking for her book. Meanwhile, her husband seemed to have a weird pessimistic attitude about us finding it at all. Before we even went over there he was talking about how it probably wasn't there and discussing with me what to do if it wasn't. I told him maybe we ought to not jinx it. Anyway, I looked where it was supposed to be and no dice, so I started just looking book by book since it's a small section. Lest they misunderstand and think there's no order to anything and looking book by book is our usual method of madness, I explained that the book wasn't where it was supposed to be so I was looking where it *wasn't* supposed to be because people like to creatively rearrange the store. The dude just laughed in this sort of merrily derisive way--like "Oh, god isn't that ridiculous," and I gave him a look and I said, "Hey, you laugh, but this is my LIFE." He kinda backed off then. Huzzah.

A couple wanted two books and the man was asking for them from me. He knew the first book's title and I showed in the computer that we carried it, but he couldn't remember the name of the second one and his guesses brought up nothin'. So we decided to check Nature for the one book we expected to find. As we were walking over there, we encountered a woman who was probably his wife. "They don't have it?" she began, which I thought was incredibly weird considering usually people don't follow employees around stores if "they don't have it" is what's been decided. But the dude told her we were supposed to have the book and we began looking for it. I found it right away and gave it to them.

3/2/05

Some lady asked me for a very specific kind of medical book today and though I pulled up some titles in the computer, none were supposed to be in the store. "Well, they HAD them at your store in Jacksonville," she pointed out angrily. That's a) Probably untrue and b) Moot, but whatever--maybe it was a LOOONG time ago and for some reason Jacksonville has more stuff than us. Anyway, I took her to Medical at her request to just let her browse, and because Medical only takes up sixteen feet but the row takes up twenty, I indicated to her that it STARTED at this particular rack, so she wouldn't start searching through the Diet and Nutrition section by mistake. Guess what she did immediately upon my leaving her to browse? Yup, ignored everything I said and just started tooling through Diet and Nutrition. ::sigh::

And now, I will show you some things I think are interesting. I've been noticing a lot of books that have, like, the same cover, and I wonder if THE WORLD IS SLOWLY RUNNING OUT OF IDEAS. Here is one example I've noted before:

Raising Your Spirited Child	Children At Promise
Mary Sheedy Kurcinka	Timothy S. Stuart; Cheryl Bostrom
Perennial	Jossey-Bass
1998	2003

Flipped	Lullaby
Wendelin Van Draanen	Chuck Palahniuk
Alfred A. Knopf	Doubleday
2003	2002

Upstate	Tithe
Kalisha Buckhanon	Holly Black
St. Martin's Press	Simon & Schuster
2005	2004

3/1/05

One lady just gets the page to herself today. She came in nice and early in the morning and I was doing a void scan in Intermediate Series, and I heard a voice saying, forlornly, "Hello?" I couldn't see Customer Service from there, so I came out of where I was to see if some rude-ass was hollering for help at Customer Service or if it was just an ass on their cell phone who thinks yelling "hello? hello?" will bring the person back from their bad connection. Anyway, when I came out I did see someone near the desk, but she was walking AWAY from it, so I just kind of watched her go to the café. I decided to stay at the desk in case she was going to go there to whine that no one was at C/S, and that's exactly what happened, except because there's weird-ass acoustics in the café I could hear everything she said.

One of our café people had a brief emergency and had to go home for a short time in the morning, so we were temporarily short a person and the girl who was filling in for café mentioned that to the lady when she complained that there was no one to help her. "It looks like you're short ALL your people!" she shot back, though she really was a little too confusey-dotty to come off as being rude. She was just perplexed out of her mind that situations happen where someone is not there to serve her right away, like that this is the real world, not an ultra-fair world of shouldn'ts and shoulds. Anyway.

When the café girl made an announcement for assistance to Customer Service and I continued to stand there, the lady made her way back to me and was like, "OH," and then she started asking frustrating questions.

She had an author's name, but when I eventually found out who she was talking about by looking up one of his TITLES, we found she had the wrong first name entirely and the last name spelled wrong. Pretty obvious why I couldn't find it despite the fact that every time she mentioned him she also informed me that he was "the Englishman." (I guess I'll just open up my catalog of British writers and find him that way huh?) Anyway, we found him in the 'puter but none of his books were in the store, so after expressing dotty disappointment she gave up on that and started asking about popular books.

"What's the book that comes BEFORE The Da Vinci Code?" she asked, and I told her it was Angels and Demons and offered to show it to her. When we got there I handed it to her and told her it was on sale 30% off because it is one of the top ten bestsellers. She started looking at his other paperbacks and then demanded to know why they weren't on sale too. "Only the top ten each week get the discount automatically," I explained, "so these other ones are either lower down or not at all on the list, they don't get marked down." Then--I promise you this really happened--the lady got this contrary look on her face and pointed to the cover of Dan Brown's book Deception Point, and says, "Well the cover says '#1 New York Times Bestseller!' Why isn't it discounted?" Oh my GOD. Look, if a book is EVER #1 it gets printed on the cover 'cause the publishers like to advertise that they have a bestseller. It doesn't mean that it is forever #1 or that it is therefore the recipient of a perpetual discount. Please.

She eventually went away like she was gonna buy her stuff, but then soon enough she was back asking more questions. She couldn't remember the title of the book she wanted and the author she wanted had three books listed but none were "the one." "He's got at least fifty books!" she protested, and I claimed that I saw three and that if he'd written that many either they were a) under a different name; b) old and out of print; or c) not distributed through us for whatever reason. She was like, "But no, it's JUST OUT!" Turned out what she really wanted was to grab the book and get information about its publishing house. I was able to give her the publishing house's name for the books in my computer, but she said this one must be from a different company. "You don't have a list of publishing companies do you?" Yeah, that's swell, we have a list of publishing companies. Not.

Apparently she drove my coworker up the wall at the register too.