My Record of Work: The Annoying, the Interesting, and the Just Plain Weird--The Year 2005.

9/28/05

I think today wins for the week in quantity of Assholes. How annoying.

My manager got this one; I only oversaw it and applauded her reaction. A mom and daughter--the girl seemed about nine--needed to get a biography on a kid level for a report, so my manager took them to Kids' Bio. She then stood them in front of the section, told them it's in order by who they're about, and was about to let them go to it when it became obvious that neither of them could figure out which books she meant. "It starts right HERE," my manager said, pointing to the shelf-talker sign that says "Biography." "So . . . only in THIS space?" asked the lady, indicating with her hands a length of less than a foot wide and swiping them down toward the floor. Yes, lady, that makes so much sense, to just put them all in an unmarked column like that, with other books right next to them not separated from this special biography-only stripe. Because this sounds sort of confusing without seeing it, I am going to make you a diagram.

This is what the section they were standing in front of looks like. But imagine books on the shelves.

There are also shelf talkers on the undersides of the shelves. The first shelf looks like this:

It begins with Art & Architecture, then on the very end of the shelf it begins with kids' biographies.

The only other shelf talker in the section is on the bottom shelf. It looks like this.

The bottom shelf is where the books on languages for kids starts.

Therefore, it would follow that the biographies are in the following sections, starting at the sign and ending where the language books start. Right?

However, the woman was indicating that she thought we meant THIS was the section of biographies:

COULDN'T SHE JUST LOOK AND NOTICE WHAT KIND OF BOOKS SHE WAS LOOKING AT?

It's pretty obvious when Art and Architecture gives way to Kids' Biography, and similarly so when Bio gives way to the language books. They kinda look really different and it's obvious that the books have people's names and titles of their life stories on them. You don't need to be told "look in this section starting here and stopping here exactly" if you can just identify the books by sight--I somehow doubt you would pick up a Spanish dictionary and say, "Oh, well this must be a biography." You can tell! If you can read, you can tell, and if you can't you would still be able to tell because the books look very different.

They messed up the section a lot too.

Okay, the illustrated part of this Work Log is over.

A woman wanted Double Fudge so I led her to Kids' Fiction, and lo and behold we had the book in two different versions, a trade paperback and a mass market paperback. When they're kids' books the two versions are almost always either the same price or within a dollar of each other for some reason, and in this case they were both $5.99. The woman then told me that Double Fudge was part of a series (yeah, I frickin' know that) and she wanted to know which version is part of "the group." I didn't really understand at first but then it came clear that she was asking me which ones her grandson had! She knew that he had "the rest of the series" and hoped I could tell her which one would match his books. I guess she thought that there was only one set where every book matched each other, and the fact is both versions have box sets and could have been bought individually, but I just told her there was no way to tell for sure but I'd recommend the trade paper because I had the box set of trade papers--and it didn't include Double Fudge--so I was able to show her and tell her that was probably what he had too. I don't know why they think I know more about their families' possessions than they do.

Here's another fun one from my coworkers; I didn't encounter it at all, but I did get to listen to my coworkers discuss it. First off, I had to run a register for an hour, and my backup was the guy who was also running Customer Service. I had to call him because I was ringing up a $200-something institutional sale all in sale books (which, if you do the math, is like a dozen dozen books) and it was taking me a while, so I called him so I wouldn't get a line. Unfortunately he also had a telephone call he was taking care of at the time, but he opted to help me instead and asked our manager to take care of the phone call for him since he had a cash drawer in his name but pretty much anyone could run Customer Service. Problem is, when my manager picked up the phone, the customer had hung up.

No problem, but then he called back again, and being that I had the Customer Service guy up at the register with me and C/S was also getting slammed with only my manager to hold down the fort, our café manager stepped in and happened to pick up a ringing phone--which was the guy who'd hung up. He complained that he'd been put on hold too long (my manager claimed it was less than a minute from the time she'd been alerted to get the phone, 'cause all she had to do was go to the desk), and said if he'd have known he'd have to wait so long he'd have called our other store (which makes you wonder why he called us back at all), and then told the café manager what he wanted. She doesn't know the bookstore so she relayed the message to my manager, who went to find the book. She came back and picked up and said, "Sir?" The man responded with the café manager's name, thinking he'd be talking to the same person. The manager replied that it wasn't the café manager and gave her own name, but before she could tell him about his book, the dude replied, "You know, every time someone picks up this phone it's a different person dealing with me. I think I am going to have to call the other store, because you guys are incompetent." My manager replied, "NO sir, NOT incompetent, just understaffed." Weirdly, she said that his tone changed completely at that point and he started not being a dick. I wonder if that touched a nerve or what?

I got called to Customer Service by the register person, and on my way there I got stopped by someone in Kids' who needed me to show her something quickly in Chapter Books. It only took a moment, but it was enough for the person waiting at the desk to get upset apparently, because she laid on the bell like I've honestly never heard before. DING DING DING DING DING! struck with an open hand because this lady's huge garish fingernails probably require that she have her hands spread all the time. When I got to the desk pretending to be all concerned and shocked and said, "I'm *sorry*, I was already helping ANOTHER customer!" she totally acted like she hadn't just been the world's biggest fucking brat and cheerily asked for Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. "And I just got off the ship, hee hee hee HEE!" she said, referring to having come from Venus. Lordy. It was really strange.

We have a rule that we have to use the "counterfeit detector pen" on any bills larger than twenties, so when a lady paid me with a fifty I had to find it. Problem is, I'm not usually at the register, so I don't know where the cashiers usually keep them. In the past I've always found it by the primary register, but it wasn't there. I know there are two of them, but I couldn't find either; I checked in the primary's drawer and all around, and explained to the woman that I was just looking for the pen to mark the bill. "Yeah, I just made it myself this morning," she said, sort of sarcastically but it sounded like she wasn't pissed off. I continued looking and the lady said, "It's probably in the drawer." I'd already checked the drawer, and told her so, but then I said, "Well on the off chance let me check THIS register's drawer" (which never has stuff in it), but lo and behold there was one pen in there, so I pulled it out and used it. I detected an air of smugness on the customer's part, which kinda annoyed me 'cause she doesn't know anything dammit. Boo hiss.

I took over the end of an order for a man ordering a book to his home, because the person who started it was needed elsewhere. If *I* had been the one to start it, I would have known better than to begin the transaction on that computer, because it isn't connected to the printer by network and so printing out the confirmation is impossible. I put the order through and told the guy I was gonna try to print it from this 'puter but it probably wouldn't work, and that if it didn't I'd just have to bring it up on the other one and print it from there. I tried but the network wasn't connected for the printer and I don't know how to set it up, so I told him the whole oh well, as suspected I have to print it from the other one, just a second.

"You should connect this computer to THAT computer then," the old man said all wisely. Oh yeah why didn't I think of that. I told him that in the past they had been, but then somehow the printer connection stopped working and no one had fixed it. He shut up about trying to tell me obvious-ass fixes to my problems, and I gave him a confirmation, but then he said, "And you need to give me one more thing." I was like, uh . . . ? He seemed surprised that his "reminder" had not made me go "oh yeah" and give him whatever he was expecting, and he condescendingly told me that since he'd paid with a credit card he obviously needed a slip to sign his name on and I had forgotten to give it to him. I explained that when you order on the Internet--which is the way home orders go--there is no slip to sign, because you're paying the warehouse directly, not the store. He backed off and said this was his first time ordering stuff to his home on a computer, so that was cool, but both times he told me what to do he was very condescending and had a "wow, she really should know how to do this" attitude.

A woman at the register was buying a couple greeting cards and two of the same children's dictionary. "Are these appropriate for a second and fourth grader?" she asked. Well, they were rung up and in the bag, so I thought this was a weird time to still be deciding whether she wanted these things, but I assured her that anyone in elementary school could use the children's dictionary. "But I'm going to be wrapping them for Christmas," she said, and I don't know what she thought that had to do with it. I said if they weren't appropriate for whatever reason she could return them, and she came out with "but by then they'll be third and fifth graders soon. Is that appropriate for a third and a fifth grader?" I repeated my assertion that the dictionaries she'd chosen are fine for anyone in elementary school and she again said, "But I'm going to wrap them for Christmas and send them!" Okay, lady, what the fuck's that got to do with me? For a little extra power to my opinion I told her I was the children's expert in the store and that I didn't see her needing a more advanced dictionary for said children until they entered middle school. "So do you have something a little more advanced than these?" she asked, hand on the bag as I rang her frickin' credit card. "I wouldn't GO more advanced than these if they're in second and fourth now and are going to be third and fifth. They're fine for any elementary school kid," I said for the third time. She repeated her Christmas line again and said they'd be being sent to some other city in Florida where we also have stores. I told her one more time that I thought they were fine but if for some reason they ended up not being right, the kids could exchange them at the store in their city for credit toward something that IS appropriate. Finally she left me alone. God! And when I told my friend this story, he replied, "It doesn't really matter whether they're appropriate because let's face it, you're getting them DICTIONARIES for CHRISTMAS. They're already going to hate you." Nice point!

Also while I ran the register, I had three people come up during a dead time (I had no other customers in line or anything) and they stood kind of near the door yakking in their threesome. Finally one of them decided it was time to check out and the group sort of drifted toward the register . . . and ALL THREE looked around and one said, "Nobody's HERE!" and they were all murmuring with confusion at the absence of cashiers. I had to flag them down to make them realize there was more to the checkout counter than just the edge where they were standing.

A woman had a historic struggle with her ability to count change, and ended up changing her mind several times about what mixture of coins to give me. (I don't think she was foreign, but she was having trouble counting the money, calling the dimes "tens" and always forgetting what change she was supposed to come up with.) Finally she came up with the right amount of change but didn't take into account that the change would bring her up to the next dollar, so she gave me one dollar too much money and in this case it was the change, a ten, and a one. I kinda blinked at that but figured, hey, maybe I've got my shit confused, and it doesn't matter because I'll just type in what she gave me and the computer will spit out what I'm supposed to give her back. I was indeed correct at my first instinct and ended up returning to her a five and a one, and she said no about the one and tried to give it back to me. I had to argue with her to get her to understand she'd given me the wrong amount of money. Hey, don't argue with the cashier when you know you can't count.

A woman wanted Abiyoyo, and I thank my lucky stars that I already knew this book (it's a kids' book) because with this woman's fucking accent I never would have understood her had it been the first time I'd been asked for the book. I of course found it in the computer but by the time I'd typed it in she'd let on that she wanted an audio version. There were no audio versions in the computer even to order, so the lady decided to drop her trump card to make me bring it out of where I've been hiding it.

"At O2B Kids they had a book and tape set for it. I've listened to it there with my child."

I informed her that a daycare center would probably have access to special educational materials (much like teachers do) that are not available to retail stores, and reasserted that there was no audio version I could order. She dropped it then but I could tell she didn't like my answer.

TWICE today this happened: I got called to the desk and the person who had me called by going to the checkout tried to flag me down before I got there! They were both very rude about trying to stop me from going to the desk (well, to stop me from going wherever they thought I was going to escape to in order to avoid helping them), only to realize I was coming to help them and needed to go to the desk to do so anyway.

A woman told me she'd bought a book called A Treasury of Stories for Four-Year-Olds last year and had come back to get her granddaughter's Christmas present for this year: A Treasury of Stories for Five-Year-Olds. I told her I'd seen said books on the sale table a long time ago but it had been a while since they'd been here; we have had two major sale book returns since last year's holidays so I assumed they must be gone, considering they were very large and I would have seen them in my first pass-through. She said she didn't need it to be that necessarily; she didn't even know if it had been our store or our CITY that she'd picked it up in, so she wasn't picky. But now she just wanted me to find her "Jack and the Beanstalk, or something of that ilk." I asked if she wanted just that story or a book of stories that had to include that. She said it should be a collection and have that, so I found her one in the kids' section on my second try. She loved the illustrations and was pleased with the other stories in it, and then inexplicably wanted me to find more for her to look at. ::sigh::

I got a little slammed at the desk (again), and this time I was helping Customer #1 elsewhere in the store when I heard a page to come to the desk. I came to help Customer #2, and was walking away with Customer #2 when Customer #3 came up. I was elsewhere in the store still with Customer #2 when I heard the bell being rung, about three times, in an impatient style. I came back to the desk and Customer #3 was there, but she was really nice and claimed that there had been a Customer #4 here who had done the bell-ringing. "I told her that you would be right back because you were helping someone," she said, all nice and sweet-old-lady-ish, "but she didn't listen and stormed off." So I helped Customer #3 and when I came back Customer #4 was waiting. "I need a Princeton Review guide for World History," she said, all snip-snappy, and I asked her if it was for AP. She said yes and I told her that'd be Test Prep, and she replied, "I've already checked there." With a bald stare like, "So what are you going to do about this now?" I told her we had two choices: We could assume she'd scoured it well enough and just order a copy or call the other store, OR I could check the shelf a second time to make sure. She chose to have me check first (so I did), but it was not there, so I had to call the other store for her and after they didn't have it either she walked away while I was still talking to the person on the phone. Grr.

And hey, remember Doofis Dancing Doris? Well, someone asked me for square dancing books and because of her I already knew there was nothing for me to even order. He left me alone for a moment, but then he came back to me and said, "I know, why don't you try a search on the computer?" I explained to him that if he really wanted me to I could show him a list of all the non-results, but there was nothing I could order for him. "But you could go to the computer," he said, "and type it in and see what you can find." I explained a third time that I had DONE that for another customer not two weeks ago and found nothing. To add (justified!) realism I said she'd been looking for books because she was in a class and needed some extra help and I had found NOTHING in print, and we'd found nothing but ballroom and ballet. He confusedly walked away without saying anything. Later I saw him sitting by the magazines holding The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ballroom Dancing, and I'm sure he didn't find Performing Arts by himself; that means he asked another freaking associate because he wasn't satisfied with my answer. Good! (My manager told me she later picked UP and reshelved The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ballroom Dancing, so he was obviously a dick who can't clean up after himself as well as oblivious.)

A lady had a title for me that came up with very similar but no cigar hits. It had the word "giants" in the title, and after I couldn't find the book in the system she asked if I could find out if it existed; I only found other books with similar titles about giants in the out-of-print search too. "Well, are you Googling it, is that what you're doing?" she asked, and I said we weren't connected to the 'Net, just a database of used books is what I was searching. "Well, can you just try 'Giants'?"

Yeah lady, see you can't tell me an absolute specific, get no results, and then go more general and expect to find the specific. It doesn't work that way. Now just go home and ask your sister for more information.

9/27/05

A dude called on the phone and asked me a question that was so garbled I couldn't understand what he was actually asking me, and we also had a pretty bad connection so I blamed my inability to understand on the static and asked him to repeat himself. This time he said something like, "The gospel play, Men Cry In the Dark, it's part of a series, and there's one before it." I'm like, "Okay, well what's your question? You want me to find out what's before that one?" And he's like, "Yes, and if it's playing next week." I'm like, what? "I want to know when they're playing," he repeated, "and the showtimes, and I need to order the tickets." I began to suspect at that point that he called the wrong place and said, "I'm sorry, I don't have information about when plays are showing . . . if you want a play that's a BOOK I can look it up. . . . " He repeated that he just wanted to order his tickets from me, and I told him this was a bookstore, he could not order tickets to some play from me. "This not the Ticketmaster?" he asked incredulously, so I figured he had a wrong number and repeated that it was the bookstore. "Well y'all USED to have a Ticketmaster there," he said. I told him that if that was the case it was definitely more than five years ago because I've been at the store five years and there has never been a Ticketmaster while I've been there. Now get this. After I told him we weren't Ticketmaster, he persisted in getting all the information to find out where he SHOULD call, and when I said there was a Ticketmaster in the mall he wanted the number, and I said I didn't have the number but I had a Yellow Pages and ended up looking it up for him. He didn't call back, so I guess he got what he wanted, but it really did make me wonder.

9/26/05

I was talking to my friend who doesn't work at the store, and this lady came up and asked me if I could help her find a certain sale book that she'd seen a stack of last time. My friend helped us look for it and ended up finding it, and she thought he was an employee--actually a manager!--and was surprised to find that he doesn't even work there. Considering he was in very casual clothes--including a Misfits tee shirt--it surprised me that she thought he worked there, but hey, he's very polite and pretty competent at finding books for someone who doesn't even frickin' work here, so I can understand her reading his attitude more than his appearance and responding to that. Now if only more people did that.

A lady wanted help finding something and so I looked it up, told her we carried it and pointed the direction we'd be going, and then--ended up following HER. It was a narrow aisle and she refused to get out of my way before entering it, so she was just kinda moseying down the walkway blind to where she was going and then just decided to walk down some random aisle. It was then I was finally able to get PAST her and keep walking to a different aisle, at which point she remembered that she'd asked for help because she had no Earthly idea where she was going. "Oh, I guess I should have been following you, then, huh?" she quipped. Uh, yes. Generally that's how it works!

A woman asked for a book and it turned out we didn't carry it. Looking surprised, she replied, "Well I wonder why THAT would be?? Is it not a new book?" Actually it was about fifteen years old, but age is not always a factor--after all, we carry Beowulf and Shakespeare's work for God's sake. It's weird how people think that if we don't have something on our shelves it must be either because it's no longer available or because we have some moral problem with carrying it (and in the latter case, they always insult us for being so disgusting as to have conservative or liberal leanings, whichever happens to be the obvious affiliation we have due to not having their book). Truth is, most books that are published are not in our store. It has to be a reasonably high-interest item that warrants the shelf space it takes up.

A woman who wanted her kid's school reading book came in with no idea what it was. "It's a classic," she said, and of course that's very telling because there's only a few classics kids read in school, right? (Picture me rolling my eyes.) "I'd know it if I saw it," she continued, on the same train of extreme helpfulness on which she began this journey. She asked if I had her kid's school reading list, which I did not, though I had some leftover summer reading lists. Her kid's school wasn't listed, but she said it was very similar to another school's that WAS listed, and she insisted on perusing an unrelated school's SUMMER reading list trying to get a ping in her brain. "I don't even remember what I said to him about it," she said, "it was either 'oh, I read that in school' or 'hmm, I never read that in school but I recognize it,' something like that. But I know it's one of those books you've heard of. It's a classic." Yeah. So I ended up saying maybe her brain would light up with information if she wandered through the school reading list section, at which point she decided without examining anything closely that the section didn't contain middle school books. I informed her that it was all the way from the elementary kids to even some college, but that didn't sway her; she again immediately dubbed it a section that was "too old," and then noticed there were a couple things on, like, a third grade reading level in there and backed off. None of them pinged her brain, so she gave up and left. I wonder if she thought that would work, coming in and saying to the bookstore lady that it was a classic that people have heard of?

9/25/05

I stepped in to help an associate who was having trouble finding the right product for a customer. The customer claimed she'd found the book on our website and that it was called "Microsoft Office Professional" for some version of Excel. We couldn't find anything with that title exactly, and she seemed to be giving my coworker a real hard time, with that whole "well I saw it on your WEBSITE" attitude. I tried my own search and looked for everything in the database for her version of Excel, and there we found one that was for Microsoft Office XP and the right Excel version, but it didn't say "Professional" anywhere on it. I read that to her and immediately she said, "That's it." I told her it didn't say "Professional" but she again insisted that was it. Well, I guess it's hard for us to find exactly what you're looking for if you have specialized terms but then one or more of them turns out to be irrelevant, huh? Why would we even read you off that one since you were so adamant that it was for Professional? Sometimes the only thing you can do for these people is tell them what you're typing and then tell them what that yields, so they can see what you're up against. Looking for a particular book for a particular version of a particular program is always hell if they don't have the exact title. . . .

A woman wanted to be led to our "veterinary section." We don't have one, so I wanted to make sure I heard her right and said, "The veterinary section?" and she replied, "Uh . . . do you work here?"

That is a brilliant thing to ask the girl standing behind the counter in an apron.

Anyway, she asked again for the veterinary section and I said we didn't have one, that there are a few medical books on pets but they're in the pets section and they're not all together. I took her to it anyway, and she sort of half-heartedly browsed, but she was looking for something pretty specific and needed something now to tide her over until the books she ordered online could get there. When I offered to look and see if there was anything in the computer in the regular medical section by chance, she replied that she didn't want me to look anything up because she didn't "have any more time." Didn't stop her from browsing for ten minutes. Umkay.

I was walking to help someone who was waiting at the desk and I got interrupted by a woman who threw herself into my path, saying, "ExCUSE me, exCUSE me!" I gave her such an alarmed look (I guess) that she said, "You work here," looking away and making it a strangely statement-sounding question, like she was informing me that I did indeed work there and therefore should be expected to be asked questions. She looked away from me while she was talking, and indicating the sale tables around her, she began rambling, "I am looking for a book, it is 'Good Morning . . . ?' I don't know, it is a book, um, um, a children's book? Well, um, 'Good Morning . . . ' well, never mind." And then she turned and walked away. I guess that was important enough to dive in front of me with such panic that I might help someone else before I pay attention to YOU and your non-question.

This dude who calls to have papers held rambled at me for like five full minutes because he was under the impression that he'd asked us to hold a Sunday Gainesville Sun for him last week. I had two USA Today issues under his name, but there were no Gainesville papers held with them. He treated me to a long string of sentences that he seemed to think would change that fact. "Well I called and had them held." "That's why I keep calling and asking if they're there, because I want them." "I really wanted that paper." "Is there a guy who works in the back who would know?" "Would anyone else know?" (I don't get this "would anyone know" crap because I was looking at the dude's hold pile and there isn't anywhere else we hide stuff on hold for customers--*I'm* the one who knows, and my answer is NO!) "I was hoping you'd have the Sunday papers, well can you hold those USA Todays until the third this time because that's when I get paid, well I really hoped you'd have those Sunday ones, I thought I called and had them held, are you sure they're not there? No? Do you think they'd be lying around someplace? My name's [censored], it would be under [censored], I had them held. Sunday Gainesville Sun from last week. No? Well I wanted that paper. I wanted it held. I really wanted that paper. Would there be any lying around in the back?"

Seriously, buddy. We held two papers for you and it's very unlikely that you called and had another paper held besides the ones we are already holding for you--we have no reason to put it somewhere else, especially since we DO have some other papers for you. You probably just made a mistake or called the wrong store or something. Now please stop trying to get a different answer out of me. No matter how you phrase that question, I am not going to suddenly realize there's a paper here for you besides the ones I already said were here. Can you please stop fucking wasting my time?

9/24/05

A woman came up to the desk asking for a copy of a book I hadn't heard of, saying she'd just called and we'd told her we had it and put one on hold for her. That was a little weird because I'd been handling phone calls most of the day and I hadn't been asked for it (though I figured it could have been the other backup girl), but there was no book on hold for her, plus it had never been searched for on the only computer that was up and running (because it always tries to auto-complete for you when you type, and it didn't try when I typed). Anyway, then the book came up as something we don't carry.

"Sorry, we don't even carry this book," I reported, and she replied, "I JUST called you and you said you physically had three copies!" To make a long story short, she didn't call us. She called Borders. Welp.

Some jackass was unfortunate enough to ask our Assistant General Manager where the nonfiction section was. Our AGM is famously intolerant of jackassery, and she responded to this lady by saying nonfiction in this store was everything except "that section," pointing to fiction. The lady was then unfortunate enough to repeat her query: "But which section is just the nonfiction section?" At this point the AGM got surly and repeated her original response but in a God-you're-ridiculous baby voice: "THIS SECTION right here is all FICTION. Anything outside that part of the store is NONFICTION." And she didn't try to draw the specifics out of this lady either; she just turned her loose to waddle off confusedly. Maybe she'll figure out someday that asking for "nonfiction" in a bookstore is like asking for the "food section" in a grocery store. Hey, they sell non-food items, but most of the store IS food and it might make more sense to be specific about what you want.

A woman came up and asked me for a book called "Pagan Homeschooling." I thought that was a really cool concept--I had never heard of the book--so I figured I was talking to someone who would have a fucking clue when I replied that it sounded cool and I would look for it. I threw it out that I had a personal interest in that and drew her attention to my pentacle necklace, and she replied, "Oh, what's that mean?"

Discouraged, I replied, "Well, you know, I'm Pagan, so. . . . "

"Oh," she replied, "I didn't know Pagans had a particular symbol."

Oh God.

I looked for the book for her (which ended up being called Homeschooling for Pagans, not "Pagan Homeschooling") and she said she wasn't sure whether she wanted to order it but had heard it was a good homeschooling book. I read her the subtitle (which was something about "a spiritual approach to education") and it was obvious from her response that she thought that was a good idea but that she had no idea what "Pagan" even meant in a religious context. (It seemed she had no idea what it meant at all.) She decided to look for it elsewhere and said she'd call us if she needed it ordered, but I hope she ends up ordering it and finding out it's not quite the kind of spirituality she was expecting. "What's this? God and Goddess? You're out of your mind! This isn't spiritual, this is a bunch of heathen trash! Oh, wait . . . maybe that's what 'Pagan' means. . . . "

A woman with that lost look solicited my help and turned out to want Baby Einstein. I took her to the section and asked her whether there was a particular one in the series that she wanted, and she replied, "Baby Galileo." (She pronounced it "gah-luh-LEE-oh" instead of "gah-luh-LAY-oh," but I ignored that.) I showed her the one Baby Galileo book that I had, and she looked disturbed so I guessed she was disappointed that I only had one. "Well what I was looking for was something more like THIS," she said, and tentatively picked up the Discovery Cards about the seasons. Ohhhkay--those are not even Baby Galileo, they're just flash cards from the regular Baby Einstein series. So I asked her for clarification and she again said, "Just something like one of THESE, but for Baby Galileo." I figured out then that she thought the flash card sets were VHS tapes because they are shaped about the same. I explained to her that those were not videos, and she completely ignored me and told me that she was looking for videos ("like these") but the one with Baby Galileo. "We don't HAVE videos," I replied. "We only do books. This is all I have." She looked confused and again examined the flash cards and I told her again that they were cards, not movies. She still didn't seem to get it and thought I was just telling her we didn't have the one she wanted. Whatever. I told her to go to Borders because they do movies.

And my favorite for today was the guy who called saying he'd bought a calendar/calculator gizmo from our Gifts Under $10 table and could not figure out how to set it.

"I followed the directions but I can't set the dern thing. Can you or somebody else there try to help me figure it out? 'Cause if I can't set it, I'm gonna have to return it."

Ohhhkay.

I told the guy to hold on while I finished helping the customer I'd been helping when he called, and then when I picked back up and went to find the gizmo to try to help him he told me, "Let me call you back, I'm on a cell phone, I don't want to waste my minutes." Umkay. I figured he was just going to call me when he got back home or something, but apparently he WAS home because he called right back in under a minute from a house phone. Well, I unpackaged one of the same gizmo he'd bought and tried to figure out how to set it, and it was pretty much a complete no-brainer; I could see easily how it worked, and proceeded to try to explain to him what to push in what order. You're gonna love his response:

"Oh wait. Let me go get it."

Jesus McChrist.

Umm, so finally he got his gizmo and I told him what to push and he kept replying that he tried that but it "didn't work." Finally he said he'd try to come by sometime this week and let one of us set it for him. Good God, please don't let it be me. . . .

9/21/05

Let me get my most annoying customer out of the way first because once I talk about her everything else will seem peachy.

I was watching the register while the regular cashier took a lunch break. This woman had two books and her opening malfunction was to ask me how much "off" this book with no discount sticker on it was going to be. I told her there isn't a discount on this book, and she immediately shot back with "But it was in the THING, it was in this rectangular thing under a sign that said 30% off!" She made a motion with her arms indicating a narrow shelf of some kind, and I just repeated that it doesn't appear to be on any kind of sale because there'd be a sticker if it was. She snapped, "Just ring it and see." So I did, and it had no 30% off. At this she became furious, so I attempted to calm her by asking her to please show me where she was talking about so I could try to figure out why it was in a place indicating a discount if there was no discount.

Of course, at this point I'm thinking to myself, "Here we have a person who can't read signs," because this happens all the time; someone reads the sign that says "Top 10 Paperbacks 30% off" and doesn't realize they've picked up #27. As we marched over to wherever she'd found the book, her huffy and me resigned, she growled a bunch of disparaging remarks about our store, about how this is SO aggravating and frustrating and this always happens to her at "this stupid company." Wow, so it's happened BEFORE that she can't read a sign! Go figure!

So of course we get to the place she's talking about and she's triumphantly pointing out the giant "30%" and I read her the whole sign (guess what--it says "up to 30% off on featured titles!") and she blows up. "THAT'S MISLEADING! IT SHOULDN'T BE LIKE THAT! IF IT'S UNDER A SIGN THAT SAYS 30% IT SHOULD BE 30% OFF!!" As we walked back to the register she went on and on about how "people who don't know the INS and OUTS of the way this STUPID store does things get CHEATED and MISLED" and "I don't LIKE this." I strangely wasn't angry or worried at all because I am so used to bullshit like this, so I attempted to give her a middle-of-the-road "yes signs try to catch your eye, but NO that doesn't excuse you from reading them" type response, halfway acknowledging her and halfway blaming her. "Yeah, I guess they figure making the 'up to' smaller than the discount percentage can throw you off," I said, and when she kept on about why would we PUT a sign that says 30% off if there wasn't even a book under the sign with that discount, I explained that it's a regular display feature whose contents change once a week and sometimes the discounted items on it do go up to 30% off but it clearly tells you to look for marked items and the book she wanted was unmarked and the other book on the display was marked with only 20%. (You'd think that'd have been a red flag, actually; that the sign says 30% but they're marked 20%--hmm, confusion; better READ THE WHOLE SIGN.)

What's strange is after the huge outburst and the accusations that this company always does that and comments like "At the GROCERY STORE if something's under a sign that says 30% off it actually means it's on sale," she ended up saying, "Now I'm not fussing at YOU, I know it's not YOUR fault."

No. You ARE fussing at me, and you DID put me through bullshit, and you DID piss me off, and you do NOT get a Get-Out-Of-Featured-Jerk-Free card. A word to the wise who don't want to get "misled" and "cheated": Read signs. Read all of the information on the signs. Because YES, the big 30% on them IS designed to catch your eye. It is NOT designed to be the sole focus of your attention. Read the damn sign.

Then I had a woman at the front of the line and then a woman behind her. As I rang up the first lady, the second one inched up and then put her stuff down at a different register. Then the first lady decided to be one of those darling customers who takes six years to pack up her shit and get out of the way, so after her transaction was complete I just stood there looking at her waiting for her to make room for the next lady. I looked up to catch the eye of Lady #2 hoping she'd be able to exchange a resigned look of patience with me or something, but instead she was wearing an annoyed look and when I looked at her she goes, "Can I PAY for this?" in an impatient prompting manner, like I'm supposed to move to the next register because this lady isn't moving fast enough. Tough shit, lady. You don't get to say what computer I use. That one has no damn money in it. You're just going to have to wait.

Back at Customer Service, I had a woman come up and ask me for a book called "A Razzle." I gave her a strange look and repeated, "A Razzle?" and she nodded, then said it again, like this. "A . . . razzle." I'm like, hmm. She apparently picked up on my consternation regarding "wow, this woman is using a word that is not in the English language," and said, "Maybe I'm not saying it right. Let me write it down for you."

And then here's what she wrote:

A lady was looking for the Goosebumps series. I of course knew exactly what she needed and was in the process of taking her there as she mumbled and muttered about how she wasn't quite sure what they were but she thinks they're scary stories and ooh her nephew loves them and--GOOD GOD just shut up, I don't need any help or extra information to find them for you, I know what they are. Now, we arrived in the section and I had told her on the way over that they were in the Series section and that Series is organized by the name of the series, so as we walked in I said, "Okay, and now we'll mosey on down to the G's." Instead of, oh, following me or paying attention, she turned around the other way looking at the aisle across from what I was POINTING AT and said, "Okay, well maybe I didn't go far enough, here's Kids' FICTION . . . hmmmm . . . " as if she was expecting that this would be a mystery to solve and that her help was needed to gather clues to where it might be. Hey, you can do that or you can have the goddamn kids' specialist take you down the ignorance-proof route and then stand there pointing at the books while you look in the opposite direction and pretend you're helping. I had to get her attention and say, "Here, they're right HERE," and she just turned around and faced the right way but still didn't register that I was pointing. When she realized that I was indicating the correct shelf in no uncertain terms she had the grace to go, "OH, oh I'm sorry, I didn't see you were pointing at it," and then seated herself on the floor in a jolly way to browse. I made sure that they didn't wrap around to the next shelf--I used to have so little room that I had to have Goosebumps wrap to the next shelf in the middle of the series--but they were all together there so I took the liberty of informing her that they were all on that one shelf, she didn't have to go to the next one to look for more. "Oh, that's a shame," she replied, completely oblivous to what I meant. Okay, whatever, lady. Call me if you need help getting your ass off the floor when you're done shopping.

A woman at Customer Service came to pick up the book she'd ordered and then realized it was probably not the right book even though it had the same title as the one she'd wanted. I guess it had been a long time since she'd actually seen the book she wanted, though, because she had to page through it and puzzle for (no exaggeration!) fifteen minutes before she determined that it was not the correct book, mumbling shit to herself like "I could swear it was in COLOR, this one's not in color." (Weirdly enough, the next time I looked up she was paging through a whole section of color photographs in the book.) Anyway, she finally decided it wasn't the same book but might be useful to her purposes, but then she said, "But it's only $20, right?" I'd probably be able to answer that a lot better if I was holding the book or you didn't have it flat open on the desk with no price information showing. I swear these people think we have the database in our heads or can tell from the size of the book what its price is or something.

I happened to overhear this one in the café: I was waiting to get my water for soup and I was behind some girl who underpaid the cashier and when she said, "Um, I still need twenty more cents," the girl said, "Oh, no, that's okay." Seriously, we're saying WE need more money from YOU, not that we're wanting you to wait a minute while we get more change for you. She ended up not having quite enough after emptying her changepurse but the café girl let her slide anyway and ended up putting some of her own change in there from the tip jar so the drawer would effing balance.

Here's a nice ironic one. A woman came up to the desk all obviously pleased that I was the one helping her, because she remembered me from the last time I'd helped her and I'd been very helpful. "You remember? You helped me with the Horrible Harry books?" She saw my "okay whatever" face and said, "Oh, YOU don't remember" in a sort of dismissive tone, and then she drops the bomb: "I need to find those books again, I looked EVERYWHERE and I can't find them!" Hmm, so you're all amused and slightly condescending that I don't remember you (one of thousands of customers), but you've been shown this series before and you can't find your way back there. Well, no big. Anyway, she said that last time she'd come I'd recommended The Time Warp Trio and her son had loved it, so she wanted to get some of those too, but she didn't actually ask me to show it to her. So after I showed her Horrible Harry in the chapter books section, I asked, "Do you want me to show you where the other one is?" I said this while pointing toward Series in the right direction. She replied, "What, Horrible Harry?" pointing to, ya know, the shelf we were still standing in front of. I swear she was totally serious too, looking at me like I was off my nut because I was offering to lead her to a series I'd already led her to. Well, am I hearing things or did you mention that you were getting more Time Warp Trio also?? And it turned out she DID want to see them too. What's funny is she went on from there to speculate on what other thing I'd recommended to her on that fateful day. God only knows, but I gave her some more recs and she didn't take them this time either. What's the point?

I had a little rush at Customer Service; I had a call on hold (although it was the other store so they understand waiting) and then another customer at the desk, and no backup. So I was looking through a long fucking list of books by a particular author and the ONLY book that we carried in the store was in the African-American Nonfiction section. The woman wanted me to show it to her so I took her back there, and even though she'd completely been there to witness the shrill ring of the telephone (with my putting the person on hold) and the tip-tapping of the impatient next customer in line's high-heeled shoe, she decided this would be a good time to launch into a story of why she was looking for this author. "My sister mentioned her to me and I went to school in the same city that this author's from and she asked me if I knew her and it was a really small town and I think maybe I did know her so I wanted to get some of her books and see what she writes about," on and on trying to give me a fucking history of how she came to ask me for this author. I ended up cutting her short and saying she could feel free to ask me if she had any interest in the titles we'd have to order. I got off the hook pretty quick, but it just blew my mind that this lady could watch me try to hold down a tidal wave of customers and decide "Hey, I need a friend, let me make some jackass small talk." Sorry. Wasting someone's time when they don't have much of it is not a good way to make friends.

Urgh. Another couple of run-of-the-mill annoyances with the phone. First I had a dude who wanted me to transfer his call to the café, and in order for me to do that I have to get him off the cordless and onto the more versatile customer service phone, so it makes a couple clicks as you do that. When I got him onto the right phone he was going, "Hello? Hello?" How long have you lived on this planet, guy? Usually when someone picks up and is ready to talk to you THEY say hello while YOU wait. You're not supposed to respond to a click and a whir by attacking the possible listening party with greetings just in case they haven't realized they're supposed to speak yet.

The next one was very similar, I had to get the lady off my cordless phone and onto the C/S phone because I was looking for her school order. I told her I had to pick her up at a different desk to do that, and so she should have been prepared. I opened her call on the cordless, picked it up secondarily on the C/S phone, killed the connection on the cordless, and picked up the receiver on the C/S phone so I could talk to her.

Amid her panicked mantra of "Hello? HELLOOOO????" I couldn't get a word in edgewise.

I calmed her like a wounded animal with "HI, I'm HERE," and she was like, "Ohhhhhhhh I thought you hung up, I thought I lost you," and I said, "I told you I was picking you up at a different desk, that's all it was," and she wailed, "BUT I HEARD TWO CLICKS!" Guess that two clicks is the universal cue to demand attention by yelling "Hello," right? Why do people do that anyway? Saying it repeatedly or using an extremely sarcastic tone does not do a better job of making someone on the other end speak. God that's irritating.

She was irritating after that too. I tried to find her school's order by phone number and the only recent order they'd put in with us at this branch was not the title she said she'd ordered. I tried her personal number too but that came up with nothing. I told her I'd put her through to the manager who handles school orders normally and maybe she'd know something I didn't know. Ooh yeah, our AGM loves people like this!

I watched my manager pick up and hit confusion almost immediately, saying, "Okay, I see your order, 25 copies of The Giver?" and then a pause and "No, I don't see any orders for The Green Book." Then a huge sigh and eyeroll and "hold on," after which she stalked to the back room and I heard nothing for a while. I asked her later whether she found out what was up with the order. "Yes, I knew exactly what she was talking about," she said, and when I asked her to elaborate she said, "She hadn't actually ordered anything." The lady had called, asked for price information to have her purchase order made up at school and for purposes of deciding which titles she wanted, but she had never rang back to actually place the order. I love it when that happens, when it's proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's their fuck-up, not ours. Though I know people who make that kind of fuck-up ordinarily harbor delusions in the backs of their minds that somehow it's still our fault for not reading their thoughts and ordering the books they want for them.

9/20/05

Oh look, another day of unholy douchebaggery.

To help us wade through all the various Assholes, let's have some fun today and give them all names!

Let's do my most annoying woman first, and get her ugly ass out of the way. Her name is Knows-Nothing Negative Nancy. Now, to set the scene, imagine this: She's an older woman with a common problem: She wants a book and has no idea who wrote it or what it's called, but she needs it now and it's a classic. Yyyyeah. All she knew was that it was related to cooking and that it was put out by the Barron's company. She claimed that "Barron's Guide to Cooking" might be the title, she was very adamant about this Barron's thing, but when I tried her titles and several alternates and then tried a search for "Barron's" and tried narrowing it down to only cookbooks, I actually got NOTHING. The cooking category didn't even show up with any Barron's hits; it was all test prep and some other stuff.

So of course throughout the whole thing she's rambling and adding more non-information like that she has it at home and she's had it for years and wants to buy one for her daughter and it's not REALLY a cookbook but more like a cooking HELP book, and that it is quite thick like an encyclopedia. Umkay. I was pretty cheery about the whole thing and ended up just taking her to the cooking section because she was sure that since it was a classic we would have it. (As we are about to see, "a classic" has different meanings to different folks.)

So. More wandering and rambling about how we "should" have this and she can't imagine that we wouldn't and where are books that aren't really cookbooks but are books about food? I kept telling her to browse in the general cooking but she refused to listen and kept drifting over into the appliance cooking section, and finally--gasp--SHE FOUND IT!

It was a rather small book entitled The Food Lover's Companion. I've never seen it before or been asked for it in over five years at this store, which is not usually the definition of "classic," but whatever.

Now for the worst part.

Now that she had the book, she began cheerily berating me for having been unable to find it with my computer. "When I said Barron's you SHOULD have been able to find it!" she squawked--and I have to say she wasn't acting ANGRY but just sort of matter-of-fact "jeez, *I* found it, why couldn't YOU find it when I knew this bit about Barron's?" Never mind that she had no title and that it was listed under the author Sharon Tyler Herbst and we don't have a "by publisher" search . . . because yes, "Barron's" was the publisher's name, and it was in a tidy circle on the cover near the bottom, not anywhere in the keywords for the book in the computer because, well, like I said we have no "by publisher" search. I actually told her that. "It might have been possible to find it knowing 'it's about cooking' and 'it's by the Barron's company' if we had a publisher search available," I told her more than once, "but we generally need a title or an author and you didn't have either one." I was trying not to be accusatory about it, more like "Well, what can ya do, stupid computers need such definite information to do a search" type of attitude, but I was also definitely trying to get it through her head that she'd come in the store with almost no information and the only reason she'd found the book was that she already owned it and knew what it looked like. "Barron's Guide to Cooking" is a far cry from "The Food Lover's Companion." They don't share ANY of the same words. What did you expect me to do with that? The conversation ended with "Well, when I said 'Barron's,' you should have known it." Because . . . remember, kids, it's a classic. ::wink::

Emphatic Expectant Ellen comes next. This woman with an unplaceable accent and a frazzled look on her face came to me asking where we would have a book with photographs of a particular hotel she'd stayed at. Apparently it was a famous hotel that she thought worthy of an entire book devoted to it, but let's face it, it's not the Taj Mahal. In fact, I'm not even putting its name here because there's a chance she'll do an Internet search and pull up two results: The hotel's homepage and the record of her jerkassosity. I looked the hotel's name up just so I could say I did it, and there was no entire book of photographs of this apparently very beautiful building. Unfortunately, not everything in the whole world has an ENTIRE BOOK ABOUT IT. I told her I had no way to search for whether there were photos of the hotel inSIDE a book, and there was no book showing up that said it was devoted to the hotel completely. "I do not know why NOT!" she spat, "It is such a BEAUTIFUL place!" I know why not. Because nobody but your jerk ass and the designer's family would want to buy a book of pictures of a fucking hotel. Let's just say it wouldn't be a bestseller. Let's just say no publisher in their right mind is going to look at you pitching "book of pictures of a gorgeous hotel" and think "Ooh, high-interest item! Sold!" I ended up telling the woman that her best bet was probably to contact the hotel itself and see if they had any promotional materials. "They do not have anything!" she protested. "Even in their own gift shop they do not have a postcard with a picture of the place!" Hey lady? That should tell you something, shouldn't it. Even the place itself doesn't have stuff promoting it. Get a clue!

Incidentally, I think this is it. Feast your eyes! Don't you want a book on it now??

So Irma got back to the desk and I told her the situation: "I just need to know which one it is again." She gave me this look of pure "GOD you're incompetent" and said, "Why don't you just ask them for BOTH??" Ahh, she thought I didn't remember which BOOK I was looking for, not which VERSION. I explained to her that our other store wouldn't have the book we'd already ordered for her either, because stores all carry the same things. She didn't seem to know what I was talking about, because after all if I was calling them to ask about a book we didn't have then why couldn't I ask about another book we don't have? Still unable to understand "we don't carry, and WE equals THEM TOO in this case," she suggested again that when I call I ask for the other book too. ::sigh::

Then Doofis Dancing Doris came up to bat. "I am looking for books on how to dance," she said, and after a quick look-through our performing arts section yielded only books on ballroom and ballet, she assured me that she wanted something a little more general, with steps for several different easy dances. I looked up her subject and actually found very little. I told her there were books on the tango (which she dubbed too hard) and though she mentioned square dancing I couldn't find a book that we could actually order that covered the subject. There just wasn't a lot available, and this was where she began to dither.

"Try and look up 'how to dance,'" she suggested oh-so-helpfully. Okay, right, because the problem is that I don't understand that you want to learn to dance, not that there ISN'T ANYTHING AVAILABLE. I told her I still had nothing and unless she had a suggestion for a particular title or a particular other dance I should try, I was out of ideas. Then she wanted a particular type of sewing manual and its name was not in the system at all (like, not even in the broadest search), so she said, "Well can you look under 'sewing'?"

I'm so glad these people know how to do my job since I obviously can't do it very well. I'm only the person behind the counter. . . .

Confused Clueless Carol joins the fray! And she wanted Flowers for Algernon but had been unable to find it in the kids' section.

Anyone see the problem with this?

All right, so I'll humor the people who haven't read it. It's not even remotely a kids' book. Despite the fact that there is a cute and furry pet mouse in it, it is not for children. I don't know how people could think it is. Unfortunately, aiding the confusion for today was the fact that she had actually FOUND a weird sale book version of the book that had been truncated and sort of made into a child's version of the story, with pictures and stuff! I told her that was the first I'd ever heard of such a thing being made, but that the actual story written by Daniel Keyes is not for children. I explained this as I took her to Literature, and she argued back that SHE had read it "as a child." More explanation yielded the information that she had in fact been fifteen years old reading it in HIGH SCHOOL. Okay, that makes more sense. But I have to say that it's very, very rare that you look for high school books in the children's section. You're lucky if you find a book for a sixth grader in there. It's for kids, as in kids when they're still at the age that they don't get offended when you call them kids.

More drama with ol' Carol ensued. When I found her the book (which of course had to have two versions on the shelf), she started asking me how "the adult one" is different from "the children's one." I explained to her that the sale book version she had there was not an official version of the book; it might be a kids' picture book of the story, but it wasn't the actual book, and she assured me she wasn't talking about this storybook version, forget this storybook version. What's the difference between the kids' version and the adult? Again, I told her there ISN'T a kids' version, but again she said she read it as a kid and if this is the adult version she wants to know what's the diff. I finally convinced her, I think, that there is ONE Flowers for Algernon and that a storybook probably got made from it because there was once a movie and it got a fair amount of attention at one time, but the story itself is the same story no matter whether you buy the trade paperback or the mass market.

I read it as a kid too. But I was in fifth grade. And it was the adult version.

Helpless, Heedless Helga wandered up to Customer Service with a distinctive book title that was one of those things you hear once and know for sure that it's a unique title. I typed it in and got but one hit, and just as I was about to tell her the information she added, "The author is Church." Which of course was not what my screen said.

Despite the originality of the title, she was adamant that it had to be "the one by Church" and was very befuddled when I said the only one in the system with that title was by someone completely different. She'd gotten the information from someone else so she determined she'd write down the author I had on my screen and give it a check with Mom or whatever. Now here's where the annoying bit came in.

We have a little cardboard stand-up sign on the desk encouraging people to contribute to the Salvation Army's Hurricane Katrina collection, which we're taking donations for at the register. Helga here decided to TAKE the sign, turned it over, and motioned like she was looking for a pen to write her shit down on.

No, BAD Helga! You no take promotional materials and use them for frickin' scratch paper! What an ass.

I wrote the info down on an actual sheet of scratch paper and gave it to her because I would not trust her with a pen. She might injure others or herself.

My next featured jerkass will be Intruding Incompetent Ida. She did this horribly annoying thing that always irks me to the core: I was sorting some kids' books into piles for easier shelving and she came up and stood right in front of me, then didn't say anything and expected me to ask her what she wanted. I know that as a customer service person I am actually supposed to be the first to reach out to people and ask them if they need help, and actually I do often do so, but when they walk up acting like they're just gonna walk by and all of a sudden their footsteps stop and you know their eyes are boring a hole through the back of your head or whatever, you're supposed to turn around and baby them and save them the trouble of that expensive and exhausting "Excuse me." Of course, Ida decided that since I was obviously engaged enough in my task that I didn't take it upon myself to ask her what she needed as she stood there near me with a confused look on her face (if only I would look up and look at it and ask, oh please!), she would answer this not by saying "Excuse me" but by inching closer to me until our auras were touching, you know? You can't not look up at someone when they do that. And then when I looked up she just stood there and looked at me waiting for me to say, "Hello you helpless dishtowel, what do you want?"

Anyway, I just bit it and helped her, and she was really annoying about wanting her Jules Verne books, and she gave me a list of the ones her grandson wanted and every time I found one that was in the store she said, "I don't need that one, I already got it." I'm glad you decided to share that with me before I wasted time looking for it, grandma. Not. Finally she decided not to order anything and started talking to herself, holding Around the World in 80 Days and checking items off out loud, calling that one "Around the World in 25 Weeks" for some reason. Ohhhkay.

Snip-Snap Selma picked up her ordered book at Customer Service and then slammed another book down on top of it, pushing them at me and saying, "Well, I'll take that too." I told her she had to go to the register to check out and she replied, "THERE'S NO ONE UP THERE!" Actually there is, and they can see you when you walk over there; they just also have a job and put books away when they have no customers, so if you go over there then they will join you shortly and let you give them money. Ain't life grand?

Oblivious Olga from one of our café distributors called to find out what our order was for their company for the week. I'm not sure but I think she might've been new. She asked for the café manager by name, but she wasn't in, so I asked her if she was calling specifically to talk to that person or if she wanted to just talk to whoever was in the café right now. (I should mention that at this point she had not yet identified herself.) Anyway, she's like, "Well-I-just-need-to-get-the-order," and I don't know about you but that doesn't answer my question, I don't know how the café runs things so I don't know if you must talk to the manager or if the girl over there would know. So I said, "Well, do you want to call back later and talk to the manager, or would you like to talk to the girl in the café now?"

Her response?

"Yeah, sure."

That was not a yes/no question. This is the part of the question and answer process where you provide data outside of the affirmative or the negative.

Eventually I guess she decided to behave and talked to the café girl and if she didn't know what was needed then I guess she put a note in the log for the manager. Whatever.

Pointless Perplexed Pamela is a teacher at Ignoramus Academy (apparently), and she wanted a class set of whatever classic book they're using for their unit. She was kind enough to spell the title for me in case I also went to Ignoramus Academy despite the fact that the single-word title is famous and easy to spell. Now, I didn't have a problem looking it up or finding editions we could order. The problem is, she has the Bantam Classic version and it is illustrated. She wants a non-illustrated version of this classic story.

Well, that's not really a problem. But here's why she's on my Wall of Shame. She expected me to be able to go through the list and tell her which books were NOT illustrated, and I mean she thought I could tell this even on books that were not in the store. She said several times, adamantly, that the book absolutely could not have illustrations, and said things like "Can you make sure? Can you look in the descriptions and find that out?"

Because as we all know, when something is NOT illustrated, it says "No pictures whatsoever! We promise!"

Lady, I don't know how to say this more clearly, but I cannot determine what a book has a LACK of. I imagine the illustrated ones will say "beautifully illustrated" or something if that's a selling point, so we'll know which ones NOT to get, but it doesn't follow from there that all the ones that don't mention illustrations therefore do not have them! Not to mention that the very edition she was holding--the unacceptable, illustrated one--was in our system with no mention of its many illustrations. Oopsie. And I think the biggest problem was that after I said these things she still kept asking me to "make sure" and "can you check?" and stuff on books I told her were not in the store. I'm sorry. Descriptions of books on the site do not advertise as part of their selling points what they DO NOT have. "Does not come with free lightsaber!" "Book does not give you syphilis!" "Guaranteed to have NO PICTURES!" We ended up solving the problem by choosing an edition we had in the store that I was able to physically check and scour for pictures, and she asked me two or three times, "And there's NO pictures?" "The only picture in the whole thing is on the front cover," I assured her. "So no pictures?" I wonder if this is like so important because she's going to make her kids illustrate them or something? Like she doesn't want to give them anything to work with? God, it was annoying.

Doris in Denial hit me up for information on Spanish books near the end of the day, and so I took her to Reference/Language. As we were going, she said she didn't really want a dictionary but a phrase book. I said that was fine because we had plenty of both. But as soon as we got to the section she started spewing, "No, this isn't what I want, I want a phrase book, not a dictionary, I want a portable travel-size book of the right thing to say at the right time," blah blah blah. Hey Doris? Shut up for a second and look at what we're standing in front of. This is fourteen feet of Spanish reference books. Just because you did not look at one single book but they look like all dictionaries to you does not mean that I took you to the wrong place. This is not a miscommunication. This is a jerkass assumption. I ended up having to pull about six phrase books off the shelf and open them in front of her face and say things like "Yeah, you mean like THIS?" before she began to realize it wasn't just a bunch of Spanish dictionaries. Of course, she rejected each one I pulled out for various reasons (too big for my purse, too small of print, et cetera). She finally figured out that she needed to browse on her own and left me alone.

Myopic Mopey Mom and Disgustingly Dickish Daughter were roaming my kids' section and I overheard something Mom said to Daughter that made me want to throw up.

At first I was optimistic because Mom was looking at classics and trying to get her daughter to decide whether she'd like to read them, but then they wandered over to the series section and spotted Lemony Snicket.

They looked at the books for a moment because they're attractive and interesting, but then the mom all of a sudden had an apparent moment of recognition and burst out with this: "OH no, you don't need to be reading that." I don't know what she thought they were or what she'd heard, but I was a bit puzzled considering they're a) Completely NOT objectionable and b) AWESOME and funny! I think sometimes people get the wrong idea about A Series of Unfortunate Events because they read the back or hear the plot and think "God, this is a depressing story--how can a book about three kids going through the death of their parents followed by relentless pursuit by a villainous madman be appropriate for children?" And assuring them that the books are funny makes them look at you really strange. You just have to have the right kind of sense of humor to appreciate it, I think, but it's really not particularly "dark" either even if it sounds like it. Anyway, that's not the point; the point is that right after Mopey Mom disgustedly dismissed Lemony Snicket's great literature, she delightedly exclaimed, "OHHH, look, it's Mary-Kate and Ashley! Oh, The Sleepover Secret! Ohh, these are good."

A little piece of my soul died. Bite me.

And finally, here we have another guest appearance by one of my managers--it was a run-of-the-mill Asshole, but of course a classic one. He told the woman, "Yeah, we usually carry the book but it looks like there's none on the shelf now, we must be out. Would you like to order it?" and she replied, "Soooooo . . . so you don't have it?" It's times like this when we think of this. . . .

WAIT, WHAT THE FUCK? Why are all my Assholes today WOMEN????

9/19/05

Cornucopia of Assholes. Oh well, Monday rules.

First off it was very busy, which is kinda par for the course on Mondays and wouldn't be so bad if the people in charge of scheduling (who shall remain nameless) would do things like schedule more than one person for Customer Service for the whole day. I ran into some of the problems I ran into today because we are not well-staffed enough. It doesn't cut it to righteously say, "I scheduled TWO people for Customer Service!" but have them both be specialists (me in the kids' section and the other guy in magazines at the back of the store) responsible for other work which does not get done on the days when we are buried in customers.

What strikes me as most annoying about this is everyone I help in situations like this seems OBLIVIOUS to the fact that they are not the only person who needs help! It's always when a person is at the front of a line of people who need service that they decide to launch into that story about their sister. Are they fucking ignoring everything outside their mind? I have to go! Save that story for your autobiography!

Anyway. On to the Assholes; I know that's what you really came here for, not to hear me philosophize on the annoyingness of my work situation. I'll commence with entertaining you bastards. Arrr.

A guy wanted The Odyssey and when I came around the desk without having to check whether we carried it or who it was by, he doubtfully informed me that it was by "Homer. H-O-M-E-R." As an aside, can you think of any other sane ways to spell "Homer" in the English language? C'mon. Not to mention I'm demonstrating that I'm familiar with it. Now, what happened was I got to the literature section and stood the guy in front of the Homer epics and saw about four different versions of The Odyssey, so unwisely I asked him if he was looking for a particular version. "Well, the one by Homer," he said, sounding annoyed, and then (you guessed it), "H-O-M-E-R."

There just wasn't anything else to do in that situation but point straight ahead at the books in front of his eyes, the whole shelf of Homer, and inform him that there were several versions and he was gonna have to narrow it down for me. He of course ended up buying the cheapest one. Whatever.

That reminds me of something. I don't remember what day it was, but some jackass lady noticed that there was a $6.99 paperback and a $13.99 paperback of the same book on the shelf, and after being unreasonably confused by this as many people are when they never READ, she accepted my explanation that different publishers sometimes produce the same book in different sizes and formats if they're classics or whatever, that it was indeed "the same book," and then she started scoffing over why ANYONE would EVER pay almost twice what the small book cost if it was the same story. "Why would somebody pay extra just to have the words a little larger? That's stupid," she said, and having figured out the entire universe, she stalked away and bought the mass-market paperback.

Yup, so anyone who likes the slightly larger print and better quality binding on a trade paperback is just silly and has no reason for their choice of purchase. Don't even get me started on hardbacks or large print. Anyone who buys THOSE instead of a mass-market paperback is a complete fool! Why isn't the whole WORLD full of only mass-market paperbacks? I mean, publishers and consumers alike must all be a bunch of jackasses! Wait a second. I got that backwards. I think only that lady is a jackass.

With the notable exception of everyone else featured on this website.

Okay, onward. This lady had ordered a book and had gotten a call from our manager saying, "Sorry, we got a notice from the warehouse that this book is no longer available, call us back if you want to try to have us place an order with a used book retailer." That was what I determined eventually, anyway; when she first called me, all she knew was she'd gotten a message about the book she'd tried to order saying it wasn't available and she had to call us to find out what to do next to see if we could get it. She wanted me to "do that," and then I had a devil of a time even finding her order because she didn't remember what fucking phone number she used. She finally pulled one out of her ass that she'd used to place the order and I was able to find her order history, but before that when we were trying to figure out what to do about it she rambled about how I should just type in the name of the book and that would fix it. Gee why didn't I think of that. No actually I need your order history so I can explain to you what happened the first time you tried to order before we start trying to get it.

Anyway, all of a sudden she's saying she needs the book "within the week," so I asked her if it had been a long-term special order when she'd tried to order it the first time and although she claimed no one had said anything special about it, I later found that to be untrue also; she later let it slip that whoever'd ordered it had told her its availability wasn't guaranteed. Yeah, sounds about right. You try to order a not-guaranteed book and nine times out of ten it comes back with a negative--"Sorry, ass face, try the used places." Eventually I got her to say she'd try the 'Net and stuff, because I wasn't going to be able to get her this thing within the week at this point, but the most annoying thing about the interaction was that throughout the saga she acted like we'd misinformed her or like all this hoohaw with trying to find her account was due to our disorganization rather than her inability to remember her phone number.

Ahh, run-of-the-mill annoyance: A guy on the phone was very unclear about his title and didn't know the author, and just when it looked like we'd have to give up he goes, "I have the ISBN." Oh ya think that'll help? Gee!

We got another late high school or early college jackass who wanted me to do her homework for her. I love telling these people they need to do their own research. "I need a book that someone wrote about traveling somewhere. It has to have been during the nineteenth century. I need a nineteenth-century travel journal."

We don't have a nineteenth-century travel journal section, I'm afraid. I felt a little bad about this one because I was kinda rude to the girl (I outright said, "We don't have a 'nineteenth-century travel journal' section, ya know!"), but I wanted her to understand you can't just go into a bookstore and hand them your project guidelines and expect them to lay out books on the table for you the way they did in the elementary school science fair project unit.

I told her the best I could do was say, "There's Biography--you can pick a nineteenth-century traveler and see if they wrote about it, or you can go to American History and browse there." I mentioned also that Travel exists but that it is unlikely to have anything that's not modern. Thing is, I have no 'Net access at work and a very tenuous grasp of history, so I have no idea who traveled during the nineteenth century who might have written about it. Do your own damn homework and come to me with a title or even a particular person to find books on, but do not say, "Give me anything that fits my guidelines, because MY only job is to read the damn thing." Wrong! My only job is to help you find the damn thing, not to help you do research (though I'll be more than happy to help you if I happen to be an expert in whatever field you ask about, I can be helpful that way).

Oh yeah, and after I pretty much told her I didn't have a way to search for "nineteenth-century travel journals," she replied, "Well, could you like search for 'autobiographical'?" Oh yeah! Brilliant idea! Let me type "autobiographical" into my computer and suddenly watch the nineteenth-century travel journals pour onto the screen! Listen here, kid. When you give me something ultra-specific and I tell you I don't have anything to give you, making it MORE specific or adding a very vague keyword (or something that damn obvious) to the search is NOT going to make it successful. Know what? With that kind of research skills and perception of academics, you deserve to fail this project.

A student came up to me and asked me if the large selection of pens by the register was all the pens we had. (Actually it was phrased more like "Those pens by checkout, that all y'all got?") I told him that was it, and he looked surprised/disgusted, then gave me this condescending cluck-and-shaken-head combination and stalked off. I think our problem here was that he wanted a cheap-ass pen to do his homework because he'd come to study and forgotten a damn writing utensil, and was dismayed to find that the pens in our store normally don't go lower than (gasp) $1.99, which is a lot of money when you also have to buy your 2,000 calorie 20-ounce mocha Snow Joe and stay at the bookstore all day "borrowing" the books for your own dirty purposes. No, we don't have 10¢ Bics for sale. That is because we are not an office supply store. (We also get a lot of requests for legal pads and notebooks and shit. We always get surprised looks when we inform them that we don't have a school supplies section.)

What's funny is right after that dude, I had a butt-licker come up and say, "Do you guys have Ethernet here?" I said we didn't and then he said, "How about wireless Internet?" You'd think I'd have mentioned it if we did once he asked the first question. But the response was so scarily similar to the pen-wanting jerk that I wanted to choke. Obvious disapproval/annoyance/"who the fuck does this bookstore think they ARE, not having unrelated services??" floating through his petty little mind. I'm sorry. We're not a study center. Some very unlikely places do have it these days--I've seen it in restaurants and bagel shops and shit, and we do have a café after all--but giving me disparaging looks like a) I have anything to do with it and b) We're incompetent if we don't have it is just not necessary.

My next ungrateful slab of meat was this dipshit who asked for a book at C/S because he had already checked the shelf where he thought it'd be and there were none there. I told him I'd check the shelf and see if there were any copies where my computer said they'd be if we had it, but I explained to him that I could not tell from the computer whether we had any copies in stock, we wouldn't know 'til we got there. I told him this while we walked to the section, and even though we hadn't gotten there yet, he replied, "So you're saying I should have bought it at the competition when I saw it?"

Dick.

Yeah sure buddy that's what I'm saying. And you're not completely obnoxious when you say that or anything, that's a completely constructive comment that actually can increase the quality of service you receive.

It's also a guaranteed ticket to appear on my website, where you will be showcased with the other pigs. Have a good day!

Urgh, I hate when people have no sense of humor. A woman called with an iron-like voice and she started presenting her situation to me before realizing she probably ought to speak to the manager, and interrupted herself to say, "Well, are YOU a manager?" I replied, "Nope--I'm awesome and everything, but I'm not a manager." As I took a breath to offer to page one, she said, "Excuse me?" I replied, "I SAID, I'm as awesome as a manager, but I'm afraid I'm not one. Do you have a particular manager in mind or should I just page whoever's in charge right now?" She completely didn't react to my joke and told me she was impartial about what manager she talked to. Hey come on! Laugh! I'm funny!

And here's my fucking jackass award for the day.

Bear with me here and picture this in your mind. As mentioned, I am the only person running Customer Service at the moment--I think even my backup was on break. And I had a backup register drawer in my name, so *I* am backup for someone ELSE. You can see where this is going, can't you?

Stop one. I get a phone call. As I'm talking on the cordless, I hear a "get over here wench" summoning bell at Customer Service. I'm going to the desk anyway because I have to look up a book for customer #1 on the phone. I approach. Woman at the desk is already looking pissy. I do the whole nod-and-smile thing at the woman while talking to the phone customer. She purses her lips and looks away. I help the phone customer and find I'll have to go to the shelf to find her book. As I reach to put her on hold, line 2 rings.

Customer #1 goes on hold. I tell the woman waiting at the desk that I'll be with her next. Then I pick up the ringing phone. Customer #2 wants a book also, and I politely tell her it'll be just a moment because I'm with a customer. Then I go to the shelf to look for customer #1's book.

The register girl pages me to the register for backup.

Yeah, right.

Sorry, girl, you're going to have to deal with your line like the rest of us. But I can't even call to tell her I'm busy because I'm on the frickin' telephone.

I find customer #1's book and pull it to put on hold for her. I walk back to the desk, finishing up my conversation with customer #1 with regards to what name to put the book under and how long we'll hold it and where. I make it to the desk and lip-pursing jerk is still there. But not for long.

She waits for me to get to the desk, then narrows her eyes at me purposefully and stalks away. That'll show ME for allowing other people to be helped in the order they arrive! How dare I not jump to her and put everyone else on hold?

Good riddance, ya dipshit--blue ribbon for you.

As you might imagine, I am paged to the register a second time in a slightly more irritated voice while helping customer #2. Tough shit.

Nothing else really, except it just pissed me off that the woman could SEE I was busy and then chose to treat it like she was getting bad service--and on top of that due to a mixture of bad planning and the luck of the draw, there was no backup for me OR the cashier when we needed it so I had to deal with this annoyed "why aren't you coming when I call??" attitude. I was tempted to call her to Customer Service for backup just to see if she'd have a better appreciation for my situation.

As mentioned, I am awesome, but I cannot be everywhere. That's just one of the hard knocks of physical existence. Ho-hum.

9/18/05

Someone called looking for my old boss so I told her that he now works in Ocala. She said, "Oh, I called the wrong place," and when I was in the middle of asking her if she needed the number to the Ocala store she hung up on me mid-sentence. I'm a firm believer in the practice of politely finishing a fucking conversation instead of just hanging up when the person you're talking to has finished being of use. Who the hell likes to get hung up on?

A dude came up to the C/S desk obviously waiting for service, so when I walked up there I asked if I could help him since the other employee at the desk was currently on the phone. He just looked at me, though, and pointed to the girl on the phone, and I figured, okay, maybe she's calling the other store for him or something. Turned out that wasn't the case. He just asked her two questions I could have helped with and then pushed all his junk at her and said, "If you could just check these out for me." Hmm, brilliant.

A woman wanted to use my telephone because she was calling around to find out if various places had the type of cat formula she wanted or something. (I guess a vet had prescribed that her cat eat a particular type of prescription diet or something.) Anyway, she expected me to look it up and call them for her, she was very matter-of-fact about going from "Can I use the phone" to "Do me a favor, get me the number for PetSmart" to "Okay, dial it up for me." I didn't mind because she explained that she'd forgotten her glasses, but I would have peed myself had she expected me to also relay messages to them for her. Now, what's annoying is then she used our phone to be a bad customer to PetSmart! After asking them for the cat junk and being told they didn't have it, she replied, "Well, Pet Supermarket has it. YOU don't?" If you know Pet Supermarket has it, why aren't you calling THEM? And then why did you hang up and demand I call Pet Supermarket for you too and then ask them the same way? She expected them to pull the cat formula out of their ass the same way people often reply to "we don't have any" with "I saw some at Sam's, I guess I'll have to go there. Are you SURE you don't have any?" Oh, well in that case, if you're not going to just change your mind and spend your money on OTHER stuff from us, I'll change my tune and bring it out of where we were hiding it. You know there's all kinds of PetSmart employees with cat food up their a-holes. . . .

9/17/05

Okay. Today a woman came in and asked for Who Moved My Cheese? Now, because I immediately reacted with recognition and began to lead her to the management section without checking the computer, you'd think she'd understand that I was familiar with the book. Apparently not, because as we walked toward it she rambled about how she wasn't sure who it was by but that if it helps the book is yellow. It probably would have helped if I didn't already know what we were looking for . . . well, maybe not, too, because THE BOOK ISN'T YELLOW. Seriously, don't give me more information when I've obviously recognized the title or know enough to take you to the section without looking it up. Pay attention wouldja?

9/14/05

I went in the back for a little drink of soda, and my new bottle of Diet Coke decided to fizz a little too much. It spilled on my hands and there were no paper towels in the back room, so I began to go toward the supply closet. I have to walk through part of the store to get to the supply closet. You see where this is going, don't you?

First I got paged to the desk and second my phone rang. I did my best to answer the phone with my little fingers and not get crap on it, and managed to talk to the person and put them on hold without dropping the phone or making it sticky. As I was talking to the person walking to the closet to try to get frickin' Diet Coke off me, the lady who'd had me paged decided she'd had enough. Standing way over at the desk, she first slammed her hand down on the desk in an insultingly impatient way (like "OH my God, she walked PAST me and I NEED HELP NOW!"), and then I hear the click, click, click of high heels rapidly following me.

"EXCUSE ME, but are you working at Customer Service?"

"YES," I replied, "it'll just be a second, I got COKE on my hands and I'm--"

Yeah, that's as far as I got because she interrupted me to snap at me what book she was looking for. Nope, I don't care about your plight, peon--just look for my book. Even though you can't exactly type with soda on your hands, can you? I just ignored her bullshit and got my towels, and she barked at the back of my head that she was going to be looking in this other section but I should look up something that sounded like "The Great Cure. G-R-A-T-E." Hmm.

When I got to the desk I took care of my phone call first and then looked for her book. I couldn't find any Grate Cures (I figured it was a pun for, like, grated natural remedies or something), and at that point she came to the desk and said, "SO, no sign of it, huh?" Nice attitude. I asked her if I had gotten the title right, G-R-A-T-E, and she ran over me replying that it was not GRATE but GRAPE that she had said. Well, that's what happens when you yell shit at the back of someone's head when they've already told you why they have to wait for your services. Weirdly after that she calmed down and acted like a normal customer.

This one's funny. A dude asked me for help while I was overstocking in the kids' section; he wanted some book for his girlfriend who was with him. The girlfriend was wandering blindly in the store looking for the book while the dude was asking for it with incomplete information. It was a relationship advice book, but he didn't know much about it except that it was by a certain author. (And of course it turned out to be one of those authors who has like forty books.) Yeah, well, I found one called Getting the Love You Want and he said that sounded like it, and then I found one called Keeping the Love You Find and he said that sounded like it too. When we actually went to look for it he called it "Keeping the Love You Want." His girlfriend was not even in the relationship section, wandering around at the end of General Self-Help. We brought her over and found the books by the author, and she pulled out the one she wanted and also called it "Keeping the Love You Want" despite the fact that its correct title was in front of her. All I can say is, between the two of them being jackasses on how to find a book and mixing up book titles, I think they may have fewer relationship problems than they think. The other annoying thing was that when we walked past a Hello Kitty display on the way out of the kids' section the dude brushed against a boxed doll and just knocked it off the stack and didn't even turn around to look at what he did when it hit the ground with a thud. What a dick.

And as mentioned, I was overstocking; I got these musical books that voided and when I threw them in the tote together they both went off at the same moment, playing their shitty tinny music sound. And they were each tuned maybe a half tone different, so the dissonance was amazing.

Last annoying ass: Someone called and asked for a book we were out of but generally carry. I remembered that someone called about that book maybe two weeks ago and we didn't have any then, and since it was something in my section I would have stocked it so I determined that we just hadn't been sent any in a while. I told her that probably there's either a difficulty replenishing or for whatever reason they don't KNOW we're out (glitch in the records, someone stole the copy so they don't know it was taken to replace it, et cetera), so I said she should order it. Her response? "No, I'll just keep checking." Lady, that does not make sense. Order it. It will come around ten days later and you don't have to sit there and "keep checking" on a book I just told you was highly likely to be not coming at all ever. Jeez! What is the big deal? Order it!

9/13/05

I heard this ad on the radio:

"Calling all jackasses: Come one, come all to my bookstore, and ask all of the ridiculous questions you haven't actually thought through and have no intention of listening to the answers for! Try your best to direct the silliest of the silly questions to that cute blonde salesgirl from the kids' department, because she loves you all so very very much!"

Then I heard this one:

"Calling all jerks: Want to be famous? Then come on down to our bookstore and be a complete dick to your heart's content. Be sure and commit your random acts of douchebaggery in the sight and/or hearing of the adorable kids' specialist with the long blonde hair, and she will surely put you on her website for all to see! Lesser buttholes will read your exploits for years and hail you as their leader!"

Apparently a lot of other people heard this ad too, because they actually responded.

Again our register chick didn't show (ooh, look who's out of work now!) and so I got stuck up there for just an hour. I don't think I had any real jerks but it was annoying because as soon as one old lady I'd been helping decided to check out, everyone in the frickin' zip code came to join her in line. And since it was before 10 AM, of course there was no alternate register set up so no way to call for backup. How annoying.

When I was released to Customer Service, I got to deal with a woman who had bad information--one of those people who comes in with a note from her mother to get a book and the author information isn't complete and there's no title but "it's some kind of diet book?" Yeah. When I asked her where she got her information, she replied, "Well my mother said you guys had it." That does not answer my question and it does not help us. If you could please tell me where she got her information maybe we could figure out what book it is, because more often than not if it's been on TV or something we'll be able to figure it out. But she was one of those people who pretty much knew she had a hopeless case after reading me her note and seeing the look I gave her, so she said she'd just talk to her mom and try to get more info and hurried away before I could try to help her anymore.

A girl came to pick up a book on hold and she told me its title first. So I just waited for her to shut up and then asked for her name. "It's under Kelly," she said (well, I changed her name to protect the jerky). I turned around to get the book under Kelly, but then I heard her mumble something that sounded like she was giving me a last name to go after Kelly when I'd been assuming Kelly was her last name. (Because fuck you, no one orders a book under their first name and no other, though sometimes we hold books under a first name if that's all the person gave us.) I turned around and said, "What?" and she told me again her name, this time with last name and not mumbling. "Did you ORDER it?" I asked, and she said she did and so of course I found it under her last name. Know what? You suck.

I was helping a dude who wanted a collection of short stories for a nine-year-old for bedtime, "You know, like a big hardbound copy." Pretty much as soon as I got into the kids' section with him, I heard the frickin' customer service bell. Well, there are other people in the store who could possibly help, though I had to be primary, but what can you do if you're already busy with a customer? So I kept helping the dude and he decided to be annoying for three reasons: One, the guy expected a "big hardbound copy" of "bedtime stories" AND wanted it to be illustrated but kept saying everything was too young for the kid, and when I said most of the stuff for the right age group was more like a little paperback he just randomly said, "Well paperback is FINE," as if he'd never said he wanted hardback; two, he agreed that the kid loved "stuff like that" when I asked if he liked fantasy, but when I pulled out Diana Wynne Jones's fantasy short story collection he saw the dragon on the cover and said he didn't think his kid was into "dragons, and dungeons and things," so basically nothing he says is actually meant to help me find an appropriate book; and three, he was OBLIVIOUS to the fact that I was in demand and he was eating up my time. While I was helping him the bell went off again, and I also got paged by the cashier to the customer service, I guess because if you ring a bunch of times and the jerk doesn't come it must mean you're being ignored rather than she might be with a customer who needs lots of help. Since I still didn't come after the page, the cashier actually called me on the portable phone and asked me if I was busy. No, man, I've got my thumb up my ass here and I like watching lines form at the desk. So anyway, every time I came up with a possibility the dude was like, "Yeah, okay . . . well, let's just see what else you've got." And when I finally thought I'd given him enough to think about he wanted to be taken to Kids' Religion for devotionals and religious stories for this kid. By that point, thankfully, someone had gone to the desk to help me out with the onslaught of other customers. ::sigh::

Oh, and here's a company-related annoyance.

Check it out; there's a new Clive Cussler book. It's called Polar Shift. Now, if you'd humor me and actually read the description on the thing, you might notice one thing: They make a typo. Actually, worse than that; they make the same typo twice in the description. This talks of a deadly polar shift and the plot to cause one to happen, but they keep typoing it as shirt. "An eccentric Hungarian genius discovered how to artificially trigger such a shirt. . . . " "Once the shirt starts, there is nothing anyone can do about it." HAHAHAHAHA!

Oh, and the other day (here's one I forgot), I was at the register ringing someone up and like a good little puppet I asked the discount card member if her information was still the same on her address. I asked if she was still on 123 Buckingham Lane (obviously, address made up), and she goes, "What?" and I read her the address again and asked if she was still living there. She replied, "Oh, no. It's 123 Buckingham Lane." Don't know what SHE heard. . . .

9/12/05

All of today's Annoyances were concentrated at the beginning of the day, 'cause I was at the REGISTER and they, well, tend to congregate there for some reason. Lovely!

We were very shortstaffed this morning because the café girl called in sick and the register girl didn't show up, so we had two people, me and the new guy, running the store with the manager in the café. Because I still had a lot to do in my section, I decided since it was early morning I'd just put one of the customer service bells at the register so people could ring for me, then go about my business cleaning and stocking my section. It didn't quite work out that way because PEOPLE ARE AMAZINGLY EVIL.

Almost no one rang it, and yet I did almost $300 of business in the morning. One of these geniuses was a person who went all the way to the fourth register and stood there in the corner looking around--this is, like, really weird because whenever I do have to run the fourth register people are practically shocked that they have to go over there since it's almost hidden, way at the end of the row in the corner. They always comment, "Wow, way over HERE?" or "I didn't even know there was a computer there!" And yet this lady skipped over the open register right in the front and wiggled herself into the back and stayed there when I came up to ring her up. I had to coax her out of there and get her to come to the right register. It just seemed counterintuitive.

Then there were at least three people that I either spotted or was told about by others who had come to my register and stood there drooling without ringing the bell. "Oh, I didn't know I was supposed to," said one man, and one girl said, "Oh, I didn't see the bell," when she had MOVED IT FROM ITS CENTRAL POSITION to put her stuff down on the counter. I swear to God sometimes I don't know how the human race continues to survive. Probably largely because of child-proof medicine caps and safety catches.

I had a woman who kept answering my questions with answers that made no sense, like when I asked for her address for the discount card and she said, "Yes." She was obviously not listening to me and was trying to make it out like she was paying attention. Finally I asked whether she wanted to leave her phone number so we could look her up if she forgets her card, and she said, "Uh-huh," and then didn't give it to me. So I asked her for it again and she's like, "Wait, WHAT?" I repeated myself and she agreed that she wanted to leave a phone number but again didn't give it to me. I said, "Okay, well I'm ready, what's the number?" "I gave it to you," she said. I'm like, okay, a second ago she didn't know what we were talking about and all of a sudden she's not only with it but has somehow skipped past the part where she gave me the information. Did I fall asleep? I just kind of stood there trying to figure it out for a second, but luckily before I had to say, "Um, no, you DIDN'T," she said, "Oh wait, no I didn't," and gave it to me, then said, "I gave it to someone ELSE already this morning."

Wow. Must be hard to keep track of which frickin' MOMENT OF YOUR LIFE you're in all the time, huh? Incidentally, this kind of thing is very easy to avoid if you'd just for a few minutes pretend like the cashier in front of you is a human being and give her your attention. Thank you.

A woman buying a wedding planning magazine at the register had to tell me the whole history of why she was buying the magazine for one checklist in it that she'd lost, and then proceeded to open the magazine and show me the checklist and start talking about how great it was. I agreed with her that it was better to spend the $6.95 for a new copy of the magazine than it was to hire a wedding planner. . . .

A dude called to cancel an order he made yesterday and all he gave was his last name. ::sigh:: I guess this was also because we had an inexperienced employee taking the call, but if you give us a last name we end up with a list of anyone with that last name who's ever ordered a book in the company. No way to sort it by date or what they ordered or anything. Blargh. Just annoying.

And then just a couple weird things on my part: First off, I forgot to give one dude his change 'cause I just shut the drawer while talking to him. Luckily he was nice and the next people were paying in cash too. Yay. The other weird thing was when I had a girl not wanting to get the discount card because the last time she got one she went through a bad time and didn't have much money and so she never used it and it expired. So I told her that we tend not to advertise it but there's a discount card curse, and that we give out the coupons with it to try to make up for it. . . .

9/11/05

Sunday Assholes argh argh!

Just two today really. One was not so much an Asshole as an inconvenience. She wanted this book that was out of print and it was not in the system by title, author, or ISBN. So I told her that if she was interested I could do a hard-to-find search for the book being sold from a third party, and have it shipped to her house and paid for by credit card, but I told her straight up that it's the same as buying stuff off the Internet yourself in case she wanted to handle it and not deal with the middleman (me). But no, she actually wanted me to place it for her, so okay, cool. She seemed to totally be with me when I told her there was no way to get the book new but that the used books usually say what condition they were going to be in, and I found a book she wanted but it was over a hundred dollars. But she didn't balk at that at all--she said to try and get it! I was surprised but took her information and told her the condition said "near fine" and that they would be charging her card and sending it to her, blah blah. Finally we get right to the part where I've taken her information, chosen the shipping options, and gotten to the bit where I hit submit, and she says, "And this is guaranteed to be brand new, right?"

::PLONK::

Long story short, I have no idea how I managed to say "used book search" and "third-party seller" and "near fine condition" and "used bookstore" and "I CANNOT GET THIS BOOK NEW" so many times and still give her the impression that the book was new. After all, she said, it was a lot of money to not be sure of the condition. After asking if she could return it to US if she didn't like the condition (to which the answer is NO), she opted to not get the book. She was very polite about it at least; I just want to know how she ignored everything I said about the used status only to get almost to the end of the order before abandoning it. . . .

I also had this middle-aged couple who just couldn't be bothered to listen to a damn thing I said even though they were pretty much expecting me to shop for them. First off the dude wanted a "self-esteem tape section FOR KIDS." You can imagine how well that worked out. Then he wanted books that would help build the self-esteem of his third-grade granddaughter because "her parents are idiots." His wife, the child's grandmother, joined us and we started looking at tapes. I had taken them to Kids' Audio pretty much to show them that it DIDN'T have what they were looking for, but he started picking up Beverly Cleary and asking me all these questions about whether it would help build her self-esteem and if it shows a girl dealing with issues and coming out on top. Actually that was pretty close so I recommended it, but didn't really see anything else on audio I'd recommend for the purpose. The woman kept asking, "Is it a DVD?" I was like, "No, we don't have DVDs here," but in another minute she asked again if we had it on DVD. Probably she meant CD or something but that doesn't make sense either because the audio book WAS a CD.

I ended up showing them the Newbery section too (because we had another Ramona book over there), and he kept asking questions about it, then finally he decided "NO, she can't read THAT, that's too HARD!" and argued with the grandma about that before winning and asking to drop down a reading level. I said if that was too hard she should try chapter books, and as I said that I took him to the section. He said, "What? Edward?" I have no idea how "chapter books" sounds like "Edward," but I said, "No, chapter books, these are about on her level," and he's like, "WHAT?" again so I said, "CHAPTER BOOKS," and he spreads his hands and goes, "I don't know what those ARE!" I said, "Well, they're THESE!" What the hell do you THINK?

So I recommended Cam Jansen and The Nancy Drew Notebooks (because Grandma was sweet on Nancy Drew but Grandpa said they were too hard), and then he started picking up Junie B. Jones, First Grader and asked if they went up to third grade. I said the character was a kindgergartner for most of the series and only recently started being written about in her first grade adventures, and plus I wouldn't recommend them because the girl is kinda bratty. He put it down after that, and then browsed some more and immediately picked up ANOTHER Junie B. book and said, "Well what about Julia . . . B. . . . " Jesus. Are chapter books too hard for HIM? I told him that was what he'd just been looking at, the ones about the bratty girl. ::sigh::

Then he asked if we had comic books and I said yes and he left to go look at them while I helped his wife with workbooks, and she was kinda a pain too, kept asking me the same questions after I answered them and didn't seem to have the ability to look at anything herself unless I presented it to her first. Finally the husband came back again and claimed we didn't HAVE any comics except Archie (I didn't correct him), and then he asked me if we had anything good for little girls on confidence in the way of MAGAZINES, so I said there were probably some back there and he's like, "Good, I want something sort of 'girl-power' oriented." Okay. There are these nice little-girl feel-good magazines back there so I showed him and he rejected them all as being "too old." He claimed they were all about boys already even though I was holding one with two girls on the cover and the only thing about boys on it said "Can you have a best friend who is a boy?" This is a magazine for girls still in the "boys have cooties" stage and he is saying it's too old. I finally gave up on them when he said, "No, that's no good" to a magazine I found that actually had the headline "Get confidence now!" and had little girl activities and stuff about friendship on it. ::big sigh::

9/10/05

I am sick and tired of people who grab a stack of kids' books and let their kids read them or be entertained by them and then think they're being "good" by "putting them back" when all they're doing is scooping up the stack and placing it faced out on a shelf. Do you really think you're helping? No, you're an ass-faced bastard. Next.

First, let's start with a few submissions. One of my managers has joked with me that between the two of us collecting Asshole files, I'm going to run out of Web space. Good thing text is small. . . .

These happened to him the other day. One was just a person who was trying to do a return from frickin' MAY. See the date right now? It's SEPTEMBER. Guess what her reason was? "It wasn't the book I needed." So . . . I guess it took four months to figure that out, huh? Methinks either she read it and returned it, or more likely she just bought it and realized she was never going to read it and decided "Hey, I need money. Instead of going to the pawn shop to trade in some belongings, let's see if the bookstore will take this back as a return!"

His other fun one was a dude at Customer Service. He was walking to help the guy and was right down the aisle when the dude looked at him directly and then pressed the bell. Hello. Maybe he thought that was a good way to say, "Walk faster"? Maybe he thought that was a good way to say, "Hey you scoundrel, I've been WAITING, this is my sarcastic way of telling you to get your ass over here"? No matter how he meant it, it was certainly a good way to say, "I am a total COCK, please write about me on your website." End of story.

Oh, and one more: Some lady's check was denied and when it kept being denied she started up the waaaaambulance, whining about how this always happens to her at our store and it is our fault. Apparently she went on for quite a time and made us accept her check manually (a chore we hate doing) and basically made it out like this is something horrific we are doing to her that we need to fix. As if that wasn't enough, she called on the phone later to repeat her jackassery, going on about how we rejected her check. Now, I wonder how it is our fault if not a single other check was rejected that day or any other recently? Yes, obviously it's OUR fault.

Now for my Assholes. Not many for a day that was both a weekend day and a day I spent some time on the register.

I had to run register for an hour in the morning, and some old dude bought something from me and then stood there holding up the line while he took out his shopping list and painstakingly scratched shopping items off of it while everyone waited and I stood there holding his change out to him waiting for him to take it. No, dude, we've got all the time in the world for you to stand there and do your personal business; while you're at it, why not balance your checkbook too? He also committed one of my pet peeves: I asked him if he wanted a bag and he said, "Not necessarily." What does that mean anyway? If you want to say no, say no. If you want to say it's not NECESSARY, then say "not NECESSARY." "Not necessarily" in response to "Would you like a bag?" does not make sense because it is a statement that casts doubt, and you're the one who knows if you want an effing bag.

A woman wanted help in Crafts and Hobbies because she was looking for collage books. I told her I hadn't seen any books on just collages but I'd look. I found the paper crafts section and actually found a collage book right off, and as I was browsing through I happened to mention to her that mostly the rest of Paper Crafts was either origami or découpage. At that she began trying to explain to me how découpage was different from collages. I knew that and told her I was just saying I didn't see any other collage books. Because she seemed kind of thick and seemed to be expecting me to find more books up my ass or something, I repeated that the rest of the section was all origami and découpage, and she again launched into an explanation of what découpage is! I told her I KNEW what découpage was. Don't you figure that if someone can pronounce that word they probably know what it is?

A couple annoying college brats asked me for a book and they had the wrong title, and as I was typing it in the dude goes, "Do you have it?" Stop prompting me. I just typed it, and I have every intention of giving you the result when it is available to me. I love replying to them, "Well, I'm trying to find out right now, aren't I?" Then since he had the wrong title I wanted to confirm and asked him if this was the right author and he was all indignantly telling me he didn't know, like it was my fault he'd come unprepared. Same thing happened when I asked if it was a business book. He was getting it for his dad. Probably Dad gave him the shitty information, but that's no reason to treat ME like I did something wrong, you putz.

9/7/05

You've probably heard the other tales of the Harry Potter lady. Today she put on her best nagging shoes and bit me in the butt a few times, sadly. Now, I know she's a few crayons short, but she knows what she's doing and she can refrain from being a jerk if she wants. Today I was doing an overstocking project and the only other person on the floor was doing magazines, so we were both out of sight of the desk. Sometimes that can't be helped. That's why we have a bell now. Well, I came out of the back room with a cart for my overstocking and there she was, HP lady, and she was like, "YOU HAVE CUSTOMERS, there's people at Customer Service, go help them." I just looked at her and didn't say a damn word and answered the phone because it started ringing. Well, later she apparently tried to help some customers. She likes to try to help customers because she is on a neverending quest to be hired by our company (she has applied about twenty times), and so she tries to prove to us that we could use her by hanging around customers and trying to help them and then coming up to us and telling us that she HELPED them and that they were VERY SATISFIED, followed by a rant about how she could DO this job. This time it was people looking for the new HP in Spanish, so she just came and asked us whether it was out yet, then told me I had customers in the back of the store who wanted to know this information. Well, see, if you volunteered to help them then how 'bout you go back over there and finish what you started? She did, actually. And then she came over to me to ramble about something and my phone rang and I was in the middle of counting something. The phone can ring three times before you HAVE to answer it, so I let it ring another time so I could finish and enter my book count, and she started pointing at my belt and saying, "Answer the phone, PHONE, it's ringing!" I told her I could also hear it and answered it and ignored her from then on. God it is really annoying to be prompted to do your job by an obnoxious customer.

Ugh. A woman was shopping for train books for a grandson and she found a Golden Book, but then refused to get it because the $2.99 price offended her. I think Golden Books are probably the cheapest full retail books out there, but she just turned up her nose and said, "These things USED to be a courter." (That's how some people annoyingly like to say "quarter.") Ahh yes, because we should have them continue to be 25¢ when the price of every single other thing has risen since you were a child in the 1700s. 25¢ was probably the equivalent of three bucks back then or something.

Two people came to Customer Service at the same time and my coworker got to the awake computer first. So I had to help my customer with one that was not awake yet and we had to wait for it to boot up. The ladies tying up my coworker kept asking question after question so he couldn't release the computer to me, so we just had to wait. And it took a while, a really ridiculous amount of time. During the time it took, the man I was helping made sarcastic comments and said it would probably be faster at this rate to go to Borders. I don't have anything else to say to this but SHUT THE FUCK UP. I can't make the computer boot faster and you see the other one is occupied.

A woman was asking for Cliff's Notes on The Crucible and we didn't have any. I looked for it on the computer and when I found it and told her its price and availability, she replied with, "And this is the Cliff's version?" You already told me that was what you wanted, so I don't see why I'd be telling you about something else. We went on from there to talk about whether she'd call the other store or order it, and then at least twice more she asked for confirmation that it was indeed Cliff's Notes. Lord.

A woman wanted books on the GRE and she said she'd been asked to get the one that was the . . . it sounded like she said "gorrins" version. I told her I didn't know what version she was talking about and she repeated it--this time it sounded more like "borrins." Then she spelled it, sounding a little frayed: "B-A-R-R-O-N-S." "Barrons?" I clarified, and she said, "I don't know, Borrins? Barrons? Well *I* don't know!!" Guess she can't be expected to know what she wants . . . when I didn't have a copy she hung up on me, too.

A man called me and his radio or TV was turned up so that whenever it talked it was blended in with his voice and I couldn't properly hear him. Throughout the conversation I had to ask for him to repeat what he was saying and ended up repeating back to HIM what I thought he said so that there'd be no confusion. And through the whole thing of course he kept acting like I was exasperating him because I kept asking for repetitions. Advice for you buddy: STOP TRYING TO SHARE YOUR TV OR MUSIC WITH THE EMPLOYEE.

I helped a foreign family with Spanish books and then later on they rang the C/S bell so I came. When I asked if they needed help the man just smashed his hand down on the top of the stack and the whole family of three was staring at me with this "Why isn't she ringing us up and why did we have to CALL her to give her our money??" look. Oh hey, I thought America had the copyright on rude customers, but just goes to show assholes can originate in other countries as well. . . .

9/6/05

I had a lady come in and ask for a school reading list title. I told her we were probably out of the book, but that I'd help her and check anyway. We went to the literature section: No book. We went to the school reading list display: No book. She told me that she'd already been to the school reading section and "I couldn't tell if it was in ANY order," she complained. I replied, "Oh, well it's in alphabetical order by author's last name." I said it really matter-of-factly like it was actually something you couldn't tell by, oh, LOOKING AT THE SHELF. In any case, the book wasn't in either place and I explained to her that she'd have to check at a different store since she needed it TOMORROW, and then the lady said, "Well is this the only place it could be?" Yeah because there are several other places this book could be but I'm not going to check there unless you say, "Can you look in the OTHER places it might be?" What was I supposed to say, "Oh, well sure, there's other places, but I just didn't feel like walking around." Ah yes, and then on another book she was holding she goes, "And how much is this?" while holding it with both hands staring at the cover. I carefully reached over and plucked it from her death hold and TURNED IT OVER. It doesn't occur to people that a) The price might be on the back; and b) That I'm not going to know it off the top of my head?

A woman called on the phone and told me she's just published a book (translation: I had my very own book printed! Me am author!) and she wanted to see about getting our bookstore to carry it. Umkay. Now, I know that I don't have the information she needs and that she probably needs to call a number and be given forms or something, but this did not stop her from continuing to talk and explain--to ME--without allowing me to say a single word. And she went on for about two and a half full minutes. I am serious. After telling me she wrote a book and wants us to carry it she started rambling about what it was about and where she's from and that it's about the area where she's from and how it's kind of similar to what happened in New Orleans with the lack of relief of the hurricane victims except with less death and it was all corrupted and oh yes, she prays to God that they get that straightened out down there, but oh yeah, she's trying to get a movie made, she knows it sounds weird but she is going to get a movie made to expose what happened in her town. Finally she shut up enough for me to say, "I'LL LET YOU TALK TO THE PERSON WHO CAN HELP YOU," but jeeeeeeeeeezus, if you have never been on the phone with someone who literally will not shut up for two and a half minutes, it is definitely an experience I hope you never have.

Had another winner on the phone too: This lady who wanted a particular coin-collecting newspaper. She was unable to explain properly to me whether it was actually a newspaper or a magazine, but either way we didn't have the rag, and then she started saying stuff like "Well all coin collectors subscribe to it!" and then kept harassing me about how she can get it. She asked me what she should do about getting it, so I told her the best bet is THE INTERNET considering they probably have a WEBSITE. She asked me if I knew where some coin shops were that would know, and I'm like, "IT'S CALLED THE YELLOW PAGES," and finally she's like, "Well are there any bookstores around here would carry it?" And I'm like, look, I said I've never heard of this newspaper or magazine or whatever, so why are you still expecting me to know anything about it? It drives me up the wall how people hear "we don't have it" and then think that we somehow have more information than other people.

I was having a carrot break in the back room, leaving one associate on the floor who happened to be busy when this one lady wanted service. The associate was stuck in one of the aisles of the store and this customer went to the desk and started banging the hell out of the bell. When I was finally contacted to come out and help with backup, the lady told me, "I was ringing and ringing and NOTHING HAPPENED!" Did it occur to you that we hear you but we're busy? It doesn't seem to occur to anyone that ringing the bell is simply a signal that you're waiting, not a guarantee of immediate service. Oh, I can't wait until I get to see how people handle abuse of the bell during Christmas. . . .

I was helping another customer in the business section, and after I finished and started walking away, I heard a really faint "Excuse me!" I was already in an aisle elsewhere at that point, so I stopped and looked around but I saw no one. Then I heard it again, coming from the computer section: "EXCUSE me!!" But still no one revealed themselves, so I kind of crept to the end of the aisle and there tucked deep into the computer section was just this dude standing there waiting for me to appear or something. Yeah, that's how you get service, just see someone go by and yell, "EXCUSE ME, GET OVER HERE BITCH," and just stand there and expect them to come. Well, anyway, then he was a dick while I was helping him too. He was standing right in front of what he wanted and hadn't seen it, and then when I showed him, he tilted a book so he could see its price but upside-down, and said, "That doesn't say 99 dollars, does it??" I told him it said 49.99. It's upside-down. If reading such things is difficult for you, you probably should turn the book around. And then he kept picking the books up and putting them back in the wrong place, just like in front of each other faced out even though they were different books. I kept fixing them in front of him because sometimes that clues people in that HEY, you're MESSING SHIT UP, but he didn't catch it. Some people just need to have their pants pulled down and be beaten with a herring.

A guy came up and asked me for "The Sherlock Holmes section," and I kinda thought for a second thinking, Hmm, should I take him to Literature or Kids' or both? (I've got versions in both places.) And then the dude starts saying, "Sherlock HOLMES, he's a detective, the stories--" and I just had to interrupt him: "I am familiar with Sherlock Holmes!" Hello! He thought he'd have to tell the poor incompetent bookstore girl who Sherlock Holmes is?? Jesus! I wonder if it impressed him that I was able to take him to Literature and look in the right place without even looking up the author? Feh. I really think they think because I work in a bookstore I know, like, nothing. God.

And in other news, I was hugged repeatedly today by a young man from the intellectually disabled group that comes in. He was in a pink shirt that read "TOUGH GUYS WEAR PINK." When he hugged me he'd smell my hair. It was kind of disturbing. He also said, "Bye, I love you" when he left. I was reminded of Mindy and Buttons.

9/5/05

A guy asked for a book by title, over the phone. I looked it up and the only book I found with that title was one that was probably not going to be easy to get. I told him that if it was the one by so-and-so, it wasn't something we carried. He replied with, "Wh-wh-what? What'd you say?" I had to repeat myself, and he didn't quite seem to get it and asked me, "Well can you tell me what other stores around you carry it?" Yeah, 'cause I have access to others' databases, buttpipe. Then he asked if I could order it and I told him the terms and said I wanted to make sure we were talking about the same book before I did such a thing; did he know the author? Again he didn't seem to understand so I tried to explain again that the only book I saw with the title he wanted was by so-and-so, so I wanted to make sure that was the right one. He was like, "Well can you just tell me if you have the book I need?"

I wonder if he was just BORN useless?

Next file: I had a mom and son come in and the little boy obviously wanted something but Mom wanted the boy to ask me for it. As I was walking by she was prompting him to "ask the lady," so I stopped and tried to prompt them to give me their request. "Come on, tell her what you're looking for," the mom said, and the boy (who was probably about seven) went and SLAPPED his mom's hand really hard and mumbled something about not wanting to ask. Mom reprimanded him very shortly and then asked me for kids' calendars. I directed them without further ado, but I did wonder what the fuck got into that kid. Then again, sometimes kids are like cats--we have no idea what's provoking the sudden acting out, but it sure does get a hold of them something solid.

I was stocking in the kids' section and I heard the wench-summoner (a.k.a. the customer service bell). I started to come and then the annoying college guys standing at the desk rang it again, louder. (The first ring had been kinda muffled.) Finally as I stepped into the desk, one of the guys looked right at me and rang the bell again. I immediately gave him a zinger: "You know, you're not going to get more than one of us even if you ring three times." They ignored me and asked boring questions. Nothing interesting.

Someone came up and said, "Where are the guide books?" I asked for clarification and she's like, "You know, guide books?" My coworker thought she might mean travel books and asked her, and then she clarified that she wanted VIDEO GAME CHEAT BOOKS. I guess that's the only kind of "guide book" in the world.

And apparently a customer was a dick to my coworker; our café girl says this dude is in the store a lot and always acts like a prick, so this didn't surprise anyone. My coworker was walking with a drawer of money up to the register and the customer tried to stop him and ask for help while he was carrying two hundred and sixty dollars. My coworker told him he couldn't stop to help him while in possession of MONEY and said he'd be right back, and then when he did come back to help the guy he requested that my coworker "come closer" to him and then he started being all intimidating like "Why are you being so short with me?" I think the dude was trying to get my coworker to admit that he was being rude to him because he's black or something, that's what it sounded like. Anyway I don't have a full account of this 'cause I'm not sure what exactly happened, but I figured someone who's such a jerk should get a mention.

A woman looking for a book that was released three months ago asked for help finding it. I looked it up, found we carry it, and led her to the place it was supposed to be. While we were en route, she told me in that "I'm a customer asking for your help but somehow I actually know more than you" voice, "Well I already LOOKED up front with the NEW books." 'Kay, lady; a) We're not going to "the new books," we are going to the fiction section; b) Released in June is not "new" in the book world, at least not new enough to be on a "new releases" table; and c) YOU'RE ASKING ME FOR HELP SO SHUT UP. When we got to the section it turned out I'd misheard her on the spelling of the author's name so at first we didn't find it--I was looking on the "M-Y" shelf and the name actually was spelled with an "M-I"--but as we were looking in the wrong place, she asked me if it was hardcover and I said yes and she informed me that therefore we were looking in the wrong spot because "this isn't hardbacks." ::sigh:: Yes. It. Is. Just because there are paperbacks in here too does not mean we must be in the wrong section. Hardbacks and paperbacks are mixed together in this section. I'd really appreciate it if you'd leave me alone to do my job. Anyway, we eventually found it and she was happy. Joy of joys.

A woman called saying she was "laid up" and wanted to get some books for while she had to stay in bed. Umkay. I took down her two titles--she was kind of unexplainably vague about them, I guess she knew the authors but not the titles and just that they were "new," so I had to wander in a guesstimate maze--and then she goes, "And you know those games magazines?" I told her I didn't really know what she meant by "those games magazines" and then she started describing them to me. After she was done she didn't make a request. Like, usually if you say "You know those [insert product here]," you then make a request about said product, like "Would you see if you have August issue?" or "Do you carry that?" But she was just silent so I had to ask, "What do you want me to check on?" Then she was vague about that, wanting me to "get her a couple" and then for some reason telling me she'd just let me look around and then she'd call me back. "And I'll just give you my debit card number and tomorrow my friend will pick them up," she said casually. Okay, warning bells. WE DON'T DO THAT. I explained that if she wanted to pay for something she could do it but it'd have to be sent to her house, like paid for through the website to the warehouse; we can't ring something through our register and have it spit out a credit card slip without having someone to sign it. I told her her options were either to arrange it on the 'Net, let US arrange it on the 'Net, or find another way to pay for the books. (Ever heard of GIVING YOUR FRIEND THE CASH??) Then she started arguing with me that she doesn't get why we wouldn't do that because she uses her debit card all the time. I told her we don't have a problem with her debit card. We have a problem with the fact that we'd have to sell this to you over the phone and then have no one to sign the slip. "But it has a VISA logo on it," she said. Umkay. You're missing the point. She wasn't too bad, she quickly decided to arrange it on the computer herself, but then she hung up on me without politely ending the call. I later asked my manager if I'd done what I was supposed to and she said under no circumstances am I supposed to let people do that kinda shit. Heh, go me.

9/4/05

A lady called in the morning, and asked me for a book by title. It was a popular title for books, because there were about twenty books with the same title. She said it was about autism, and some of them had no descriptions for me to be able to tell what they were about, so I asked if she knew the author. She did not. Then she started telling me again that it was about autism, and then questioned whether all the books with that title were about autism. I explained again that they were not, but that some had no description for me to be able to figure that out. Then it turned out that she had the book on her computer screen on the 'Net right then and managed to find the author for me, followed by, "I think." (How can you just "think" you're giving me the right information if it's on the screen in front of you?) Anyway, the book didn't show up in the system at all, so she told me it was about autism again. Lovely. I told her I had no info on her book and she might want to order it off whatever website she was on. ::sigh::

9/3/05

I have to admit, though, it is funny to imagine that dude bewilderedly (and probably angrily) ringing the bell over and over expecting us to materialize and we couldn't hear it because we were in the far-off back room.

So we had a dude asking to pick up his book and he claimed we called him on, like, a day we don't call people about books. My coworker was a little puzzled because she checked the F shelf under his name and there was no book and then he had this strange information of getting a phone call on a day we know we did not call anyone. She suggested maybe it was a different store, but the dude was like, "NO, I ordered it HERE," blah blah. WELL when I came up there I decided to find out once and for all if we ordered it and took his phone number to bring him up in the computer. There was his order, just like he said, ordered maybe two weeks ago just like he said.

But the name on the account was something that certainly didn't start with F.

When we gave him the book that was waiting on the B shelf under a different last name he offered no explanation for why it might have been ordered under that name, but come on now. If you ordered it, you know that there's a possibility that you ordered it under a different name--how many names can you possibly have? How come it didn't occur to you that MAYBE JUST MAYBE our issue in finding the book had to do with the fact that YOU DON'T KNOW YOUR FRICKIN' NAME?? It's like when people get bent out of shape that we can't find their order under the phone number they give us only to find out they're one of those people with fifteen phone numbers and the sixth one on their list happens to be the one they ordered under . . . but this is not unearthed until they've been hollering at us for ten minutes insisting that they ordered from us and we needed to give them their book. If you'd pay attention to what information you're giving us, I think it'd be easier to help you.

An older woman wandered up to me in Kids' and asked for books about the moon. I told her to come with me to Kids' Science and pointed out the astronomy section, at which point she said these were too advanced and this was for a three-year-old. Then she started describing a book she'd bought for the kid about taking the moon for a walk, and that he'd just loved the story and she wanted more stories with moons in them. So in other words she didn't want a book about the moon; she wanted a book that featured the moon in a story.

Well, we don't have a section for "books that mention or have artwork of the moon."

When I explained this to her she just started rambling about how she's not sure where she picked up the last one but I don't know what that has to do with anything since she doesn't want to get the same book again. I suggested Goodnight Moon. She seemed happy with the idea but when I showed her the book she rejected it. We found like one other that mentioned the moon but she didn't like that either, so I took her to Caldecott because thanks to this jackass there was a book called Owl Moon over there that was fresh in my mind. She didn't like that either but then here's what blew my mind. "Oh, HERE," she said, "HERE'S one!" And she picked up In a Small, Small Pond. "In a Small, Small Pond," she said delightedly, and began sort of reading to herself and making happy cooing noises.

This book has nothing--NOTHING--to do with the moon.

I'm not even going to try to figure that one out.

And lastly, here's an entry one of my managers sent me because he knows how much I love a good Asshole and he didn't want me to miss this one just because I wasn't there.

My manager had just been called to the register to do a return and ended up being interrupted by an elderly gentleman who asked where Foreign Language was. He gave him directions--he couldn't take him there because he had to do the return--but the man went off and did his thing. As a good customer service employee, my manager decided to see if the man needed any more help, so after he was finished with the return he ventured to Language and found no sign of the man.

Unfortunately, he had not found his book and left as expected/hoped; he was instead at Customer Service asking a different employee where Foreign Language was. My manager decided to take this one and reclaimed the customer, leading him to the Spanish section. Turned out the dude was looking for a particular book, and when confronted with the many, many options, he grumped, "How am I supposed to find my book with all these different colors?!" Ohhhkay. And apparently he also didn't know the title of the book, which kind of ruled out any outside help; he just knew he had to get "the book" for his class. Now here's the weird part: He found it! He found the book and pulled it out, and then he informed my manager that he wasn't mad at him. Instead, he said, "I'm mad at myself for being a dumb motherfucker!" (He said the last word really weird.) Then he walked away and bought the book. Amazing. The dude's bullshit about not being able to find the book because they're different colors sounds like Mr. Wise, and so does the cussing, but Mr. Wise doesn't usually insult himself, and on top of that he was not wearing pajamas.