My Record of Work: The Annoying, the Interesting, and the Just Plain Weird--The Year 2006.

This page should be in frames. If it is not and you want it to be, please click here. If it is and you don't want it to be, click here. Both versions have all the information.

MARCH!


3/29/06

Today I was visited by the usual gang of jackasses. First of all there was the normal jerk customer who puts words in my mouth: I say, "If we had any copies they would have been right here," and she says, "So if they're not here you DON'T KNOW where they are?" Wait a sec, I just said . . . never mind. You're not listening, and my breath is sick of being wasted.

And then there was the clown who made me repeat myself FOUR TIMES, and not because of any apparent hardness of hearing since she heard me fine the rest of the conversation. She asked me for a book and I wanted to make sure we were talking about the same one, so I asked her if so-and-so was the author. The first time I said it she replied by repeating the title. So I tried again, explaining that I had found a book by that title--was it the one by so-and-so? "Well it's an architecture book." Unlike you, lady, I listen, so I already knew that because you said that earlier. "Yes, but is the author so-and-so?" Pause, then "I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE ASKING!!!" I suppose the only way she could not understand me three times in a row is if the word "author" is jargon or something. "IT SAYS THERE IS A BOOK CALLED SOMETHING-OR-OTHER. IT IS BY SO-AND-SO. DO YOU KNOW IF THAT IS THE AUTHOR OF YOUR BOOK?" All of a sudden she was like yeah, oh yes that is him, it says so on this paper in front of me. I would think that maybe a customer asking about a book might be open to the idea that the employee might ask about the author, but noooooo. . . .


3/28/06

I was stocking in the kids' section and this older lady with her sunglasses bizarrely situated across her MOUTH came up and said, "CAN I GIVE YOU MONEY??" She was holding a book and a couple bills in her hand. I was like er um well sure you can give me money but I'll run away! (No, I didn't say that.) I had to send her to the register (and she whined that no one was up there), and then I had to get the guy to go meet her. When he came up she said, "OKAY SO YOU'RE THE ONE WHO TAKES MY MONEY??" Lord. . . .

And today we had the epidemic of people who can't find books that are in order. The first one was a dude who claimed the book he wanted wasn't on the shelf and he had actually made it to the right section but even though it was only a section of three shelves he had missed the book he was looking for even though it was in the exact right place and faced OUT. And the other lady was more annoying; she was butting in asking me for help while I was helping someone else, and she wouldn't take no for an answer when I told her I would help her when I was finished helping the first lady, so I pointed her, told her the author she needed, and sent her away. (She said she'd be back if she couldn't find it.) I finished helping the first lady and got called to the register and then the bell at C/S rang, but when my coworker got there no one was there because it was THAT lady and she couldn't be bothered to wait yet again, and was walking around looking for me or someone who could help her. She ran into me coming back from the register and said she couldn't find it, and as I took her to the right place she said, "These did not APPEAR to be in any kind of alphabetical order!" I told her they WERE in alphabetical order, and immediately grabbed a copy of what she wanted. Look, I know bookstores can sometimes be confusing if you haven't worked in one for more than half a decade, but trying to blame your incompetence on poorly organized shelves when they're damn near perfect is just not nice.

And now for another issue of Disturbing Book Covers with SwankiVY™.

[baby butts??]

If someone could please explain to me why a book featuring photographs of baby animals' asses is published and my books are not, it would be nice.

And the ass-face from 3/20 was back today--actually yesterday AND today, the one who was upset that his credit card hasn't been credited for the astronomical return sum of $7.43. Yesterday he began the conversation by barking at me about how he still hasn't seen a return credit even though the transaction was a week ago. Oh look, karma seems to have found its latest victim! So I hooked him up with my manager and she told him that the problem was not something a retail store had any control over; he was going to have to call an 800 number where they deal with transactions that have issues, and he responded to that by saying that he would NOT call them. He wanted US to call them and straighten it out for him. Well, being that we don't have access to personal accounts and whatnot--only YOU have access to your information--his unwillingness to call forced us to deal with it another way, and the manager just put in a ticket which takes forever. And though Mr. $7.43 insisted that he needed an answer by 2:30 that day (ah yes, you're allowed to give us a time limit now!), no answer had come by that point. He called again today, even more hopping mad.

This time he got a different manager and tried to talk to her like she already knew the situation. Well, this particular manager has some friends at the corporate office and knows who to call for crap like this, so she told the guy she'd try to find out but he was too busy whining at her and yelling, and she had to explain to him that the longer he stood there yapping at her to fix it, the longer it was going to be before she could HANG UP and get to FINDING OUT. (He just didn't like being told he'd be called back in fifteen minutes, because we certainly never called him back yesterday.)

When our manager talked to the transaction guru at our home office, she found that we have done our part and he just needs to call his bank and find out why they haven't processed what we sent them. The corporate lady was also totally shocked to find that this weirdo was calling over such a small amount of money. I'm sure he wasted that much money in hot air yelling over the past few days, to say nothing of the time wasted. So of course when she called the dude back he was still trying to get her to do something, and she told him our store, our company has done our part and it's the BANK he needs to talk to. She gave him this like 40-digit number for the transaction record and finally got rid of him. Maybe after this he'll figure out that if he has issues with transactions and whatnot, he needs to call a BANK.

A dude called about a book and felt he needed to spell the word "sustainable" for me. Before he even got close to finishing his spelling bee recitation I already had the information about the book on the screen. I told him I knew how to spell it, and then he was rattling off an author's name, but he said the first name and paused like he was having trouble reading or pronouncing it. I filled it in with the name on my screen and he said "Yes!" in a surprised voice. I ordered it for him and throughout the rest of the transaction he kept giving me this attitude of surprise like he couldn't believe it was so easy to do this so he wanted to double check everything to make sure I wasn't just pretending to help. At the end he asked me to repeat my name for him and thanked me by name at the end. Argh. Now my being good at my job makes people suspicious.

A lady came up and asked me if I had any little kids' videos anywhere. "Oh no, we don't do movies here," I told her. "Oh. Well I'm looking for, like, VeggieTales videos. Would you have anything like that?" I just gave her a blank look and repeated, "WE DON'T DO MOVIES HERE." Why does this happen all the damn time? I guess I need to repeat my venn diagram!

[venn part 2]

And lastly, a typical conversation with a customer.

"Sorry, we don't carry that book."
"So you don't have it?"
"No, we don't have it, sorry."
"Okay, so . . . you don't?"
"NO."
"So . . . no?"

I guess the way I'm supposed to deal with that is change my mind in response to this great Jedi Mind Trick.


3/27/06

Some special issue of Sports Illustrated was published and in our area it's big news because a local star is on the cover. So of course when we got seven copies last Thursday they disappeared in less than half an hour. Before that happened and then continuing afterwards people have been repeatedly asking about it and abusing us in various ways when they hear that we have no indication as to whether we're even going to get it again even though we contacted other stores and the publisher. So today we got a total ass clown.

We were standing at the register and this very brusque woman came up and started barking questions at us regarding the magazine. I told her that as soon as we got them they were snatched up, and predictably she growled at us to tell her when we'd get more. For some reason when I told her we had no information, she then wanted to know when it was we HAD had them. I told her I thought it was Thursday but we'd only gotten maybe seven copies. So she barked again a repeat of her question: "But when did you HAVE them??" So I repeated my "I think it was Thursday that they came in." If you look at this Work Log and look for a date of the 23rd (which was last Thursday), you'll see there is no entry. That is not because no one was a jerk. That is because I WASN'T THERE. So that was a guess. Anyway, I continued to talk in order to inform her that she could check back with us here and there to see if we get any more since we've contacted the publisher and whatnot, but before I could finish any semblance of a complete sentence she gave us both a piggy glare and stalked away. Think I should have given her the copy I've stored for safekeeping in my ass?

A lady called about a book. I knew it was one we carried and told her I'd check the shelf. We had ten copies of it, and I told her so and told her I could save a copy if she wanted. Then while I was still in the section (away from the desk where I can look stuff up), the lady asked about a second title and then after a pause she said, "Does that ring a bell?" Ring a bell? You think I'm searching the database in my head, lady? I have to go to the computer and look it up this time actually. Her title didn't bring up any hits, and she admitted that she wasn't sure what the title was actually, so we gave up, but then she had to end the conversation by asking me, "And . . . and you do have the other book?" Oh, you mean that whole thing where I said there were ten copies, asked if she wanted to hold one, got her name, and told her I'd hold it isn't in her brain anymore? Shit. I assured her that I did indeed have the book and was holding it for her. "Okay so . . . so you do have it?" I swear if I got on the computer with her and pointed a webcam at myself showing me holding the book and grinning, she still would have asked me if I had it.

A guy bought a book and I asked him if he needed a bag. "No, I had a bag for 30 years, but I got rid of her!" he quipped. Weirdly enough, that's the SECOND time someone has made that joke to me at the register. The first time was January 13, 2001, when a guy told me that he already married a bag but it didn't work out. Hrmm.

A woman came to Customer Service to get help with a book. I looked it up for her and took her back in the store to help her find it. We were successful, so I asked her if she needed me for anything else. She said no, and as she said that I got called to the register so I started to depart as she was finishing her sentence. Unfortunately her sentence revealed that she didn't need anything else because the only thing she had left to get was "a book I ordered up at the front." I told her that if she ordered a book it would be at Customer Service, and then I went off to the register. I had to help take care of the lines, and then that lady appeared in my line and informed me that she would take this book as well as the book that we were saving up here for her. Jeez. I had to go get it for her because I knew it was likely she'd go back there and have no one to help her and it would just make me look incompetent, even though SHE'S the one on this damn page. . . .


3/26/06

A group of kids who were just too cool for school came in and one of them walked up and asked me where the pop culture section was. I told him we didn't have a "pop culture" section. So he changed his wording but asked the same question: "So where would books on pop culture BE?" Dude. So I told him again that there wasn't a section for something as vague as pop culture and asked him what he was looking for. He told me it wasn't anything specific but where would "stuff like that" be? Well, I decided three strikes and he was out, so I explained to him all the various sections of the store that held material that could maybe be viewed as being popular culture. He opted to be taken to the section that had the books about movies.

And my coworker got this one, which we will definitely be quoting for months.

Some teenybopper jerk walked up to Customer Service and was talking on her cell phone, and she plopped her books down on the counter and pushed the books forward to clue in the apparently incompetent associate that it was time to check her out. Well, so the employee at the desk asked her if she was trying to check out, and at that point the girl realized maybe something was wrong since she wasn't being checked out and she said, "Are you THE HELP?"

Now we cock our heads and ask each other if we're "the help" all the time.


3/25/06

Sometimes I truly believe that Satan is sending his minions to shop in my store. . . .

We sent out some e-mail coupon that was only good for the weekend, and you could print it out and use it in the store for five bucks off your entire purchase if it was over $25. So that was all fine and good, but this particular customer explained that she was buying enough stuff to use it two or three times. I didn't understand at first but it came clear to me that she thought she could get five bucks off for EACH 25 bucks she spent, and when I told her that I needed a coupon for each transaction that it applied to and that the coupon itself said it could only be used once a person and once each visit, she started chipping away trying to find holes in the rules, finally deciding that she would go home and print more of them and come back for separate transactions and there was nothing we could do about that. Guess what? If you want to go home and make more copies of this and keep giving us 20 bucks for every 5 that we give you, we still win. . . .

And of course I happened to have restroom duty for the women's room when some lady took her two rowdy young boys into the toilet with her and they behaved like . . . well, boys. I was actually in there during part of their reign of terror, and I heard the two boys screaming at each other arguing over which one of them was occupying a larger stall. When I later returned to clean it I found a huge . . . like almost up to my knees . . . pile of toilet paper in the corner by the sinks, which had obviously been used to cover up a giant spill of some sort of chocolate drink. So they spilled something and attempted (sort of) to clean it up but didn't actually pick up the paper that had soaked up the drink. Beyond that the cups for the drinks were left on the restroom counter with junk all around them in little rings, and of course, one of the boys had left the seat up. As I was about to start cleaning up their mess I got a phone call from the cashier who told me that the boys' mom was alerting him to the mess in the women's room. Ahh, you let us know you caused a horrible wreck. How noble of you to throw a bunch of toilet paper on it and leave it there.

And speaking of absolutely adorable and sweet kids, I had one call me and begin a sentence (probably asking about Yu-Gi-Oh! or something), but then he stopped in the middle. I figured since he was a kid maybe he just lost his train of thought and I waited patiently for him to begin speaking again, but then he just hung up on me. I knew it wasn't a connection problem or anything, too, because I could hear his TV in the background. I expected him to call back when he'd organized his thoughts but he never did.

We had another huge weekend sale beginning today and one of the big sellers was the buy 2 get 1 free bargain books from the sale tables. One lady took advantage of that deal and got three sale books, and as I was ringing them up for her the third one decided to be uncooperative and not ring up correctly in the computer. Its barcode came up as unrecognized in the system (which was silly because it was our bar code and everything), so I had to go to the next step in locating it which involves typing in the title and searching for it in a list. As I was doing this I lightheartedly explained to the lady that the computer didn't like the bar code, and she replied with that horrible quip that so many customers seem to think is hilarious and original: "I guess it must be FREE!"

What's funny is, yeah, this book IS free. You're doing the buy 2 get 1 free sale.

I reminded her of that fact and she thought it was even funnier. I was amused myself. Sorry, but "oh I guess it's FREE then" isn't funny or original, unless it turns out I can use it to make you feel like a jerk. Har har har.

A lady at Customer Service gave me the information she had about her book, and I typed it in immediately and brought up a screen giving me the status of her book. As I opened my mouth to tell her we didn't carry the book and would have to order it, she interrupted and said, "And while YOU look for it I'll just be over there in the alternative health section." I told her she didn't need to go wait for me and browse somewhere because I could already tell her we didn't have it, but she didn't seem to get that the answer was that simple, unable to comprehend that it wouldn't be a long and drawn-out process to search for her book. Yay computer.

A real cheeky kid came to my register today and started being really sarcastic and cute while his mom was there. He was getting comics and I was talking about how cool it would be to draw pictures and be funny for a living, and he responded positively and told me he wished he could play video games for a job. I was like, "Yeah, some people actually get paid to be game testers," and he goes, "Yeah, that's like getting MONEY to ROT YOUR BRAIN. I want to do that!" His mother broke in at that point, saying, "But what do you have to do first?" He rolled his eyes and said, "I have to get an EDUCATION." He said some more stuff about how he wanted to play video games and make them up and stuff, and she goes, "But before you do that you do what?" And again he rolled his eyes and said, "Go to COLLEGE." You could see this was a conversation they'd had many times. . . . Heh, it was cute.


3/22/06

A woman came up to me and asked for a book; she had title and author. I got two books with the title she wanted but neither were by the author. I tried the author and nothing with that title or anything similar came up. "Well it's ON Amazon," she said in that "I know what I'm talking about, now help me correctly" voice. I told her that if that was the case then maybe it was only available through there right now for whatever reason; I didn't see one with that title and that author. So, being that I'm a curious bastard, I went to Amazon when I got home and typed the title in. Weirdly enough it did bring up a book by the author, but I can't figure out why because the title doesn't match at all. It's a completely different unrelated title. (Maybe somewhere in the reviews it mentions the other book or something, which as far as I can tell doesn't even have a release date yet, it's in a series.) I'm guessing she heard/read about it somewhere, maybe the first book of the series, and when she typed it into Amazon she got what I got and didn't realize it's a completely different book. When she crabbily told me she'd just ORDER it from Amazon if that was the case, I told her I guessed that was her only option; I hope when she tries to do it she realizes "Wait a minute. . . . "

A lady with two spirited children was walking around the sale tables near where I was working. I overheard the mom arguing with her daughter about gum. Mom was chewing some and Daughter was too young to have gum, but she kept asking to have a piece. Finally Mom TOOK THE GUM OUT OF HER MOUTH and held it out to her daughter and told her she could taste it but not bite off any. WTF? Here you go, kid, lick my gum. Gross! Parents do weird things to keep their kids happy.

An older man walked up to the customer service desk and asked us if we do gift wrapping here. I told him we don't have a gift wrapping service but that we sell gift wrap if he wanted any. He just stared at me like "we don't have a gift wrapping service" was not something he could be expected to process, so I repeated that I was sorry but we didn't have a service for that. He said, "Everything for MONEY," and walked away. I have no idea what he meant by that. I didn't say we charge money to do gift wrapping either. I said we don't have a service. Bite me. Not everyone gift-wraps.

I had a couple issues with people understanding me today. My first call of the day came while I had literally just punched in and I was trying to get my stuff put away, and this lady said she wanted to know the availability of a children's book. Piece of cake. She said it was Ten Terrible Dinosaurs and then said, "By Paul . . . " and she paused, so I filled in the hole with "Stickland?" I'm the kids' specialist. I know this shit. She replied, "Excuse me?" I said, "It's by Paul Stickland, right?" and she said, "I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean . . . a big one?" Umm. "THE BOOK IS BY PAUL STICKLAND, RIGHT?" She figured it out after that and agreed that she was looking for the book by Paul Stickland. I told her I recognized it and if she'd hold I'd find out if we had it. We had two copies. Yay.

And then this lady was looking for a biography and those are shelved by who they're about. I took her to the shelf and looked where it was supposed to be, and I said kind of more to myself than anything, "Let's see, the author's name is O-U. . . . " "OH NO!" the customer burst. "You have to have it!!" Okay? I told her I was just spelling the author's name. But then we really DIDN'T have it, and I told her she was going to have to repeat her previous performance, which she did, adding an "Ahhhh!" to the end. Turned out we normally only carry one copy and this was for a book club! So of course we probably would be out of our only copy if a whole group is looking for it. . . .

And today a lady walked up to the café and asked the café guy if they have coffee. GAH! I have to get out of here!

A lady was telling me what name to hold her book under and she said, "It's F as in Frank. As in Funny. As in Frog." I don't need that many F words to understand that it's F and not S or whatever. I also have an F-word for you. . . .

This wasn't really an Asshole, but it was inconvenient and annoyed me, so I'm writing it. A lady came to return something, but it turned out actually she wanted to exchange and so after I'd processed the return part she decided she'd go get the book she wanted to have instead. And then she just disappeared into the section and stood there gaping at the books until I went over to find out what was keeping her and she described the one she wanted for me a few different times. I told her that we could just give her her money and she could shop another time if she wanted, because processing a return is kind of a hairy business and I didn't want to delete it off the register and have to do it all again, but my cashier had built up a line of two waiting folks, neither of whom was listening to her suggestion that they could go check out in the café if they were in a hurry. Finally she came back and let me give her her money back. Grr.

And my last one of today. I had eight minutes to go before I was off the clock, and nothing in particular to do, so I grabbed a piece of scratch paper and started doodling a face on it.

And the next thing I knew some girl said very loudly right next to my face, "I NEED HELP!"

No opening or anything. And she had walked up to the desk so soundlessly that I hadn't noticed her and made no effort to get my attention or anything. Just walked up, stared at me, and said "I NEED HELP!" And I was not standing at an open place at the desk, kind of in a corner where the high border of the desk makes it NOT a place to interact, so it wasn't like she had gone to the place people generally go for help. Anyway, the book she wanted wasn't even in existence yet, it still has like four months to go before release, so she went away. Just as I was leaving (after I clocked out), I saw her approach the desk again while another associate was helping another customer, and I could see her staring after me obviously wondering why I didn't come back and help her. Oh, did the lack of apron and the fact that I'm carrying all my "I'm leaving" stuff like my backpack and purse not tip you off? I'm off the clock.


3/21/06

Only one Asshole for today. A lady called and I was about to go check for her book on the shelf when the phone rang again, my second line. So, because I have to, I answered it, with full intent to help the first customer first. But this new customer knew exactly what she wanted and just wanted to order it, so I stuck her order in the computer and processed it. But then . . . THEN . . . she started rambling. She had just realized there was another book she *might* want to order, and started calling over to her husband about whether he wanted to order it, and they started ARGUING about it! I could hear him in the background and her right next to the phone having an in-depth discussion about whether she should have me order the book, and I'm like, you couldn't have done this before you call me and waste my time? She then came back and asked me how much the book was, and I gave her the information, at which point she started explaining that it was a beautiful book and all this junk. I cut her off by saying I knew, I had read it, which was true. It was a nice book. But then of course she wanted to bond with me and talk about it. I skirted all her conversation efforts and tried to make it obvious I was busy, and I guess finally she took the hint and thanked me profusely for processing her other order and hung up. I had to go back to my customer on the line, apologize for the wait, and lie to her that I had to check one more place and wanted to make sure she didn't think I'd forgotten about her. Guess I shouldn't have assumed that any customer will let me get away with making a transaction quick and easy.


3/20/06

A telemarketer wouldn't leave my manager alone today. She explained to the lady that we can't accept any offers or change any services but she wouldn't stop talking so finally she had to say "WE ARE A CORPORATE-RUN COMPANY AND WE AREN'T INTERESTED, THANK YOU, HAVE A GOOD DAY" and hang up. I don't get the whole need to call us and solicit us at frickin' work. . . .

At my store we got a ding on our report from the district manager for not talking to customers enough, so I've been trying to be especially careful to be alert to whether they want to talk to me and if they are doing something that I don't want to interrupt by saying hi. I tend to avoid speaking to a customer if they are on the phone or talking to another person, if they are reading, or if it is obvious that a great hurry is involved. It was this last case that caused me not to speak to a man as he practically RAN past the customer service desk at which I was standing, and then he started poking his head in the first and the second aisles of the store and saying what sounded like "Anybody home?" Hmm.

So I turned to watch him fully as he hurried down one of the aisles and disappeared from my view, and then I heard his voice call, "I HEAR you. . . . " Ohhkay. . . . And then he emerged again and noticed both me at the desk and my manager nearby in the Hallmark section, and finally he started asking us questions. It was normal from there, but it seems as though this man was in frantic search of an employee's help and it makes no damn sense that he ran past the help desk without even looking at it. (I guess what he heard when he said "I hear you" was my manager slamming journals around in Hallmark.)

A man came to the desk to ask a question and I was dubious about whether we had any books on his subject, but I took him to the gardening section and started browsing. We came across a book on tomato plants, which was close but no cigar for what he wanted, and then he said, "Now, let me ask you THIS--tomatoes, are they a FRUIT or a VEGETABLE?" I told him of course they were a fruit, and he said, "OHHH, so you're NOT just another pretty face." Guess what? Not all of us cute little girls will fall for the very deep question you like to ask so you can artificially create an opportunity to correct someone. Though I have to wonder whether that was just kind of a dickwad way to give me a compliment.

How to explain this guy? Shortly before I went on break I got stuck in the language aisle with a dude who just couldn't figure a damn thing out for himself. He wanted to learn Spanish, but it took me a full two minutes to teach him where to start and stop looking for the books. I showed him where the Spanish books started, and then explained that the section continued to the next bookshelf and the next. "So they're not all together?" he asked, which was the opposite of what I had just shown him. I had to explain that the language section was organized by alphabetical order by language, and you could see Latin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian . . . and here, right after Russian, is SPANISH. Then it wraps to the next shelf below it. And then the one after that. And since the bookshelf ends there, it starts again at the top of the next shelf. When I explained that these were separate bookshelves, he seemed to get it.

But then he was confused about how to choose from so many options, and wanted something that would play in his computer "for something to look at." I told him we don't really do software but there might be one or two things here. Sometimes they do come with helpful CD-ROMs. I actually found a couple for him but he ended up being more interested in one that came with an audio CD because it was Spanish For Dummies, about which he kept saying, "That's the book for me, I know that's the book for me." Heh. Yeah, at least he's the one saying it. . . .

From there he was opening books trying to understand them, and he got caught on THE ALPHABET. He didn't understand how the alphabet in the beginning of the Dummies book worked. It was telling you the names of the letters, like in Spanish the letter A is pronounced "ah" while English-speakers say "ay," and the letter B is pronounced "beh" while English-speakers say "bee." But he thought the table was explaining how to pronounce the letters when they were inside Spanish words, and no amount of explaining could get that through his head. I ended up finally telling him that the audio CD in the book would be very helpful with pronunciation, and after having a brief discussion with him about whether he could play the audio CD with his computer, I escaped.

And finally, there was the Indian guy. He had the thickest Indian accent I had ever heard while still being able to understand his English (mostly), and he was talking to me on the phone about something that would have made no sense in any language.

His problem was that he had bought something from our store on Saturday, returned it on Sunday, but only saw the transaction for the debit in his transaction record on the Internet. He wanted to know why, early Monday morning, he still had no record of the return transaction having been processed.

My explanation that banks are closed on Sunday did not get through the chinks in the protective armor that protects his mind from harmful things like logic.

So every time he got to the end of his story--I bought it on Saturday and they debited my account, I returned it on Sunday and they did not credit my account--I'd explain it to him and he'd start at the beginning again, usually adding weird things like "So now please process it" or reading me the transaction number off his receipt and then demanding again that I needed to put the transaction through. Um, we're not the bank, and the bank wouldn't do this for you either. You're going to have to wait your happy ass a few more hours. And after I explained to him that it might take a day or two, he got sarcastic and whined that it only took a day to debit his account but he guessed it was our policy to not CREDIT that quickly. Banks can't REALLY be closed on Sunday or anything.

What annoyed me most is that the return amount was $7.43. He was that worried about seven bucks? Damn, that's hard up.


3/19/06

No jerks today, but there was a weird comment. A guy took a look at me and told me, "You ought to be in a movie." I told him I needed to know what kind of movie before I knew whether to take that as a compliment or not. "Like Lord of the Rings," he said, and I just accepted that and went on with my life. However, as short as I am I'm still too tall to be a hobbit, and regardless of any other similarities I'm too short to be a Tolkien elf, so I'm still not sure how to take that. . . .


3/18/06

We had a huge book signing event today. In all the time I've been at the store it's the closest to a person of celebrity status to do a signing at our store--someone I hadn't ever listened to on the radio who wrote a book--and I got to spend the morning giving the details to curious customers who called in and then being lectured by those who found out that I do not listen to these people's morning show. I tried to think of a good way to say I don't give a shit about it, but "give a shit" has lost its shock value, so I'm gonna just go ahead and say that when it comes to this book signing I don't give a nutsack. I just want this huge crowd to quit messing up my kids' section.

Even though we had a gigantic signing we still did the damn Yu-Gi-Oh! game and some kid decided he was in charge of my register I guess. I told him his total was sixteen something and he goes, "NO, it's $15.96!" I told him what his total was again and he informed me that the display had said $15.96 just a minute ago. That's because I rang up four packs of his crap or whatever and the total for that was $15.96, but there's this thing called tax, and there's also this thing called the cashier knows what it costs and tells YOU.

We also had all kinds of weekend sales and some lady came up having picked over and vultured at every table we had, and so her basket was full of BARGAINS! Oh YEAH! So most of them had to be manually keyed into the register and our cashier was being very careful to do everything right because one mistake would cause him to have to call someone to void an item or a transaction (and we were already pretty backed up), so the extra caution made the transaction a little slow. The lady also didn't have a discount card so he offered her one, and she seemed interested but then said in the snottiest tone of voice ever, "But how long will THAT take you??" Fuck you.


3/15/06

A guy was looking for information on a very specific and unusual subject, and I'm not gonna say what because if he searches for it on the 'Net he might find this page, but let's say it was something as odd as looking for antique vacuum cleaners. I told him we didn't have a section for that, and he responded that we had books on COLLECTING BOTTLE CAPS so we should have that! I found a few books on his subject that were actually in print and ordered them for him, and his order came to over a hundred and fifty dollars. I guess he's really serious about this thing. Heh.

A guy came in and said he had ordered a book a couple days ago and wanted to know if it was in yet. I did a double-take and asked him if he meant actually a couple days ago rather than, you know, long enough for it to actually get here. He said that he literally ordered it two days ago. I looked it up in the computer and he really did order it two days ago, and there haven't been any shipments since then, and even if there had been it would have been ordered too close to the shipping date to make it this week. He seemed a little defensively confused at MY confusion as to why he'd be back two days later, and explained that he's from out of town and was in the area so he just figured he'd check, but the problem is they tell you these things when you order books. I think people don't get that we really mean it when we say it won't be here 'til the weekend because no Book Fairy is visiting us between shipments.

Now. Here is an interaction that requires an illustration.

A woman called me asking if we sell software. I told her we do not. She replied, "Oh. Well, I'm looking for Quicken. Would you have that?" I asked her if she was asking for Quicken, as in, SOFTWARE. She said yes. I replied, "We don't carry software. AT ALL." She accepted it this time and hung up.

Now what I don't get is how you ask a question like this. I answered "no" to "do you have software," which in a venn diagram means that an entire category of merchandise is outside the bubble called "things we carry." You then cannot expect anything inside the bubble of "software" to overlap with "things we carry." Observe.

[book venn]

Now, as you can see, we carry some books, some gifts, some office supplies, some toys. And not everything that we carry is one of those things, nor do we carry all items in all of those categories. But software--along with other whole categories such as intimate apparel and real estate in outer space--are excluded from "things we carry."

I guess that lady didn't understand venn diagrams. Or BASIC LOGIC.

Another woman who falls into this category of Can't Understand Basic Logic (should I make another venn diagram?) is this teacher. The woman called from a small nearby town and said she was an educator in need of large quantities of two titles . . . LIKE, NOW. She told me she was going to need 14 copies of a certain book and that she did not have time to order them, she needed them immediately. I told her we generally don't keep quantities like that in the store on a regular basis, we will order quantities for schools but we have no reason to have that many most of the time. This was all just a warning for the inevitable shootdown though; I told her all that before I checked, but assured her I would check anyway. The first title she asked for came up as being a book we carried ONE copy of.

"We have ONE copy."
"Well I need fourteen."

Pause.

"We only have one. You said you don't have time to order them?"
[Huge sigh] "Well can you GET them by TOMORROW?"

Good luck, lady!

People like this don't understand that our warehouse where we get our books is not across town; we can't just run over there and grab what we need. It's in Alabama. We're in Florida. It's going to take at least six days. And considering when in the week you're making the order, probably more like a week and a half, since our truck's almost certain to already be packed for this weekend's delivery.

From there she mostly just expressed annoyance that we could not help her and pull more copies out of our assholes, and then told me she'd call back if we ended up being her only option. Erf!

And my last Asshole for today was a guy who came in the front door and straight to the customer service desk to ask where we have our stamp collecting supplies. (Which is to say that he didn't look for them himself before asking for help.) When I went to take him there he said, "I can never find anything in here. Every time I come you've MOVED THINGS AROUND!"

I like to be nasty to people who pretend like they gave it a legitimate try before asking for help. Don't pretend it's our fault you can't find anything. We didn't move jack shit; you just didn't even bother to look, which is FINE except you're pretending we hid it from you.

So I gave him a big smile and told him YEAH, we move things sometimes, in fact it was only two years ago that we had a big remodel and moved this collector section to its new home! I wonder if he got the point? Guess what, buddy--if Collectors really is in a different place than it was last time you were here, then you last visited us in 2004. You can't expect things to be in exactly the same place as you last saw them when you only come every other year or something, and plus I'm betting your memory's not good enough that you would have remembered its location anyway. . . .


3/14/06

A man who was hard of hearing came to the register and began to check out. Of course, I found out he was hard of hearing when I asked him if he found everything okay and he ignored me, then realized I was looking at him like I expected an answer and gave me the most bizarre "what the FUCK" sort of expression in response. "HUH?" he said. "I don't hear well." I repeated my question and he just nodded and then looked away again and started fiddling with the impulse buy crap. But I wasn't done.

I had to ask him if he had a discount card, and again he realized I was asking him a question and out came the expression on his face, broadcasting, "WHAT are you doing speaking to me, cashier person?" Well, man, regardless of whether you can hear well, people are going to talk to you. So I repeated my question and he just waved his hand at me in a "piss off" manner, so I have no idea if he heard me or not. But then his books were ringing up to be quite a high dollar amount and I thought he could USE a discount card, so I asked in a louder voice if he wanted one. AGAIN with the look, and then he grumbled, "Just PROCESS it." Okay, yeah, I'm sure it gets tiresome having to ask everyone to repeat stuff when your hearing goes but that's what hearing aids are for, and even if you don't want one or can't afford one (unlikely from the price of these damn books!) you can't go around acting like since you can't hear then nobody around you has anything important to say. Ass.

I found this one out from our regular cashier today, even though it happened a few days ago. One of our managers had stepped out to get her lunch and the other manager was in the middle of counting a drawer (a task you're not supposed to interrupt since you'd pretty much have to start at the beginning again) when a woman came up demanding to do a return. The cashier called for our manager, who then called him and said she was doing a drawer and the lady would have to wait. So the cashier explained this to the woman, who responded by standing there and not moving.

Well, most people would probably understand that the phrase "She's busy doing something, she'll be up in a few minutes" has inherent in it a request to MOVE so the cashier can take care of the lengthening line behind your ass, but this lady was oblivious, so he asked her if she would mind stepping aside so he could take care of the folks behind her.

And she said no.

So the cashier told her he couldn't let her just stand there blocking the register because that wasn't fair to the other people, and she didn't care (!!!) so he actually told the next customer that he could wait on them and started working around her!

At which point she said, "YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

Our cashier is a very nice man who isn't real big on profanity. He was extremely offended.

Long story short, he told her she wasn't allowed to talk to him like that and told her to leave the store, at which point she actually did. (I guess she was intent on showing us a protest on how she was being treated and wanted to take her business elsewhere . . . too bad it's a RETURN and we're not jealous of who you take it to. . . . ) When she went by him he told her not to come back and if she does he's calling the police. Wow. But yeah, what a jerk.


3/13/06

A family with a mom and three children ventured to our store to buy a particular kind of trading cards whose popularity is decidedly past. I knew for a fact that we'd once carried them, but when the mom and one of the kids hit me up for the cards, the first thing I did was express doubt that we still had them. (Kind of a dirty trick on my part--sometimes I won't know one way or the other if we have something, but if we say "I don't think we have it" and then we DO, they're pleasantly surprised, rather than "I think we have it" and then we DON'T--if the latter happens, they seem to think I've already told them we have it and I'm taking it back, like challenging me on the subject is going to make me look harder or in places I didn't try yet.)

Anyway, so I said we probably didn't have any but the only place we'd have them would be this rack. As I started going toward the rack, the mom said to one of the kids, "She's gonna go look it up." Look it up? That's not what I said. I said if it's anywhere it's on this rack, and now I'm going to the damn rack. So we looked at the rack and there were only the expected more popular cards on it, so I said that as I suspected we no longer had them.

And of course, the oldest kid had to say, "So, can you go look it up?"

I made a rather confused expression and explained that there was no "looking up" to be done, that we only put such things in this one place and looking in this one place is, in essence, "looking it up." Not to mention that the only "lookup" I have is for books. "Well the website said you had it!" said the kid.

I told her that our website does not say what's in the store, though it offers many items for order that are only available through the warehouse. "No, I mean the website said THIS ADDRESS has the cards." Well, our website doesn't do that. It doesn't have a place to plug in which locations physically have items. You still have to talk to a person to find that out.

But then it turns out she's not even talking about "our" website. It's the website of the trading cards, where they list us as one of the stores in the area that carries the product. Well, far be it for me to say so, but some other site not even run by us saying we have it and being wrong is not our fault. I told her the site was more than likely just out of date if that was the case. We did used to carry them, I explained, but she was just giving me this look like she had been promised something by ME or by people *I* represented, and that since she had been promised this that I needed to take the cards out of wherever I was hiding them. Whatever.

A woman called about a book and when I looked it up it was a book we didn't carry. When I told her so she said, "Well, may I ask WHY NOT??" I told her rather unabashedly that we just don't carry every book that's in print. She countered with a response that turned out to be a lot more logical than I'd given her credit for: The book is on bestseller lists--in the TOP 10--of two other major chains, and yet we can't actually even order the bastard. When I told her that if a book is in print and in public distribution we can generally get it unless it's the publishing house itself that is the problem, she revealed that actually she knew it was in reprints. So why the righteous indignation when I told her we didn't have it? Of course we're going to have trouble getting it if the people who make it had to go run home and make more! But then again this was one of those books that is controversial, so probably she just wanted to make sure that our lack of carrying it wasn't because as a chain we collectively hate black people or something. That would be such a wise move, right.

I helped a customer and after they agreed that they needed nothing more from me I began to leave the desk. Up rushed a college-age young man on a beeline for the desk, having dashed suddenly from the café--and he clapped his hands loudly, three times. When I turned around to see what the HELL, it became obvious that this clapping was in fact to summon me. So I went over there and clapped back at him, and started singing the clap on clap off song and told him I expected the lights to go on and off when he did that. He didn't appear to get it. I'm wondering now if the Clapper is no longer in the consciousness of the younger generation and that I have just made myself look really old. . . .

And this lady amused me. I got her on the phone and she asked if we had a paperback book of Sudoku puzzles. Well if you know anything about this Sudoku thing you know it's the hottest craze since the crossword puzzle, and people are like obsessed with it. Now, this lady was buying the book for a friend who was going on a trip, and when I revealed to her that there isn't just one book of Sudoku puzzles but in fact several dozen just carried in our store, she freaked out because she was going to have to make a decision. "I don't do decisions," she said--yes, those are her exact words. "I'm menopausal. I've been menopausal for the last eight years and I just can't make decisions." Ohhhhkay lady. Cluephone: NOT A CRISIS. I told her about some of the nice ones we had and said she ought to come down and have a look, but she seemed shaken at the choices and commented, "THIS is just AWFUL!"

I just don't know what to think of this situation. This woman is completely paralyzed by having to make a choice for a book of sundry amusements for her friend's plane trip. This is a big, huge horrible crisis for her. She ended up telling me that if she thought she could handle coming out to look at the choices she might be by later.

Somewhat early in the morning I got an older couple who were some brand of foreign that I could not identify; it did not impede their speech but it made for odd interaction somehow--most specifically in that whole personal space issue thing. So first of all they asked me for a religious book, and I found that we were supposed to have it so I went to the shelf and managed to find one copy. I brought it to them and they rejoiced. Standing really close to me.

So I backed up and asked them if there was anything else, and then THE QUESTIONS began. I swear this happened three times; first the woman would ask a question, and before I could say anything IMMEDIATELY the man would ask a different question! And then both would stand there looking at me expecting an answer! First "How much is this book?" coupled with "If we order more copies and buy the same title two or more times will it be cheaper?" Luckily I only had to address the man's question on that one because the woman answered her own question by noticing the price, but then they started inching up on me again asking more questions. "How long would it take to come in if we order?" "Do you have a phone number you can give us?" At this point I answered the woman and told the man I would go to the desk and write down the phone number, but they kept crowding me up against a table! So when I wiggled past them to try to get away and put a desk between us again, the back of my clothes caught on a stack of sale books and jerked them onto the floor. "Oh I will get that!" the man said cheerfully, and cleared up the mess! I just wrote his number down and gave it to him.

But then they inched up to the edge of the desk--it seemed I was safe, though, they had noticed they weren't supposed to come up there--and the questions began again. "So this is your only copy?" "If you order do you have to pay shipping?" Tired of this, I made it clear that they were doing something ridiculous by just looking back and forth between the two of them several times and holding up my hands, and the man got it and laughed and said they would stop bombarding me with questions. I answered what they asked and they finally started to go away.

But then the man turned around, held up the book, and said, "You know, JESUS actually WROTE this book!" I was like, "Um yeah, that's what it says on it," because it's one of those books that says it's a collection of essays by a couple of people who just identify themselves as "listeners." I guess a book doesn't have to be divinely inspired in ancient times anymore to be considered the word of God; this guy has no problem accepting that Jesus really said these words since whoever wrote the book said so and that person wouldn't lie or be mistaken of course. But my thoughts on the dangers of being "virtuous" enough to have unquestioning faith in everything from the Bible to a modern divinely inspired book don't really belong in my Work Log.

Speaking of religion, though, I was helping out at the register and this woman bought a bunch of stuff and I sold her a discount card. She was very pleasant and so was I, and it was one of those interactions where I really enjoyed talking to the person rather than just feeling like I was smiling and tolerating them until they got the fuck out of my store. She was just a genuinely nice person and she apparently felt the same about me. But then when she left, she put a little folded piece of card stock paper on the counter and said, "This is for you," and scurried out. It said "Thank you" in nice script on the front, and something told me I knew what I would find when I opened it.

Suspicions confirmed! TRACT ALERT!

"I greatly appreciated YOUR SERVICE this day! You have greatly blessed me. In return, I would like to share with you what has been the greatest blessing of my life. The Bible says that F.A.I.T.H. is the answer."

So it's a special tract made just to hand out to people who waited on you or whatever. It goes on with this corny pseudo-acronym of "F.A.I.T.H." with a paragraph featuring convenient line breaks to make the "FAITH" letters add up to a word going downwards, with the bottom part of the tract squished up with Bible verses.

It reminded me of my first job in a restaurant, where I was working as a dining room attendant (not exactly a waitress since the place was a serve-yourself salad buffet). One Easter Sunday over half of our seats were taken up by a single church group, and they sure as hell kept us busy. Then when they left, every single one of them--meaning, each PERSON, not even each party--left us a tract INSTEAD OF A TIP. I guess they figured the information was more valuable than money. But dude. There were only like four or five DRAs and about forty or fifty tracts. You can only save each of us once. THE REST OF YOU SHOULD LEAVE MONEY, YOU BASTARDS!

And that's my nostalgic Asshole File from maybe 1995 or so, combined with my tale of Drive-By Jesusing.


3/12/06

No Assholes, but I did remember this interesting thing from last week. A guy bought like five or six Shel Silverstein books at once, and commented to me that they were a wedding present for his wife who is an elementary school teacher and LOVES Silverstein. When he left I told him I hoped his fiancée enjoyed them, and he said, "Oh, she will. And if she doesn't I'M NOT MARRYING HER." Hahaha.


3/11/06

I didn't have any of my own Assholes today, but I overheard this one from some dude in the café asking another associate about gift cards. He was confused about how they work--specifically, he was worried about how long it was good for. Now, first of all the policy is WRITTEN on them, so the dude could have read the print on his card if he wanted to know. But he went ahead and asked the other associate, and then kept INTERRUPTING. When the employee was trying to explain that after twelve months of non-use the card starts deducting a fee from the balance, the guy interrupted after the phrase "after twelve months" and said "--Then it's done?" The associate tried to explain that no, it wasn't "done," it was just going to charge a fee, but then he wanted to know when that twelve months starts to count down. The employee said it was from the last time the card is accessed, so then the guy interrupted that to ask, "So if I NEVER use it then it's good for life?" Huh? How does that even make sense? Yeah we only start charging a non-use fee if you ever use it. No, we start deducting money from it at the point where we figure you probably lost it or forgot you had it. So they explained that when it's activated is counted as its last "use," and the twelve months starts counting from there. I didn't hear if the guy kept going trying to interrupt the explanation with his guesses about the explanation because I escaped to go to lunch.


3/8/06

So, the whole world exploded today. . . .

Well, more accurately, evil storms centered on our company's home office and knocked the power out of the entire city, which effectively handicapped the operations of the entire chain. Every one of our stores the nation over was unable to take credit cards, checks, or gift cards on their registers, and we had no customer service database for looking up books or ordering items. Even our e-mail was down. And that spells FUN, in the form of ASSHOLE CUSTOMERS!

Now, seeing as how we are pretty good at guessing when it comes to books and our store is pretty organized these days, helping customers who knew what they wanted was usually not a big deal. We'd just take them to the section, explain the problem of not being able to check if we carried the book, and do our best. The register was a little more difficult as we could manually process checks the old way (not electronically) and we could force credit cards in manual overrides, but there was truly no way to take gift cards. That requires communication with the company-specific server, and the server in another state was being eaten by evil wind.

And for some reason we were inundated with customers in the morning, and after everything had come back up we got slow. Great. I mean, it was constant at the register. A guy who wanted help finding some Meg Cabot books asked at the register, and I happened to know, so I took him there and when I came back there were two customers in line standing at the wrong register craning their necks confused about the lack of cute blonde salesgirl. Where did they come from? Why must they all check out at the same time? And why must they go to the register that isn't open and put their shit down on a counter full of crowded displays designed to discourage such behavior if there was an open one right at the beginning? ::sigh::. . . .

So of course, it couldn't be easy. For the two and a half hours we were offline as a chain, we had to deal with a host of customers who acted as though our inability to help them because of technical difficulties was a reflection of our incompetence or of extremely illogical store policies. As the only non-manager present in the store who has manager clearance to do such things as manual overrides on credit cards, I got stuck on the register, and of course I got a woman who wanted to buy seventy dollars' worth of sale books and produced a gift card at the end of my extensive ringing up process.

I explained the situation to her, saying that gift cards were the ONLY type of payment we could not process right now, but that she could still get the stuff if she wanted to either pay a different way and use the gift card another time OR she could put the stuff aside and we'd hold it for her until the system came back up.

"You've GOT to be kidding!" was her response, followed by a lot of statements that indicated her gross misunderstanding of what was going on. She thought for some reason that I was denying her the use of her gift card indefinitely, OR that I was saying it was now worthless, like we had changed our policy or something. After I finally got her to understand (or so I thought), I put her stuff aside for her and she said, "I'd like you to hold it at the door for me." Double take. Well, the register is literally RIGHT next to the door, so it can't exactly get much closer without being stacked on the floor next to it. So I asked her what she meant, where she wanted her books held. "Just, I'd APPRECIATE it if you'd hold it at the door," she repeated. Obviously another customer suffering from that disease that makes them confuse "I need clarification" with "I need repetition."

Then after I just made an executive decision to leave her pile of shit there with her name on it at the register and let her tell me if she didn't like it, she asked me, "So when CAN I use the gift card? EVENTUALLY? EVER??" ::sigh:: I told her I could not predict when the servers would be back up but we could start processing cards again when the normal service returned. I was sorry it was so inconvenient for her, but I wasn't exactly having fun either considering every non-cash transaction was a hoop to jump through, so I didn't appreciate getting lectured and whined at as if it was my customer service that was at fault rather than the technical difficulties.

Another gift card FUBAR occurred when a woman wanted to do a return with no receipt and was planning on doing some shopping for items to trade BUT (get this) for some reason wanted me to process the return and give her store credit right then and there anyway. Meaning she was going to get the store credit, then go shop the same day and use it. Even if shit was working, that sucks, because why couldn't she do her shopping and then let me do it all on one transaction? But these things never make sense to customers.

So I explained to her that I could not either issue or use gift cards until the server was back up, and she's like, "You're kidding," and then she started doing that genius customer thing where she suggested ways I could do what she wanted anyway. "I'll even just take a piece of paper," she said. Oh yes, that will go over swimmingly. I will take a piece of paper and write down how much store credit you have, and my company will have no problem authorizing that. Just listen to what I'm saying and choose an option: Shop now and trade, or take your return and come back later either when the server's up or you're ready to shop. Feh.

So, once the server came back online around 11:30 AM, I only had to deal with the run-of-the-mill Assholes, like this girl.

I'm changing the titles of what she was looking for because if she keeps searching the 'Net for this crap I don't want her finding my page whining about her, but you can still get the gist. So what she did was come up to me and say, "I'm looking for the books by Nancy. Do you know what I mean?" I told her I didn't know of anything that is known of as "books by Nancy," so she elaborated that this children's author only seemed to have a first name and she wrote a book called Little Cat's Bath Mat. (Remember, I'm making this shit up, that's not really the title.) I kinda joked with her saying that the author must be one of those single-name authors like Madonna. But when I tried the title I got nothing, just very similar titles whose authors were not Nancy, and so then she's like, "Can you try just 'Nancy'?" Yeah sure girl. I gave her a twisty smile and typed it in just so I could have a lot of fun reading out to her how many books came up from that search. The number was almost 2,000.

I asked her where she got her information, and this is where she became kinda snotty and snapped, "I got it off of YOUR guys' website!" She said she expected that if she found it on our site she thinks it should be in the store, and when I said we have the same search engine and all the same database information as our website on the 'Net, she started looking doubtful and went to a position of "Well I THINK it was you guys. . . . " Just to be sure I ran the search on our Internet site--the only outside-the-intranet site we can connect to--but of course I got nothing.

Later when I tried the search at home I managed to come up with it, but had to specify in my search criteria that I was choosing to look in the hard-to-find database of out-of-print used books. If she indeed found it on our site, she would have had to do that too, and the hard-to-find section is pretty clear about the fact that it's not new books, just third parties selling shit on the Internet.

On top of that her "Nancy" author was not even really an author (as I could easily tell from the descriptions); the books were released under the publisher's name, but an "author" was credited being that it was supposedly this kitty cat telling the story of her bath mat in her own words. So they list the character as the author to be cute, just like Terron Schaefer is the author of Cashmere If You Can but they pretend it's by a goat who became a model so they actually credit it to a goat named Wawa Hohhot, "as told to Terron Schaefer." It even says "Hohhot" on the spine and DOESN'T show the real author's name. Hardy-har.

Then I encountered a space case in the kids' section. I walked by her and she was pushing a baby carriage with some books stacked on top of its hood. "Excuse me, do you work here?" she asked as I was attempting to bustle to somewhere important. I stopped and asked if I could help, and she said, "Was it you I heard talking to that other lady about Narnia before?" I had been on the register all morning so of course it hadn't been me, so I said no. "Oh," she said, seeming disappointed, and then she started pushing the carriage again like that was all she wanted to know. But then as I was just starting to go back to my business, she turned around again and said, "Oh, well let me ask you this . . . you wouldn't know where the Narnia books ARE, would you?"

Sorry, no, the only employee who knows where Narnia is must be the person you overheard before. There is only so much knowledge to go around and we must share equally; no two employees know the same thing. Especially not about EXTREMELY POPULAR BOOKS.

I showed her the Narnia books and dove into my Diet Coke break, wishing there was something stronger than pop in that bottle. I don't drink, but this job often makes me wish I did. A hangover cannot possibly hurt my brain more than these customers.

And then we had a good old run-of-the-mill beeyatch who came to the desk just as the customer service girl was leaving it with another customer to show her where something was, and this lady responded by banging on the bell repeatedly as if to say "What are you doing? Stop helping other people, *I'M* here, don't you walk away from me!" My coworker was so upset by that. We both hate it when people imply that we're not giving them good service just because when they arrive they aren't next.


3/7/06

A woman came up to the register and started asking the cashier for customer service help, so he volunteered my services. Joy of joys. I took the woman to the desk, asking along the way what she was looking for. She was holding the second book in a trilogy, apparently, and wanted the first and third books. She mumbled their titles to me but we were walking so I didn't catch them. When we got to the desk I stepped in and she suddenly couldn't see me anymore! Wow I'm invisible! She stopped and looked around blankly and yelled, "WHERE'D YOU GO??" I was like, "Right here," and she suddenly saw me and was like, "OH."

So she approached the desk and gave me the titles. We were supposed to carry the first in the trilogy but the third wasn't even listed. Considering the second book was pretty new, I supposed it wasn't out or orderable yet--just in the planning stages rather than being produced yet--and when I told the lady that she replied by re-reading the title to me and saying she wanted it. I told her the book wasn't available yet and she decided this was her cue to open the book to show me the other titles in the series and hold it in my face while pointing to the title. I explained again.

So we went to the shelf to see if book 1 was there and it wasn't, so I asked if she wanted to order it. She said, "Yes, just order me book 1 and also book 3." It was like talking to a cinder block. Actually I've gotten better understanding from objects made of concrete. Oh, and then on top of that when she went to the register to buy book 2 she went to the wrong one because she expected me to come around and ring her up as well, even though there was already a cashier standing there open. Sorry, lady, I really want to get rid of you now, someone else can complete this junk.

I answered the phone with my spiel, which as you may know includes the road we're on because there are two of our store in my city. The woman on the phone asked right after my spiel if I was on a different road. I said no and repeated where I was. "Oh, so you're in the mall?" she concluded, and I told her we were near the mall but not part of it. "Well what are you next to?" she asked, and from there she recognized it. ::sigh:: Hey, if you don't know where we are--which you obviously don't--maybe saying "where are you?" instead of "are you HERE? Oh, then are you HERE?" would work out better.

A woman came up to me in Kids' and asked me for a series, and I was unsure of whether we had the new one and of who the author was. I told her I would have to go look it up, and turned around to go to the computer to do so. She called after me, "Well, any chance that you could please DO that??" I told her that's exactly what I was doing. What did she think, that I'd end a transaction that way just walking away from her by giving up and saying I'd have to look it up, which would obviously be too harrowing? C'mon!

A woman at the register still needed customer service help and when I told her that she couldn't order books at the register and I could take her back to the service desk and order whatever she needed, she replied, "OH, I have to go back THERE. Well NEVER MIND THEN!" Sensing that she was unreasonable and probably enjoyed feeling like she had the power to take her business elsewhere over a minor inconvenience, I just told her that if she knew exactly what she wanted I could write it down, order it in her name, and call her when it was in. Her order ended up being a pain including four items, one of which was difficult to pin down because it was a manga and in our computer system those are often difficult to figure out because most of them do not have individual titles and rarely have the volume number in the title on the computer. So you'll type in the manga series's title and up pops every book in the series looking like it has only one title: The title of the series. You actually have to look at the covers on the screen and read the volume number to make sure you're ordering the right one, and when there's no picture--as was the case with this one--you just have to estimate by the copyright date and pray you're right.

And lastly, yesterday someone tried to get us with a fake traveler's check. It was white instead of colored with fading colored paper or whatever, and the hologram that was supposed to be on it was scratched and improperly applied, and the ink was just a little too dark, it looked "wrong." So my manager looked at it and said she couldn't accept it, so the con artist was snipping and snapping being like, "WHY can't you take it? YES you can," and all that. I guess they count on us not seeing a lot of traveler's checks and probably not knowing what they are supposed to look like, and thus falling for scams involving a fake one given to us to pay for a magazine when it's a hundred-dollar traveler's check. Sure buddy, your fake piece of paper is going to be traded to us for a magazine and 96 bucks. Hah. My manager totally called him on it and said she couldn't take it because it was "damaged," and when she said she could get her loss prevention officer on the phone and see if she could get clearance to accept a damaged check (har har) the guy took his check back, said, "I see where this is going. You guys have a good day," and left. I hope his shitty fake check didn't get him any free money. What an ass. People lose their jobs over accepting things like that just because they don't know any better.


3/6/06

Somewhat early in the morning I got a phone call from an excited fan asking for details on a book signing that is happening at our store next week by a well-known radio personality. I told the lady some details and when I told her that the celebrities' radio station was also going to be on-site broadcasting, the woman told me that if that was the case she wanted to bring up a beef with them. She said that the celebrities' show used to be on for an hour longer and now they've cut it back an hour and she wants to know why. "So maybe when I come out I will bring this up to them, I will bring it to their attention," she said. Oh, that sounds like a good idea. Come to a book signing and then inform the radio station that you don't want them to do what they've been doing--they probably don't have any reason at all for making the show shorter, so all they need is a fan to say, "I like this show, make it longer again," and I'm sure they'll do it! And I'm sure the lady who's signing her book probably wants to hear you whine too, and will say, "Oh, one of my fans would like us to be on longer. Let's take care of that, shall we?" ::sigh::

A dude I've exchanged words with on the bus a few times seemed to think said conversations were grounds to treat me like a personal friend, and proceeded to start an interaction with me that took half an hour to complete. He was an actual customer, legitimately looking for something, but in between everything he decided to tell me these anecdotes and stories and kid with me, and a couple times he made fun of the other customers who came up to ask me questions. Now here's the annoying part; he didn't know his author's name except for the last name, and what he thought was a first initial, and he didn't understand why just knowing a first initial was not helping.

Finally he came up with the name (and the first initial hadn't even been correct), and we found around 50 books listed. He made me turn the screen sideways so he could see and then scroll it down for him at his request, taking ten years to read everything and then asking questions about stuff on the screen even though he was looking at it. And every scroll down request sounded something like "Okay, go down one . . . okay . . . no wait, go back one. How much is that one? Oh, okay, well show me the one we were just on. Okay. Go down. Go down. Down one more. No wait!" I had a LOT to do today and he was taking up all my time so I tried to hurry it up by reading him titles, but he would have none of it and made me back it up and allow him to look at everything.

After six pages of this we went on a book hunt and found one book by the author, which he decided didn't make sense because there had been over fifty in the computer. I reminded him that the computer didn't say what we carried, only what we could order. And he went on about how it didn't make sense that it couldn't tell us what was actually in the store by an exact inventory and whatnot. Then he launched into the whole "I read this and did you know that and I recommend this book" speech, the one customers often give me when they have a weird perception that I like what they like or am interested in what they are interested in. When someone paged me to the register I finally escaped his clutches.

I ran a break on the register and I got this winner of a woman who walked up toward the register, stopped a while before she got there, turned around in a strange doglike circle, and then went into one of the fiction aisles. She immediately emerged and went into the next fiction aisle. I figured she was looking for someone. Then she came out of the aisle again and did another doglike circle, which I might describe as a very tight spiral with a head movement like she might be trying to bite an imaginary tail. It was very odd. And then she swerved suddenly up to my register and plunked her books down, and said, "I almost missed you because you're so short!" Wait, she was looking for ME? But I was right here in plain view. Why was she looking for me in the fiction aisles anyway? It was weird 'cause she didn't even come all the way to the register before starting her game of fetch, and it didn't even look like she looked at the checkout counter to see if someone was there. Hmm, weird squirrelly woman.

A woman called and asked me to check my shelves for a book, and gave me the ISBN. It came up with NOTHING. And the title also brought up NOTHING. I asked where she got her information and she said, "Off YOUR website!" Uh-huh. Well, there's no way that our website had a book's availability but our in-store system doesn't even show it exists. So I acted like that was really weird and sounded fishy, which ended up getting the story out of her: "Well I don't know what website I was on. But it had your store's name on it." She claimed that she'd "typed it into the Internet" and found some book search sites, and that one site claimed our store had copies of the book and also cited one other store that carried it. Um, that's not "our" website, sorry. What the hell does some third party know about what we have?


3/5/06

Only one jerk today. It was a father-son team, the son being probably late teens. They asked for a certain science fiction book that I hadn't heard of, and the computer said we usually have it on the shelf. "We've already BEEN to the shelf!" said the dad. "There's more than one shelf, Dad," the boy said. Huh? So we went to the shelf where the book would be and I found a copy. But they didn't seem happy and the boy didn't take it when I picked it up and tried to give it to him. "That's the one I already have," he said finally. "The one I'm looking for is another one in the series." Then he gave me THAT title. Okay . . . so we scanned the shelf but didn't see that particular one, and this really flummoxed the father, who started asking when we get shipments in and if I could find out if that book would be on the next shipment. "I don't know if we even carry it," I explained, and at both customers' looks of confused despair, I reminded them that they had asked me for a different title at Customer Service, and that just because we carried this book didn't mean the other one was one we carried just because it was the same series. (Why did they ask me for this book in the first place when they apparently knew the title of the one they really wanted all along??) When I checked at the desk it actually was one we never carry, so I ordered it for them and that was it.


3/4/06

Here's an example of someone realizing halfway through that they're screwing up, and then trying to cover it up.

A lady came to my store looking for a book that we were out of. Turned out she'd already ordered one at the other store today, but thought she'd check with us. Now that she knew we were out too, she said she'd be content to just wait for the order to come in over there. But she did have one question: If in the future she wants to know about a book, do our stores have the ability to communicate with each other and ask questions about the stock?

After a short silence I asked her, "You mean 'can we call each other?'"

She seemed at that time to notice that it was kind of a goofy question, but then she tried to make it sound like it was legitimate by saying she just wanted to know if it was possible for each other's stores to ask questions about the stock, that's all.

"So . . . are you asking me if we have the ability to call each other and ask about books?" I asked, again simplifying her question so it sounded as silly as it was. She agreed that was what she was asking, and when I said that we did indeed have the ability to pick up the phone and speak, she again said, "Oh, okay, I just did not know if that would be possible." What do you think, lady? If you as a customer can call the bookstore and ask questions, why would you think we'd have any trouble at all calling each other? It's called a telephone, and anyone can use it.

Two women within an hour of each other asked me for sign language books for kids, and neither was asking for a project or event so it was just a coincidence. But then a dude came up to me a little while later, asked where the language section was. I asked for some clarification on what kind of language he wanted--considering we have separate sections for English dictionaries, language arts, and foreign language, he needed to be more specific. But when he started moving his hands in a weird circular pattern like "come on, come on" in sign language, I figured maybe he was about to ask me for sign language books too. But no. He just said, "Well, the language section, LANGUAGE!" Yeah we've established that. I'm not asking you to be more specific for the hell of it, jerk; it's because "language" isn't enough information for me to take you to what you want. I think from now on I'm going to have to assume that everyone who asks me this sort of question is ignorant, and give them a multiple choice set to choose from, because all they do is repeat their first vague request when I ask for more information.

Some fucking kid was puffing on a recorder from this book-and-recorder set in the kids' section. He had taken it out of its package and was blowing into the instrument, which of course means that now I can't sell it. When I went in the section to see what was up I saw that actually he had TWO of them and that one was from the easy-to-open plastic flap set but one was from a set that was sealed in hard plastic and IT HAD BEEN CUT OPEN, obviously by an adult because he was about two years old. And there sat Dad in the train seat reading, obviously aware that his kid was using products that weren't his and making them unsellable.

So I thought to myself, there's no way that a parent would do that unless he was planning to buy this item for his kid. So I just waited to see, and watched the kid destroy part of my Sesame Street section. It was then that I decided that Dad was probably more of a goddamn bum than anything, and decided to go pick up the used recorder (now discarded on the floor) and take it away to the damage bin, which should have cued him to speak up and say "oh no, we're buying that" if he was. Well, I picked them up and made sure he saw me doing it, and nope, he didn't try to stop me. I mentioned it to my manager, who got a little huffy and went out there and took another item away from the kid, but still Dad didn't say anything. Obviously all of the toys are his. Watching the little boy toddling among a mess of books on the ground, I started picking up a little hoping to make Dad aware that I was not happy about his son's behavior, but nothing happened, and I got interrupted part-way through by another dad. When I brought him back through the area and he saw the mess, he quickly told me the mess wasn't the fault of his children. I was like, "Oh, I know it wasn't YOU." Gee, who was it? "I just hope no one trips over anything," I added. Dad never did anything to stop his kid from wrecking the section, either. People who act like our store is their kid's playroom really piss me off.

And as my last loser for the day, I'd like to feature the buttplug who found it necessary to loudly eat potato chips into my ear when he called me to ask about a book. For God's sake, you jerk, if you have to eat while you're on the phone with me, couldn't you at least not chew into the phone with your mouth open? God.


3/1/06

Today was a very, very busy day for some reason. I think there must have been an ad on the radio that anyone who went in public during the day and acted like an ASSHOLE to a retail worker would receive a cash prize. They sure acted like they were competing for Biggest Jerk. Read on.

There was a trend today for people to walk to the desk and ring the bell repeatedly for service. This pisses me off not only because I'm probably absent from the desk due to HELPING OTHER CUSTOMERS but also because whenever they ring the bell over and over it annoys everyone in the store and makes all the customers aware that there is a person here who isn't getting served fast enough to satisfy them. That just makes us look bad. And they KNOW it.

So the first of these people was someone who went to the register before coming to the service desk trying to ask for help. I was paged and the customer was told to go to the desk as a result, and I happened to be with a customer when the page was made but I was almost done. I finished up my interaction and made my way to the desk, but not before the woman who'd had me called started ringing over and over. I came into the desk and acted like I was surprised she was doing something so annoying, and told her I was sorry she'd had to wait but I had been with another customer. When she saw me she looked shocked and barked, "*I* need your help hunting two *books*!" Well, help yourself to my infinite knowledge.

So I said to the lady that I was ready for her information and she stared blankly, so I said, "What's the title of the first one?" and she goes, "Oh GOD!" and starts looking around aimlessly, then started calling another woman's name. Turned out it was the other woman who was looking for the books, and she was clear across the store in the Christian section. The annoying woman who'd come to the desk to ask me the question didn't even know the titles, and I guess she expected that she could go fetch me from the desk and then bring me to the lady in the Christian section rather than, ya know, using the tools at the customer service desk to locate books. So basically she'd summoned me so impatiently only to have me have to stand there and wait for the person who knew the information to waddle on over. While we were waiting for her to get her butt over to the desk the annoying first woman looked at me and said in a sort of sarcastic manner, "THANK you for COMING," like this attitude of "wow, I can't believe SOMEONE finally CAME." Ahh, shut up. I can't remember what else was annoying but I think from that point on they were just generally non-outstanding rude ass customers, nothing to write home about.

Another Ringing Customer occurred when I was elsewhere in the store and I was paged again, and I came to the desk to see that THREE people were at the desk and one was banging on the bell. When I came into view one of the women standing there shot out from the desk to intercept me--I guess she wanted to make sure SHE got service first, which probably meant she wasn't first in line--and just shot her questions at me without any semblance of human compassion. More evidence that when I put an apron on I become a faceless robot to most of my customers and am therefore owed no consideration for my feelings, especially since politeness costs so much and would be wasted on the likes of me. Anyway.

So this woman rapid-fired her questions and they were answerable by pointing, which I did--and then I found out that the person who was next at the desk was actually WITH that woman and she asked the same questions! Nothing like wasting my time to save your own, eh? I directed her to where her friend had gone and got her out of my hair, leaving me one more person to help and that was easy enough.

And then the last person who was a notable Ringing Customer was this jackass who rang the bell over and over again and when I came into her view I was helping a man with something on an endcap very close by. I looked over at her trying to make her realize that hey, I was here, I knew she needed help, can't you see I'm busy with someone? And she looked right at me and banged the bell a whole bunch more times. So when I finished helping the man I came up there and told her I was afraid there was no one else in the store to help her, I was the only one, so I was sorry (hah, not really) that she'd had to wait for me to finish with my customer. She made this shocked snotty face and said, "You're the ONLY one??" Which was temporarily the case because my backup was running the register since the register person was on break. So I told her that yes, I was the only one, and it was at that convenient point that the café associate scurried up to the desk.

Even though a lot of the café associates don't even know how to interpret the information on the bookstore screen (i.e., how to tell if we have a book and where), sometimes if they know we're slammed they'll come over to "help," and it seems to calm a customer down if someone at least seems to be helping them. That's why he came over, just to see if he could be a warm body to make this asshole stop ringing. But of course as I was explaining I was the only one and up runs this other person, she pointed and said, "Well what about HIM??" I explained that he was from the café and then told him I had it under control, he could go back, and he did.

If only that were the end of it. She continued to be a complete jerk to help, opening first by saying that she wanted a map of our city, but in a book. I told her we didn't have "books" that were maps of the city, only fold-out road maps. She snapped back that she wanted a BOOK. Yeah I get it. I told her that we tend to carry the spiral-bound map books of larger cities, while ours is not very large. As if this mattered, she countered that they make one for a city nearby that's even smaller than ours. I don't care that they make it. I'm saying we don't HAVE it. And I had to take her to Travel to show her that that was the case before she believed me.

But then she had another question. She said she was interested in a book she'd heard about but didn't know who wrote it or what it was called. Oh, surprise. But the information she did have was that it was by the same person who wrote The Da Vinci Code. Which of course is easy because everyone who's worked in a bookstore long enough to get a papercut knows it's by Dan Brown. But she didn't want The Da Vinci Code, she wanted "the other one" by him. Well, usually when people say that they mean Angels and Demons even though the man wrote a half dozen other books. But when I said that title the woman gave me a decisive "No, that's not it." She went on to say it was on the same subject as The Da Vinci Code and that she thought it had the word "holy" in the title. I told her that Dan Brown doesn't HAVE any books that are on that same subject except for Angels and Demons being somewhat related, but she didn't believe me and kept repeating the bullshit info she had, adding that it had been said on PBS recently.

I told her that a lot of people are interested in the buzz kicked up by Holy Blood, Holy Grail and she told me that was it, so I told her it wasn't by Dan Brown. She said she must have been misinformed that it was by him, but she knew that was the right book. But when she found out that book isn't a novel, she began to doubt again that that was it. I showed it to her anyway and she said, "But it's not a novel?" I told her again it wasn't a novel, it was religious history, detailing the same information that Brown wrote about but actual facts rather than an exaggerated and fictionalized story. She looked at it a little more and then said she wanted me to take her to the place where books like this would be, except fictional ones. I had to explain that fiction is by author, not by "what they're about" or grouped by books that are like each other. So she asked me again if this book was a novel. For the third time I told her it was not a novel.

As we stood under the big sign that said "History/Theology," she kept rambling about what few little facts she knew and how interesting it would be to read it but that she didn't want to read something that wasn't a novel, and managed to ask THREE MORE TIMES whether this section was novels. I guess she saw a couple books on the shelf that would have seemed like appropriate titles for her subject if they hadn't been nonfiction. So I guess she was hoping the answer would change. Honestly I don't think she would have blinked or argued if I'd just changed my mind after the sixth time and told her it was a novel. She totally would have bought it. Too bad by this point I was happy that she wasn't satisfied. :)

Another winner: I helped a woman who wanted to know what books we carried by a certain author, and we only had two, one hardback and one paperback. Since she seemed very concerned about the prices, I pointed out that one was hardback but one was paperback, thinking she'd want the cheaper one, but then she pointed at the hardback--the newer one--and said, "And that one, is that paperback or hardcover?" Confused because, you know, SHE WAS LOOKING AT IT (and I'd already mentioned it), I told her the answer, and then she pointed at the paperback and asked about its cover too! I hate it when I have Assholes whose questions and comments are so ridiculous that it sounds like I'm making it up, but this lady was one of those. . . .

I had a girl on the phone asking for a study aid, and when I couldn't find it in the system and got to the end of my list without seeing anything that fit her description and told her so, she said nothing. Just silence. I asked if she was still there and she replied, "Oh yes, I'm just trying . . . to . . . well. . . . " Verbal skills here people! We're on the phone. I can't see you. I don't know what you're doing that prevents you from talking or why you're calling me to get information and then you don't give any indication that you've heard or processed what I said when I'm done speaking.

A guy came up and asked me where we keep our time measures. I'm like, huh? Stopwatches or something? We're a bookstore. . . . Turned out he wanted DAY PLANNERS, like datebooks. He changed his request from "time measures" to "time planners" and from there I figured out what he might mean and asked if it was like an appointment book, and he's like, "Yup!" He was obviously not foreign either, since everything else he said was accentless and understandable. . . . Who knows why he decided to call day planners "time measures."


On to April!


Backlinks:
MAIN PAGE
WRITING PAGE
JOURNALS PAGE
WORK LOG PAGE