the customer is always right (in their own mind)

well, kids...

i'm back in retail. and i am back at a book store. bonus. as some of you may know, i once worked at a book store chain and left for weird circumstances. but that is all behind me now as i have a great job, which i thoroughly enjoy at a new book store chain. and i'm not just saying all that because my boss might read my blog. i've said it before... working at a book store is great if you are at customer service because everyone that comes in the store assumes that you have read all the books that you sell. they ask you in almost reverent tones where they too might find a book which could offer them such enlightenment. it's like you are a librarian that doesn't shout at people for being too loud. sometimes you will have a customer that is stupefied that you can't find "that book with the word blue in the title that that guy on the radio was talking about this morning" "well, what radio station, ma'am?" "oh, i don't know. my kids were listening to it." and of course the that is the only information that they have to give. let me just say... i'm good, but i'm not that good. i once had a woman ask me to find "that book with the word wolf in the title". it wasn't about wolves but had a wolf on the cover. do you know how many books have the word "wolf" in the title? after scrolling through about 64 titles, i gave up and told her to just call when she had more info. on my first day at my new job, i had someone ask me for the "new" bram stoker novel. stoker died in 1912. i don't think that he has had anything published in a while. i have a friend who worked for the same company as myself and he had a frustrated woman that wanted a specific edition of the new testament. i say frustrated because at reaching her wits end in not finding what she wanted, turned to him and asked pleadingly, "when did they start putting the old and new testaments together?" oh, i don't know, like 300 AD. god, i love those strange few customers that give my blog fodder.

i've only been working at the store for a little less than a month, but already i have had some folks that defy normalcy. there is one guy that used to hang out at my old bookstore that now hangs out at my new bookstore. that man gives me the heebie jeebies. to me, he looks like what i imagine gollum would have looked like if instead of lurking in the depths of the misty mountains, had moved to a trailer park and eaten twinkies while he fondled "the precious". needless to say, i tend to stay on the other side of the store when i see this fellow. i'm sure he's nice but i tend to judge on my instincts and my instincts tell me to run away, run away! we have our share of oddballs, sure. like the old guys that buy a readers digest, paula dean's newest cookbook and the best of lesbian erotica of 2008. or the emo kids that think that they look very individualistic but actually look like the other group of emo kids that just left, who looked like the other emo kids that were there the night before. there is always at least one parent, every shift, that can not or will not control their child/ children. and there is at least one perv (probably trailer park gollum) that leaves random bits of porn all over the store. thank god, i like my co-workers

that is the thing about retail... it is a lot easier to get through a shift when you enjoy working with the staff. my last bookstore had a fun group of booksellers but the manager was difficult and looked like a giraffe. not that she was difficult because she looked like a giraffe, but she did and she was. i don't know what her deal was but she always seemed to not like me. it happens. i was good at my job, great at upselling, gift co-ordinating, and customer service but i was never "good enough" to achieve the employee of the month. and it was obvious to the entire staff that she purposely skipped me every month. so i took it upon myself to buy a oversized novelty button that read, "employee of the month" and wore it under my name tag. if anyone congratulated me on my "achievement" i would politely explain that it was a joke and that the actual EOTM was whomever it happened to be at that time. everyone would laugh and i would carry on with my work. perhaps my sassiness is why i no longer work there. this group i've now joined seem to be able to take a bit of sass and dish out some of their own. thank god. it's just a job, not life or death. they are just books. in the end all will be ok, so just work hard and enjoy it, eh?

but i guess that is the most important part of having a job. to enjoy. i don't work in offices because, i am too much of a free spirit. i get bored and then i get feisty, then i get fired. i have worked so many places (one of the many drawbacks of working in theatre professionally -- you have to supplement your income somehow.) but i find that doing a job where i get to assist people in some way, i like to think that i excel (or at least am kinda good). i enjoy the environment of being surrounded by books. i may not be much of a writer but i can absorb the power of the written word from the great minds that have gone before and paved the way for the next tolkin, Shakespeare, rowling and dickens. the next great name in literature may frequent my store and just maybe i will be the one that leads them to the book that fuels the flames of their literary career. the next Pulitzer prize winning author may be standing on the other side of the counter from me. watch it be trailer park gollum. *skeevy*