Fretting over tenses.
It really does seem like the more of a bastard I am to my BN co-workers, the more they enjoy my presence. Over the last week or so I've been downright cranky, verging on ornery, and they fucking eat it up with giant spoons. For some reason I decided to sign up to work the Harry Potter mimdnight party tomorrow; actually, I know exactly why I signed up for it, but that reason has proven to be a bit lacking now that we are coming up on the actual event and I REALLY REALLY REALLY don't want to work it. Alas, this is the hand I dealt myself, and so tomorrow I will be working the hours of 6 PM - whenever the last person has gotten his or her vicious hands on a copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which probably means 2.30 AM or so. After that, I foresee heavy drinking. I also foresee light drinking during. Shhhhhh.
Expectations are a bitch, and customers are even bigger bitches. A woman asked if we were going to have a party for the book release date at the store. At the time she was actually holding a schedule of the events for tomorrow night, so I simply pointed to said schedule, going through the list of activities, which include face painting, wand making, fortune telling, magic shows with live owls and bunnies, as well as the live J.K. Rowling simulcast from Scotland and the performance by Jim Dale, beloved narrator of the Harry Potter audiobooks.
The customer then looked at me and said perhaps the last two words that I wanted to hear at that point, two words that made me want to leap over the counter, pound her brain out with a copy of John Irving's massive new load of self-aggrandizing horseshit, and personally consign her soul to an unspeakable Hell where a thousand torments will be visited upon her by many-cocked demons bearing the smiling face of Albus Dumbledore: "That's it?"
I stared at her dumbly for a second before she continued: "Someone told me you were having a party."
Yes, that's it. We are transforming the physical appearance of the store, setting up activities on every one of the place's four floors, bringing in an apparently immensely popular audiobook narrator for what I imagine is a substantial fee, setting up video monitors all over the store so that people can watch a live broadcast from Edinburgh Castle, and bringing live owls into the store, but none of that constitutes a party.
"That is the party," was all I could muster.
"Huh." And she walked away disappointed.
Work bloggery makes me tired, but I'd be remiss if I failed to mention the toothless, ragged-looking old woman who came in today asking for a book about military insignias. I dutifully looked up the book and told her she could find it on the fourth floor. She told me that she just wanted a printout of the book info so she could buy it later.
The near-homeless look of this woman was my first clue, and the second clue was all I needed: this woman was crazy. There are a couple of customers that do this: they come in, ask about books, and ask for us to print out the info. Some just want to know about one or two but some have a long list, either of specific titles or, like this woman, general topics. They are invariably old, rude, and unkempt, and they never ever ever buy anything.
Nevertheless, I printed out the info and gave her the sheet. Then she asked me for "a book called Rats."
"Rats is the title?" I asked.
"Any book on rats," she said, before clarifying, "Puerto Rican rats."
Yeah.
After printing out info on the first books I could find that seemed like they would quench her unruly thirst for knowledge of topics as varied as bathroom remodeling, tying knots, "A to Z gardening," and human cloning among others, I decided that I wasn't going to do anymore once it became clear that she wasn't going to stop until I stopped her. At this point she'd said "one more" about three times and I was not in the mood to keep going. I finally denied her request for a picture book of baby animals ("all baby animals," of course), saying "Ma'am, I can't just keep printing out this stuff for you."
"But I only need five more," she whined. "I need it for my research, for school!"
Thought but not said: "Yes, the curriculum at Crazy Old Toothless Woman Academy is a varied and rigorous one."
Throughout this "transaction," there was a man, clearly with her, who stood a bit back from her and off to the side, watching her. I can only assume this was her presumably long-suffering son, who I was sure was going to give me shit about the way I was treating his spacecase mother until I realized that he has to deal with this shit all the time, was probably more embarassed than anything else, and more than likely has hourly fantasies of murdering the old bag. In any case, I didn't have to deal with him, and his mother decided that she would head over to one of my co-workers and ask him to look up the book on baby animals, adding "he doesn't want to do it anymore" to her request in the kind of condescending, grandmotherly tone that makes me want to snap every neck in the world even those of my closest friends and loved ones.
When, after some time, my co-worker managed to find a baby animal book that matched her syllabus, she thanked him just loudly enough for me to hear it and offered her hand in thanks. He declined to shake it, which was a wise move considering that while I was looking up the book on healing herbs I happened to glance up at her and notice her fondling her right breast.
Everybody loves a storyteller. Perhaps that's it.
Expectations are a bitch, and customers are even bigger bitches. A woman asked if we were going to have a party for the book release date at the store. At the time she was actually holding a schedule of the events for tomorrow night, so I simply pointed to said schedule, going through the list of activities, which include face painting, wand making, fortune telling, magic shows with live owls and bunnies, as well as the live J.K. Rowling simulcast from Scotland and the performance by Jim Dale, beloved narrator of the Harry Potter audiobooks.
The customer then looked at me and said perhaps the last two words that I wanted to hear at that point, two words that made me want to leap over the counter, pound her brain out with a copy of John Irving's massive new load of self-aggrandizing horseshit, and personally consign her soul to an unspeakable Hell where a thousand torments will be visited upon her by many-cocked demons bearing the smiling face of Albus Dumbledore: "That's it?"
I stared at her dumbly for a second before she continued: "Someone told me you were having a party."
Yes, that's it. We are transforming the physical appearance of the store, setting up activities on every one of the place's four floors, bringing in an apparently immensely popular audiobook narrator for what I imagine is a substantial fee, setting up video monitors all over the store so that people can watch a live broadcast from Edinburgh Castle, and bringing live owls into the store, but none of that constitutes a party.
"That is the party," was all I could muster.
"Huh." And she walked away disappointed.
Work bloggery makes me tired, but I'd be remiss if I failed to mention the toothless, ragged-looking old woman who came in today asking for a book about military insignias. I dutifully looked up the book and told her she could find it on the fourth floor. She told me that she just wanted a printout of the book info so she could buy it later.
The near-homeless look of this woman was my first clue, and the second clue was all I needed: this woman was crazy. There are a couple of customers that do this: they come in, ask about books, and ask for us to print out the info. Some just want to know about one or two but some have a long list, either of specific titles or, like this woman, general topics. They are invariably old, rude, and unkempt, and they never ever ever buy anything.
Nevertheless, I printed out the info and gave her the sheet. Then she asked me for "a book called Rats."
"Rats is the title?" I asked.
"Any book on rats," she said, before clarifying, "Puerto Rican rats."
Yeah.
After printing out info on the first books I could find that seemed like they would quench her unruly thirst for knowledge of topics as varied as bathroom remodeling, tying knots, "A to Z gardening," and human cloning among others, I decided that I wasn't going to do anymore once it became clear that she wasn't going to stop until I stopped her. At this point she'd said "one more" about three times and I was not in the mood to keep going. I finally denied her request for a picture book of baby animals ("all baby animals," of course), saying "Ma'am, I can't just keep printing out this stuff for you."
"But I only need five more," she whined. "I need it for my research, for school!"
Thought but not said: "Yes, the curriculum at Crazy Old Toothless Woman Academy is a varied and rigorous one."
Throughout this "transaction," there was a man, clearly with her, who stood a bit back from her and off to the side, watching her. I can only assume this was her presumably long-suffering son, who I was sure was going to give me shit about the way I was treating his spacecase mother until I realized that he has to deal with this shit all the time, was probably more embarassed than anything else, and more than likely has hourly fantasies of murdering the old bag. In any case, I didn't have to deal with him, and his mother decided that she would head over to one of my co-workers and ask him to look up the book on baby animals, adding "he doesn't want to do it anymore" to her request in the kind of condescending, grandmotherly tone that makes me want to snap every neck in the world even those of my closest friends and loved ones.
When, after some time, my co-worker managed to find a baby animal book that matched her syllabus, she thanked him just loudly enough for me to hear it and offered her hand in thanks. He declined to shake it, which was a wise move considering that while I was looking up the book on healing herbs I happened to glance up at her and notice her fondling her right breast.
Everybody loves a storyteller. Perhaps that's it.
posted by Dktr. Blasphemy at 12:12 AM
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