Manic.

We'll see if the shakiness will allow me to give you a report of Friday night's big release party for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Any typos or misspellings can and will be blamed on my unsteady hands.

I already regretted signing up to work this event, but I didn't really regret it until I walked into the store and my fight-or-flight response kicked in. I've been in crowded places before, but for some reason the atmosphere in the store was terrifying to me. Maybe it was the people in costume, all of whom I absolutely refused to look in the eye.

There were owls, as promised, and they were actually really, really cool; one of them was an older bird, a dark-feathered owl with huge orange eyes that the handler had raised from an egg, while the other was younger, with white feathers and a black face. There were also fake Harry Potter glasses which made me wish I wore glasses, as I've totally mastered the Meaningful Glasses Remove, as perfected by Anthony Stewart Head on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Prior to being put on a register from 9:30 until the end of the night, I didn't actually have a whole lot to do other than work on the Meaningful Glasses Remove and tell people where to go to get the numbered wristbands that determined their place in line at midnight. Wandering around the store for a while, I was struck by the age-inappropriateness of the suggestively clad women that were posing for photos with terribly lonely guys who presumably couldn't make it to this weekend's San Diego Comic Convention (aka Nerd Prom). And how many of the young boys and girls who packed the store will develop schoolgirl fetishes as a result of the decision to dress up two of the more comely BN employees in academy attire?

The low point of this pre-register period was undoubtedly the Silly High School Girls. Eventually I was stationed outside the store to open the doors for people with strollers and answer questions. So I just propped the door open and leaned on it, taking in the sights. Several people annoyed the hell out of me by telling me some variant of "Well, don't you look excited," as if I'm supposed to be ecstatic about working at Barnes and Noble on probably the busiest day in the store's history. The Silly High School Girls started out as nothing more significant than that. One of them tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Come on, Gregor¹, it's Harry Potter day!! Get excited!!" I gave them the same fake smile that I give every customer that tries to be funny and assumed that'd be the end of it.

You probably already figured out that this was not in fact the end of it. Eventually they came back out and decided to just kick back in front of the store. They were all dressed up as I don't know what, magicians I guess. And they kept talking to me. The head Silly High School Girl offered to take my Saturday shift if I'd give her my special BN Harry Potter t-shirt. The whole thing was really excruciating and I just had to stand there and pretend I didn't want to snap their Silly High School Necks. Once I finally got to go back in the store, they passed by the info desk where I was stationed and said something to me, I forget what, as they went upstairs. Once again, fake smile, and once they were past I just put my head in my hands and shook it while my co-workers wondered aloud why a group of young girls had just called out to me. I looked up and realized that they were looking at me, i.e., they'd seen how I'd reacted once I thought they weren't looking. They didn't bother me again.

I don't know why I was put on a register two hours before the release of the book. It was intensely boring as nobody was buying anything. I just stood around making not-unpleasant small talk with a bunch of employees I don't know because they are cashiers and I work at information and never the twain shall meet. Once the book actually went on sale, though, everything became kind of a blur. First customer had pre-ordered a regular copy and a deluxe version. The deluxe versions hadn't been brought out yet so as we stood there waiting for them she repeated, over and over again like a mantra, "And one deluxe version. One deluxe version. Deluxe. Deluxe. Deluxe deluxe deluxe. Deluxe."

Most customers didn't stand out, though², and I was able to reduce interaction with most of them to the absolute bare minimum: How many. $19.50. How many. $19.50. How many. $38.99. How many. $19.50. It was kind of nice, actually. There are always people who want to make small talk, though, and in particular there were several people who asked if I'd had a chance to read the book yet. The word "yet" was always in there, as if there did not exist the possibility that I wasn't interested in reading the book. I don't know what irritated me more: the presumption that because they are chomping at the bit to read this book I must also be, or the idea that I somehow had time to read the book while on cashiering on, again, probably the busiest night in the store's history. I'm near-frantically ringing these books up as the store manager stands at the head of the line barking orders to cashiers and customers alike, but in-between customer number 557 and 558 I managed to read a couple of chapters. Fuck you, next customer. How many. $19.50.

And that's it, really. The only other thing that stood out about my Harry Potter cashiering experience was the woman who came up to me brandishing her receipt with a pissed expression on her face. When I asked her what was up, she said, in a really unnecessarily rude tone, "You forgot to give me my books!"

I heard "book" so I gave her a copy. "I bought two," she said, so I gave her another and she stomped off. The idea that in having walked off without her books she might share the blame for what happened probably never occured to her.

My hands are still shaking.

---

¹ Still not my real name, no.
² I didn't mention this in the original entry, but there was a guy who was dressed as Albus Dumbledore and refused to break character even as he was buying a book in which, as it turns out, his character dies. He even signed the credit card slip "Albus Dumbledore." My dreams were awash in his blood that night.

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.