“I can’t shop under these conditions”

…Has to be my favourite quote from last week at work.
Poor customer, wanting to buy two US-published guitar magazines. They tallied up to around the €12 mark and he was most unhappy. I explained to him that the retail price of the magazines is set by the magazine wholesaler, and not by us, and then explained that the mags are first imported into the UK and then imported here – hence getting double the hammering on taxes that UK mags get – hence the higher prices. He wouldn’t accept that and kept on at me. I told him that it is not within my power, or my manager’s power, to change the pricing, basically, it is what it is. He kept going away and coming back like I’d change my mind every time he came up to the counter. Eventually I suggested that he look around and see if other local stores carried the magazine, and compare what they were charging to what we were charging. He responded with “But if you’re telling me the truth they’ll be the same price everywhere.”

Yup, that’s true. Took him a while, but he got the point. That was when he told me “I can’t shop under these conditions” and demanded to see my manager. The manager was out on lunch, so he complained to two other staff members, at length, then went away and came back only to find the manager was in a meeting. I still don’t get what he thought he’d accomplish by speaking to a manager, but I guess we’ll find out someday soon.

A workmate also told me about a customer she had who wanted to buy a book, the only information they had being that it was “translated from something into something else”. Um? Okaaay. We can assume it was translated into English, but they had no idea what language it was translated from, or even what the book was about. The bookseller tried all the hot titles (Steig Larsson, Vikas Swarup etc.) to no avail, and eventually had to gently let the customer know that their request was simply too vague, and that a bit more information would prove useful. On hearing that story, I’m beginning to reconsider the whole “cream and written by a woman” school of looking for books. At least a cover colour and an author gender gives us something….

Then yesterday I was accosted by a customer who wanted to know if there was a Mind Body & Spirit festival going on locally. I told him I didn’t know. He told me he was sure there was. I told him I was really sorry, but I could only help him find Mind Body & Spirit books, but had no knowledge of any such festival. He was adamant that it was going on. He was also adamant that I had this information and was being obtuse in refusing to share it with him. (Oh yeah, I like to hoard all the Mind Body & Spirit goodies all for myself, obviously. My persistent woo-allergy does not preclude me from doing this, oh no!).

I told him that the only thing I knew about that was happening locally was the weekly organic market and told him how to get there, also suggesting that he try checking on the web to see if what he was talking about was actually happening. That was a mistake. He then wanted to use our computers to google it. I said that wasn’t possible and directed him to an internet café. He told me I wasn’t very helpful. I bit my tongue to keep from telling him that a bookstore does not equal a tourist office, and instead said that if I had known anything about any such festival, I would have told him. Because I didn’t, I couldn’t. As a last ditch effort, I directed him to the shopping centre and advised him to ask in the health food store there, or to pick up one of the local free-sheets which would surely contain any information he was looking for. Apparently I should also have had one of those free-sheets on my person because telling him where to get them was just not good enough (sing it with me now…). Eventually he went away.

People who cannot recognize the illogic of their actions hurt my brain.

Retail frustration #18464731

…or thereabouts.

I work in a bookstore. We sell books. Therefore one would assume that most people who come into the store like reading, from this comes the not-too-unreasonable assumption that they can read.

It may be a bad assumption.

Several times a day I see people standing in front of the locked bathroom door, staring at the sign that tells them the bathroom key can be obtained from the coffee shop. If I’m shelving in that area they inevitably ask me for the key (not just me, any bookseller in the general area can be swooped upon). When we point out that we don’t carry the key, they get narky. Refer them to the sign they’ve just been staring at and you get called a “smartass”. I had a woman yesterday tell me to “get the key” for her. I advised her to go to the coffee shop and she glared at me. I didn’t doubt she had read the sign, and it occurred to me afterwards that this is yet another example of the entitlement problem; she didn’t feel like walking all the way to the coffee shop, so I should have obliged and skipped off there to get a key for her. Er, nope.

Add to that the number of people who stare at the sign at customer services, advising them to go downstairs to pay, and then say “Can you take for these books here?” and we’re looking at serious reading comprehension failure. Either that or they think the signs are an elaborate ruse we’ve cooked up to entertain ourselves…

And one from a co-worker who was working the customer service desk when a woman came upstairs and made a beeline for her and a colleague, blurting out as she reached them, “I’m looking for a book that’s downstairs at the till, where can I find it?” (I kid you not). Co-worker one was busily trying to think of a way to explain politely what that meant, when co-worker two asked, with arched eyebrow; “Downstairs at the till maybe?” From what I heard, that customer at least had the grace to be embarrassed for not having listened to what she’d been told in the first place.

People, seriously, there’s no point in getting all cranky with booksellers when you refuse to believe clearly printed signs, or even listen to what we’re telling you.

Deranged and demanding…

Some dispatches from co-workers.

Firstly, the deranged:

Customer comes into the shop (evidently having worked up a full head of steam), marches to the till, slaps down a Collins World Atlas, and informs the hapless bookseller at the till that he is going to sue the shop.

She is puzzled by this and asks why.

His response? He bought the atlas (note: ATLAS not map) because he was planning a trip to Spain and wanted to check whether or not a particular road was finished or not. He didn’t ask any of the booksellers present at the time whether an atlas (that will be revised once every 4-5 years, and that will be sent for formatting months before it hits the shelves) would be the best way to find such up-to-the-minute information. Nope. Nor did it occur to him to use t’internets to double-check whatever the atlas said.  He went to Spain and the road wasn’t finished, even though the atlas said it was (funnily, I think it probably said somewhere that the road was “due” to have been completed by the time the atlas went on sale, but anyone with a passing familiarity with road projects would know that “due” is not the same as “will be”. In Spain or anywhere else.)

Recognising that he was not liable to be swayed by logic, the bookseller offered him his money back on the Atlas. Nope, not good enough (really, I’m going to write a song called “not good enough” with a refrain we can all hum as a calming mantra when dealing with people like him). He was determined to sue us. Now, the bookseller gently suggested he might consider suing Collins instead since they produced the atlas, but he was having none of it. We sold him the book and we “didn’t warn him” that it may contain inaccurate information with relation to roads in Spain.

Now, I ask you – how were we supposed to know what he was buying it *for* if he didn’t consult with us? How can we “warn people” about content idiosyncratically specific to them? Like the lady who wanted the dictionary with only “hard words” (by her own unique definition of what they are), there is an expectation that when we sell something to someone we should be somehow psychically aware of what they want it for – no matter how bizarre – and be able to warn them if it may not fit the bill.

I guess if he wants to waste money on suing the shop, that gentleman (and I use the term strictly as a matter of politesse) may learn that the judiciary are a bit smarter about realistic retail expectations that he is.  Or maybe he would then sue them too? Who knows.

Now to the customer that takes the cake for most demanding ever which, as you can guess if you’ve read any of the guff on here, is no mean feat.

Picture the scene, there is a book launch about to start upstairs in the shop, apart from the trainee manager, there are two staff in the entire shop. The lift (as we all know by now) is out of order. Said managerial type is busily trying to figure out the PA system, set out chairs, wineglasses, and put together the lectern and back-drop, all on his lonesome. He is VERY busy. Upstairs there’s one staff member fielding inquiries and selling books to people who have come for the launch. Downstairs there is one bookseller at the front tills.

In marches woman with pram. She wanders around, discovers the lift is out of order and demands someone help her bring the pram upstairs (it was a demand, not a request, I am assured of this). Bookseller at till explains that she can’t leave the tills unattended, but rings upstairs to get bookseller no. 2 down to carry the pram upstairs.  This he does.

When upstairs the woman makes a beeline for the obviously extremely busy manager and proceeds to waste his time with inane questions. He played along, getting increasingly frazzled as the launch was due to start any second. Eventually, he had to excuse himself to attend to that, and Ms. Demanding did not approve of this at all. No, she needed to go back downstairs, and required both him and the other bookseller to help her since she had one book and one magazine to carry, and couldn’t be expected to do that. They boggled, both of them, but like the princes they are, one carried the buggy down and the other carried the book and magazine for her.

Downstairs, the bookseller behind the till watched this with incredulity. She was busily serving customers, and Ms. Demanding joined the queue with a mere 2 people ahead of her. Guess what? Not Good Enough (sing it with me now!).  After ten seconds she piped up: “Is there no-one to serve me????”

Uh, think she’d had quite enough service for one evening…

Anyway, bookseller at till explains that there is only her down there (obviously), but is brow-beaten by customer into getting the poor beleaguered manager back downstairs to serve her. This he does, and the woman decided not to buy the book after all while at the till (thus rendering null and void any trip upstairs and all the distraction she has caused) and leaves with her cheap magazine, muttering about how her child has been made fractious by all the delays. Um, I’m presuming here she meant her “inner child” since according to all present, the baby in the pram slept through everything. Lucky kid.

So she leaves, and they all breathe a sigh of relief. Not ten minutes later, bookseller at till notices a flashy car is double parked on the road outside the store, hazards flashing. In marches Ms. Demanding (minus child, presumably left out in the CAR which is DOUBLE-PARKED, with the engine running…so, yeah, the kid is obviously a priority) runs around the store, saying nothing but giving the evils to all the staff before running out again. They think this is odd, but hope it’s the last they’ve seen of her.

At about 20 mins to closing a customer approaches the till with an iphone in their hand. Someone has left it behind. The bookseller at the till roots through the phone-book (we always do this), looking for a number listed as “Home” or some other way to contact the owner. The phone is obviously new as there are only about six numbers listed, and none leap out as family contacts for the owner. She shrugs and pops the phone under the counter, to keep it safe until it can be locked in the safe awaiting it’s owner.

5 minutes to closing the phone rings, manager answers it and is met with a panicked “Did someone hand in a phone???”. He recognises the voice instantly. He says he’s not sure and passes the phone over to the downstairs bookseller (with an eye-roll). She is asked the same question, in the same tone. And responds with one of her own: “What kind of phone?”

Ms. Demanding starts berating her for having had the temerity to ask a question without having answered what she was asked first, but is met with a calm and level: “We get several phones handed in every day. It would help me to answer your question if I knew what type of phone you meant.” Huffily the customer manages “An iphone, not that it’s any of your business” (?!?).

She is told that an iphone was indeed handed in. Next question: “When do you close?”

Simple answer “In 5 minutes.”

Guess what? “Not good enough.” (It did occur to me to make this a drinking game, instead of a song, but anyone reading several posts here would end up with liver damage). “I can’t get to you in time. Someone should wait for me to come down and pick up my phone.”

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” (We do have lives, y’know, and if she’d been a bit less demanding someone may have hung around with the phone. She just wasn’t the type to generate extra-mile goodwill from anyone.)

“Well then, someone should drop it up to me.”

The bookseller was stunned and spoke without thinking: “Are you serious?”

She was. She was also making a heck of an assumption that anyone working at the store (a) has a car or (b) drove to work or (c) good customer service means acting as a courier service out of work hours for customers with a severe entitlement complex.

“I’m afraid that would not be possible.”

“Why not? I need my phone. I only live in (location a 25 minute drive away)”

“Best I can do for you madam, is put your phone in our safe and you can collect it when we open in the morning.”

“That’s not..”

“It’s the best we can do.”

(Grudgingly) “Alright then but I need it put in the safe right now, immediately. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you, but I can’t put it there now as I’m on the phone to you and the safe is elsewhere in the building. But I will put it there as soon as humanly possible.”

“And your name is?”

Bookseller duly furnishes her name.

“Right, I’ll see you at 9am tomorrow.”

“Er, I’m not working tomorrow, but-” (she was going to say that any manager or senior bookseller could retrieve the phone from the safe but was cut off)

“What do you mean not working???? You’ll have to come in to give me my phone!!!”

Eventually Ms Demanding grasps that her phone can be retrieved from other staff members and gets off the phone after several minutes complaining about our useless customer service.

It was then 20 minutes after the store should have closed.

And thus Ms. Demanding has set a new gold-standard for “unreasonable expectations of service”. I really really hope no-one else comes along to raise the bar still higher. And if they do, I really hope I’m not dealing with them…

Some things never change…

Remember when you were a child and some grown-up accused you of lying because you had a black spot on your tongue?

I used to think this was a uniquely Irish Catholic phenomenon but it seems there are variations on it globally. I also thought, like the whole notion of  a place called limbo full of dead, un-baptized babies, that it had faded away and was now only there as proof of how screwy things were in the past.

My bad. There I was at work, with a couple of sweet kids and their grandmother buying some books. The boy decided he wanted some Match Attacks (what kid doesn’t these days) and his grandmother (not much over 40) told him he’d already gotten some earlier in the week. He said he hadn’t (he really wanted them, they’re like paper-based crack for boys that age) and she said he was lying. And then proceeded to tell him she knew because his tongue was “turning black” and that if he kept it up his tongue “will wither away and fall off” (wtf?! That’s taking it to a new level. Bitch!). She went on and on about blackened tongues and not being able to speak, while I stood there grinding my teeth and trying to remember the lyrics to “Black Tongue” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs so I wouldn’t feel tempted to wallop her.

How is it ok to feed kids with such rampant stupidly scary-making misinformation in this day and age? Why do clueless parents get all up in arms about “the dangers of videogames” when kids are having worse crap fed to them by people they trust and are supposed not to question?

I don’t know why it annoyed me so much, but I know that it did.

I had a customer yesterday inform me (as though my creaking knees hadn’t noticed) that our lift has been out of order “for a few days now”. Her tone was dripping with the potential for nastiness. I explained that the repair company needed to get parts for it from the UK and offered to carry anything she needed help with. She frowned at me and told me that (the favourite expression of our snootier-than-thou customers) “is not good enough”. I was rather tired and so merely boggled at her til she went away (saying she’d come back in a few days and “it had better be fixed”).

We’ve already seen customers who expect me, personally, to fix the damn thing because they are inconvenienced, now I’m expected to craft specialist replacement parts on the spot, and out of thin air? Wtf?

I have alts that are smiths/engineers in WoW, but even if they had very high skill levels I’d never be out of it enough to think that their skills could translate to reality. What prompts silly members of the public to think that booksellers are also multi-skilled part-making, lift-fixing wonders? And if they are inconvenienced by having to take the stairs on their rare trips into the shop, how do they think we feel about having to run up and down them umpteen times a day? Honestly, my knees are less happy about there not being a lift than they are.

Hello, I’m a chancer…

Ok, he didn’t actually say that, but he might as well have. On a day when we were severely low on staff (darned flu/virus thing that everybody seems to be catching all at once) a man comes up to the counter and demands to know how much is off the book he wants in the sale. Short answer, nothing as there is not a bloody great SALE sticker on the front of it (can you tell I’m getting tired of explaining that?) but he was treated to a calm explanation of the concept of sale stock by one of the booksellers at the till.

He goes away, muttering. Next thing he spots another bookseller at the till and comes up to her demanding she make an offer on the book price for him as the book is “damaged”. She takes the book from him and examines it. It is, in fact, pristine. Mint, you could say. She tells him that the book is perfect and she can’t offer a reduction for shop-soiling on a book that is pristine. He harangues her, asking how she can claim the book is perfect: “Look at it! You think that’s not damaged?!” Er, yeah, she did. He kept on and on at her, but she didn’t bend, and he left in a strop, minus the book. She didn’t know he’d tried to get money off it already, and being a conscientious sort she nabbed me as soon as I came in from the coffee shop down the road (I was on a break) to check she’d done the right thing. The book (a collection of 60’s and 70’s film posters, with a glossy black cover) was indeed mint. There were some fingerprints on it, but they could be wiped off. Allegedly, if you tilted it towards the light at an odd angle there was what seemed to be a tiny scuff-mark on it. A wipe with some pledge and a duster, and the mark vanished. She didn’t know about the pledge method – but she’ll know to use it next time. I’m actually sorry I wasn’t there to wipe it down in front of him and ask him where the “mark” was…

Another one today, woman says her son bought a cookbook for his wife and got it for 50% off. She wants it today. I explain that the sale is over and the book is now 25% off (it was never actually 50% off, but that’s another story…). She says she was only coming in at 10.30 this morning because it was hard to find parking (?!), I point out that the sale actually ended a few days ago. She again says she doesn’t want to pay more than he did. I raise an eyebrow at her and point out that I cannot just sell her the book at 50% off. She wants to know why. I explain that the sale was for a limited time only and the prices today are different to the prices during the sale (amazing how people don’t “get” the notion of a sale). She wants a special exception made for her. At this point I knew she knew she was pushing it, so told her that if she didn’t want the book, she didn’t have to buy it, but I could not sell it at a price other than the one on the cover. She caved and bought it.

Next the parade of people who refuse to understand the terms and conditions for redeeming those €10 vouchers we’ve been having such fun with (there would be sarcasm dripping out your screens about now if it were possible). They keep telling us that they already spent €30 before Christmas to get their vouchers and why should they have to spend another €30 now to get the “money back” (it’s not money, it’s a piece of paper with terms and conditions attached to it)? One lady went so far as to produce tears and her original receipt from when she was given the voucher. Lovely.

Wouldn’t mind, but we all foresaw this, and so all booksellers (in our store)told people to check the Terms and Conditions on the vouchers when we gave them out. It would appear that people are not inclined to listen, or read the Ts&Cs, they just want to buy one book that is €8.95 and have us give them change from their €10 voucher. Fat chance.

One day to go til my holidays. Boy, do I need that break!

Oh for God’s sake, get back in your boxes!

*cough*

Sorry. That is a plea to the weirdos who have been making life difficult in work over the past while.

It is a weird feeling to be working in a shop that sells books and wanting to say (several times a day) “Learn to read, why dontcha!”.

Examples? Let me show you them:

Customer comes in, says she wants to return books she bought from us. Proceeds to take a load of books out of a Hodges Figgis bag. With Hodges Figgis price stickers on them. Bookseller looks at her, eyebrows raised, “Er, sorry. We’re not Hodges Figgis.” Customer disagrees.

Eh, there’s a bloody great sign over the door with the shop’s name on it, and it ain’t HF. There’s also promo matieral everywhere you look in the shop, none of which is for Hodges Figgis. Bookseller gently explains that Hodges Figgis are in town, on Dawson Street, that there is only one branch. She also points out that we have never stocked any of the (highly specialised academic) textbooks she’s trying to return. When that fails, she points to the HF price stickers. Customer finally accepts defeat.

You’d think. Nope, she leaves the shop only to come back 10 mins later and insist that she had bought the books in this very store.

Eeeep?

Next a customer who wants a book that she knows nothing about, so far so familiar, right? But this one had a special spin. She made the bookseller look up an author because the book was part of a series and this guy had written one of the books. He didn’t exist anywhere on the databases we have. Then she wanted a phrase searched for as it was the series umbrella title. No joy. Then she wanted a publisher searched for. Fine, we found them, but it transpired they weren’t the people who published the series. It would seem that she knew this, but thought she should ask for the search in case the bookseller didn’t know how to google. Next she wanted a search for books on photography, because there are photographs in this nebulous book. That threw back about 10,000 results. From what she said the book seemed to be a publication from a small local press. We couldn’t find them either. At this point the bookseller’s head was near implosion, and the woman looks at her with a  smile and says “I know I should probably look it up myself, but it’s not like you’re busy or anything…”. Oh really? We were incredibly short-handed in work today, and everyone was trying to do about 10 things at once. So, there weren’t a lot of customers at that particular time, but oddly enough, we all had better things to do than wasting 25 minutes on a wild-goose chase.

Then there was angry lady with cane, who bellowed at me while I was doing a book search for another customer. She wanted to know where the books on pets were. I told her I was helping someone at that moment, but I could direct her to the section and would help her when I had finished locating/ordering the book for the customer I was with. She went away and came back 2 mins later saying there were no books on pets in the natural history / pets  section. I was still serving the same customer. I told her I was sorry if my directions were wrong, but I would bring her over to the books when I was finished with the person I was helping. She brandished her cane at me and bellowed about how difficult it was for her to walk. I suggested she sit down on a stool beside the counter and wait. She looked daggers at me. The customer I was serving made the grave error of giving me a wry smile, only for her to round on him, waving her came and shouting at him “Do you think this is funny? Do you? What is so bloody amusing?”.  I thought she was going to wallop the poor man. To defuse matters I asked a young chap who is with us for work-experience to bring her over and show her the section on pets, and to bring the stool with him so she could sit and browse at her leisure. Thankfully she didn’t come back over, and the customer I was dealing with eventually got his two books ordered in relative peace and quiet.

So… business as usual in the retail trenches. I’m off to cook dinner now, but there are more tales from the epic struggle to sell books without killing customers to come. Stay tuned!

“I’m not just intolerant”

Announced a customer to me, out of the blue the other day.

I boggled. Then she decided to expand: “I’m not just gluten intolerant, I’m lactose intolerant.”

Again a boggle. I mean, why walk up to a bookseller and announce this? Next she starts wittering about the Patrick Holford clinic in London (I think I was supposed to be impressed) and how they had “diagnosed” her (quelle surprise etc.) as having food issues that they could treat for her. So she wanted a book (eventually this came out) that they had told her to buy (along with a bucketload of Holford snake oil pills). Oddly enough the book  wasn’t readily available, which caused her to have a strop, which I guess proved that she is intolerant… and that what Holford says doesn’t make books sell. Thankfully.

Then today, a co-worker tells me that they had a customer the other day who had a complaint about dictionaries. It was unique in that she wanted a dictionary that contained only “hard words”. As an example she opened a dictionary to an random entry and announced “Hygiene! See I already know what that means. That’s no use to me. I need something that only has words that I don’t already know.”  The bookseller boggled a bit before explaining that dictionaries contain all kinds of words, and that people who are learning english (for example) may not know the words she considered to be “too simple” for inclusion. Not good enough. Apparently the dons of Oxford should psychically produce personalized dictionaries for customers like her. And possibly label hers with her name too, and only produce one copy and arrange to have it shelved somewhere she’ll be sure to come across it. Yeah….

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, people manage to surprise you.

Urrrrrffffff…

New year, slack on posting as  I have been busy at work, and having a birthday and stuff.

One thing that struck me, and that is possibly worth a mention, is the lunacy that overtakes bookworms at bookstore sales time. Today is the 8th of January and so far this year I have purchased 15 books, plus I have more set aside at work (I think there are 5 under my name…) – so that’s around 20, not counting the bounty of books recieved as gifts for Christmas/birthday…. so when will I get to read all of them? And what on earth possessed me to dive into the bucket of proofs at work and root out another 4 books to add to the pile? I am hereby banning myself from buying any more books until at least March, when I should have some of this lot read. Let’s see if I can stick to that….

Joy from work – before Christmas (yeah, I’m a slacker) a customer confounded a manager at work by looking for a book about the American Revolution that he’d heard a lot about. A trawl through he history section produced nothing. He was asked if he was sure of the subject, yes of course he was. Did he know the author by any chance? Yep, someone called “Bates”. After much to-ing and fro-ing it transpired that he was after “Revolutionary Road” by Richard Yates….which is not about the American Revolution at all at all… but I suppose it has “Revolution” in the title and is set in America…. sigh.

And my top bookseller moment of 2008 was – selling a mystery shopper a copy of “What was Lost” (which contains a hilarious section devoted to the increasingly insane ramblings of a mystery shopper on the edge) without knowing they were a mystery shopper. They were looking for a book for a book club, allegedly. There were very nice about me in their report though…. I wonder why?

So far this year I have managed to read one book, Tom Bedlam by George Hagen, which is a grand read, an old-fashioned page-turner where you can forgive the strikingly small-world-ness of people crossing paths on different continents because it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling, and where you really do care about the characters, which always matters.

I have also partly re-read Toni Morrison’s Jazz for the book-club at work (last read it in college just after it came out) and now I want to re-read Paradise as well (read Beloved again a year or two ago) since I’d forgotten how much I love that trilogy (of sorts). Have to finish Jazz again first though.

I also skimmed through Hayden Herrera’s book on Frida Kahlo’s paintings (on sale for €10!) which a colleague very kindly made sure was kept for me. I’ll give it a proper read when I have time, though a lot of the text seems to come straight from the bio, which I have owned three times since 1992 – it has become one of those books I refuse to let people borrow. I just bought this one for the colour plates of the paintings though, so I’m not fussed if the text does turn out to be a rehash.

Next up on the to-be-read pile is “Due Preparations for the Plague” by Janette Turner Hospital, which I’ve been intrigued by for a while. Picked up the hardback for a song (yay for sales!) so I’ll finally get to have my curiosity sated.

So if I’m quiet for a while it’s because I’m working my way through thirty books – although I’ll post the good the bad (but not the indifferent) as I go. Also, stupendously silly/irritating/angry customers will always merit mention, if only because it feels good to vent into cyber-nothingness!

Things I learned (so far) this Christmas…

1. Some people find Christmas muzac “disturbing, distressing and upsetting”, and they feel the need to scream at you about this at the top of their lungs – unaware of how disturbing/distressing/upsetting that may be for you. Luckily the complainer in this case was shrugged off with a smile. I wonder how he’ll react to me wearing my Santa hat tomorrow?

2. More people than you’d imagine do their shopping at the next-to-last minute. There was a scrum of people around our tills from 9am this morning. 9-10 is normally quite quiet and allows us to restock and tidy up a bit, not so today. It was all go from the moment the doors opened.

3. Just like last year, everyone wants the same few books, all of which have sold out *everywhere* by now – but this year they expect us to be able to tell them if our competitors have them in stock. Uh? I wouldn’t know, and even if I did, why don’t you go to one of them and see?

4. People are cheap. Seriously cheap. I had 8 customers today blow cylinder head gaskets because they thought our €10 vouchers were actual book tokens that they could give as presents. When I pointed out that they were not really suitable gifts as they had terms and conditions attached (ie, you have to spend €30 on books to redeem each one…) they told me (variously) “That’s just stupid!”, “That’s no use at all!”, “You’re criminals” (!) etc. etc. Some of them even returned books they’d bought to get the voucher, and then refused to give the voucher back – and we’re criminals?

5. And people are also smart, once we started giving the voucher with book token/gift-card purchases they all started buying gift cards for €30, like some weird sort of savings scheme – they buy the gift card now, for the amount they’ll have to spend, then scoop up the voucher and spend all €40 when the vouchers become valid. Clever, but transparent, and somehow unfair. It’s meant to be a reward for large spends, not a savings scheme.

5. People are rude. They think nothing of jumping a queue to scream a query at you while you’re attempting to deal with other (lesser in their eyes) customers. I sent three people to the back of the queue today during a particularly busy period. As did my co-workers. The people in the queue waited their turn, so can the pushy people.

6. Some people are lovely. Patient, gracious and unflappable – they are grateful for the help you can offer, and a joy to deal with. I suspect many of these people have experience of the retail sector at Christmas. Never mind the possible reasons – these people rock. And I salute them!

And a piece of wisdom I’d like to impart: never ever ring a bookshop within 3 days of Christmas. Either everyone will be too busy to answer the phone, or when they go to check if they actually physically have a copy of the book you want, they will be descended upon by 5 people at a time trying to distract them from finding your book for you. No exaggeration. I went out of the floor today without my name badge (no, it doesn’t say ‘creamandwrittenbyawoman’ on it…), realised immediately and headed to the staffroom to put it on, that took 25 minutes as I was stopped 8 times en route. That’s a record.

Blog on hiatus til after Christmas – happy holiday-of-your-choice one and all!

Getting this down quick…

So I don’t forget. A colleague had this lovely conversation today:

Customer: Where do you keep your fictional history?

Colleague (squinting at him and going WTF? in her head): Um, the history section is upstairs, and fiction is downstairs. what kind of book are you looking for?

Customer (looking at her like she’s not very bright): Fictional history. I said. Most places have a section for it.

Colleague (ponders): Do you by any chance mean historical fiction?

Customer (world-wearily): Yes, that’s what I said. Now where’s the section.

Colleague: Well, we don’t actually break up the fiction section like that here. Can you tell me what authors you like, and I can show you some other authors that write historical fiction.. (now, she was thinking along the lines of Steven Saylor or medieval/Elizabethan historical novels, heavily researched, y’know the kind).

Customer: Wilbur Smith, like.

Colleague: ….? (boggle)

Customer: Yeah, he wrote all those great historical books about colonial Africa. Something like that.

Eeep. Now, the obvious ones to push here are Ken Follet and Bernard Cromwell, with a side of George MacDonald Fraser,  and she didn’t slip up there, but she was a bit taken aback by the notion of Wilbur Smith as a historical novelist. As would anyone be. It made me smile.

Today I only had five people making me offers on books that were clearly priced.

It’s not a damn bazaar people, there is no haggling for a better price!

I had a woman ringing in a panic about the Nigella Lawson Christmas book and practically screaming down the phone at me to hold one for her as she’d be right down for it…uh, yeah. Ok. We have like 120 of them, it’s no sweat to keep it for you. I assured here there’d be one behind the till with her name on it. Poor lady must have thought I was being overly laid back because she arrived down in under 10 minutes, all red-faced and sure it would have sold out. Bless.

Now, I know there’s a recession on and money is tight, but I really really was blown away today by the number of people who protested at (one of) our current offers. If you spend €30 we give you a voucher for €10 to spend in the New Year, not too complicated that. But people are very very cross that this €10 is not in the form of a gift token they can give someone as a present. No amount of “How cheap are you?” looks can knock them off stride in their complaining. Not enough to get a stack of books at half-price, they want to be able to rack up another present for free with the voucher. It doesn’t work that way. People are also offended that they have to spend money in January to redeem the voucher. Hey, we don’t make you take them, and we won’t force you to spend them. Ease up already with the whole scrooge thing! I actually told someone today (they were the fifth person in a row to yell at me) that they had no obligation to redeem the voucher if they didn’t agree with the terms and conditions. It actually made them stop yelling, which was nice.

Also, there’s less than seven shopping days til Christmas, you’d think people would realise that some of the more popular books will have sold out by now – print runs are limited and booksellers can’t print on demand. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve heard “But it was mentioned on the radio/on TV/in a newspaper just last month!” when I tell people something has sold out. Cue a long explanation of the fact that newspapers/TV/radio stations don’t check that there are enough copies of a book out there to meet the demand their mentioning them will generate. You want to yell at someone about it? Fine, yell at the publisher for underestimating demand, consider the fact that if you looked for it when you heard about it, we had the book, but now with everyone and their dog chasing after it – it’s not so easy to come by. Oh, and shop earlier next year.

That will be all… I have me some Warcraft to be playing.