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!

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.

Tis the season…

….when a day at work leaves you feeling like a puchbag in a gym full of people who’ve been advised to take up boxing to help with anger management issues.

Thankfully (like childbirth, or so I’ve been told) each December-madness period magically gets erased from the brain (I think turkey, ham and cranberry sauce, taken together may well have properties akin to the zapper in Men In Black) until the next time it hits, eleven months later.

I’m holding on to that, because as it gets closer and closer to Christmas people are becoming more and more unreasonable:

“Why can’t you order blah book from the US for me and get it in time for Christmas?”

“Why can’t you order blah book from the UK and have it for me tomorrow?”

“What do you mean you’ve sold out and there’s no print run planned before Christmas?”

“Will you sell me this book for a fiver?” (retail price €7.45)

Sigh.

On the other hand, there are lovely customers, well aware that they are cutting it fine in looking for the book du jour 8 days before Christmas, and are overjoyed to find it still in stock. There are people looking for harder-to-find books who have literally hugged me because I came up with a copy for them. There was a mother today who called me an angel because her son really wants a book that’s not out here yet, but I told her it is available in the U.S. and she skipped off home to order a copy by courier. Another customer thold me she could kiss me because myself and another member of staff located Dog the Bounty Hunter’s autobiography, which she hadn’t been able to find anywhere else.

All of these lovely people have put the grinches (of which there are too many) in the shade. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have yelled at me because they can’t have a copy of “Napoleon and the Irish lad” (er, that would be “The Emperor and the Irishman” and sorry, it’s reprinting!), or whined for aeons about magazine prices not coming down enough because of the exchange rate and VAT coming off magazines in the UK – gawd people I do not actually set the damn prices. That is beyond my power. If you don’t want the magazine, don’t buy it. I’ve tried referring people to head office with pricing complaints but they snootily informed me that they don’t have time for such things – no but they have time to harangue a peon for ten minutes while the queue behind them builds up, and the tempers of those waiting in line become frayed. One of them was bitching about the price of “Vanity Fair” and to be honest, Tina Fey is on the cover, it’s the most popular issue we’ve ever had, and you shouldn’t be cheap when it comes to Tina Fey (sez me, so there!). I stood there, holding the magazine, and told him I’d happily pay twice the asking price for that issue. He shut up. I will remember that tactic in future (well, it wasn’t really a tactic it was the truth).

So now, worn out from a day in the retail trenches, I am cooking myself swedish meatballs for dinner and looking forward to a night in front of a blazing fire, with a good book, to refresh myself before tomorrow’s onslaught. There’s less than a week of shopping time left til Christmas – so if you need some books, best get them quickly!

Pwnt…

If anyone doubted booksellers are sarky sorts – I couldn’t resist putting this zinger from a co-worker up here.

We were whining in work about not having gotten any proofs in a while (makes a difference from whining about it being cold etc.) and a co-worker mentioned that a “few” had come through that I missed. How did I miss them, I wondered.

Well, she took them all, that’s why. To my half-hearted protest of “But I may have wanted to read one of them!” she raised an eyebrow and replied, deadpan; “Nah, you wouldn’t have. I looked at all the covers and none of them had a corpse on the front.”

Ah, that’s alright then…. (and to further redeem herself, she rescued the new Jo Nesbo proof from the bunch that eventually arrived and stowed it safely in my locker for me – making me a very happy camper!).

On the daft customers front, answered a call the other day with my usual greeting, “Good (whatever time of day it was), thank you for calling (company name, store location), (my name) speaking, how can I help you?”

Customer on phone says: “(Our store location)?”

I reply: “Yes, that’s right.”

A pause, then: “But I was looking for (totally other location), why did I get through to you?”

Now I’m thinking “Because you dialled our number?” but it wouldn’t do to say that, so instead I offer to give them the correct phone number for the branch they want. Nope, they want to be transferred. Not possible. They are not happy. My flabber is gasted by their lack of understanding of the basics of telephonic communication, but I give them the right number anyway. Bless ‘em, they made me feel kind of clever by comparison.

How can we sell books we don’t know we have?

Remember the dubious genii of booksellers, nicebutdimus and cantbearsedus? They struck again last week.

We order from a number of suppliers for customer orders, and everyone is warned on pain of severe pain not to open anything from any of these, but to pass the package on to me or another senior bookseller for processing.

Note the “Everyone” in the above sentence. Also note there is never a day when either of us is not there.

Why then do I stumble across books I’ve ordered for myself, on the shelf, unpriced, with no invoice and nothing on the system to say that they’ve arrived? This prompts a major panic on my part. How many other packages has this genius opened? Are customer orders sitting out on the floor? Eeek! My head started to explode.

And…not only were books from other order batches out on the shop floor, unpriced, but some of them even had invoices tucked in to them.  On. The. Shelf.

Why log and price up a delivery when you can just shelve it? Are the customers who buy these books supposed to log the invoices for their lazy asses???
And how pray would they do that???

Argh! Much anger and stewing ensued, as well as a chunk of re-ordering to save blushes when customers come looking for stock that has been “accidentally” sold.

Idiocy of the day

These are a few gems from one day in the pre-Christmas rush (that’d be today then).

Customer: How do I get to Ballinteer?

Me: (being extremely helpful, because it was early in the day) You can get a bus there from right up the road.

Customer: No, I’m driving.

Me: Er, we sell street guides to Dublin just over there.

Customer: I don’t want a sales pitch, I want directions.

Me: (speechless)

Thankfully another customer (the one I was attempting to serve before being so rudely interrupted) intervened and gave the woman her directions. Hopefully they involved driving off a pier.

Later on I’m at customer service, typing up an invoice, when I overhear two people talking loudly as they walk around:

Customer 1: I love books. How about you?

Customer 2: I really really love books.

Customer 1: I love them so much I joined the library. I’m so happy.

Customer 2: I love the library! I never buy books anymore.

Customer 1 (not to be outdone) Oh, neither do I? Aren’t libraries great?

Yes, libraries are great, and librarians are wonderful people. But if neither of them ever buy books, what are they doing wandering around a bookstore? Something amiss there.

And someone I could help:

Customer: I’m looking for a book I read, something about a roof and footprints and snow with a depressed central character.

Me: Would that be “Miss Smilla’s feeling for Snow”?

Customer: I dunno. I was rhapsodising about depression while under the influence of some illegal substances the other night, and it came into my head.

Me: Ok.

Customer: She really embraces her depression, know what I mean?

Me: Eh?

Customer: What does the cover look like?

Me: Well it’s had several, but one is a picture of a rooftop with footprints on it.

Customer: Yes! Yes! That must be it.

(Funny what strikes people about books. Especially while on drugs. He was a lovely bloke though and I sold him a few other books too.)

Customer: This may be a random question. But do you know what time the post office closes?

Me: (checking watch) They’re closed now I’m afraid. Usually close at 6. They’ll have a sign up with their times in the doorway.

Customer: Oh, damn. The GPO stays open late though doesn’t it?

Me: Er, I don’t really know (it’s 9 miles away from the shop – though I don’t say that). If you’re just looking for a stamp there are some shops around here that sell them.

Customer: No, I need to post a cd to my friend.

Me: Oh. Sorry.

Customer: I think the GPO stays open til seven.

Me: But it’s ten past seven now.

Customer: (getting annoyed) Well that’s a lot of use isn’t it??

Me: I’m sorry I can’t be of any more help.

What did she want me to do? Post the damn thing for her using some magic link-up with the (closed) post office? March up to An Post and demand (of an empty building) that they serve her?

We are a bookshop. We SELL BOOKS. No call credit, no movies, no music cds. We do what it says on the sign. Unless you want a book (or a magazine) don’t harass us. PLEASE!

No, never heard of it….

Customer comes in looking for a book, they ask a co-worker (to be fair, a newbie) if we have it in stock.

Does newbie consult the computer? No.

Does newbie look around them to see if the book is on front-of-shop display? No.

Result: customer thinks we don’t have our No. 1 bestseller, and that we employ people who have never heard of Patricia Cornwell’s latest book.

Good thing I was there to sprint across with a copy.

And I wonder why I’m stressed?