(no subject)

[oyceter]

Sometimes I hate my job. I got very very irked today because of customers who can't seem to figure out that one can put books back right where one finds them!! I was all excited because there was a big gap in my shelf and I thought people had actually bought stuff, but noooo... turns out that person had just pulled off a fourth of the shelf and stacked it on the floor, mixed with all these other books. WTF?!

Not today, but a while ago, I find an empty software box in my section, which means some rat bastard has shoplifted another game. I hate these people too. They are refusing to pay the 12 or 15 dollars for a game that is usually 40-50 dollars! And if they're stealing video games, I'm thinking they're not poor little kids just trying to get food, because they have computers and everything! Dude. Robbing used bookstores that really do need that 15 dollars is not cool.

Times like this I want to line up the nasty customers so I can kick them all in the shins while I make them pick up their own messes. Grrrrr.

I think I am not really suited to customer service. There must be people out there who are good at this, right?

Comments

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

:smile: Some customers can be very annoying.

How are you feeling now about bookshop ownership? I hope it hasn't turned you off?

My first job out of college was in the management training program of a big retail chain; it was an eye-opener.

[oyceter]

Not quite yet... but that's because I'm hanging on to the hope that I'm not going to be the one doing the shelving!

Management training? Wow, what was that like?

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

My very first job ever was shelving books in the library; I wasn't very efficient because of getting interested to see what was in them, and then ending up checking many many out.

It was helpful to use my degree in a practical way; but it was very very long hours 60-70 per week. Any more detail than that would run into pages of text. :smile:

There are some very good easy books on running your first shop. I did an Associate's in Fashion Merchandising before going on into Bus Admin, and one of our classes was built around one of these books. It was good to learn financing and location, and very fun to do the exercises on creating the layout etc on your dream shop.

[oyceter]

Hee! I do that too! Well, sometimes... generally I kind of curse out the books in the business section because a lot of them look reeeeaaally boring.

Hrm, sounds interesting... I should probably dig some of those up sometime.

[thewildmole.livejournal.com]

Gah. There were people I always wanted to kick when I worked for Huge Bookstore - especially the ones who would pull out books from one section, go wandering about the store and then just randomly shove them in whatever part of the store they ended up in last before they left. Or the idiots who took the books out of the Sex or Gay/Lesbian shelves and then hid them in other sections. What? Did they think we were going to suddenly shine a spotlight on them and announce via the store intercom that they were reading a sex book? *rolls eyes*

And I managed a customer service department (for a chain of 200+ health clubs - oh, the stories I could tell *g*). You get to the point where most of it becomes a minor irritant on the scale of "Wow, you were raised by monkeys, weren't you?" Stealing, though, sucks no matter what.

[oyceter]

Hee hee hee! Minor irritants are the people who go up to us and kind of whisper, "You know, some of these books look used" and I have to stifle giggles as I tell them that we are a used bookstore.

Actually, those are more funny than annoying ;).

I had a rather irritating lady today, just came up at me and barked a name. "Do you know where to find this?!" So I asked her if the person wrote fiction or something else, and she shrugs, mutters "How should I know?" and mutters that the other person told her right away! Grr.

I curse the stealing people with monkey boils.

[thewildmole.livejournal.com]

I had a rather irritating lady today, just came up at me and barked a name. "Do you know where to find this?!" So I asked her if the person wrote fiction or something else, and she shrugs, mutters "How should I know?" and mutters that the other person told her right away! Grr.

Oh...hated that! Yes, I work in a bookstore but this does not mean that when I was given my name badge that I suddenly became the Fount of All Knowledge :P. I had a guy once who swore up and down that I was just being a bitch because I wouldn't tell him we had books by a particular author. After five times of typing in exactly how he spelled the last name and coming up with bupkis, I decided to go look on the shelves.

You know, if he'd just spelled the freakin' name *correctly*, life would have been so much simpler :P.

Oh, and I just finished another book that made me think of the Asian authors discussion we were having via your LJ a while back...

[oyceter]

So true! Although it always makes me feel good when I actually do know the answer of a question off the top of my head. I also got my first sex book in my section a few days ago, heh.

Oh, and I just finished another book that made me think of the Asian authors discussion we were having via your LJ a while back...

Oh really? What book?

[thewildmole.livejournal.com]

I also got my first sex book in my section a few days ago, heh.

So you're no longer a virgin...sorry, I couldn't resist! *g*

Oh really? What book?

It was The Unwanted by Kien Nguyen. He was an Amerasian child in Vietnam. His mother was a landowner and rich before the fall of Saigon. They finally got out in '85 or so (IIRC) in one of the refugee relocation programs.

I really wanted to like the book. The guy went through a lot of stuff, some of it really horrific, but it had that same sense of...holding back. It was the same thing that Tan does and that drove me nuts about Jung Chang's book, Wild Swans: there seems to be a definite disconnect between the emotion of the moment and the author's retelling of it. I wasn't looking for "OH, TEH ANGST!!1!" but I wanted much more of a sense of how the child Kien felt rather than just a retelling of the event with carefully chosen adjectives that were apparently supposed to convey the missing emotion. It literally felt like the author was keeping me at arm's length throughout the entire book.

[oyceter]

Hee hee, it's ok. I'm the stupid pun maker, just ask the boy.

You know, I've never really noticed the emotional disconnect with Tan. I don't know why, maybe I manage to read Joy Luck Club whenever hormones are running rampant, because I always find myself tearing up when June talks about feeling not good enough for her mother. Well, hormones, or extreme identification issues ;).

And herein ends any intelligent commentary I might have, because Tan's probably the only Asian author I've read! I should probably remedy that at some point.

[thewildmole.livejournal.com]

Well, hormones, or extreme identification issues ;).

Hee! IMO, Tan is probably one who has moved past the emotional disconnect to some extent. The characters come across with an emotional context to them that I don't find in several other Asian writers I've read. Gus Lee (China Boy and its sequel) is another one.

Jung Chang (see my other LJ) drove me insane because I felt like I was reading a report complete with footnotes and bibliography rather than a family history - and it was her own family!

[katie-m.livejournal.com]

Maybe they were overly trained by those college libraries with the big "for God's sake don't try to reshelve this yourself!" signs?

Yeah, I got nothing.

I will share my favorite Stupid Customer moment of all time, though. I worked for a while in a Things Remembered, which is a store that sells little gifts (mugs, boxes, plaques, etc.) to be engraved. I once spent something like half an hour walking through the entire store with this couple who were looking for a graduation gift for their nephew. We decided on a clock in the shape of a book, clock on one side, engraving plaque on the other. We went through a very long "what do you want engraved on it?" process, they paid, but they didn't want to wait for engraving, they'd be back the next day. Okay.

On their way out, they take out of our catalogs.

An hour later (after the engraving was done, I might add) they called me furious because they'd seen said clock on a page of suggested bridesmaid's gifts. How could I have misled them into getting their nephew a girl's gift? (The clock was not inherently girly.)

I'm still flabbergasted to this day.

[oyceter]

So true! And I get that, I do, because I've culled through my entire section and found some pretty odd books there! But sometimes, I just want to kick them. Actually, that's most of the time.

Hee! That's a great Stupid Customer moment. I can't believe that... although we get a lot of people coming up to us with horrified whispers, mentioning that some of our books look used. I have to try really hard not to giggle when I tell them that yes, we are actually a used bookstore.

[anodyna.livejournal.com]

Back in my days as a bookstore clerk, I had the literature section, the last aisle of which was partially blocked by a huge round pillar. Guess where all the sex books ended up? Yeah, stuck into the shelves right behind the pillar, which was apparently the only place in the store sufficiently comfortable for reading about *The Sex*.

On the other hand, I enjoyed finding excuses to putter around in that aisle just when somebody got comfortable back there, because the squirmy reactions I got were pretty amusing.

Just a thought--given the shoplifting potential, maybe you could suggest that things like video games and other popular theft items be kept behind the counter? It seems like that would be a deterrent to at least some of your potential thieves.

[oyceter]

Bwah! You're so evil ;). I remember I used to go into bookstores to sit and read the romance novels, which were my version of "The Sex" before fan fiction and before I just stopped caring who saw me reading romances.

I'd kind of like that, although it'd also make my job a little harder... I dunno. I'm hoping the shoplifting problem for the games so far isn't that bad -- we already put things behind the counter for CDs and DVDs, but in general software boxes are too big to bag. It's just the evil people who will go break the seal and take the CD, grrrr.