customer drama

Chevy Chase on a lawnmower

/ Meg / 1 Comment

Today is my first day at my “new” job — an editor at my paper (versus just assistant to the editor, which was my position as of last Friday)! I can already see how much busier I’m going to be as the sole individual in all of my sections without a real back-up plan . . . but I’m looking forward to the challenge. It’ll be a nice change of pace to stay continuously busy during the day!

In further fairly uneventful news, we had a rash of crazed customers at the store over the weekend who never failed to bring the LOLs. I updated the list I now keep in my back pocket of the most hilarious stories.

My favorite is actually not a “bad” customer story: A father was walking around the bookstore with his young son, who has obviously reached that overwhelmingly curious stage of life where he routinely points to objects, asking his dad what everything is. His patient father responded kindly, “Oh, that’s a book” or “That’s a magazine” or “That’s my shoe.” I was standing near the information counter, sorting through some recovery when they walked by a display.

“Dad, what’s that?” asked the little boy, pointing at the first cover of a stack of movies.

His father raised his eyebrows, puffing out his cheeks. “That’s . . . Chevy Chase on a lawnmower.” (I’m assuming he was looking at a film classic, but I couldn’t figure out which one, really.) He laughed a little, then tugged on his bewildered son’s hand. “Come on, buddy,” he laughed.

I burst out chuckling myself and had a hard time holding it together when I rang up his family about ten minutes later. I wanted so bad to mention Chevy Chase, but I didn’t want him to think I was stalking him or something! It was just so ridiculously random — I loved it.

We got into a lot of political confrontations with customers over the weekend, too — people who were upset because we had too many Obama books, others who were upset because we weren’t displaying McCain books, others who felt our displays “unfairly” supported Obama . . . okay, so these are all Obama-haters, I realize now. All political beliefs aside, I don’t know how anyone could look at any of our displays and see them as anything but balanced and fair! There may be more “Obama” books on a table, but that’s because there are more Obama books in existence! And if the agitated customers had actually bothered to, you know, read the covers, they would have seen that most of the books were actually criticisms of Barack Obama.

But I guess no one actually troubles themselves to read anymore.

Turning in the ‘mistress of ceremonies’ sash

/ Meg

I’m a drama queen. And no, not in the teenage-girl-eyeroll sort of drama queen way, where I’m constantly slamming doors and texting my friends in a huff because so-and-so didn’t include me in their plans to go to the mall this weekend.

I’m 23 years old, so that would be slightly more than ridiculous.

No, I’m a drama queen in the theatrical sense — I love performance, silliness and, yes, being the center of attention. Not all the time, of course, but most of the time.

I suppose this is exactly how I’ve come to be the resident “mistress of ceremonies” for all in-store events at my bookstore. To date, this has include the midnight releases of popular books Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Breaking Dawn and Brisingr, as well as a Holiday Open House, ceremony for the opening of our coffeeshop, Halloween storytime and an assortment of other smaller scale events.

And I’m always into these things! I was big into drama in high school but haven’t made time to get into theatre since then. My little crazy announcements and parties at the store are my only opportunity to be “dramatic” anymore.

And I usually dress up. Really dress up. Here’s me at the Harry Potter release in July 2007, just to give you an idea:

Yeah.

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Excuse me — where do you keep your invisibility cloaks?

/ Meg / 1 Comment
Perhaps Harry can spare his?

Perhaps Harry can spare his?

One of the craziest customers I’ve ever dealt with made her way over to my information counter at the bookstore last night. I have to point out that in addition to being crazy, she really did look crazy — she had the biggest hair you’ve ever seen. When she spent too long wandering around the store and we were trying to close down, my supervisor muttered she was going to “tear her wig off.” (!)

In no particular order, said Crazy Lady was looking for books on the following topics (and yes, I wrote them down at the info counter — there was no way I was going to forget any of this ridiculousness):
• ESP
• golden retrievers
• Princess Diana
• The Marine Corps
• Tammy Faye Bakker
• nuclear energy
• supernatural occurrences
• a world atlas
• coyotes
• metaphysical “gifts” — abilities
• The Kennedys
• a bible cover
• some famous artist I couldn’t pronounce

and . . . my favorite . . .
• INVISIBILITY

Invisibility! She wanted a book on INVISIBILITY! As in, to make one’s self invisible! She presented this question to one of my co-workers, not me . . . Because I probably would have had a hard time not suggesting the Harry Potter series. Harry has a mighty fine and useful invisibility cloak . . . Maybe she could get a few pointers on how to acquire one?

To be fair, she did purchase several of the books we found for her — which is a huge upgrade from the hour or so we can spend with a customer finding items, only to later come across the entire stack of them wedged behind a chair or piled up on a dirty cafe table. Joy of joys!

Let me put you on hold

/ Meg

Last night at the bookstore, I got a pretty interesting call.

Scene: A random September evening at work.

Me: “Thank you for calling [Bookstore], this is Megan, how may I help you?”

Teen Guy: “Hi, do you deliver?”

Me: “I’m… sorry? This is [Bookstore]. Are you looking for an item?”

Teen Guy: “Yes, but I want to know if you’ll deliver it. If you have it.”

Me: “Like, you want me to get in my car and drive it to you?”

Teen Guy: [Long pause, then exasperated.] “Well, however you deliver it. If you drive it, or mail it . . .”

Me: [Equally long, dramatic pause.] “Let me put you on hold.”

Holding is my solution to most strange phone requests. I click the little red button, put the receiver on my shoulder and usually stand, dumb-founded, for a minute or two. Sometimes I call for the opinion of a coworker or manager. I didn’t know where to go with this one.

Guess we should just start calling the store Pizza Hut! But wait, they don’t deliver, either, right?

And in other bookselling news, people are still coming in for summer reading materials. Seriously? Summer reading? Locally, we’re already into our second week of public schooling. College classes at most of the major universities in Maryland began on Tuesday. Are you really coming in to find books for your slacker teenager the second week of school — and then getting mad when we’re actually sold out of them? What did you expect?

And the holiday selling season is just around the corner . . .