Life on the other side of the counter.

A lifetime ago, or what seems like it, I worked at a bookstore. Being that I was an English major in college, I theorized that I was working in “my field” or some such nonsense. The job afforded me all the luxuries a young 20-something needed – pocket money, no true responsibility and an adjustable schedule to drink my nights away. Granted, the spending money was a bit light in the pocket book as I had started acquiring the bills and debts of most 20-somethings – college loans, rent, credit card debt, etc. But that is a tale best saved for my bankruptcy hearings…….hah!

Being that I now work in a desk job (granted, I am finally higher on the management chain and have my own office so I can’t complain…too much), I have periodic bouts of nostalgia for my tenure in the “customer service” industry. I have very little contact with clients these days outside of email and phone calls. Sometimes I think back on the human interaction that my life in “retail hell” had. And then I think a bit more……and remember what a pure nightmare some of the clients/customers were.

Some of my personal favorites were:

1) IDIOT CUSTOMER: “I am a customer here and therefore I pay your salary”

ME: “Ummm nope, don’t see your signature on my paycheck”

2) IDIOT CUSTOMER: “Well that’s it….I’m never shopping here again”

ME: “Great ……I get paid whether you shop here or not. Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out!”

3) IDIOT CUSTOMER: “What do you mean it’s declined…..try it again”

ME: “Sorry – your card was declined again”

IDIOT CUSTOMER: “That can’t be….you must be doing something wrong….try again!”

ME: “Umm okay…sorry…it was declined again”

IDIOT CUSTOMER: “I don’t get it…I’ve been using this card all day”

ME: *head* *counter* *ugh*

4) IDIOT CUSTOMER: “I was in here last week and you had a book on a display table. It was a regular sized book with a purple cover. Do you know where it would be?”

ME: “Yup….as we obviously shelve our books according to color – which makes much more sense than organizing them by author. Sure….we would keep purple books upstairs next to the red ones.”

…and on and on and on. Being that I am often a customer, I go out of my way to keep my idiocy to a minimum…or at least save it for the bar. In thinking about my brief life on the “other side of the counter”, I recently remembered the stupidest customer ever….or the smartest! I am still torn on this one.

Let me set the stage…..it was early in the day. The glorious un-named bookstore (from which I was unceremoniously fired …story for another time) had only been open about an hour. Our shifts were divided in hour increments. A typical shift would have me shelving/straightening my assigned section for an hour, the information desk for an hour, registers for an hour …and so on. I was on registers for this little scenario. Since the store had only been open for a little while, we were not fully staffed. Generally the mid-shift (11AM to 8PM – lucky bastards!) would come on to relieve the openers of their tedious tasks…such as the dreaded registers!

I was twiddling my thumbs, straightening the area behind the counters and hoping to make it through my hour unscathed. Up walks a flighty new-agey sort of gal with a large bag that she places on my counter.

IDIOT CUSTOMER: “I want to return these books. I have my receipt.”

ME: *sigh* – “OK” (as I reach for the loads of paper work that accompany all returns – not even bothering to look at the receipt or the contents of the bag).

IDIOT CUSTOMER: “But…the thing is…I want to return the books…and then I need to buy them back again”

ME: “I’m sorry …HUH?!?!?!”

IDIOT CUSTOMER: “I want to return the books. Then I need to buy them all back again”

ME: “Why don’t you just keep them?”

IDIOT CUSTOMER: “Because I’m not sure I want to keep them ALL…..and I just haven’t had the time to look at each one and decide which ones to keep. Since you guys have a 30 day return policy and today is the 30th day, I need to return them and then buy them back.”

ME: “Ummm ma’am, we aren’t a library. We are a book STORE! I am not sure I can do this! I have to check with the manager.”

At this point, I left the ding-bat at the register – thanking my lucky stars that it was early enough in the day that the store was still pretty empty. I didn’t want the dreaded register line back-up of disgruntled customers bitching about my slow “return” skills.

I went to my manager who begrudgingly said we “had to do it” as it fell within the corporate return policy.

*le sigh* – so I went trudging back to the register and told ding-bat that she had to fill out some paperwork and handed her the return forms to fill out.

ME: “So…let me get this straight – you want me to take all these books back…umm return them – and then have me re-ring them so you can buy them again?!? Right!!!?????”

IDIOT CUSTOMER: “Yes – thanks so much. I just need to get some time to leaf through them and figure out which ones I want to keep”.

ME: “OK – while you are filling out the forms, I will start ringing the books back in for the return. Are they in that bag?”

IDIOT CUSTOMER: “Yes – here!” (sliding the bag to me).

I reached in the bag and started to pull out the books – all ten of them. As I was scanning in the titles, I noticed they were all self help books – natch – for the new agey ding-bat. I started to look at some of the titles…and here’s the kicker….EVERY SINGLE book had something to do with overcoming procrastination.

Umm…yeah…there really wasn’t much more to say after that.