Bizarre Adventures in the Book Store

2007-09-30T23:27:07Z

Working with the general public is always interesting. Here are some of the highlights so far this year:

A lady called for her child's summer reading books. I had the list and books available for her to see. She then wanted me to read the summaries of each book, plus the page numbers and whether her child would like them or not. (As if I would know.) I spent over half an hour answering her questions and then she said she was going to order them online. (AARGH!!!)

One Saturday afternoon the silence of the bookstore is broken by a cell phone ring. Suddenly, a woman starts screaming and crying. She rushes out of the store with her daughter running after her also crying because she doesn't know what is going on. I chase her through the parking lot and I hear her tell her daughter that someone has died. I stop her and offer to drive her home since she is in no shape to be behind the wheel. She calms down a little at that and is then able to drive home. Never heard from her again so I'm not sure what really happened, but it was very sad to listen to.

That same afternoon, not an hour later the phone rings. As I answer, some woman starts telling me how she was just in our store and as she was driving away she heard a noise in her car. She thought there was something wrong with her car, but when she got home her neighbor told her the sound was a jet breaking the sound barrier. At this point, I'm starting to roll my eyes a bit. She then says she was calling to see if we had heard it at the book store. I assured her we hadn't heard anything, but she kept insisting her neighbor told her everyone had to have heard it. After several more minutes of rambling, I asked her if there was anything book related I could help her with. She paused and asked one more time if we had heard anything, at my 10th negative response, she said "Oh, well then the noise must have been my car all along." and hung up. (What the hell?) Another half hour of my life wasted.

This is one of my favorite ones: A gentleman came in looking for a book and all he could remember was it had a picture of a piece of toast on it. Needless to say he left without that book. He did come back a few days later with the title, so we were able to find it for him then.

Several years ago, I was working at a mall store and an older gentleman came in one day and handed me a folded note and a jewelry box and mumbled, "This is for you." I was curious, so I opened it. There was a diamond engagement ring worth about $1500 inside. The note was a proposal of marriage with some kinda scary wording, stuff like, I've been rejected 1,000 times before, so I'm not afraid to be rejected 1,001 times, etc. I contacted mall security and they contacted the local police. I had to give the ring back, but they picked up the guy and took him to the police station and explained that he couldn't give rings or notes to young women like this. I felt bad that they had done it that way, but I guess it was for the best. He never did come back into the store again.

I have an ongoing feud with one psycho customer in our store. She usually intimidates the other employees into giving her coupons she hasn't earned and making them cry. Our store has a policy: every 12 books you buy earns you a $5.00 coupon, which hasn't changed in about 15 years. So everytime she comes in and I refuse to give her a coupon, because she hasn't bought her twelve books, she starts yelling at me and calling me a bitch. She then threatens to go to a competitor who is about 45 minutes away. Finally, I tell her she will have to do just that because, I still won't give her a coupon. Then about a month later, she'll come back in as if nothing ever happened and the viscous cycle starts all over again.

Well these are just a few of the more interesting things that have happened in my years of retail service. Please feel free to share some of your adventures, also.

redwolf35

Bizarre Adventures in the Book Store