Please don’t lick the monies (and other tales of retail stupidity and real rewards)

I’ve come to decide that most retail cus­tomers fall into four cat­e­gories: ass­holes, nice peo­ple, needy mcneed­sters, and freaks.

Some­times the venn dia­grams over­lap.  Some­times they don’t.  There are out­liers, of course.  Aliens who land on Earth just to make you grab your hair and say OH MY GOD WHERE THE HELL DID THEY COME FROM, like the par­ents who think it’s a fun idea to walk back­wards with their kids down the esca­la­tor dur­ing the busiest time at the store, when other peo­ple are try­ing to use the esca­la­tor to oh, say, GO UP LIKE THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO.

This is when I get out my mom voice, the one I didn’t once have, and say (stern look over glasses included) “Stop that right now, go up to the top of the esca­la­tor, turn around, and come down the stairs at a respectable pace, right now sir, you in the red shirt and brown pants with the red sox cap.”  The info desk per­son came out to reg­u­late and make sure they came down, so I could remind the irre­spon­si­ble par­ent that such irre­spon­si­ble bull­shit would get them banned from the store, though I said it in a way that was more “we had some­one injured just last week doing just that, I’m sure you wouldn’t want your beau­ti­ful daugh­ter hurt, would you,” instead.

I do not like to fill out injury inci­dent reports, see, even ones where every employee in the store who’s a wit­ness to the wail­ing and bleed­ing can all clearly swear on a whole stack of bibles (located upstairs, on the left, over the cafe) that IT’S ALL THE STUPID CUSTOMER’S FAULT.

Pub­lic sham­ing.  Nope, don’t mind if I do it at all.  Those Puri­tans and their stocks, they were on to some­thing, I think.  I don’t care if it’s pas­sive aggres­sive or out­right aggres­sive or bitchy or rude.  DO NOT FUCK AROUND IN MY BOOKSTORE.  WE’RE NOT A DAMNED PLAYGROUND and I WILL LEARN YOU SOME MANNERS IF IT’S THE LAST THING I DO.  Besides, I’m sick of get­ting ice for your kid’s head injury in the cafe while you’re nowhere to be found.  Yeah.  That hap­pened, too.

There was that lady at Christ­mas, fifty years old if she was a day, who blew her red snotty nose and then LEFT HER USED TISSUE right on my counter after she was done with her trans­ac­tion.  Yes, gen­tle reader, I left my reg­is­ter.  I fol­lowed her right to the end, despite the fact that it was 8 p.m. on a Fri­day and we had a line to the end of the store.  I said “Excuse me.  You left your dirty, germy tis­sue out on my counter.  I’d like you to come back and throw it out, please.”  She fol­lowed me back.  I held up my bas­ket, she threw it out, face red, and then I got out my Lysol wipes and wiped down my counter as I wished her a good day and told her I hoped she got over her cold very soon.

The next cus­tomer told me I was her hero.

Last week, I had a lady get out her money to pay.  She had a new wad of cash from the bank, lots of new bills, and I get it, I know.  I han­dle new cash all the time.  I’ve got a vat of sticky-goo in the base­ment I use to help me sep­a­rate the new bills, make them easy to count.  Bar­ring that, you crum­ple them up a bit in your hand, then count them out– it makes it all go much smoother.

But no, not she.  Instead, in slo-mo, out comes the thumb, then the wet, glis­ten­ing tongue.  She licks the thumb, a string of drool, prac­ti­cally trail­ing, as she sep­a­rates all the ones, count­ing them out until she gets the right num­ber, then hands them to me, wet side fac­ing me.  I took them dry side down, even though it was awk­ward, and so help me, I know it was rude, but man, she used a lot of spit.  I got out a tis­sue and dried them a bit before I put them in my till.  Because– EEEEEW.

There’s a rea­son the other head cashier and I keep a quart of hand san­i­tizer under the reg­is­ter at all times.  Money is filthy, you just don’t usu­ally have to see the rea­sons why enacted out in front of you so vis­cer­ally.  So please, don’t lick the monies.  At least not where I can see.  You’ll make Doris Day cry.

And then there are the peo­ple who try to get to give you the online price.  “But I reserved it online.”  We have this handy-dandy thing where you go to the web­site, look to see if it’s in store, and if it is, BAM, the store clerk picks it out of the shelf and brings it down to the reg­is­ter to hold it for you.

I try to patiently explain that reserv­ing it online to be held at the store does not get them the online price, only the con­ve­nience of in-and-out ser­vice.  If they want the online price, they don’t get the ser­vice of some­one pulling the book off the shelf for them after it’s been put on a truck from the ware­house from New Jer­sey (or wher­ever), unpacked by my receiv­ing man­ager, shelved by my shelver, zoned by my book­sellers, and then pulled by the per­son who han­dles the online reser­va­tions who checks all the emails of the peo­ple too lazy to come in and look for the book on the shelf all by them­selves.  You want the online price, you wait the two days while Joe Shmoe in the ware­house puts it in the box and into the truck and sends it directly to you.  It’s called cus­tomer ser­vice.  And same-day con­ve­nience.  Over­head.  Learn it.  Live it.  Don’t love it, but deal with it and you know what?  I’m not going to match the online price, so kindly stop ask­ing.  Just, NO.

There are peo­ple who mum­ble and cut you off when you ask them the mem­ber­ship ques­tions, tell you they won’t sign up because Ama­zon ships free, etc., when you tell them we ship free as well to mem­bers, they tell you you’re lying even though there are SIGNS ALL OVER THE STORE, peo­ple who assume you’re illit­er­ate and inter­rupt you as you’re try­ing to ask them basic ques­tions about the book that they’re look­ing for until you can’t actu­ally look up the book– “Sir/Ma’am,” I finally say, “I will be able to do this if you would let me fin­ish a basic series of ques­tions that will allow me to com­plete an inven­tory query, so if you would please lis­ten, I would appre­ci­ate it,” peo­ple who get pissed off that you don’t take OTHER STORE reward cards and gift cards when YOU AREN’T OTHER STORE, because, um, the SIGN ON THE FRONT SAYS WHAT STORE YOU ARE, and then there are the kids who get pissed when you card them when they try to buy porn, the jerks who insist that “THE SIGN SAYS 20% OFF,” and when you say the book isn’t stick­ered as dis­counted and there­fore is the reg­u­lar price, plus, the sign says “Select titles,” they go off about it being small print and their being lawyers and not to push them around, god­damnit, because they know unfair trade prac­tices when they see them.

That was hilar­i­ous.  I pulled the sign, looked it over, said, “It’s the same size as the 20%, don’t you think?” to the cashier next to me, “and by the way, I’m a lawyer, and so is he,” and he handed it to the also-a-lawyer ring­ing next to him.  She agreed, handed it back down the line, and I put the sign down on the counter, looked at him, said some­thing to the effect that I was sorry, it wasn’t small print, would he still like the book, and if he wanted to speak to a man­ager, I was the head cashier, hello, nice to meet him.  Then I smiled and asked him how he’d like to pro­ceed.  He bought the damned book.

Hint: the three judge panel wins every time.

And then there’s the needy mcneedsters.

Them, I don’t mind, even if we’re a book­store, not a psychiatrist’s office.

We all get a lit­tle bit lonely, and if a lit­tle bit of con­ver­sa­tion or a com­pli­ment on their sweater makes them feel bet­ter, hey, what the hell.  They’re in a lot, and if they mostly read mag­a­zines and occa­sion­ally buy a mass mar­ket romance or mys­tery and talk to us when it’s not busy– where the hell else are they going to go?

There are some peo­ple so dis­or­ga­nized it’s a won­der they get through the day– “I need a book, there’s a boy, and a ball, there’s the word ‘the’ in the title,” and yet some­how we find it– and I wish I had an end­less stack of note­books and pen­cils for them, because LISTS, YOU CAN HAZ THEM.  There are peo­ple so tired and depressed and sad-looking that I worry for them, even when I’m feel­ing my black­est.  We’ve got an older man, always “cheery,” who’s retired, and his inter­est in books is polit­i­cal and finan­cial, stuff I stay out of because it just makes me depressed.  But I stay up on the news, and I know how to bull­shit, so I can talk to the guy.  I don’t know if he’s blow­ing smoke up my butt, but I gather he’s wealthy and had quite the busi­ness, but his wife’s now quite ill and gets can­cer treat­ment a lot.  The store is his out­let and frankly– he can be a bit of a time-suck.  But– he’s doing no harm, and it brings a lit­tle light to his day to flirt, tell a mild dirty joke, or agree that Eliot Spitzer’s a shmuck and the mar­ket is awful. At Christ­mas he brought me a box of Frango mints that I shared with the store.  He didn’t need to know I don’t care for mint as a fla­vor, all I had to do was say thank you.  And so I did, with a kiss on the cheek, and I got an over­joyed smile.

When it’s someone’s birth­day, or some­one is leav­ing, I bake them what­ever they want.  It’s easy for me, and it makes some­one happy.  Pineap­ple upside down cake?  You got it.  One of my favorite cafe peo­ple is leav­ing to go move in with his girl­friend and start col­lege again and I said he could have what­ever he wanted– after deep thought, he said– “Um.  Oh.  Choco­late chip cook­ies.  No.  Wait.  M & M cook­ies.  No.  Wait.  Could I have both?”  When I said yep, the chor­tle of glee that I got was so pleased.  I like that it’s easy to make peo­ple happy that way.

And then there’s the nice peo­ple.  Mr. W., the retired math teacher who comes in to com­bat pol­i­tics with me because I’m a Keyn­sian and he’s Chicago school all the way.  Mrs. C., who didn’t like Eliz­a­beth Gilbert (“so self-involved in the end, I do feel sorry for her”), but loves Alice Stein­bach and any other non-fiction rec­om­men­da­tion I make, so now I can upsell prac­ti­cally any­thing and she’ll give it a try because I “have excel­lent taste.”  Mrs. W., who’s a child psy­chi­a­trist and deals with the most severely trau­ma­tized kids, who buys utter trash and pulp mags and when I had a bad cold that lasted for months offered to write me a Z-Pak if I didn’t have health insur­ance and recently com­mented with all the weight that I’d lost that I was “lovely” and “didn’t need to lose any more.”  There’s “Crazy M” as we call her, with pre-Raphaelite hair and lace sweaters and too much girl­ish makeup, always a bit scat­ter­shot, for whom we save coupons because she has to count out her pur­chase to the last dime.  She always has a com­pli­ment for either of us head cashiers– she com­ments on our hair or our sweater or just “you have a nice aura today,” and she always, always means it, full of Grace as she is.  There’s a monk from a monastery nearby, also Grace-full, and I love inter­act­ing with him, and not just because he buys really inter­est­ing books, not all reli­gious.  (Book choices, the ulti­mate intel­lec­tual voyeurism.)  One day, he was short just a dol­lar, and the monastery had appar­ently cleaned out the car, so there was no spare change in the well.  I spot­ted him a buck from my pocket because hey– he’s a reg­u­lar cus­tomer and I wasn’t going to let him go home with­out all his books.  I told him it wasn’t a prob­lem, not to worry about it, and even as he said he’d pay me back, I for­got all about it.  The next time he came in, though, he had not only my dol­lar, but a loaf of the spe­cial bread he and his broth­ers bake just for Easter, and oh, it was eggy, sweetly-spiced heaven, even though I’d expected no kind of reward.

The freaks?

Oh, that’s a whole post unto itself.  They often over­lap with the ass­holes, and we’ve got nick­names for all of them.  They make us wish we had a blender in the base­ment, so we can add vodka and rum to our icy blended cof­fee type drinks.  Some of them have worked for the store.  They’re the rea­son, moreso than the ass­holes, that a col­league and I dearly want “Inter­na­tional Talk Back to Cus­tomers Day.”

But I’ll leave you with a list of nick­names for teasers.  Miss Piggy, Twitchy, Bare­foot Guy, Manga Man, and Blue Dread­locks.  Yeah.

The Isle of Mis­fit Book­stores.  ‘Tis a won­der­ful place.  Just don’t lick the monies.  Please?