Not a bricklayer, not an escalator, not a physicist, Jim. Just a tired bookseller.

Remem­ber those episodes of Star Trek?  The ones where Doc­tor Leonard McCoy– “Bones” to those of us who just LOVE the grumpy old South­ern doc– would protest that “Damnit, Jim,” he was a doc­tor, not a fill-in-the-blank?

The last three weeks at work have been like that.  It’s been crazy– we’ve all been one-armed paper-hangers in a wall­pa­per­ing Olympics con­test on crack, and it’s been utterly NUTS.  I’ve also appar­ently had “ANSWER LADY” tat­tooed on my fore­head in ink only oth­ers can see.

“Where’s the post office?”  “How do I get to X?”  “What’s the square root of pi?”  (Okay, the last one might be a mild exag­ger­a­tion, but barely.)  I have been asked the most irrel­e­vant, unre­lated ques­tions hav­ing NOTHING TO DO WHATSOEVER WITH BOOKS AND MY BOOKSTORE by a con­stant influx of peo­ple, and it’s been exhaust­ing.  Add to that, the peo­ple who treat us like we’re they’re children’s babysit­ters or their research assis­tants (because yeah, writ­ing down the name of a book that you read about some­where wouldn’t be a good idea, no, not at all) and/or then argu­ing with us when we tell you the right name of some­thing (trust me, I know that the name of Christo­pher Hitchens’ new mem­oir is called Hitch-22, it’s RIGHT FUCKING THERE if you’d stop argu­ing with me long enough to just turn around and LOOK AT THE BOOK).

Sigh.

But that’s not really what I wanted to talk about.

Babysit­ting and rep­ri­mand­ing other people’s chil­dren for bad behav­ior aside (I have used my Mom Voice of Doom more times these past few weeks than I care to think about (DO NOT RUN ON THE STAIRS, STOP IT RIGHT NOW, STOP RUNNING BACKWARD ON THE ESCALATOR, DO NOT MAKE ME LEAVE THIS CASH REGISTER, YOUNG MAN, OR YOU WILL REGRET IT are all words I have uttered, but it always does work, and the par­ents, they cower too, it must be the look over the glasses) what I wanted to talk about was this.

The bartender/psychologist phe­nom­e­non that occurs when you work in retail.

I’ve joked on occa­sion that we should serve beer.  Or val­ium.  Or both.  The prob­lem is, some­times I mean it.  The best we can do, though, is lend a lis­ten­ing ear.  And there are days when I don’t have enough patience to do it, to be kind, to be nice, to dole out the smiles and com­pli­ments to the peo­ple who’ve had a bad day because damnit– I’ve had a bad day too, had to tell too many out-of-control kids to stop knock­ing shit over, had to tell too many snarky rich yup­pies that no, I will not match Amazon’s prices and main­tain my grande politesse rather than telling them to just go fuck off.

It makes my day when “Crazy Mary” comes in, for exam­ple.  She’s a loon, seri­ously, lives on a dif­fer­ent planet than us though she’s lucid enough that she prob­a­bly has some harm­less admin job some­place– but she has Grace with a cap­i­tal G, always has a nice word to say.  She never has quite enough cash, is always scrap­ing her purse for her one-and-only-one book pur­chase as she com­pli­ments my hair or my skin on my neck­lace and the same with whomever else is ring­ing her out.  You’d bet­ter bet I give her the coupon and the house mem­ber­ship dis­count I’m sup­posed to save for mem­bers hav­ing prob­lems with their reg­u­lar num­ber.  Mary was hav­ing a bad day the other day and was feel­ing her age, talk­ing about “the menopause” mak­ing her hair dry and her face lined and mak­ing her ugly– so I told her, and meant it, that she wasn’t as old-looking as she thought, and that I thought she looked lovely because she had a beau­ti­ful smile.  Damned if she didn’t light up the place like the sun.  It was worth every other ass­hole who asked me to match Amazon’s prices that week.

And then there was my last cus­tomer Sun­day night.  Some­one had taken a fist right to her nose, pounded the crap out of her face.  Rac­coon eyes, spread­ing yel­lowed bruises up into her fore­head, down into her cheeks.  It was bru­tal.  She was tired– rat­tled, con­fused– and the bruis­ing was a few days old.  (Old per­sonal injury lawyer train­ing at work.)  I directed her to the cal­en­dar sec­tion she asked for, watched her wan­der around, killing time, then she came back at the end of the night with her selections.

When I check stuff out, I flip the books face side down so the barcode’s face up, then hit them with my scan­ner– it doesn’t look like I’m read­ing the titles.  So I greet the cus­tomer, talk with them about mem­ber­ship, stuff the books in the bag, make eye con­tact and talk with them as I’m doing my thing, all the while flip­ping my eyes back to my screen to make sure the titles are scan­ning.  I can see the titles on my reg­is­ter screen.  And this lady’s telling me as I’m mak­ing polite con­ver­sa­tion about our mem­ber­ship pro­gram and the weather and our cal­en­dars (because “Hey, you look beat all to hell, can I look up the name of a shel­ter or lawyer for you, even with your Fendi purse and your David Yur­man neck­lace?” isn’t exactly a great open­ing line) that she fell on her kitchen floor and it’s embar­rass­ing to go out but she’s got to live her life, right, etc., etc., and yam­mer­ing on for 15 min­utes– long after the trans­ac­tion is done.  Mean­while, the titles on the screen are glar­ing at me where she can’t really see, though her books are already bagged.  They’re all about divorce, cus­tody, get­ting out of abu­sive rela­tion­ships.  And she’s got bruised wrists, bruises all up her arms.  She did not fall on her kitchen floor.  I had a line of four other peo­ple, but I was not going to rush her– I just pushed the bell and had some­one else (my man­ager ended up tak­ing the call) come ring out the oth­ers– and I let the lady con­tinue to lie to me as I made sympathetic-type noises and told her that it must have been painful, and she had a right to go out and keep liv­ing her life, and etc., etc.  My man­ager was pissed that I was let­ting this lady go on– right until she walked behind me and got a gan­der– then she went back to another reg­is­ter and just started to ring while I let rich, beat-up lady talk.

And when she was done, she just kind of ran out of steam. So I smiled at her, and she said “I guess I need to pay you, hunh?”  I smiled and nod­ded, we talked about a book she might need to order, she paid, and off she went into the night.  I hope she’s some­place safe, read­ing those books and get­ting out of wher­ever she was.

Last night I wasn’t so patient.  The minute I walked in the door, it was non­stop.  I had 540 trans­ac­tions, when I usu­ally have 240–311.  And we have an older gen­tle­man cus­tomer who’s rich and a penny pincher (he always wants me to get him all of the coupons) and a bit of a pest– sweet on me too, since he’s harm­less and usu­ally gets out of the way when there’s cus­tomers to be served as much as he wants to talk about all the finan­cial news of the day), but last night, he was in a hell of a state, I don’t know why– and so was I.  He was needy as hell, and wanted atten­tion RIGHT NOW, and I just couldn’t help him when he kept inter­rupt­ing me while I was the only cashier and I had five other peo­ple in line all the time, absolutely non­stop.  He didn’t want to be helped by the other man­agers, he wanted me, and it was just dri­ving me nuts.  I felt badly, but annoyed, angry too, because he could see I was busy and was being enti­tled– but maybe he wasn’t and really was just so dis­tressed (I don’t know how old he is, not exactly, it’s hard to tell, and he does repeat sto­ries as old folks like to do, so it’s hard to tell what’s early demen­tia and what’s just … old folks kind of stuff) but I just didn’t have any patience.  I didn’t speak meanly to him, I gave him some rec­om­men­da­tions– but I finally had to say to him– “I’m sorry.  I can’t help you right now.  It’s too busy, I have too many cus­tomers, you keep inter­rupt­ing me, dear, I’m going to ask Other Book­seller W to help you.”

W, thank God, dealt with him with so much fuck­ing patience, but he was really in need of so much damned hand-holding, and really, I wanted to slip him an ati­van mickey because boy, did he need it.  He was really out of it, on the phone with his wife (who’s ill with can­cer, never leaves the house except to go to treat­ment at a local hos­pi­tal whose can­cer wing is NAMED FOR THEM, that’s how rich they are) and hand­ing the phone over to me to have me tell her that X and such was a good book while I was try­ing to ring through other cus­tomers and it was just a damned mess.  I wanted to stran­gle him.  I wanted to cry.  I wanted to go out in the park­ing lot and chain smoke a pack of Camels.  Instead, on my break, I had a half-klonopin and left it at that.  And at the end, he calmed down, said W was fab­u­lous, said thank you, etc., and I thanked him for say­ing so and thanked him for com­ing in yet again, told him I was sorry I was too busy to be able to help him myself, etc., etc., at which point he actu­ally said, “I don’t like to see you work­ing so hard, dear,” but at the out­set, he wanted his own way right then and right away, and was an exam­ple in micro­cosm of the rich cus­tomers we deal with day in and day out– although at least he brings me choco­lates some­times that I can share with the rest of the store.

So no, I’m not a doc­tor, Jim.  I am, how­ever a book­seller.  I’m also a babysit­ter.  And a bar­tender.  And a psy­chi­a­trist.  And human.  Some­times, I’m awfully tired and cranky and not very patient, and I wish that that wasn’t the case and that I could be nicer and give you the com­pli­ment or smile or polite lie you deserve.

The next time you walk through a line at a store and see a har­ried cashier, please try to keep that in mind.  I’ll be patient with you– or at least I’ll promise to try.