BipolarLawyerCook

It’s been a strange week in Book Wobe­gon. After a week of hit­ting every sales goal, sell­ing mem­ber­ships like it was the newest style on the cat­walk, and peo­ple rolling in off the street to demand they be hooked up with that Dan­ged Dig­i­tal Reader Device they’ve all got to sell, things have gone dead again, and the management’s push­ing and wor­ried and scared about num­bers again, peo­ple ner­vous and twitchy about hours get­ting cut.

No one wants to be a mem­ber– no one wants to belong, everybody’s a loner, and no one wants to give over their email for coupons. “I don’t have a com­puter” is a cur­rent refrain. Pos­si­ble for the old­sters, not so much for the ones peel­ing the Ben­jamins off of their rolls as they refuse to make eye con­tact. And the ones who cut Ike, the Banana­gram Queen off mid-spiel in her mem­ber­ship pitch to declare “I don’t pay for that stuff” and then demand that the store honor competitor’s coupons? She smiles politely and says, “we don’t honor com­peti­tor coupons.”

They want to use the competitor’s coupons? They can drive next door, down into the mall park­ing garage, take the ele­va­tor up, and go into that store.

“But they don’t have the books!”

She smiles less politely. Looks them straight in the eye.

The ones who’re con­fused when she tells them they’re not in Bor­ders?  Them she just smiles at and wishes them a good day.  They’ve got big­ger prob­lems than her not hon­or­ing their com­peti­tors’ coupons.  How do you not know the dif­fer­ence?  And what else are they miss­ing, if they can’t tell the dif­fer­ence between one store and the next?

“Have you heard about our mem­ber­ship program?”

This time, they don’t inter­rupt. They don’t always buy it, but yes, there’s a point. Their membership’s free but no– they don’t have the books. Her store– it does. She makes sure of that.

–

For a wealthy sub­urb, her clients read lots of gos­sip mags. She’s seen too many come over her counter when she walks by the children’s sec­tion, sees “Frog and Toad Together” on the cover of some­thing and thinks “It won’t last. Never does.”

–

The girl who tosses the still-shrink-wrapped audio­book of Eclipse over the counter (designer baby doll dress, reeks of some expen­sive per­fume and cig­a­rette smoke, accent drips of Long Island Princess) says “I’m return­ing this.”

Queen Ike reads the receipt for the $57.00 item and sees it was bought back in April, then turns it over to show her the return policy.

Four­teen days, any returns after that will not be per­mit­ted. (Except at the manager’s dis­cre­tion, which the receipt does not say. Hi. I’m the man­ager. Yes. And Queen Ike sends her fel­low cashier off on her break.  Shit’s about to get ugly and the girl is so young.)

She can do an exchange. And no, a store credit is not mer­chan­dise. The girl explains (shrills, really) that she has a Mas­ters in Eng­lish and she doesn’t have time for this and read­ing the backs of receipts– well– it’s the same song and dance. She stomps upstairs after sim­per­ing that she’ll just “exchange” some­thing and return it tomor­row. She comes back down­stairs with a Mal­colm Glad­well box set and she’d like to buy it, please, a bull­shit smile on her face.

Queen Ike’s Assis­tant Man­ager comes up just in time for Ike to say “Oh, dear. I’m afraid my scan­ner doesn’t seem to quite work.”

The Assis­tant Man­ager looks at the scan­ner, turns it over, says “Hmm, looks like it doesn’t,” then turns the receipt over again.  Then she looks at the Master’s in Eng­lish– return­ing the audio­book about sparkly vam­pires .  “She’s got a law degree.  She can read the back of receipts.  Have a nice night,” she says.  And smiles.

Later on, a co-worker– young, gor­geous, bril­liant and snarky in that quiet-zing! way, saw the Glad­well box set on the shelf for resort.  “Glad­well…” she mur­mured.  “He’s like the Jared Dia­mond of the psy­chol­ogy world.  My anthro depart­ment had a dis­cus­sion when he came to cam­pus on whether or not he was worthwhile.”

Ike asked her about the result.  She smiled mys­te­ri­ously and headed upstairs.

–

“Why is this gate closed?  My child could hurt him­self, hit­ting his head on it like that!”

The gate’s closed because I love the water­melon sound of scream­ing, obsti­nate, mis­be­hav­ing tod­dlers’ heads thunk­ing against it while their moth­ers ignore them and try to carry on a phone con­ver­sa­tion and ignore the cashier while they also berate them for not run­ning a day care cen­ter in what is a bookstore.

“The area behind cash­wrap is for cus­tomers only.  Chil­dren often run behind here if the gate is not closed.  May I have your credit card, please?”

–

“I want to return this Chicken Soup for the Teacher’s Soul.  I don’t have the receipt.  I bought it with cash.  I can do an even exchange for another Chicken Soup book.”

“Do you have a mem­ber­ship card?  Or an Educator’s Card?”

“No.”

“Then I’m afraid I have no way of look­ing it up.  I can do an exchange for the low­est price in the com­puter, since I have no way of know­ing with­out the reciept if you bought it here or online or with a coupon or at some promo price.  That price is 10.76.”

“But I always shop here.  I never shop online.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, with­out a receipt, I have no way to know that. I can’t just do a book swap, I need some record of pur­chase to do the kind of trans­ac­tion you want.  With­out a receipt, I can only give you 10.76 worth of credit toward another book in the store.”

“But I always shop here.”

She might be telling the truth.  But Ike works there forty hours a week, has for almost a year now.  If that woman’s “always” is true, then she’s on a very dif­fer­ent series of “always” than Ike’s, because Ike’s sched­ule rotates, 8–4, 3–11, M-F, week­ends too, and this isn’t a woman she rec­og­nizes at all.

“Have you ever ordered a book with us, ma’am?  Is there some way I could look you up in the sys­tem?”  The woman huffs and says “We’re going in cir­cles” and storms out of the store.

Yes, ma’am, we are.  Just dif­fer­ent ones than you think.