Posted in adventures in retail, book snob on Jul 25th, 2010
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 […]
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Posted in adventures in retail on Jun 22nd, 2010
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 […]
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The Sunday Times Book Review has an article about a new book– a transcription, really, and I’ve read the advance copy, it’s well worth the read– of an interview between the late, great David Foster Wallace and the Rolling Stone reporter and writer David Lipsky as Wallace is doing his book tour after Infinite Jest […]
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Posted in adventures in retail on May 16th, 2010
Sometimes, she feels like an air traffic controller, and wishes that instead of the Head Cashier phone she most times does not carry (too heavy, too clunky, and most days, well, eh, she just doesn’t need it and the ringing of the lines she does not have to answer is just plain annoying) she had […]
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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, […]
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Posted in adventures in retail, poems on Jan 4th, 2010
Desperate for Par
It’s a note my coworker left me on top of one of the tills in the safe,
an echo of a phrase I used once in passing.
A joke. Sort of.
We were so out of ones, fives and rolled coin
it was giggle-inducing.
Holidays working in retail make you punchy like that.
It’s meta, that comment.
She’s homesick for the South, […]
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Posted in adventures in retail, bipolar on Jan 1st, 2010
A lot of customers– they all think they’re wags– ask if they sell any good books. Har-dee-har, har, she wants to reply.
One of her coworkers– the cool artsy-school grad, female drummer, was in a band, if she’s describing her in a screenplay, wears chinos and button-down shirts and worn Vans(-ish, they might be Skechers or something, […]
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Yep. Workin’ Christmas Eve.
But that’s okay. You know why?
I baked. Cookies. Lots of ‘em. I made my traditional Fine Cooking butter cookies with raspberry jam filling and frosting. And chocolatey cookies sprinkled with salt from Barbara Lynch’s cookbook Stir. (Run, don’t walk, make these cookies.) And the best toffee you will ever eat, ever.
That’s right– recipe links. […]
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Posted in adventures in retail on Oct 30th, 2009
Dear Sir:
The fact that you insist that you have “a email,” (it’s actually “an email,” just because you have an English accent doesn’t mean you have mastery over your own tongue) with a tracking number proving we’ve received your book doesn’t change the fact that both my inventory system and my phone call down to […]
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Posted in adventures in retail, poems on Oct 24th, 2009
Large denominations are changeable,
but when you’re out of pennies and ones, you’re in real trouble.
It’s an existential life lesson, sure,
we’re all alone in the end,
but mostly, just make sure you have enough pennies and ones.
The ladies with Prada purses and Louis Vuitton wallets
don’t always expect you to make an exception for their returns.
The men in sweatshirts, […]
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