ALARUMS & EXCURSIONS

Ah, a day off. The calm in the eye of the storm.

Yesterday was another crazy day. The sad part is, if
we had one or two more booksellers(not shelvers or
barristas or alpha's oh my!)it would have been much
less stressful.

As it is, those of us there are running back and forth
between info and registers, and at this rate we will all
be burned out by Christmas. I find myself drifting
towards rudeness with some customers lately and take that
as a signal to take my ten minute break.

Among the more...unique...ones lately:

The woman who I called to notify her that her book
had come in. Her answering machine took the message
after I was treated to a quote from the Bible that
the customer's disgustingly cheerful voice delivered
with a "There! That should help you through your day."
I hung up with a few well chosen(and whispered)phrases
of my own.

The woman looking for a summer reading book for her
daughter:
"Where are your kid's books? Not the kid kid's books,
but the kid's books." (She wanted Young Adults.)

The woman who made use of the computer kiosk:
"The computer says it's a large paperback.Where
is your large paperback section?"

Add to this TMWMBO in full voice paging the troops
from info to registers and then two minutes later
paging them back to information and you have people
walking about with stressed looks.

It was 6pm before I had a chance to try to reshelve
some of the day's returns that had accumulated along
the books and such that customers leave lying about.

I do love the book biz. I do,really.

But damn, I need a vacation.

And it now appears that won't happen until August.