For those of you that may not have read part 1 of this series, I used to work at a restaurant. The first hub is all about that experience. This hub will be about the two jobs I had that were pretty much exclusively customer service based. Both of those jobs happened to be at bookstores. I love bookstores and I loved the jobs I had there, with one little exception: the customers.

The first bookstore I worked at was in a mall, during the Christmas season. The one thing I remember the most about this place was that we didn't have a public restroom. It was a very small bookstore, situated at the end of the mall, next to a Sear's. Sear's had a public restroom, but every time I alerted customers to this fact, they acted very annoyed and put out that they would have to walk all the way next door and take an escalator to a restroom. Often, they would try to convince me to let them use the restroom for the employees of the bookstore. It got to the point where I told them we didn't have a restroom at all, and that we too had to walk to Sear's.

Aside from the bathroom bandits, we also had the customers that were angry and tired from the Christmas rush. The year that I worked there, one of the Harry Potter books had just been released. Needless to say, it was a big seller, and we ran out of copies right before Christmas. People could not fathom that we didn't have more copies in the "backroom". Let me just state now, our bookstore was so small, we didn't have a back room. All of our overstock went above the bookcases on shelves. When I told people this, they did not believe me. I had more than one holiday shopper call me a liar. Ok fine, yes, I am lying; I just really don't want you to have the book because I'm a jerk. We had the same problem with Yu Gi Oh cards. Do you remember those? It seemed like every time we received a box of the cards, someone would come in and purchase the entire box for their kid, thus leaving us with no packs for the rest of the shoppers that wanted them for stocking stuffers. When people asked where they could get the Yu Gi Oh cards and I told them the toystore, they said "I'm not going to that madhouse! Aren't you going to get more before Christmas?" Well, no, because it's DECEMBER 22ND. They acted as though it was my fault that they didn't get their shopping done early.

The other bookstore I worked at was in an affluent neighborhood, and was much larger. Everything about this place was fantastic, except for the pay, and...you know.

This one particular instance was again during Christmas. There were a lot of really nice restaurants right around the bookstore I worked at, and oftentimes in the evening we had people come in to browse after they had enjoyed a nice meal, and several drinks. I had a woman come up to the information counter, where I was stationed, and ask where we kept our children's books. As was the store policy, I walked her to the section and asked her if there was anything specific she was looking for. She was a school teacher and wanted books about Christmas, regarding Santa Claus and Jesus, so she could teach her students about both aspects of Christmas. No problem, I showed her several books and she took them. She then asked if we sold books about other holidays that were reserved at this time of year. I showed her some books about Chaunakah, and she took maybe two or three. Then I showed her the books we had about Ramadan, and she snorted loudly and didn't look at them. So I suggested Kwaanza, and she said "Oh yeah right, that's not even a real holiday. No thanks." Okkaaay. Nevermind then.

The other thing that customers did all the time was come to me and ask for "that one book". Um..."you know, the one that's about that guy and he meets that other guy and they go to that place? You have to know what I'm talking about; it was really popular last year!" I have read a lot of books. I don't know the plot to every book ever written. Sometimes I was able to actually find what they were looking for, and every time they would flip the book over and read me the plot, as though they needed to prove that they had the plot right. Fine. Good for you. My other favorite was "the cover is blue!" Next time you are in a bookstore, count how many books of one color you see. Doesn't matter what color it is; I'm sure you'll see more than a few of that same color.

We also had a music section in that store, and you can imagine it was about the same thing in that section as well as the book area. "That one song", "that guy that was on that show one time and has a hit song", etc. My favorite was when they tried to sing the song to me, or hum it if they didn't know the words.

The last little rant I have here is when people would walk up to the register, I would ring up all their purchases, and when I gave them their total, they would hand me a gift card...from a different bookstore. The best part about this is sometimes they would get mad at me, like I swapped all the signs to say "Bookstore A" instead of "Bookstore B" just to spite them. Or, they would ask if I couldn't just take the card anyway! Of course I can't; that would be as useful as me taking your grocery store value card, wouldn't it? We were the only bookstore in the area, so I can (sort of) see if you were window shopping in the neighborhood and decided to pop in for some books without realizing what bookstore you were in. But I can't see driving there and not knowing where you are.

Coming soon: The Computer Store! (Iiiieeeee!)