First, a rant!
I got to work the afternoon shift in texts today and when I arrived, the morning shift guy (who's one of our better employees) told me about this woman he referred to as a "witch" (in a tone that told me exactly what he meant. like I said, one of our best ones). She had come in and asked a cashier if we had a book, and he promptly directed her to texts. She seemed to find this unreasonable and felt she was getting "the runaround", and told the text guy as much, and when he offered to go to the shelf and get it, she snapped at him and told him, "NO, I WANT YOU TO LOOK IT UP ON THE COMPUTER."
The computers lock themselves after a few minutes of idle time, and they're also about 10 years old, so logging in takes a good minute or so, and then another minute to accept inputs.
Frankly, the summer sections take up all of 4 shelves, and it's far faster to physically get a book as it is to look it up. But I digress..
It turned out she didn't know her class abbreviation, so he finally just ignored her and walked to the shelf and handed her what turned out to be a rentable cd rom. The cashier who checked her out noted that she asked, specifically, if she could return it if the cd was missing.......out of a sealed package.
I thought the story was amusing. I've been in retail for a long time. Sometimes you get that customer, and the best you can do is hope they don't come back.
Around 3, right as I got my only customer for the day (Saturday, campus bookstore, summer session), I got a call from a woman who said she'd bought a cd package and the cd was missing.
Go fucking figure.
I told her we could exchange it if she'd bring it in, and her reply was, "I had a really bad experience there and I'd rather not go back. Could I speak to your manager?".
It turned out that she was basically angling to get the charge refunded to her, and keep the package. Most times, that's called theft.
Our manager, who was fed up with this but still trying to maintain some shred of professionalism, explained that he understood perfectly what she was asking, and that he was not a moron. She replied, "well, that's two steps ahead of your employees".
The manager working was our trade manager, who I've never seen angry before. And the man was visibly shaking on the phone with this woman. Eventually this all culminated in the usual "can I have the name of your store manager and her email address" bullshit.
I'm a little pissed about the whole thing. What this woman doesn't understand is that you shouldn't be unreasonable, rude, and antagonistic to people who have sensitive personal information of yours. Such as a sheet that you fill out in order to rent a textbook. And you certainly shouldn't call the college-educated employees of an establishment "morons" for doing their job.
So in case you're one of those customers who likes to go shop just to cause trouble, let me caution you to pay in cash and not give out your address. Just FYI.
Whew!
Second, an update!
I finished the semester, with only one B (which is an improvement as far as Spanish goes). I don't know how many more to go. I'm tracking down the actual individual who does the final audits for graduation applications to find out exactly what I need, because as usual I have 20 different answers from 20 different people in Fine Arts. We also have a brand-spankin-new Dean, so that's bad scene as far as my query goes.
So far, all I know is I probably can't even apply for the BFA this fall.
We'll see. Hopefully I'll run across an opportunity to show something this summer, possibly at the local coffee shop. Nothing really sells there, but at least my work'll be up and not stacked in my apartment.
I got to work the afternoon shift in texts today and when I arrived, the morning shift guy (who's one of our better employees) told me about this woman he referred to as a "witch" (in a tone that told me exactly what he meant. like I said, one of our best ones). She had come in and asked a cashier if we had a book, and he promptly directed her to texts. She seemed to find this unreasonable and felt she was getting "the runaround", and told the text guy as much, and when he offered to go to the shelf and get it, she snapped at him and told him, "NO, I WANT YOU TO LOOK IT UP ON THE COMPUTER."
The computers lock themselves after a few minutes of idle time, and they're also about 10 years old, so logging in takes a good minute or so, and then another minute to accept inputs.
Frankly, the summer sections take up all of 4 shelves, and it's far faster to physically get a book as it is to look it up. But I digress..
It turned out she didn't know her class abbreviation, so he finally just ignored her and walked to the shelf and handed her what turned out to be a rentable cd rom. The cashier who checked her out noted that she asked, specifically, if she could return it if the cd was missing.......out of a sealed package.
I thought the story was amusing. I've been in retail for a long time. Sometimes you get that customer, and the best you can do is hope they don't come back.
Around 3, right as I got my only customer for the day (Saturday, campus bookstore, summer session), I got a call from a woman who said she'd bought a cd package and the cd was missing.
Go fucking figure.
I told her we could exchange it if she'd bring it in, and her reply was, "I had a really bad experience there and I'd rather not go back. Could I speak to your manager?".
It turned out that she was basically angling to get the charge refunded to her, and keep the package. Most times, that's called theft.
Our manager, who was fed up with this but still trying to maintain some shred of professionalism, explained that he understood perfectly what she was asking, and that he was not a moron. She replied, "well, that's two steps ahead of your employees".
The manager working was our trade manager, who I've never seen angry before. And the man was visibly shaking on the phone with this woman. Eventually this all culminated in the usual "can I have the name of your store manager and her email address" bullshit.
I'm a little pissed about the whole thing. What this woman doesn't understand is that you shouldn't be unreasonable, rude, and antagonistic to people who have sensitive personal information of yours. Such as a sheet that you fill out in order to rent a textbook. And you certainly shouldn't call the college-educated employees of an establishment "morons" for doing their job.
So in case you're one of those customers who likes to go shop just to cause trouble, let me caution you to pay in cash and not give out your address. Just FYI.
Whew!
Second, an update!
I finished the semester, with only one B (which is an improvement as far as Spanish goes). I don't know how many more to go. I'm tracking down the actual individual who does the final audits for graduation applications to find out exactly what I need, because as usual I have 20 different answers from 20 different people in Fine Arts. We also have a brand-spankin-new Dean, so that's bad scene as far as my query goes.
So far, all I know is I probably can't even apply for the BFA this fall.
We'll see. Hopefully I'll run across an opportunity to show something this summer, possibly at the local coffee shop. Nothing really sells there, but at least my work'll be up and not stacked in my apartment.