I left the Office job after two hours yesterday, my strained muscle making it painful to sit in my chair and use my computer and phone. I tried calling out of the Bookstore, but I was called back: very short handed, two events, could I please please come in pretty double please with chocolate and whip cream?

So, because I’m a total idiot, I said yes. I wasn’t put on the hourly schedule and spent the whole three hours at the Info desk, where, fortunately, no lifting, bending, or considerably physical activity was required. And once I’d been moving around for an hour or so, the pain began to subside and I felt considerably better.

Looking for a book for a customer in the literature section, I noticed that there was a huge pile of books unshelved (rather rudely) in the “W” section. I quizzed a service manager about the books and was told that our loss prevention guy had noticed a suspicious looking fellow handling a gun, had called the police, and the gentleman had tried to conceal the weapon behind the books in that section. It turned out that the gun was fake, and quite a few police officers showed up to take the individual in question into custody. Being as it was busy, it was decided that reshelving the books was a task best left to our overnight crew. No one quite knew what the guy was going to do with a fake gun, but I hope he wasn’t going to try to fake assassinate this guy, who was in the store last night for a signing.

It turns out Brent Scowcroft was doing a signing in town last night as well, at The Washington Post. I know this because an older middle-aged white lady came in last night demanding to know where our copies of Scowcroft’s Brezezinski’s book were. Now, look, here’s the thing: I don’t know everything. That’s why we’ve got three different databases to search and cross-reference (Wikipedia, too!). After being verbally berated for not having a stack of the books right at the front of the door (lady, the book came out in September, that’s not new), she than insinuated I was illiterate for not knowing how to spell Brzezinski (I was spelling it Brezinsky, and when I asked her, “Oh, how do you spell it?” all she could offer was “with two z’s.”) Unable to find it in our customer search database (it wasn’t listed under Scowcroft), I said, “Let’s look in the politics section” and she added “Well, that’s where it would be!” in the most arrogant I’m-superior-to-you-asshole tone (yeah? Then you find the book, you dumb whore!). It wasn’t in section, and she declared that we’d “lost a sale!” because it was now too late for her to get the book signed (because that extra minute makes all the difference).

Lady: if you’d bothered not to wait until the last minute to get the book, you’d be set. Also, shutting your fucking mouth for a minute, so that I could’ve, y’know, done my job, would’ve resulted in you being very happy. For example: once you stormed away (drat), I logged into Wikipedia, found that Brezezinski was the co-author — her “Scrowcroft’s Brezezinski’s book made me think Brezezinski was the subject, not a co-author — found the correct spelling of Brezezinski, and located four copies in our politics and government section — the book, for some reason, was filed under his name (not Scowcroft’s). Here’s where it gets better: Brezezinski did a signing in our store, all four of our copies were autographed by him.

I tried to alert her to this, but alas, waving them at her back as she stormed out didn’t quite get her attention. Shucks how that happens!

Here’s the thing, and it’s a valuable lesson: you get more with honey than vinegar. This lady was all about vinegar, and the thing about the retail business is that when you’re rude to store staff, store staff is not going to be motivated to go out of their way to help you. We don’t know everything about what we’ve got in stock, and with a store as large as ours, sometimes we’ve got to triple-check things, look around, and, yes, guess. This takes time – I know we’ve got an instant gratification society, but if you can’t give it a few minutes, you’re going to leave disappointed. Waiting until the last minute and trying to browbeat someone into something is most likely going to leave you storming out without what you’re looking for, it’s just the way it is. So sad, bye-bye, don’t come again.