Tales from the bookstore
Nothing terribly exciting today, so I'll get some stuff off my chest about my co-workers. First though, let me make it very clear that I love my co-workers. For the most part, they are intelligent, well-rounded, funny, just generally awesome people (well, except that new guy up in Kids. He's a freak. ;)
However. There are a few minor things that just annoy me.
For starters, the new taskers. Usually, when new task people are hired, there's no huge rush, and there's time to properly train them on how things are supposed to be arrange on the shelves, and where any relevant stickers are supposed to go. But as Christmas approached, there was this mad rush of hiring, and just getting these people onto the floor so they could get the books onto the shelves. All well and good, except that nobody had time to train them proper merch standards. Specifically, that when you have enough books to face some of them and spine others, you always start with a facing, and then, moving toward the right, spined books, and you repeat until you run out of books. But merch standards decree that you always always always start with the facing. But the taskers don't know that, so as I wander around my section, I have to move piles of books around because they don't go like that! And I know this seems like a silly little thing to complain about, but since it falls on me (and the other CERs in my section) to maintain proper merch standards, it's just annoying to have to fix them all the time.
Then there's the info people. When someone goes to the info booth to figure out where they can find whatever book they're looking for, the info person will look the book up, and send them to appropriate section. The problem is that there are two lines on the screen giving the location. There's the broad section (In this context, generally History & Poli Sci) and then the subsection. And the info people have this annoying habit of just telling the person the broad section. So I get people coming over, telling me, "I'm looking for [Book Title], and they said it was in History & Poli Sci." That's not very helpful to me, because the book could be in International Poli Sci, Terrorism & Espionage, Canadian Poli Sci, US Poli Sci, Archeology, Ancient History, Medieval History, General History, Exploration, Canadian History, South & Central American History, African History, European History, British History, Irish History, Russian History, Asian History, Middle Eastern History, Jewish History, US HIstory, Civil War, Vietnam War, WWI, WWII, Other Conflicts, General Military History, or Weapons & Vehicles. 27 possible subsections. In many cases, it's either obvious in which subsection the book will be found, or I just know where it is, but in other cases, it can be hard to determine whether something goes in Canadian Poli Sci or Canadian History, for example. So I end up having to look the book up again, which wastes the customer's time, and sometimes annoys them. And this could so easily be avoided if info would just send them over and tell them to look for the Canadian History section in the first place.
Oh, and this bugged the crap out of me, although they did scrap it fairly quickly. Half the sales floor staff (the half under one of the new assistant manager's jurisdiction) got informed one day that for every 25 customers they served, they would get an I Thank You card (it's our employee rewards program. You normally get one if you go above and beyond or whatever). Now this pissed the hell out of me for a few reasons. For starters, not implementing this little scheme universally was totally unfair. If they were going to do it at all, it should have applied to everybody, not just some of the sections. And secondly, it's completely ridiculous, because, hello? Helping customers is not anything resembling "above and beyond the call of duty." Helping customers IS the duty. That's the number one thing the job description entails. We already get rewarded for that. It's called a paycheque. To get extra just for doing your fucking job? What the fuck? Can you tell I'm bitter, and wasn't in any of the affected sections, for the brief time this lasted? I'd still think it was ridiculous, but I probably wouldn't be quite so pissed off about it. Not that I begrudge him them, but Fuzzy's been working there for a few weeks, and has racked up 4 or 5 of these things, thanks in part to this silly little scheme, while I've been there four months and have one. Maybe he's just way better at his job, but seriously, the things I hear about people getting these suckers for just kind of make me go, "Where are the managers when *I* do these things?" Bah. Now I'm just whining, so I'll leave this subject alone before I get completely intolerable.
I leave you with really the only stupid customer I had today. She was a phone-in customer, and was looking for a book, of which we were supposed to have one copy. Probably at least half the time the computer says we have one copy of something, we don't actually have it. Sometimes it might just be misfiled, but the most likely reason for its absence is that it's been stolen. So anyway, I tell this lady that I can't find the book, and she asks me what that means.
Me: Well, in all likelihood, it means someone's stolen it.
Her: How can they do that?
Me: Uh, take the book and walk out the door.
Her: But I was under the impression you had electronic alarms.
Me: Nothing's infallible.
Inner voice: So does practically every other store these days. Do you really think those things have eliminated the problem of shoplifting altogether? Good lord lady, our front door exits onto a busy downtown thoroughfare. Unless someone happened to be looking right at you when you walked out, once you're out there, you're just another one of hundred of pedestrians. Even if you weren't, we don't get paid enough to chase people. And that's not even getting into how ridiculously easy it is to foil the sensors entirely. Oy.
Not the stupidest I've had, but definitely a think-before-you-open-your-mouth moment.
However. There are a few minor things that just annoy me.
For starters, the new taskers. Usually, when new task people are hired, there's no huge rush, and there's time to properly train them on how things are supposed to be arrange on the shelves, and where any relevant stickers are supposed to go. But as Christmas approached, there was this mad rush of hiring, and just getting these people onto the floor so they could get the books onto the shelves. All well and good, except that nobody had time to train them proper merch standards. Specifically, that when you have enough books to face some of them and spine others, you always start with a facing, and then, moving toward the right, spined books, and you repeat until you run out of books. But merch standards decree that you always always always start with the facing. But the taskers don't know that, so as I wander around my section, I have to move piles of books around because they don't go like that! And I know this seems like a silly little thing to complain about, but since it falls on me (and the other CERs in my section) to maintain proper merch standards, it's just annoying to have to fix them all the time.
Then there's the info people. When someone goes to the info booth to figure out where they can find whatever book they're looking for, the info person will look the book up, and send them to appropriate section. The problem is that there are two lines on the screen giving the location. There's the broad section (In this context, generally History & Poli Sci) and then the subsection. And the info people have this annoying habit of just telling the person the broad section. So I get people coming over, telling me, "I'm looking for [Book Title], and they said it was in History & Poli Sci." That's not very helpful to me, because the book could be in International Poli Sci, Terrorism & Espionage, Canadian Poli Sci, US Poli Sci, Archeology, Ancient History, Medieval History, General History, Exploration, Canadian History, South & Central American History, African History, European History, British History, Irish History, Russian History, Asian History, Middle Eastern History, Jewish History, US HIstory, Civil War, Vietnam War, WWI, WWII, Other Conflicts, General Military History, or Weapons & Vehicles. 27 possible subsections. In many cases, it's either obvious in which subsection the book will be found, or I just know where it is, but in other cases, it can be hard to determine whether something goes in Canadian Poli Sci or Canadian History, for example. So I end up having to look the book up again, which wastes the customer's time, and sometimes annoys them. And this could so easily be avoided if info would just send them over and tell them to look for the Canadian History section in the first place.
Oh, and this bugged the crap out of me, although they did scrap it fairly quickly. Half the sales floor staff (the half under one of the new assistant manager's jurisdiction) got informed one day that for every 25 customers they served, they would get an I Thank You card (it's our employee rewards program. You normally get one if you go above and beyond or whatever). Now this pissed the hell out of me for a few reasons. For starters, not implementing this little scheme universally was totally unfair. If they were going to do it at all, it should have applied to everybody, not just some of the sections. And secondly, it's completely ridiculous, because, hello? Helping customers is not anything resembling "above and beyond the call of duty." Helping customers IS the duty. That's the number one thing the job description entails. We already get rewarded for that. It's called a paycheque. To get extra just for doing your fucking job? What the fuck? Can you tell I'm bitter, and wasn't in any of the affected sections, for the brief time this lasted? I'd still think it was ridiculous, but I probably wouldn't be quite so pissed off about it. Not that I begrudge him them, but Fuzzy's been working there for a few weeks, and has racked up 4 or 5 of these things, thanks in part to this silly little scheme, while I've been there four months and have one. Maybe he's just way better at his job, but seriously, the things I hear about people getting these suckers for just kind of make me go, "Where are the managers when *I* do these things?" Bah. Now I'm just whining, so I'll leave this subject alone before I get completely intolerable.
I leave you with really the only stupid customer I had today. She was a phone-in customer, and was looking for a book, of which we were supposed to have one copy. Probably at least half the time the computer says we have one copy of something, we don't actually have it. Sometimes it might just be misfiled, but the most likely reason for its absence is that it's been stolen. So anyway, I tell this lady that I can't find the book, and she asks me what that means.
Me: Well, in all likelihood, it means someone's stolen it.
Her: How can they do that?
Me: Uh, take the book and walk out the door.
Her: But I was under the impression you had electronic alarms.
Me: Nothing's infallible.
Inner voice: So does practically every other store these days. Do you really think those things have eliminated the problem of shoplifting altogether? Good lord lady, our front door exits onto a busy downtown thoroughfare. Unless someone happened to be looking right at you when you walked out, once you're out there, you're just another one of hundred of pedestrians. Even if you weren't, we don't get paid enough to chase people. And that's not even getting into how ridiculously easy it is to foil the sensors entirely. Oy.
Not the stupidest I've had, but definitely a think-before-you-open-your-mouth moment.