Morons I dealt with today
First there was this lady on the phone. She was looking for some book about horses, which turned out to be a photography book anyway, so I really shouldn't have had to deal with her at all. The book is called "Horses." As you can imagine, this is not going to produce useful results, so fortunately, she had the author's name, and it was unusual enough that it should have worked fine. I knew things were starting to not go well, though, when she started getting snotty with me because I needed her to spell said author's name. More than once, too, since she didn't enunciate very well. When I looked up author and title, nothing. I tried looking up just the author, and got several results, but none of them were the one she was looking for. I tell her I'm not finding anything. She gets even snottier, all "It's a very well-known book, and they got it from Chapters." Eventually, she decides she wants someone else to look for it. Fine. I go find B, a manager, and he gets on the phone with this lady. Initially, he doesn't have much luck either. Then she asks him if the freaking ISBN would help. He says it would, puts it in, and bam. There's the book. Then, from what I gathered from B's end of the conversation, she wants to know basically why I'm such a moron that I couldn't find it, and that I should have asked her if she had the ISBN - to which B pointed out that most customers don't have a clue about those, so unless they mention it (as she did to him), it's not something we normally figure they'll have. So anyway, she got her book and I guess she was happy then, but ugh. Tell him the additional info you have, but I'm just supposed to be psychic and know that you're holding some info in reserve? I would have thought she'd mention something useful like that as soon as I had trouble finding the damn book. But no, apparently it's much more fun to be bitchy to your salespeople. Bah.
And the next one wasn't bitchy, just a bit eye-roll-inspiring. She's poking around in my section, so I ask if I can help her find anything. She says one of the guys is already in the basement looking. OK, that's cool. Then she comes to me a few moments later, and says, "But could you let me know when he comes back?" Sure, I say, who was it, what did he look like? "Well, I didn't see his name, but he was staff. He was wearing a vest." Well that certainly narrows it down. Since that was about all she could tell me, I pretty much just dismissed it. Eventually, other manager came up from the basement, and it turned out to be him she'd been waiting for, but seriously. She couldn't come up with any features at all? I know it's not at all unusual for customers to pay no attention whatsoever to salespeople as people, but it's still always nice to be reminded of just how little notice you get, beyond whatever you're actually doing for them.
In other news, my computer is still not feeling better. Seems the NumLock button is well and truly fried. Not too sure what to do about that at this point.
And the next one wasn't bitchy, just a bit eye-roll-inspiring. She's poking around in my section, so I ask if I can help her find anything. She says one of the guys is already in the basement looking. OK, that's cool. Then she comes to me a few moments later, and says, "But could you let me know when he comes back?" Sure, I say, who was it, what did he look like? "Well, I didn't see his name, but he was staff. He was wearing a vest." Well that certainly narrows it down. Since that was about all she could tell me, I pretty much just dismissed it. Eventually, other manager came up from the basement, and it turned out to be him she'd been waiting for, but seriously. She couldn't come up with any features at all? I know it's not at all unusual for customers to pay no attention whatsoever to salespeople as people, but it's still always nice to be reminded of just how little notice you get, beyond whatever you're actually doing for them.
In other news, my computer is still not feeling better. Seems the NumLock button is well and truly fried. Not too sure what to do about that at this point.