The adventures of a Barnes & Noble employee:
This is the most fucked up thing to ever happen to me at work: Basically, I am calling a customer because the book she ordered has come in. A three year old picks up the phone and gargles into my ear before handing the phone to her father. I ask for the woman who ordered the book by name and he asks rather suspiciously: “Who is this?” I tell him it is “Barnes and Noble in Northville calling,” and he says “Okay hold on.” Five minutes (literally) later he yells to his wife (I presume) in an extremely sarcastic manner that “Barnes and Noble is on the phone!” Another few minutes later she picks up, and the other line hangs up. Before I can say anything she whispers in a shrill voice: “I know it’s you! I told you never to call me at home!” This catches me a little bit off guard. All I can manage to say is “Excuse me?” to which she replies: “Ohmygod. Ohmygod. I thought you were someone else.” I then tell her that her book is in and hang up.
Important: If you are buying something and the scanner doesn’t work, and you say “Must be free!” and offer a shit-eating grin, well then shame on you. Presumably you believe the clerk is thinking: “Boy! what a silly guy! Perhaps his background is in improvisational comedy!” But you are wrong. Dead wrong. What the clerk is really thinking is: “If one more person says that today, I will attack with such ferocity that seasoned police officers will weep upon discovering the bloody remains.”
Once, while attempting to locate a book on Breastfeeding for an older woman, she caught me off guard by stating matter-of-factly: “It was smart of God to make the baby and the milk come at the same time.” Yes. Yes, it was.
