Annals of a Bookstore Manager

The Two Battles

There are two battles that a retail worker can never hope to win in that ghastly war between them and the average customer; a veritable war of attrition with more casualties than a body can stomach to see. I am not referring to those miscellany moments where a customer decides to pick a fight, often over a mistake they made and they know it. Those are more like guerrila tactics, at best, and you can settle about as quickly and effeciently by punching the person as talking it down. I have never punched a customer, mind you, and never would, but rarely do those loud customers and their Viet Cong methods ever return anyhow, and many of them will still spread dirty little slanders and libels about you, so I am just saying. I do not think it is right to hit people, but I would understand.

No, I refer to two larger battles. You can never win the battle of prices (just so you know, fellow workers, that the prices are always too high, even when it horrificly clearanced) and you can never win the battle of temperatures. Considering most people have to dedicate hard hours of their life to earning money, you can guess which one people make the uglier fusses over. That's right, the thermostat. I'll get to that in a moment.

There is not much I can say about prices, since that makes some level of common sense. The cheaper you can get something, the more of something you can get. Five dollars saved today might be steak biscuit in your retirement. I understand the need to be frugal.

What I do not understand is the flat level that this is applied with. A customer is seemingly as happy about getting a couple dollars off an already heavily discounted book as they are with getting a couple dollars off a heavily overpriced piece of clothing. If you walk into the Book Gallery, chances are you saving from five to ten dollars per purchase. I still get asked to discount books for any number of reasons. Some comical, such as "I am the first customer of the day, what's my prize?". Some somewhat practical, such as "I am a college student, do you have a college student discount?" or "I am going off to Iraq in a week, can I have 10% off?". Some are downright sleazy, such as "This book's print is too small, I need money off." or "I am buying the book that was on the display table, people have browsed it, I want you to take two dollars off the cover price." Notice that I did not stage the last couple of them as questions, but it is a general rule of thumb, the less reason there is for a discount, the more the customer will demand instead of ask.

And I do not even get it that bad compared to some stores. Our stuff is overstock, and so is not expected to be super pristine with shiny new bells and whistles. Apparently the epidemic of people damaging merchandise in a store to get a small discount got so bad that most retail chains are only allowed to sell damaged goods if there is no possible replacement. I once heard of a woman turning in a pet store, falsely, as mistreating an animals, which forced them to go through costly medical exams by the rules of the trade, just so she herself could come back later and try the "I hear these animals were all being examed and so I take it they are not completely well and I want to buy this one at half price because of it."

This series of complex artifices, though, pales in general comparison to what fights erupt over temperature. And I swear to you, it is a fine line. In fact, because it is a fine line, it is the hard one to win. I have seen people shiver at 71F and scream that they are hot at 73F. Frankly, if you were to put half a dozen people at a room that was constantly 72F, but tell them that you are going to alter the temperature from time to time, I imagine you would see them shiver and sweat to some rhythm.

Is it just me, or have people become complete pansies when it comes to things like temperature. Alabama has days that go from 50F in the morning to about 80F at noon. 30 degrees in temperature change is pretty notable. You would think the locals would be ok with a few degrees adjustment between stores. Not really. They are going to complain. Just not to the people at the store (unless it is extreme, but I will get to that).

In fact, this is why I consider this one the deadlier of the two battles, because it is the Cold War (no pun intended). There will never be open salvos. Customers will just walk by you, and turn to their friend, and then say loudly "I guess that don't like customers here, because they have it too hot to shop!" You want to know how hot it was that day? 75F. We don't like customers because we had it three degrees above 72F. We had it at a temperature that only will induce sweat or discomfort, really, if you are doing moderate labor. And she, the one who said the above quote, was not the only one who thought this. Just the only one who said it aloud.

And how often have retail and food workers had to endure the constant ritual of people either making a dramatic show of taking their jacket off and wiping their forehard, while glaring at you? Or, possibly worse, gripping their arms in front of their chest like they have just heard news of a child's death, shivering, and smiling at you wanly as though they are saying "It will be ok, I will be the one to suffer for you."?

All of this has been exasperated by the fact that our store has had a broken thermostat since who knows when. After six months of putting up with passive agressive complaints and glares, I was tempted to resign and put on my resume "Left because of broken thermostat." I had women shout out that they would rather pay twice as much for books than shop in such a hot store (it was 78F).

We had several days this past winter, back when 2006 had a winter, before everything went goofy temperature-wise, where it would be 64F, maybe colder on a few of them. And so people would walk in, wrap their arms about them, and stare at us with weak smiles. I could understand their reaction, somewhat, if it wasn't for the obvious visual clue that the booksellers are standing around with jackets on and huddled together with pained looks on their face. A few would approach, and tell the shivering booksellers "Did you know it's cold here?" (or, the infinitely more annoying "Boy, you guys love the cold, huh?"). I wish, to this day, that I had the courage to say "As a witch's tit, ma'am, as a witch's tit."