It's been a while, so time for another one...

If I had to name the most retarded question I've ever had from a customer, I'd struggle because they were all gems in their own right.

This one happening last Friday was comedy gold, though.

Woman, probably in her late 30s, comes into the shop.
"Can I help?", I say.
"Yes", she says, "can you order me a book off the internet?"
I look at her, confused. "What do you mean, waterstones.com? You'd have to have your own account-"
"No", she says. "Off amazon."

I don't even know what to say to that. I suppose now is the time to give up. *slowly bangs head against wall*

I'm sure I must be approaching enough material for a book, or a least a Top Trumps deck. All I know is that she'd be ranking mile high.

I saw that bird on "Have I got news for you" and couldn't get over it. I've always been a sucker for parrots, but I am so re-sold again, I want one. Now. Please. Now.

This girl is full of keys....!!

... we must remove her nipples!

Species

I may be flypaper for freaks, but working in customer service brings hazards of its own. Again, one could argue that this is probably why I ended up working in an industry that provides an endless supply of every bit of disproof of evolution.
And it's not just me. My friend James, who runs a different bookshop, has a load of tales of his own, which he allowed me to share, again proving that human progress is on a rapid decline, especially considering that our main clientele is supposed to be academic.


So here is an exerpt from an email, which I considered editing, but then thought would just let speak for itself.

"We had no psychos - certainly not to your Russian standards* - but then I seem to remember Bournemouth being much better for that sort of thing! Mainly I get people who seem to not be able to read, or understand simple phrases like "we don't have it in stock, but I can order it for you" (this is usually met with "I can have now? I want buy now.").

I should tell you about my favourite customer of the last fortnight. Chinese girl comes to the till with two books and a loyalty card. I scan books, swipe card and tell her she has 8 quid of points if she would like to use them?
'I get points for this books?'
'yes, they go after, so you can use them next time.'
'I want use now.'
'You can't.'
'I buy separately then.'
Ok. Void transaction. She points at one book- 'I use points from that to buy that' (points at other book).
Ok, scan book, swipe card.
'Actually I want use points from other book.'
Right. Void again. Scan other book, swipe card- 'That's 42 quid for that one, do you want to use your 8 quid of points on this one?'
'No I want pay both books together.'
Right. 'You can't pay for both of them at the same time if want to use the points from one for the other.'
'Oh. I pay together then.'
Right. Void AGAIN. Scan both. 'Thats 77 quid, would you like to use your points?' Nodding with big grin. 'Ok, that's 69 quid.'
'I want use points from those books.'
'You can't until your next purchase.'
'Oh. I don''t want use any points then.'
VOID AGAIN. I swear if she had changed her mind again, I would have refused to sell her the books. She didn't, and as such, she escaped with her life.

I shall get back to explaining to all the students a: why their lecturers lie to them and tell them they ordered the books with us, and b: that when we say about a week for delivery, that does not mean an exact 168 hours from ordering!

Another recent favourite was the girl who responded to everything by nodding and smiling even when I was telling her that the book didn't exist, the girl who decided against buying her books because I had pointed out that she was buying a single copy of the book which was in the pack which she was also buying, the man who started screaming at me when I told him that he had to pay for the book when placing an order, the lecturer who has been told every year for five years that the book on his list is no longer available yet insists on continuing to include it on his reading list, the lecturer who hides books by other authors in the hope that students will buy his over-complicated out-of-date book, the lecturer who can't understand why we can't keep in stock a book which hasn't been printed yet (especially as he wrote it), the continual arguments with students about returning books they have obviously used (sometime even annotated) and we won't refund them ("it's against my statuatory rights!"- it's against my human rights to have to deal with people that stupid), students and lecturers alike giving answers to different questions to the ones which you haven't even asked yet.
And the one that really gets to me a lot of the time - Me: "is there anything I can help you with?"
Customer: "hello", then walking away. 'Hello' is not the answer to 'Can I help you?' Unless you say it in a Terry Thomas voice.

Ah, Vitriol!"

I replied to this: 'Hahahahaha. Say, did you ever notice the difference when you stopped working with mental patients and then just went into customer service instead?'

James: 'Yep, my patients always said please.'

I rest my case.

(*this was after my telling him the tale of Christopher Tarantinovskovich)

Friday the 13th and the influx of psychopaths

Getting up on a Friday 13^th is a bit of a wary experience at any time, but that we were going to encounter a class A psychopath was something I never expected. As a disclaimer, I need to point out that I have exaggerated nothing in the following description… he really was that intense.

We had barely been open for 30 minutes when this big burly guy wandered in. Late 20s, shoulder-length wispy frazzled hair with a receding hairline, leather jacket, thin wire glasses. When he greeted us, he had a thick Eastern European accent… possibly Russian. I require you, dear reader, to apply this accent to everything he says, to fully appreciate the experience.

He was quite loud in an overcompensating way, and meandered around the shop. “Have you no cards for Valentine’s Day?”

I dutifully pointed him to the shelf.

“The student shop, they have nothing, just five cards, just all about love!” he complained loudly, half to himself, half to us.

“To be fair, mate, it is the holiday of lovers”, I said.

He looked up at me with a wild expression. “I was online, on internet, and there was, for lovers, for friends, for boss! I researched, I’ll go out on computer, I show you print!! I’ll prove it!” For a second he reminded me a bit of Borat, on a massive aggro trip.
”Nah, that’s alright, mate”, I said. “I believe you.”

“They have them on there, for friendship, for teachers!”

“For teachers?” I repeated, incredulously, with a little laugh. “Slightly inappropriate, perhaps?”

“Why not teacher?” he said. He looked dreamily into the distance and quietly mused to himself: “”My teacher… she is very young…”

“erm… ok”, I said, with a slightly panicky grin.

He handed me a card which he stated was “very nice” (the Borat comparison immediately sprang to mind again). I rang it through the till. He wandered off again, looking at more cards, something that irks me in customers, especially if there is a queue behind them (which there wasn’t in this case, but it was still rude – kind of the equivalent to walking out of a room mid-conversation. It irks me as much as customers drumming their fingers while you ring their stuff through. Makes me want to chop them off!! But I digress.). Get on with the transaction, mate!

“My teacher…”, he said again. I looked at the card. It was covered in little hearts, saying “Gorgeous”, “Sexy”, “Kiss me”, “Hug me”.

“If that’s for a teacher, you might want to reconsider”, I said and read it out to him.

“Fuck me??”, he burst out loudly, repeating a misunderstanding. I shrunk back, creeped out, squealing internally. I glanced at Max, who stood behind me on a computer, trying to look busy and not involved by typing frantically, trying really hard not to laugh.

Psycho Boy picked another card. I voided the first transaction and put that card through, instead.

“I will pay you!” he said gravely and pulled out a little velvet bag (where he must keep his booty, surely). He dug out a few coins and threw them at me in a too-wannabe-nonchalant way. “Yes!” he muttered intensely. “Let’s do this, Christopher!”

I gave him change and a receipt. “Thank you!” he said, gracefully (in his own mind).

Then he leaned on the counter. “Have you got 'Lolita'!”

“Erm, no”, I said. “But I can order it for you.”

“You haven’t got 'Lolita'!”, he said, in exaggerated horror.

“No, but we got a lot of other books.”

He looked around and spotted the 'Grindhouse' book, a ‘Making of’ book of ‘Death Proof’ and ‘Planet Terror’. He went to leaf through it. “Quentin Tarantino!”, he said appreciatively. “One day I’ll be as big as him. A filmmaker.”

I suddenly realised who he tried so hard to be. He seemed like someone who had decided to completely reinvent himself as a tough shit guy from an action movie, and would, from now on, only recite bad movie lines. Maybe this whole psycho act was intentional? Except that it was more of an 80s version of a psycho, but possibly perceived by him as the latest psycho chic, as it just had made it over there to Mother Russia.

“Keep this book for me!” he ordered. Then he turned around and wandered towards the exit. “These books have nothing to say!”, he muttered. “But I, Christopher, I do!”

Show me what you read and I'll tell you who you are

A boy came into the shop. He bought these two books.














This is even funnier when you know that the Tax book is 78 quid.

I couldn't stop laughing for half an hour.

Panzer

A while ago I was going through old photos. Can’t get enough of them – the older, the better. Whether it’s to look at old fashions and laugh about them (and be secretly ashamed to have partaken in them), or marvel at how skinny we used to be, to trigger memories or to wonder at our innocence/ignorance at all the things to come – the people we would become, and the gap between our expectations of the future and what actually happened to us).

I also love looking at other people’s photos – somehow it makes your friends more three-dimensional and even more loveable to know what they were like when they were kids, and how they came to be the people they are now, which is why I pester them at every opportunity for photos and childhood stories. You then don’t just bond to the few years you have known them. It makes you feel like you have known them all your life.

I have some pictures that seemed pointless at the time they were taken. Why get a shot of the view from your bedroom window? You see that every day! It amazes me now, though, to see how architecture has changed, how the East German standardised children’s playground has changed into something adhering to health and safety laws and how the scrawny saplings behind our house have turned into thickly foliaged trees. Some of these photos I merely took because I wanted to show my host family in Texas 12 years ago what it was like where I lived, not knowing that these would be the remnant documents of my childhood I managed to salvage before mother could run off with the rest of the household.

And then there are a handful of photos that strike me as plain bizarre. Almost alien. Parts of a past that is so opposed to everything we live and believe now that it seems entirely like someone else’s life, and although I used to live in the middle of all this, I now remember it like an independent observer… as if my kid self was just a character in a story. If I didn’t have those pictures, I might not even remember at all. They are little pieces of conserved past, pinning down memories that would otherwise dissolve and be forgotten.
Like this picture of a Soviet Panzer rolling past our living room window.
(Whoops. I lied. It was German. Dad told me that according to the Four Power Agreement, Soviet tanks weren't allowed to drive on German soil. They could be transported, but not driven.)

Dad remembers the exact day. It was 30 April 1984, the day before the International Worker's Day, and the tanks were moved closer to the city centre to be ready for the parades the next day. The tank came from neighbouring Berlin-Karlshorst, which was the district housing the Soviets, heading towards Strasse der Befreiung, now called Alt-Friedrichsfelde.
It was the same street our school was on, and the same street Gorbachev came driving down when visiting Berlin in 1989 or 1990, the street we lined up along, shouting “Gorbi! Gorbi!”, which infuriated our fiercely communist Russian teacher.
We had quite a few Panzer parades back in the days. It was always cool and exciting, but in retrospect I wonder why they organised those parades. It was always treated like a celebration, a celebration of East German and Communist power, but now I can’t help but think (what may be a statement of the obvious to those who were older and more aware of the political power play in those days) it was also meant to serve as a reminder to us who held the reigns. In the end, we were only the Soviets’ buffer.
There were Panzer parades on regular occasions. We already heard them when they were miles off, a deep rumbling which would, when drawing near, start shaking the glasses in our cabinets. The Panzer chains plowed over the asphalt and left white tracks, like a car’s skid marks in reverse. Sometimes they would carry medium range missiles, which was equally impressive and terrifying (as a Bomb child, I was in permanent fear those things would go off in front of our house, and I always naively let out a sigh of relief when it had passed us, even though they would have still done considerable damage exploding a few miles down the road.

We lived near a big intersection, where our street crossed Strasse der Befreiung, which, in the direction of Berlin’s city centre, would turn into Stalin/Karl-Marx-Allee, a majestic boulevard with a Stalinist architecture intended to impress. At that intersection, the tanks would turn and rumble towards the town centre.
Strasse der Befreiung was the road the Soviets entered Berlin from Poland, the B1 that directly connects the two. The Soviets, depicted as our soup-supplying, chocolate-distributing, child-hair-smoothing Big Brother, while our grandmothers repressed stories of how they hid in basements from getting raped and pillaged by those same soldiers. (Not that you can blame them… after all, we practically flattened their country.) Strasse der Befreiung, which earned a bitter twang of irony because of the kids it killed like stray cats, when they tried to cut their way to school short.

By the way, that street is not called Strasse der Befreiung (Liberation Street) anymore. It was one of those things that were eagerly changed, almost with a sense of shame, not just about the Nazi past, but also about that we fell straight from a brown mistake into a red one, repeating our past just in different colours, like a teenager swaying from one extreme fashion to another.
Most of the past is a mere memory now, a fleeting image, because hardly any hint of the past remains, everything having been demolished or being derelict now or turned into discount shoe shops.
There is a debate about whether removing cultural artifacts is a good or bad thing, if they are artifacts of a totalitarian regime. I can understand demolition as an act of liberation, but somehow, the place where I come from hasn't got historical markers... the ones we've got are displayed with a sense of guilt, or hidden away in museums. It wasn't a good history per se, but trading it for the pretense it never happened can't be the right way either. All I really got are some old photos... but they do the trick.

It just feels like a significant period ended, well, as an anticlimax. But then maybe, so does life.