So the story goes that I walked in to work this morning to find a wall of boxes greeting me, over twenty boxes of band books that had been sent back to me from one of our stores because the manager of that particular store had grossly over-estimated how many books she would sell through during this rental season, plus 8 boxes of music from various publishers that I had ordered to fill specific customer special orders. So I whipped out the trusty hand dolly from the supply room and did some good old-fashioned heavy lifting and carting. And then the phone rang about ten times in two minutes, which I had to run and answer every time because, to add on to the countless things that I love (*cough*) about my job is the fact that, oh, have I mentioned that it's just me and Greatest Print Assistant Ever running the entire damn department? Meaning, ordering, shelving, unpacking, loading, unloading, warehousing, and, yes, having to cover the damn sales floor 90% of the time. Anyway, after rearranging the wall of boxes from the back of the building to a small mountain of boxes in front of my desk because there was nowhere else to put them, goddamnit, I finally plopped myself down at my desk to enjoy a delicious double Americano (at last!) and start working through the frighteningly large number of email orders in my inbox that had accumulated over the weekend. In the midst of this, one of our store managers, Casey, came up to my desk followed by a tall, gangly, middle-aged man who, apparently, was looking for some obscure Japanese guitar tablature book that this guy saw online:
Casey: Hey Ysabel, can you order music from Japan? This guy is looking for a guitar boo--
Idiot customer: HEY! Are you from Japan?!
Me: (under my breath) Uuuhboy... (out loud) No. I'm from the Philippines.
Idiot customer: Oh. Uh, Vinnie Moore! Vinnie Moore!
Me: "Vinnie Moore"? What is that, the name of the artist?
Idiot customer: The book I'm looking for is 'Mind's Eye.'
Me: Okay, let me see what comes up in this publisher's database... (proceeds to type into my computer)
Idiot customer: Whoa, is this what you do all day? I actually work. Harharhar!
Me: (Slowly craning my head around to look him in the face) Do you want to get slapped upside your head?
* Casey starts walking away *
Idiot customer: Hey, you're cuter than he is. I'd rather get help from you anyday!
Me: (eyes rolling so far to the back of my head I can see the bookshelf behind me) Ohmygod...
Idiot customer: Oh wow, you type really fast! That's pretty impressive. Look at that!
Me: Errrrrrg...
Anyway, I was stuck helping this numbskull out for the next half hour during which he threw out a couple more unbearably charming attempts to flirt (bleargh) with me and show off in front of his buddy who was very kindly just sitting on a piano bench noodling on a guitar. What an idiot. All I could do to get rid of him was to tell him that I would call some distributors and see if they had an old copy of this book in their inventory (even though this thing is clearly out of print, and only available from this Japanese seller on eBay) and that we (i.e. anybody but me) would call him if I could get a copy (won't happen). And then I immediately went down to the dungeon of doom where Greatest Print Assistant Ever was working on sorting through all our Christmas sheet music (Yes, you heard me right. Christmas music. Because piano teachers have already been on my case for the past month about buying f*ing Christmas music. It's September, you old hags!!!) so that I could share with somebody the sheer grossness of this moron. Yurgh. End of story
In other news: Tomorrow is audition day for the Wind Ensemble. I feel meh about it. At least the excerpt this time is not the Mendelssohn Scherzo like last year. I think I'll do a decent job. The difficult thing is gauging how you are going to react to any sort of audition process when you haven't really been in any sort of regular high (or any) -pressure performance environment. I can play the audition music just fine. But getting into that room and playing for a hidden panel and remembering how to control those voices in your head (all you music nerdly friends know what I'm talking about) when you haven't had to really deal with that kind of thing in a while -- that's something I'll have to wait and figure out tomorrow I guess. The good news? Now that Wind Ensemble is starting again, I'll get to leave work early two days a week again! Huzzah! ...even though it means paying a ridiculous amount of money to park in Seattle two days a week again. That's not so cool.
In OTHER news: Heroes* season premiere tonight! To celebrate, Scott and I will grab some burgers from Burger Hut (They have this 'Burger Hut Special' which is basically a really simple, delicious, fresh-grilled burger with a blanket of scrambled eggs inside. Wow. So good.) and come back to watch it on TiVo, baby! Woo!
* Um, apparently Peter Petrelli and Claire are dating in real life now? Blech. I do not approve of this.
Mmmmmm. Egg on burger is so good. BTW you can say stuff like that to customers as long as you smile at the end. Trust Me.
ReplyDeleteI actually offered to let a customer slap me today. Whatever her problem was, it amazingly wasn't my fault, as I wasn't there that day. But still. I feel like everything at my job is my fault. Stupid rich people and their stupid lapdogs. :-P By the way, egg on a burger? Not so much. Sausage, maybe. Not burger.
ReplyDeleteNever offer to let a customer slap you! You must go by Ysabel Rule of Customer Service: "THE CUSTOMER IS NEVER RIGHT. THEY ARE WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!"
ReplyDeleteAlso: egg on a burger is delish. I must find a way to convert you while being 3000(?) miles away.