Friday, February 24, 2006
This is turning out to be one of the most annoying days in a long time. Every customer's a complete nutcase or just getting on my last frayed nerve. Right now there's a lady in here with her hyperactive little kid. He's stomping his feet, squealing like a pig and running around screaming like an idiot. Before that there was the lazy-eyed jackass who bought a CD, returned it a few minutes later...and couldn't think of a reason for returning it. I gave him the cash anyway to shut him up and get him out of here.
Earlier there were blithering idiots galore whom I couldn't understand in the slightest and this one guy who brought a CD up to the counter and asked me breathlessly, "Can I buy this here? Can I buy it in there? Can I bring it with me to get books and then buy it? Can I bring books in here and buy it all at once? Can you hold it for me? Can I leave it there to hold?"
My brain was swimming. "Yes, no, no, yes, yes, no," I replied. He looked at me with zero comprehension. Hey, you ask a million questions, I answer a million questions, dumbass.
And let's not forget the first customer of the day who just had to tell me the story of why he was buying a particular disc. "You know, it was a such a nice day Thursday. So I was out for a drive and I decided to stop by my buddy's house. We talked about cars for a little while, had some lunch. Turns out his wife's sister is getting married. She's a nice girl, it's about time. It started to get cloudy so we went inside the house and he asked me if I wanted to hear some tunes. I said yeah so we turned on the TV and watched one of those cable radio channels, you know those? With the music playing and the words on the screen that tell you what song it is and what album it's from? So were listening to that for awhile and it was getting late, but I heard this one tune on there and I liked it. So yeah, I'm getting this album."
BUDDY I DON'T CARE.
All of this is probably extra annoying because it's one of those increasingly frequent "I am wasting my life drawing stupid comics and living in this town" kind of days. In fact, yeah, I'd say every day is like that now. Whatever, it's better than being dead. I think.
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Earlier there were blithering idiots galore whom I couldn't understand in the slightest and this one guy who brought a CD up to the counter and asked me breathlessly, "Can I buy this here? Can I buy it in there? Can I bring it with me to get books and then buy it? Can I bring books in here and buy it all at once? Can you hold it for me? Can I leave it there to hold?"
My brain was swimming. "Yes, no, no, yes, yes, no," I replied. He looked at me with zero comprehension. Hey, you ask a million questions, I answer a million questions, dumbass.
And let's not forget the first customer of the day who just had to tell me the story of why he was buying a particular disc. "You know, it was a such a nice day Thursday. So I was out for a drive and I decided to stop by my buddy's house. We talked about cars for a little while, had some lunch. Turns out his wife's sister is getting married. She's a nice girl, it's about time. It started to get cloudy so we went inside the house and he asked me if I wanted to hear some tunes. I said yeah so we turned on the TV and watched one of those cable radio channels, you know those? With the music playing and the words on the screen that tell you what song it is and what album it's from? So were listening to that for awhile and it was getting late, but I heard this one tune on there and I liked it. So yeah, I'm getting this album."
BUDDY I DON'T CARE.
All of this is probably extra annoying because it's one of those increasingly frequent "I am wasting my life drawing stupid comics and living in this town" kind of days. In fact, yeah, I'd say every day is like that now. Whatever, it's better than being dead. I think.
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Friday, February 03, 2006
There's a guy I had to deal with at my old CD store job before this one. He's a little troll of a man named Jeff, who used to come into the chain store I worked at and buy blues CDs. He listens to blues exclusively, and it's always a warning indicator when someone only listens to one genre of music to the exclusion of all others. Sure enough, he has a screw loose. He'd buy the CDs, take them home, and exchange them a couple days later for -- you guessed it -- other blues CDs. We finally had to tell him, "Look Jeff, you can't exchange any more CDs. We're cutting you off."
When I switched jobs and came over here to the bookshop's music room I hoped that was the last I'd see of him. I was wrong. After four blissful years of silence he appeared out of the blue (no pun intended) earlier this month, browsing our blues section. He rarely buys anything now, just waddles his five-foot frame in, carrying a half-empty gallon jug of water. He sets down the water somewhere, looks through the blues section he's studied a hundred times before, then leaves.
Except that sometimes he doesn't leave. You see, he overheard us mentioning to another customer that we can play 30-second music clips off of our distributor's website, so now he keeps bringing blues CDs up to the counter and demanding that we play the clips for him. He has this highly annoying rumble of a voice, an über-baritone with a hideous little grumbly rasp, like an eight-pack-a-day smoker forcing words through their ruined larynx. Combine that with a colloquial approach to the language and a total lack of politeness and you have a recipe for my hate.
Yesterday he came up with a Little Freddie King CD. "Play summa dis fah me."
I played the first clip. "Next one." I played the second clip. "Next one." No please, no thank you. Just "Next one. Next one. Next one."
Finally it got towards the end of the disc and a song called "Fox Hunt." He chuckled to himself, a horrible gurgling sound. "Oughtta be 'Cunt Hunt,' haha."
Did I just hear that??
I stared at him blankly in disbelief. "Didn't catch that, huh?" he asked, grinning. I gave him the Stare of Death and didn't respond. Seconds passed as we sort of looked at each other. I didn't even trust myself to say anything to him because it probably would have devolved into shouting. He finally got the message from my stony silence and shuffled off to his next destination, scratching his perennial five o'clock shadow. He'll be back though. They always come back.
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When I switched jobs and came over here to the bookshop's music room I hoped that was the last I'd see of him. I was wrong. After four blissful years of silence he appeared out of the blue (no pun intended) earlier this month, browsing our blues section. He rarely buys anything now, just waddles his five-foot frame in, carrying a half-empty gallon jug of water. He sets down the water somewhere, looks through the blues section he's studied a hundred times before, then leaves.
Except that sometimes he doesn't leave. You see, he overheard us mentioning to another customer that we can play 30-second music clips off of our distributor's website, so now he keeps bringing blues CDs up to the counter and demanding that we play the clips for him. He has this highly annoying rumble of a voice, an über-baritone with a hideous little grumbly rasp, like an eight-pack-a-day smoker forcing words through their ruined larynx. Combine that with a colloquial approach to the language and a total lack of politeness and you have a recipe for my hate.
Yesterday he came up with a Little Freddie King CD. "Play summa dis fah me."
I played the first clip. "Next one." I played the second clip. "Next one." No please, no thank you. Just "Next one. Next one. Next one."
Finally it got towards the end of the disc and a song called "Fox Hunt." He chuckled to himself, a horrible gurgling sound. "Oughtta be 'Cunt Hunt,' haha."
Did I just hear that??
I stared at him blankly in disbelief. "Didn't catch that, huh?" he asked, grinning. I gave him the Stare of Death and didn't respond. Seconds passed as we sort of looked at each other. I didn't even trust myself to say anything to him because it probably would have devolved into shouting. He finally got the message from my stony silence and shuffled off to his next destination, scratching his perennial five o'clock shadow. He'll be back though. They always come back.
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