Tales of the Bookstore, Chapter 3

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Tales of the Bookstore, Chapter 2

I had trouble falling asleep last night. It could have been the late-night coffee, it could have been the late-night caffeinated intake of Diet Dr. Pepper, or it could have just been that we were getting some awesome thunderstorms with impressive, rolling thunder, but I just couldn't sleep.

You'd think that I would be able to write a blogpost last night and have it set up for posting this morning, right? Well, you could think that, but it didn't happen.

So, here I am, tapping out the second installment of the year of my life I spent as an assistant manager at a bookstore between graduating from college and heading off to graduate school. The first chapter can be found here.

As difficult as it might be to believe, when I first showed up at the bookstore, I was pretty quiet and reserved. I didn't talk too much with my co-workers as I wasn't sure exactly what the hell I was doing behind the counter at a bookstore--both from a job performance view as well as a "what the fuck happened to my career" view.

I started in the middle of June, which meant that summer was in full-swing. This meant that girls were wearing shorts and tank tops and, while I had finally decided to make that commitment to the Ex- that we were going to spend eternity together, I still enjoyed looking. It's like, even if you've eaten your fill at the buffet, you're still going to at least look at the dessert options, right?

So it was one day when this tall, beautiful blonde girl came wandering into the store. I was behind the counter, admiring her from afar. I had yet to truly befriend Shane (mentioned in chapter one), and I was taken aback when he came up front carrying a bunch of books. He stopped at the counter, saw where my eyes were affixed, and turned to take a look, too.

He then turned back to the counter, rolled his tongue out of his mouth, and started panting. Then he looked up and said, "I need to go to the back for a moment." And left.

He came back after she had left the store. In his defense, he was busy shelving books in the interim, but he also liked to go to the back and talk with the lady who did receiving and the other lady who did the non-book merchandising for the store. When he returned up front, he looked around for the tall, blonde girl.

"Is she gone?" he asked.

"Unfortunately, yeah," I responded. "We've had some more action, but nothing like her."

"Well, you need to page me if she ever comes back into the store."

"Will do," I said. And then I added, "She was a dirty one."

"What?" Shane asked. "Dirty?"

I then proceeded to explain to him that a friend of mine--Will's little brother, Pat--was in a band and he one time sang who he liked a "dirty girl", one that was so hot she was dirty, that you'd want to do everything to.

"She wasn't just hot," Shane added at the end. "She was fucking filthy."

And so that was our code-word for hot girls in the store: filthy.

Fast forward a few months to the following spring. We had had a somewhat regular patron come into the store who was...well, I don't know if she was a hippy, just enjoyed the lifestyle, or was lazy. Or a bit of all three. But she was the kind of hippy who really has an aversion to soap, shampoo and razor blades.

I see her come into the store in her tie-dyed shirt, cut-off shorts, and green cloud of funk hovering around her like an aura. She passes by the front counter and, because I'm so fucking customer-service-oriented, I smile, nod, and say, "Good afternoon. Is there anything I can help you find?"

She declines my offer for help, for which I was secretly--silently!--thankful. She wanders over into the general fiction section and peruses the titles therein.

Along comes Shane a few moments later, bipping his way up to the front of the store.

"A real filthy one over in fiction," I tell him.

His eyes light up and he gets that goofy Shane grin on his face and he does an immediate 45 degree turn to port, making a bee-line for the girl who, if she ever washed or took any sort of pride in her appearance, probably would have been quite fetching. Instead, she's, well, stinking up the joint.

Shane runs into her wall of funk and I immediately hear him gasp. I look over and, from a different aisle, he's looking back to the front of the store, glowering at me, shaking his head, and making a throat-slash gesture.

It's all too much and I start laughing.

Finally, he returns to the front of the store.

"If you ever do something like that again, I'll slit your fucking throat," he threatened.

Barely able to contain my mirth, I responded. "Hey," I fired back, "I told you she was filthy."

[NOTE:] Blogger is apparently having issues with pictures right now. So...I'll fix it later.

Tales of the Bookstore, Chapter 1

I think it's time I start telling you some tales about the bookstore where I worked. I spent a year as an assistant manager at a store called Little Professor Book Company in Fort Wayne, IN.

When I was a senior in college, rolling out of bed at 10 am for that difficult Christian Humanities class, I completely forgot to submit my applications for graduate school. So, Notre Dame would have to wait a year before I got there. However, what to do in the interim?

Upon graduation, I interviewed for a few chemistry jobs around the greater Fort Wayne area, even went up to Ann Arbor (Jesus, is she a whore) for an interview at Parke-Davis (which got bought and closed down six months later) for an analytical job. All of those jobs in the chemistry/science field did not pan out, so after about a month of not having any money and my good looks not really getting me by anymore, I started applying pretty much anywhere with a "Help Wanted" sign in the window. I hit up Lowes, Meijer, and eventually settled on the bookstore.

Little Professor interviewed me the day after I submitted an application, and two days later (I decided to NOT start working on the weekend), I was employed full-time. About a month after I started, I got promoted up to Assistant Manager and made a whopping $7/hr. That's fat cash, homies. Well, it was fat enough to pay for an engagement ring, pay off the last of my school bills AND my credit card, and keep me good and liquored up for ten months.

It was about the third day at work that I met Shane.

Shane was...not a model citizen. By any stretch of the imagination. Good guy, loved working with him, but he hated working there about as much as I did. If you can believe it, I was the Dante to his Randall. I may not have wanted to be there, but I did at least put forth an effort to provide mediocre customer service.

Shane didn't give a fuck.

He'd call his girlfriend/fiancee/wife a fucking whore--while on the phone in the children's section! He'd drop other indelicate phrases while working on the floor. He would go over to the bay which housed the self-help and grief books and talk about how he hoped they'd never find a cure for cancer. He would also drink all the coffee provided by the shop next door, thus making the young women who worked there come over and replace it.

On second thought, that was a good thing. The chicks who worked next door were fucking hot.

I once had to field a complaint about Shane from an angry customer.

Me: Hello, Little Professor Book Company, Covington Plaza, this is Matt, how may I help you?

Customer: I want to speak with a manager.

It was at this point that I rolled my eyes. I always had people calling up bitching because some employee couldn't find a book or they farted or something like that. I had a feeling this was going to be another one.

Me: I'm a manager, how may I help you?

Customer: Yeah, I was just in your store around lunch time [it's after dinner by the time this call came in] and I heard one of your employees swearing.

At this point, I knew exactly who it must have been.

Me: Do you know who it was?

Customer: It was a guy.

Me: Could you be a little more specific? I can't really berate the offender if that's all I have to go on.

Customer: What the hell? I've seen your staff. How many fucking guys work there? How fucking hard could it be to figure out who it was that was swearing and fire his ass?

Me: Well, aren't you one to cast the first stone?

Aaaaaand...then I hung up.

He called right back.

Me: *opening spiel upon answering the phone*

Customer: Hey, asshole, I don't appreciate being hung up on. I just wanted to let you know that I will be taking all of my business to Borders from now on. Because I do not appreciate being hung up on by some fucking loser who works in a bookstore.

Me: Well, good luck with that.

I then put him on hold. And then I never picked the call back up.

I found Shane. Instead of pulling him aside to tell him to cut it the fuck out, I did the professional thing and confronted him out on the book floor in front of the staff and customers.

Me: Hey, some asshat just called up voicing his objections over your use of the word "fuck". Tone it down a bit, would ya?

Shane: *after a pause where he realizes what I just did* Well, alright then, Captain!

So, yeah.

The biggest problem with Shane was that he had a severe case of oral diarrhea. If something went in his ears, it came out his mouth.

Since I was a manager AND the tallest person on the staff, I was charged with changing the light bulbs around the store. In the children's section, we had a display set up that was supposed to look like a tent, with all these vinyl banners and such hung over a couple of lintels. Under the "big top" there was a stage where some sucker had to sit and read books to kids on Saturdays and Tuesdays.

One Sunday afternoon, I was struck with a desire to not do any real work, so I decided to change all of the burnt out light bulbs. As I was maneuvering myself around the stage in children's, I noticed a thick layer of dust on top of all the vinyl banners. On a whim, I dragged my fingers through the dust, drawing my initials in the dust as well as the date.

Later that day, I showed Shane, because I couldn't contain myself over how fucking clever I was. He thought this was hilariously brilliant, got out the ladder, and did the same on the next banner over. Cool, I thought, now we'll see how long it is before the guy whose job it is to keep the displays clean finally does his fucking job.

The next morning, Shane came in and showed our little bit of artwork to the store manager.

She was not amused.

That night, I had to get the ladder back out and I had to wash the dust off all the banners.

Because I'm mature like that, I took the bucket of filthy, dirty water and dumped in the bed of Shane's new pickup.

Revenge is a dish best served muddy, I guess.