Diary of a Bookstore Employee 1

Hello. Today I shall start a new series, thus new life into my blog. I'm gonna call it 'Diary of a Bookstore Employee' because that's what I am.

Ahem.

So the Christmas season is ending. As of 2/1/2013 things will go back as normal, which means Returns (HELL) every month. Yes, I can already imagine those frantic days of pulling dusty books from the shelves, sorting through them and putting them in cartons. Oh joy. But other than that, I quite look forward to being back to normalty. At least returns is only 1 or 2 weeks of hell per month, the Christmas season was hell for TWO FREAKING MONTHS!

And WHAT is with the type of customers walking into the bookstore these days!?!?! They walked in and expect to be treated like some freaking VIPs! THIS IS A FUCKING BOOKSTORE, NOT YOUR MOTHER'S HOUSE! So of course following the rise of people is the rise of idiots, and following that is customer complains! Lately it's not just our customer service that gets complains, but there has been reports of missing handbags/wallets/handphones/children/spouses in the shop as well. What's funny is that when these people/things are missing, and never recovered, people blame US the bookstore. Can you imagine people saying stuff like:

Why didn't you look out for my stuff?
Your store is so big that's why my son got lost.
Your staff didn't notice my very average-looking son?
You couldn't even look after just one bag?

Get the picture? There's so many questions that I could reply back to these stupid questions. But being the polite staff I am, I am obligated to hold my tongue and just smile like an idiot. Even worse is that, after these incidents were reported, and the managers all got rallied together, in the end it is the sales floor staff who got a 'reminder' (ie order) to be mindful of customers' belongings/children/spouses.

This, came right after we had to sign an agreement to perform all the basic customer service things that we already have to do ON TOP of being mindful of our display, merchandise, ordering, counter safety, customer safety, shelf tidiness, stock level and a myriad of other things. Now we also have to add 'Guardian of Customers' Personal Belongings' (including persons) = GCPB. It's been a while since I made acronyms. What irritated me more is that these rules are imposed by people not in the sales floor, but spent most of their time in the office, away from the day to day bs of serving customers. It's not just one or two. It goes on and on and on and on and on even after the store closes sometimes.

So when you see service-related employees being rude to people outside of work, now you know why...

This post is not very coherent it seems. I could barely keep myself on this page long enough to finish it. I have lost the zest for blogs obviously, but I needed to rant.

Ta'ra!