Merry Be

Phew!  That was a long and arduous retail holiday season here at Barnes and Noble.  Long hours, many days, lots of overtime.  But Erin seems to think it is no excuse for failing to post, and reluctantly I admit it is not.  Mea culpa, and here’s your post. 

My absolute favorite moment of the retail season:

Sitting around the break room at 5:00 this morning with a rosy glow filling me.  One of our managers had a rough holiday– it’s only two and a half years since her husband died– and she told us how much in meant to her that we’re there with hugs and encouragement.  She said, “there’s such a difference between having friends at work and working with your friends.” 

She’s right.  We are all friends.  We have our differences of course, but you could even say we’re family in a sense, and you wouldn’t be wrong.  We love each other and we’re there for one another and we work hard for each other.  That’s what family means, isn’t it?  That and taking Polaroid pictures of one of your managers dancing around in angel wings, a halo, and reindeer antlers.

My least favorite moment of the holiday season:  Getting to work at 4:45 am to mark down the clearance items… or maybe hearing that the Dayton Mall store might have beat us in the gift card sales contest.

I actually can’t narrow the baddies down to one thing.  But I have to say that the customer who tried to return something her husband had purchased and have the amount credited to an account that was in his name that she did not have the card for with her was very near the top of the list.  The ironic thing is we could’ve done it if she’d had the physical card with her.  But she didn’t, and then became infuriated because we refused to credit the amount back to the account without the account number, expiration date, and permission from her husband over the phone.  Really, it’s physically impossible to do it without the first three pieces of information, and in order to do it over the phone we have to have the verbal permission of the person who actually holds the account. 

 The best part of the whole encounter was when the words, “Well, don’t you have a record of my credit card number here?  Why don’t you?  Didn’t you think somebody might need it?”  came storming out of her mouth.  Yes, lady, I thought somebody might need it.  The guy who wants to steal your identity definitely needs it, and since we don’t know exactly who he is, why don’t we just publish it for the whole world to read and issue a copy of your driver’s license and soc. card while we’re at it? 

Today we also had somebody bring a gift back with a gift receipt that clearly indicated a couple of different discounts had been going on.  In that case we give the customer credit for the amount the person who bought the gift for them paid for it.  Sounds reasonable, right?  But the customer did not think so.  He wanted full retail value for it, and acted as though  the manager doing the return was an idiot for refusing to give it to him.  (We get the ‘idiot’ act a lot– nobody seems to realize that the majority of our employees have college degrees.)  Hey, it’s not our fault your Auntie Nina is a thrifty shopper in addition to making killer fudge.  Enjoy the fudge, enjoy the sentiment, and stop being an overbearing, materialistic selfish pig just because you didn’t get exactly what you wanted and Auntie didn’t mortgage her future to give it to you.

You know what makes it all worthwhile?  When you follow up on a note that a coworker has left you saying that a customer was looking for a Polar Express toy train, and could you see if we have one and call them back?  And then you get a tired-sounding housewife on the other end who is clearly doing the dishes by hand and trying to keep a baby happy in the background, and her whole tone and demeanor changes when you tell her you’ve found a train for her.  My manager told me that when her husband came to pick the train up later that night he wanted to thank me, and refused to leave until he had thanked someone enthusiastically and at length.  He said that we made their whole Christmas.  I guess the other stores were sold out.  Anyway– one customer like that makes all the rest fade away somehow.

 ~Merry