NaBloPoMoDay 16: Geek Of The Week

I have eight minutes to post this whole story.

Here's the short version:

Don't come into my place of business and pull the Queen Horse's Ass routine with me, and I won't pull out my red hot GOTW iron and brand your Talbots-swathed butt.

Agreed?

Okay...watch this space and I'll fill in the blanks.

So what was it...full moon tonight? Barometric pressure dropped? Fire sale on poopy-head pills?

Whatever it was, the folks out shopping tonight were in a singular mood. And that mood would be "pissy". A few customers were only mildly snarky, but mostly, everyone was marching around the store as if they had a Lego shoved sideways up their bum.

Let me back up...

I work at a bookstore. A rather large bookstore that you've probably heard of. It would be the largest bookstore on Earth, Jupiter, and Betelgeuse. Yup, that one.

Here are some of my previous posts regarding bookstore employee hijinks and escapades.

A Heartwarming Encounter With A Customer-For-Jesus

Customers Say The Darndest Things!

Another Post about Bookstores In Which I Mention The Barometric Pressure


What fun!

Except, tonight was not fun.

Tonight, a lady customer was a bit of a snot to me.

Let me set the scene:

On this evening, I arrived at work for my seven o'clock shift and was immediately dispensed to the Children's Section. Normally, I absolutely love working in "Kids" (that's bookseller lingo for the Children's Section, if you haven't figured it out.) I usually take a spin around the sales floor, tidy up the one or two books that have slipped from the shelf or were re-shelved backwards and upside-down; make sure all the Thomas The Tank Engine trains are on the table and not on the floor, where I am sure to later step on one and end up skating headlong into the Backyardigans display; and then, I window shop.

It's a living.

It's not difficult.

In fact, my shifts at the bookstore are often very relaxing, and honestly, quite an enjoyable way to spend an evening all while earning eight-twenty-five an hour.

On occasion, a herd of toddlers will run crazy-koo-koo through Kids, pulling books from shelves hither and thither, and making a general mess of things. The adorable munchkins run into the Kids section full-steam, beeline to the first book at eye-level, yank the book off the shelf, plop their diapery butts onto the floor and flip through the pages one-two-three, and then chuck the book over their shoulder where, by now, a jogging parent balancing a venti latte has caught-up just in time to save the book mid-flight and with an impressive one-handed grab. At this point, the parent usually turns to me with a twisted look of apologetic panic and says something like, "Where does this...Tilly, come back! Wait for...where did she...NO! NO! Get off that table!...I'm not sure...this book? Where...?"

Oh, ho, ho, says I! Not to worry, oh Valued Customer! You just hand me the book and I'll be ever so glad to put it back on the shelf while you wrangle your clever kidlet. I know what it's like to be out and about with little ones, oh boy, but do I. If you want to direct Tilly to the Thomas table, I shall be ever so happy to fetch a chair so you can have a set-down and enjoy your drink while you mind your little poppet.

I'm so awesome like that.

It's the Children's Section. We expect a modicum of low-level mayhem. We know that sometimes a mom might leave a stack of books on the floor whilst making a hasty exit with a suddenly screaming banshee-child. We know that children are touchy-touchy creatures who like to touchy-touchy everything. We’re cool with the odd sticker book being de-stickered because we know how fast those tiny darlings get into just everything even when you are right on top of them every step of the way.

And I’m an employee, after all. It’s my job to clean-up. It’s up to me to help make the experience at our store as pleasant as possible. I don’t want to embarrass anyone, and lord knows, I don’t get paid enough to intentionally make a customer angry. So when Billy Boy stuffs a copy of Goodnight Moon into his frothing Pamper, and dad is at the peak of embarrassment, I step-in to assure dad that all is well, it’s happened before, it will happen again, and that we still would like him to return to our store and buy many lattes and many hardcover bestsellers at 30% off, 40% if you purchase the member’s card, and please don’t think twice about your son’s kinky board book fetish. Because we don’t, either.

Most parents really try, you know?

Except tonight. Tonight, the Talbots lady customer did NOT try.

She did not try at all.

When her five-year-old pulled a huge stack of hardcover picture books onto the floor, she did not try.

When her five-year-old pulled a second stack of $19.95 hardcover picture books onto the floor and then tap-danced on the spines while pulling a third stack of hardcover picture books onto the floor, she did not attempt to redirect him.

In fact, she wasn’t even in the Children’s Section at the time.

When I gently pointed out to her adorable child that pulling books onto the floor might damage the books, she was not there to confirm this fact.

When I firmly but kindly asked him to help me pick up the books, and he flat out told me “No. I don’t want to pick up the books”, she was somewhere else entirely.

When he started to climb up the bookshelves by using a row of Dr. Seuss books as a foothold, and then began tossing more books from the upper shelves, it was then I began yelling “WHO IS THE PARENT OF THIS WEE, DELIGHTFUL RAPSCALLION. OH BUT WHAT A JOY HE IS. SURELY SOME PARENT WANTS TO CLAIM HIM AS THEIR OWN." The mother was, I later saw, sitting across the store with her thumb up her ass.

And when she finally did deign to grace me with her tweed-tailored presence, it was to gaze down her nose and, with an exasperated sigh, demand to know what on earth could be the matter.

“Well, your son just pulled three stacks of books off the display and began to climb up the bookshelves, and....”

“No, he didn’t,” she stated as a declarative sentence.

“No, he did.”

“No, Leonardo would never pull books from a shelf. My son doesn‘t do that.”

“Actually, Leonardo did just that. And there are the piles of books right there.”

“Sigh. No. He would never do that.”

“Well, I should let you know that I asked him if he would like to help me put the books back on the shelf."

"And?"

"Well...he refused to help.”

“Of course he did. He didn’t take them off. It's not his job to clean them up. Even if he did take them off. Which he would never do.”

“O...kay. I see. You’re right.”

“Of course I am.”

“ Your child is throwing more books on the floor right now.”

And sure enough, as we were discussing the improbability of Leonardo running roughshod through the bookstore, the young man himself was scaling another wall and knocking entire shelves of books to the ground.

And mom did nothing.

Anyway, long story short, with a swish of her hair and a sashay of her rump, mom finally gathered Leonardo from the lighting fixture, and they exited the store.

By way of a parting gesture, she set her empty, lipstick-stained latte cup on top of a collector’s edition of Le Petit Prince…and left it there.

So yeah…maybe she’s no Hugo Chavez in the way of being an obnoxious jerk, but Leonardo’s mom gets my vote for Geek Of The Week.

Not for being a bad parent.

Not even for her kid making a powerful mess.

She gets this award for simply being an insufferable boob.

Congratulations.