Info and Receiving: a double whammy!

Hello.

I must admit I have been slow to blog these past few days. It is not because I have not been at work (far from it -- I have, indeed, spent a good deal of time at work!), but because, to be honest, not much interesting has happened.

On Sunday I worked my usual opening shift. Booth and Noble doesn't open until 10am, but the opener gets to come in at 8 and do chores. This means that for two full hours, there are no customers. Stretch it out, and you could spend the whole time just putting the newspapers away.

Then, at 10...no one comes in. It's 10 o'clock on a Sunday. Would you be in a bookstore?

Then, at 11, the opening Grunt gets a break. It's only the last two hours, the toiling hours of 12-2, during which the Grunt really sees any sort of customer. And if the day is as nice as Sunday was, then, well, then there just aren't very many people.

It is sad that the only interesting story from Sunday was the woman.

She was old, say about 245 years. She hobbled over to me, clutching a hardcover book in her scrawny hands. With the eyes of an eagle, she had spotted me from across the store, but it took upwards of twenty-five minutes for her to approach me.

She came up close to me. I could smell death leaking from her. She turned her crooked nose towards me an inhaled. "Ahh..." she let out. "I like your soap."

I replied, "thanks. Is there anything I can help you with?"

She twisted her head, cocking the neck so loudly people nearby ducked, expecting a Wild West-style shootout. "Is this," she held out the hardcover book, "a new book?"

I looked at the cover. There was only one place she could have found that book: Hardcover New Releases. She had picked up a book from a stack of identical books that all were sitting on a shelf labeled "New Releases." And she asked me if it was new.

"Yes, ma'am, I do believe it is," I replied, watching her lick her crunchy lips.

"Excellent. I do so enjoy," she smiled like a dog panting, "Harlan Coben."

But alas, that was the only story from Sunday. Today was even worse -- I was in receiving working on a project. I interacted with no customers!

See, the management, quite rightly, decided that we needed to rearrange the store. So, two weeks ago, we did. A group of people stayed up very late and shifted thousands of books. Now, where there once was Science, there is now Cooking. Where once there was Shakespeare, is now Mythology. Where once there was Health, is now...well, Health stayed pretty much the same.

But, if you will recall from an earlier post, Welcome! , there are a bunch of carts in the back receiving room. These were now out of order. So I, in order to get some more hours, volunteered to come in and fix them.

And they are now fixed.

Of note, however, was one time when I left receiving to grab my Diet Coke from the breakroom, and I passed a small boy wearing the exact same outfit as me. Down to the socks. Besides the obvious height difference (he is about ten and about 4 foot 6, I am older and taller and therefore more virile), the only difference was that he wore one of those white rapper's caps.

He obviously was quite a bad ass.

A bad ass, I might add, who shops at Old Navy and Target.