July 22, 2007

• Harry Potter night of Doooooooooooooooom!

  OK, so it wasn’t that bad, but boring, yes, tedious, yes, nerve racking, oh definitely. I used to be agoraphobic when I was younger, so when I say that there were approximately 2000 people in the store last night (this morning?), you know it was not a happy fact for me, especially since I had to be back at work by noon. It’s not that I don’t like people. I just don’t like to share space with more strangers than I can easily count or avoid. For the most part though, people were nice and patient.

  For the most part….

  Then there was the guy who came in early on and wasn’t buying anything Potter-related. When he got up to the register, he decided he did not want a particular book he had chosen. Instead of giving it to me and saying he didn’t want it, he shadily tucked it in the magazine rack that sits in front of the registers. Since we all know what assuming does, I asked him if he didn’t want the book. Of course, his answer was no. So I asked him if he could give me the book, to which he replied, “No manners on Harry Potter night, huh?”

  Ummm…. . But his was just the typical rudeness one might encounter on any given day. I pretty much ignored his ignorance, thanked him, and told him to have a nice night. I’ve encountered his sort before. If not for people like him, keeping the store clean would be a lot easier. It’s people like him who not only leave cups and whatnot on the bookshelves when they’re done with them, they go the extra mile to hide their leavings behind books so it takes a couple days for the smell to alert us to their little gift. Night, night Mr. Inconsiderate.

  Customer #2 appeared around 10pm or so. Her beef was the line she’d had to wait in that morning in order to get a ticket to get in line to buy Harry Potter that night. We opened at 9AM (as we do every day) and allowed people to show up earlier in the day to collect a numbered wristband so that it would be easier to assemble them at midnight to collect their reserved book(s). Her complaint was that the line that morning had not moved fast enough, that she had been late for work because of it and that other customers had as well. What if she lost her job because she had to be at our store to get a good number. How rude of us to inconvenience her by offering her a convenience!

  Far be it for me to assume that people will choose their jobs over picking up a stupid numbered wristband. I just smiled (well not really, but I’m good at looking grave and concerned), nodded, and agreed it was a crying shame what she’d been through. Honestly, if people are stupid enough to make themselves late for work to pick up a wristband to collect a book that they could just as easily collect the next day for the same price (without having to wait in a line until nearly 3AM), then I kind of think they deserve to lose their jobs. I really had no sympathy for this woman, but I couldn’t very well tell her she was an idiot. Smile and nod…. smile and nod… and hope the Ignorant-gene doesn’t breed true….

  But the real gem was the final problem customer.  At around 11:45, she came up to the register to complain because they had shut down the “sorting-hat” event to begin lining people up to get their books. I was a bit sympathetic since it’s not fun to stand in line for a long time and then not get what you waited for, but she was completely out of control. She claimed her kids were very upset, but they looked pretty calm to me… probably used to having a primadonna-mommy. Maybe they should share with her their illicit stash of valium.

  I explained that we really didn’t have enough employees in the store to run all the events and get people out of the store with their books in a reasonable amount of time. Not what she wanted to hear, but eventually she went away…. only to return about five minutes later to whine that she had not known she needed to get a wristband to get in line for her book (even though she would have had to pass the table distributing the wristbands to get into the store). For the next five minutes, she griped at me about how badly we were running the event and that she should be able to get her book ASAP, without wristband. Basically she wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise, enjoying the sound of her own voice much more than my reasonable response . After saying ma’am about a dozen times, trying to get her to let me speak, I said ma’am very loudly and she said, “Don’t you raise your voice to me!”

  

  Hah! Well it was the only way to get her to notice I was still there, but another half-dozen ma’am’s later, I finally inserted, “You won’t listen to what I’m saying.” To which she replied, “Well, you’re not saying anything.” To which I replied, “Because you won’t stop talking!” Gleeee! I had finally lost my temper. Why is it that keeping your temper is never as satisfying as losing it? It just feels so good to say what’s really on the tip of your tongue. Oh yeah… I have little tact when it comes to letting people know they’ve ticked me off, but I do have a certain flair for irony. Least she shut up long enough for me to tell her that I had no power to give in to her demands as I was only a supervisor, and she would need to speak to a manager. Then I directed her to one of my managers, knowing full well that he would not give in to her either! hahahahaha She left. Too bad, so sad. She had expended all of my sympathy with her unreasonable tirade. Of the three, I’d had the most sympathy for her in the beginning, and she totally took it too far.

  Where’s Cthulhu when you really need him?  

  Beyond that, the night went fairly quick. I am overjoyed that there will be no more Potter books. Honestly I can’t stand these events. A country fair is about as crowded as I care for, and even that I can do without. I don’t even like to go to amusement parks, and I’ve never been to a concert. When I go to movie theaters, I sit at the very back of the theater to avoid the crowds and if I don’t get up in time to bolt as the credits begin their run, I wait until I don’t have to mingle with my fellow movie goers. If anyone ever yelled FIRE! I’d have to patiently wait while everyone went crazy trying to get out, then pick my way over their frenzied, unconscious bodies.

  This all goes back to junior highschool when I was “lynched” by some of my fellow students. Yeah, so it didn’t end in a hanging, but they still followed me for about three blocks, spitting on me and throwing garbage at me while calling me names. Which harkened back to and dredged up memories of a past life where something similar happened to me and where I was ultimately burned alive. So I think it’s understandable that I should be just a little leery of crowds and hope to avoid them when I can.

  I just don’t understand what makes a couple thousand people want to congregate in an enclosed space with complete strangers… to be jostled and rubbed against… to suffer the smells of their unwashed neighbors… the noise alone is enough to make me want to run out of the store and find a tree to cower beside. (Trees are a very calming influence for me, plants in general help me immensely, but I would be lost without trees. If you really want to understand what I’m talking about, look up a book called, The Secret Life of Plants.) Such noise does not belong in a bookstore. Bookstores are quiet places far removed from booming music, the gabble of mobs, and the smell of the unwashed. I may not have to fight the urge to curl up in a fetal ball in some dark corner so much any more, but any time I’m surrounded by the crush and bustle of overly excited strangers, there’s a little part of me that just sits in my brain and shreiks non-stop till it’s over.

  So if humanity is technically a herd animal, I am doubly a freak for loathing the herding instinct and the herd itself. I don’t want to mingle with the masses. I am so much more content to savor the words of humanity and discard the gross physical interactions of my peers. I don’t want to socialize with people so much as I want to play with words and savor them and share them with people who love words as well. I love books for this reason… books and music are really the best humanity has to offer. Why then do people choose to congregate at inconsequential and superficial “events” like Harry Potter night? I don’t know. I don’t understand. I’m a people watcher. I understand the individual. I didn’t learn psychology in college so much as I memorized terms for things I already knew. Sociology was a whole different ball game however. I’ll never understand group dynamics and what motivates people to be a  mob. I’d rather socialize with a small forrest than the same number of my own kind.

  

  • 12:11 am
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