Category Archives: Personal
Why Reinhold Glière Owes Me Gas Money
“Is there a discount on that for wasting my time?” is what I expected George to say. While he wasn’t doing heel clicks and high fiving people the second time around, he also wasn’t looking for a fight, and that was an improvement. I’ve decided that George (not his real name) and I have something in common; he always expects the worst in a situation. The problem with that outlook is that a great deal of the time, you bring on that outcome. I expect the worst, but more in order to be pleasantly surprised. George on the other hand, expects it and brings that result on by being something of a cranky bastard.
“Why did you shake that customer’s hand when you saw him?” my coworker asked after George had left happy. Or George-happy at least, which meant he’d said thank you and didn’t look like he was going to punch me in the face.
“I helped him yesterday, I was taking care of something for him.”
“Yeah, but why did you shake his hand?”
At first I shrugged and laughed it off, “I went to private school, we shake everyone’s hand when we see them.” Which is true, by the way. Picking out private school boys is easy; the year after they graduate, they’re the guys with terrible facial hair, the patchy, awful beards grown because they finally wouldn’t get detention for having whiskers, ten years out you can still pick the private school boys out of crowd by their khakis and blue blazers (and 
The truth is, it was partially the knee-jerk reaction of the, “Good to see you” handshake when meeting a familiar face even while thinking, “Who is this guy?” But ultimately, I’d made the decision the day before that should I see George again I’d shake his hand, call him Mr——, and take him up to the register to ring him up. It’s the same principle as when a customer stops you to ask a question. Whatever you’re doing you stop, you put down your stack of books, and you give them your undivided attention.
In high school, I had a crew coach who made us do sets of eleven when it came to push-ups, leg lifts or the other countless physical hells brought down by the wrath of a Jesuit priest who would follow us in his battered Chevy Corsica on our runs to shout… encouragement. The idea behind it was to train us for the sprint at the end of a race, to condition us to push for one more even when we thought we were done. If you can do eleven then why not push for fifteen, and if you’re at fifteen then twenty is within reach.
Before crew, I had a Tae Kwon Do instructor who would line us up against the wall during our Saturday morning class, tell us to plant our foot and do ten side-kicks while he yelled out the count. With each kick we would yell, a vocal manifestation of the energy behind the side-kick. He would walk the line, adjusting our stance, reminding us to keep our arm up, holding his hand high above our head to aim our kick at. When we reached ten he would yell, “One more! One more! One more!” The ‘one more’ would usually surpass the initial count, the exercise becoming a competition to see whether our legs or his voice would give out first. These two coaches, in vastly different sports, understood not only how to train us to set goals, but also to never be satisfied simply by achieving them. They wanted us to fight to blow those goals away, to be prepared physically and mentally for the sprint, to always be ready for one more. It was to prepare us to take that next step when anyone else would have said they’d gone far enough.
The problem stemmed from my store carrying two recordings of this symphony, one featuring Falletta and the BPO and one by somebody else. The one by somebody else was put on hold for George when he called. And the one by the BPO? That one, the only copy we had, sold about an hour before he came into the store. That’s how I ended up on the receiving end of George’s rant involving how much money he spends in the store (I don’t care), how rude he found our music staff (no they’re not, and also, pot calling the kettle black?), and how he’d driven all the way to the store the day after a blizzard (so you drove here on a nice day).
“Now I want to know what can you do for me,” he finished.
I was a bit lost for words. He’d thrown a lot at me. What can I do for him? Usually, the customer asking that is holding out their hands so we can throw money or free items into them until they finally love us again. Nothing makes me feel less inclined to help a person then having them berate me and then expect to be rewarded for having done so. Unfortunately, nine times out of ten, that’s how the situation is resolved, if not by me then one of my bosses who then berates me as well for not throwing a gift card at the customer myself. Money isn’t the answer, or at least it shouldn’t be our answer. A gift card doesn’t solve the problem, it pushes the problem down the line to someone else because now that customer knows were giving away free money every time they raise their voice.
“Not much,” he scoffed.
I agreed. There really wasn’t much I could do, and certainly nothing at all that would put that CD in his hand at that very moment. Underneath it all was realizing that it was our mistake–an honest mistake, I will stick by that, but our mistake nonetheless, and I wanted to make right even if George was a jerk. I called our only other store to have a copy of it, one about twenty miles away. After triple checking the product number, conductor and album name (loudly so that George could hear) I asked them to put it on hold under my name. I told him that I drive out to the other store and pick up the CD, but wouldn’t be able to get there until later that evening; I would call him when I was back at this store with the item on hold for him. He didn’t seem as though he believed me. He didn’t say thank you.
Round-trip from my house to the three stores and back is about forty miles. I spent most of it considering whether this was even worth it. Should I have just told him he was out of luck and let him yell at me a little more? What did it matter? His behavior certainly didn’t deserve the time I was taking out of my day to do this.
They were sweet and understanding, and I ended up going to two different stores in order to get the books shipped out by the next day. In that case I didn’t have a problem doing it, they just as concerned that I didn’t beat myself up over it as they were about the books themselves. At least they knew what happened to their son’s package and we could get everything straightened out. Most people aren’t as patient Mr. & Mrs. Wuhr. They didn’t want anything other than to know we could take care of it. I’d forgotten about that couple until after I’d picked up the CD. For that memory alone I’m glad I did this. It’s important to hold onto any bit of kindness you encounter. Some days they’re all you’ll have.
“What can you do for me,” he’d asked.
Not much. And initially, there wasn’t much I wanted to do. I was tired, my day was almost over. I didn’t have the energy or the patience for this garbage. He was a jerk. And that’s when it’s important to smile, when you have to smile. You have to take a deep breath and push yourself to eleven, and then to fifteen, to twenty. You have to find a way to go the extra mile, or go ‘above and beyond’ as we call it at the store. One more. There wasn’t much I could do. One more. I could do this much. One more.
I expected the worst when he came back. A demand for a discount or repeating his complaints from the day before. Instead, he remembered my name. He spotted me first and called out my name. His face was still blank, but his voice was softer this time around. So I set down the books I was putting away and went over to him. I smiled and shook his hand. I told him it was good to see him and that I’d checked on his CD as soon as I came in that morning to make sure it was right where I’d left it. I rang him up for ‘Il’ya Muromets’ and a few magazines he also had, and told him to ask for me if there was anything else he was looking for. George said thank you this time, and that he appreciated how quickly I was able to get it for him. He still didn’t smile though. Next time, next time he’ll smile. Unless he’s a robot that requires the sweet symphonic stylings of the BPO to recharge at night….
A Christmas Miracle | the Reason I Want to Work in a Bookstore
It’s been a difficult Christmas. But aren’t they all?
There are a lot of reasons that go into why; from the typical Christmas present buying stress that everyone feels to the typical Christmas present shopping stress that every retail employee feels (the knowledge that before or after your shift of dealing with stupid people, you have to become one of the stupid people); there’s certain ‘first Christmas’ jitters that comes with a new relationship, with new friends, new people. All of these things, if left unchecked, can add a little more anxiety to the already rushed and overwhelming holiday season.
There’s the stress involved in surviving a retail Christmas when the team of people you depend on for exactly that—to survive; to make it out without too severe a nervous tick or a larger drinking problem then at the start—has changed. A few months before the holiday season kicked into gear a total management shift left me with a team that I didn’t know. This was a team pulled together from multiple stores, with new skills and ways of doing things. I was depending on strangers, essentially, and counting on people I didn’t know to pull together during the most intense period of time in retail. That experience alone is already a difficult process, but to do it during the time of year when we’re already overworked and ready to collapse can be a recipe for disaster.
Yay… Christmas.
I’ve survived. More or less.
I’ve survived because of something that happened to me the first Christmas I worked at the bookstore. No, it wasn’t the Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen official fan club key-chain I found on the floor that year. Sadly, that was lost when my car was broken into or I’d still have my store keys hanging from it. (I’ve been on the lookout since for a new one, in case you come across one) It wasn’t the keychain, it wasn’t a physical thing so much as it was something that happened. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this story, but it comes to me every once in a while when I get run down at work. When I get exhausted, frustrated and question why I’m doing this, why I want to work here anymore, this is what I remember. It’s good to have a story like this.
I was hired in the spring to work in the stockroom, but a week or two before Thanksgiving I got pulled out onto the book floor. I was going up to the Show, right? This was my big chance to help out at the customer service desk. To the detriment of my sanity, I’ve remained out there pretty much ever since. It seems, unfortunately, that I’m quite good at it. I am apparently able to switch on this alternate persona of “Customer Service Matt” who is cheerful and talkative, and able to engage in smalltalk.
That’s how I ended up working Christmas Eve. That’s how I ended up finding that Olsen twins key-chain. That’s how, about a half hour or so before we closed, I met this mother. At that point in the night we were all chomping at the bit a little. We could taste the eggnog waiting at home and wanted to close up, sticker all the calendars half-off as quickly as possible and get out. We were all in recovery mode, which means putting back together a store that just did two days’ worth of sales in eight hours. We were tired. We were dragging. Everything hurt.
What customers were left fell into two categories: oblivious that it was Christmas Eve or pissed off at us that we didn’t have whatever book they just realized they needed. The book they were looking for was either some obscure title that hasn’t been in print in this country in twenty years, or the must-have biography that year that’s been on backorder across the entire world since Thanksgiving. You don’t want to deal with either group. They’re both complete time-sucks.
A woman came up to me as I was straightening up a table. She was a little frazzled and asked about a specific children’s book. Just what I needed. Half an hour to go and I was forced to venture into the post-apocalyptic wasteland that was the Children’s Department. On a Wednesday night in July you can’t get within five feet of Childrens’ without losing an hour of your life, but during the Christmas season? You stumble out days later, disoriented and near death, hoping one of the girls from the café is nearby with a tray of cheesecake samples you can gorge yourself on.
It only got worse after looking up this title that I had never heard of before as it turned out we had one copy. One. It had come in back in July. It could be anywhere. It could be nowhere. All I could imagine was ending my first retail Christmas by having my ass handed to me by this petite blonde woman over a kid’s book she had realized twenty minutes ago was the most important thing in the world to her.
And so we went to search the shelves, excavate the debris of discarded holiday purchases, forgotten coffee cups, narrowly avoiding a collapsing cardboard display, and what I hoped to Krampus was only a brownie mashed into the carpet. I was a retail Indiana Jones on a quest for the one true cup—or book. This was life or death. The clock was ticking here; the first closing announcement was moments away.
In this situation you’re prepared for one of two reactions from the customer: a burning festive fury or utter indifference. Either you don’t have the book and you just ruined their Christmas, in which case they will make sure you damn well know what a disappointment you are, or you have it and get a mumbled thank you (if that, in some cases) as they run for the registers.
But there it was! I slid it off the shelf slowly, silently, in complete awe at its pristine condition. I was as surprised as she was it was there and I have to admit, I was pretty proud of myself. Deep down I didn’t expect her to share my excitement or even congratulate me on what I saw as winning a hard-fought battle. It was less than that, I didn’t even expect a thank you. I expected her to take the book and disappear into the fog of faceless, thankless customers that had come before her.
Instead, she hugged me.
With tears in her eyes she explained why, at the last minute, she needed this particular book. Her son was sick. He was spending his Christmas in the hospital and I got the impression that he had been hospitalized for a quite a while. On Christmas Eve she had remembered this book, perhaps it was one she had read as a kid, that book that somehow retained all of wonder and excitement that Christmas possesses for you as a child and suddenly wanted to share that with him. There was nothing more she wanted then to spend Christmas Eve reading it to her son. More than any other gift, she wanted to read this story to him, she wanted to share this story, this piece of Christmas magic with him.
She said it was a Christmas miracle. I’d heard that phrase a few times already, and countless times since. Most of the time now we mean it more as a joke than anything else. We found a book actually shelved alphabetically by author like it was supposed to be. Christmas miracle. More often than not we’d find that Christmas miracle in a pile of discarded books for us to put back on the shelf later that night. That saying doesn’t carry much weight anymore. The miracle lasts right up until the moment they see how long the line is. But this one was.
I don’t know her name; I didn’t ask her son’s. I didn’t ask what hospital he was in and I don’t know if he’s even still alive. I believe he is. I decided years ago he was, and not just because this would be a terrible story otherwise. Of course, I wouldn’t recognize the woman now; it’s been too long and there have been too many faces since. She could have come in a hundred times since then and I wouldn’t have known. But I remember the tears in her eyes and I remember her story.
When this store, this job, when this holiday season that’s lost its spark starts crushing me and I feel defeated by the negativity of customers or coworkers, and expectations, by my own pessimism, and by the seemingly endless repetitious pointlessness of it all, I remember this story.
I remember there was one copy of that book, just one copy that had sat lost and ignored on the shelf, unwanted as the thousands of people tore at the titles around it. One copy that, at the last minute, was needed to share this sliver of love and wonder and Christmas magic with a little boy too sick to spend Christmas Eve in his own bed at home. I hope he remembers that story, and remembers to be thankful for the people he spends his holidays with, for the experiences each day that make all this worth it. I hope he reads that book to his kids years from now and maybe he even tells them how their grandmother suddenly went out on Christmas Eve to find it for him they stayed up late while she read it to him. He should add to his version of the story a terrible snow storm his mother had to battle through. It might add a little more excitement to it. A little embellishment isn’t so bad. Over the years of remembering and clinging to this story I may have exaggerated my memory of it. I might remember him as being much sicker then he was. For all I know he only had a broken leg or his tonsils out, and his mother is a very emotional woman who unintentionally led me to believe the kid was on his deathbed. I like the story I have now. It’s a good story. It’s special to me.
I hope the story that he has to be special for him. I hope that picture book gives him a reason to find that something hopeful and brand new in a holiday that so many of us have buried beneath a pile of meaningless presents.
So I remember.
I remember this mother, running out at the last minute on Christmas Eve, not to buy some toy or other empty thing, but instead to buy this book, a story, an opportunity to create a beautiful memory in being able to read this story to her son. That’s the only Christmas miracle I believe in.
Maybe you said it enough for both of us that night, with tears in your eyes and the excitement of going back to your son victorious, but I’m the one who should have said it. Thank you.
My Monsters
I’ve hung them up in two apartments and I can’t imagine a place feeling like home without them. I’m talking about my monsters. Three framed drawings by a little kid I don’t even know, who I’m sure I’ll never meet. They’re perfect.
A couple years ago I was clicking around online and came across an article about a little boy with leukemia. Similar to Batkid now out in San Francisco in that he’s sick and he’s awesome. Come on, you can’t hear about a kid like this and not have tears in your eyes.
Go pull up video of Batkid. That’s the little boy who, thanks to Make A Wish, is surrounded by hundreds of people cheering him on throughout the city, while he saves a woman tied up by the Riddler and gets to ride around in a freakin Lamborghini Batmobile. Tell me there aren’t tears.
That’s how it was when I came across this story. The kid I read an article on, his name’s Aidan. He loves monsters. Drawing them, watching monster movies, making his own costumes. Which is good, since he spent most of his childhood up until that point in a hospital bed. Plenty of time to draw monsters. And I’m talking the classics: Frankenstein’s monsters, the Wolfman, Dracula and Count Orlock. There’s a difference.
He got my attention. If I wasn’t sold on this kid already, seeing pictures of Halloween when he got pulled around in a wagon dressed as Jigsaw’s dummy from Saw so he could trick-or-treat, did the trick. This kid is awesome.
I’d just purchased the Legacy set of Frankenstein movies that had a bunch of the old Boris Karloff monster flicks. Thanks to Netflix I watched the Wolfman, Dracula, the Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Invisible Man. All those great old Universal flicks that started everything. I also had Monster Squad, one of the greatest movies of my childhood. At the time it was recently out on DVD and I snagged it. It takes all those old great horror icons and rolls them together with a Goonies-esque group of kids. Who doesn’t love this stuff?
the one in the middle looks just like Kevin
The reason this article on Aidan was out there though was because his aunt, in an attempt to raise some money towards his hospital bills, had taken his drawings and put them up for sale on Etsy. Not a bad idea. Well, unless you’re me. Because now I have to buy one, right? But how can I choose? I just went to the site to browse, then I talked myself into buy one. Then I double-checked my bank balance and decided I could get three. It’s for a good cause, it’s ok.
I went with the classics. Wolfman. Frankenstein’s Monster. And Dracula. But not really. There’s a difference between Dracula and Count Orlock. You should know. I’m not going into that. Why did I ultimately go with Nosferatu over a Universal vampire? Was it that then all three would be in different colored marker? Yeah, that’s probably it. But it may have been that I had to give it to this kid that he knew the ripped off Max Schreck/W.F. Murnau version. That’s going to be my official position.
But I realize now that my choices were perfect. Not only did I do something cool by purchasing these, but now I have my monsters, I have a good story to tell about how I ended up with these kid’s drawings framed on my wall. Oddly enough, these actually represent my two friends and I.
No, no, hear me out on this: Frankenstein’s monster is covered in scars, but the ones on his hands at first glance look like your typical hash marks for keeping score. Much like I had to do on New Year’s Eve. Marks on one hand for bottles of champagne I drank, marks on the other for shots. Just in case I had to go the hospital. The Wolfman is obviously Kevin who could probably braid his back hair and can grow a full beard before lunch. And Nosferatu? There’s this thing the three of us tend to do now and it came about after we lived together for a few years. It unquestionably originated with Alan. When someone comes into the room at night and turns the light on he will hiss and has gone so far as to throw his hands up in front of his face as if clawing at the light. He started it. We all do it. Its reflex now, there’s no stopping it. Our children will end up doing it.
So not only could I support this great little kid, who has since gone into remission, and his family by buying a few of his drawings, I’ve also, oddly enough, ended up with monster-caricatures of my best friends and I. Money well spent.
Gas Station Burrito 