eeeeemoooooooo

I really, really, really hate people.

So... I'm standing at the information desk minding my own business and this customer comes up to me and shouts, "What color is your parachute?" at me. I'm a little startled, as I think anyone is when someone just walks up and starts shouting at them. Then I kind of snap out of it and am like, "I know where that is," and start heading over to that section. "How many copies do you have?" he asks, thankfully at a less scary volume, though this is when I'm no longer near the computer or close enough to the section to tell. "I can tell you that when we get over there and I see," I reply patiently. I get over there and start going through the copies and counting them out loud for him. I turn around to tell him the total I've arrived at, and find out that he stopped following me halfway there. I tell him we have 10, though I feel kind of foolish talking to this guy from halfway across the store. He holds up three fingers and shouts, "3." I pull them and bring them back to him. I ask him if there's anything else he wants. He starts telling me about something or other he heard mentioned on WJBC, I still have no idea what it was though it sounded something like "Catharsis." I told him I could take him back to the computer and look for that, and he agrees. Then, for whatever reason, on the way back he stops to make chit chat with another customer (I don't think they even knew each other) for awhile. I stand at the computer wondering what I should be doing the whole time, because I can't get started on searching for this book until I get him to spell whatever word this is in the title of the book he wants. When he finally gets back, I ask him if he could please spell the word. "I'm a little out of breath now, I think I'm just going to get these and call it a day," he tells me. He looks expectantly at me like he thinks I'm going to ring him up there at the information desk, a weird mistake a lot of people seem to make. I point at the big sign that says registers at the front of the store and say, "I'm sorry, I can't do that here, you'll have to go up to the registers."

So he went to boss-boss and complained about me. He was apparently very disappointed because he had heard great things about our store and how friendly we are and how I never smiled and seemed annoyed at him.

Okay: I think the universe is bizzare. There HAVE been times when customers have annoyed me and I've kind of let it seep out and show, but I could've sworn I was at the top of my game in niceness to that guy. Seriously, I was in a good mood this morning. And I was so startled when he started out yelling at me that I didn't actually do what I sometimes do when someone comes up and just says the title of a book or section (act really stupid like I don't understand that they're asking me to find it). Also, if someone stops to talk to someone else for twenty minutes or gets on their phone after I've started to help them, I do tend to walk away and do something else, but this time I actually waited around for the guy while he randomly stopped to coerce some poor lady into unwanted conversation about her little kid. So basically this guy shat all over me and treated me like his peon, and then got mad when I didn't smile about it even though I was as nice to him as I am to customers who aren't jerks. And I really wasn't mad over the exchange, like I am over some particularly jerky customers, until he complained about me. I would've forgotten it the instant after it happened. He seriously got about the best service anyone at the store could offer (Happy or Explosion are the only ones I can think of that would randomly smile at this guy for no reason, and I'd say about half the employees we have, at least, would've had to look this book up before taking him to it, unlike me, who knew exactly where to go the instant that he mentioned it).

And man... I wish I had talked to Lister or Elaine about it, not boss-boss. I've talked to both of them at various times about things I've done that have actually been wrong and felt less yelled at than when boss-boss talked to me about this fucking BS complaint. Obviously it is my word vs. his, and I have had slip ups in the niceness to bastard customers department before, but I told her the absolute truth about what happened and she gave me all this stuff about how we have to appear happy and smiling and stuff, that just being polite is not good enough and since it was his first visit to the store I gave him a bad impression of our store and he's never going to shop there again. I finally got fed up with this conversation and said something like, "I guess I'm just not a smiley person," which made her all angry and tell me that it doesn't matter that I don't want to smile, it's not about my mood, it's about making the customer happy. Look, it's not like I wouldn't fake smile the whole day if I were any good at it. But has she seen my fake smile? It's much more creepy and disturbing than the more neutral face I wear most of the time unless I have a real reason to smile. If I were a customer I would definitely not want someone making the fake smile I make when I have to fake smile. They should fucking ask you in the job interview if you are good at fake smiles if it's so damn important.

I. Hate. Everyone.