January 14, 2008
How'd it feel? Like this:
Other than a quick bathroom run (even ducks gotta go sometime), I pretty much was on the cash register for nigh on seven hours straight. My back hurts, my neck is stiff, and by the end of the night I fully expect a bruise to have formed on my left hand.
It's Christmas in the Bookstore!
In his comment section, Steven mentions that he could never work retail. It does take a different type of person to do the job well. I really enjoy helping customers, usually... but by the end of a day like today, all I really want to do is hide underneath the counter. "Nope, not here, sorry."
A good CSV person has to have a hook. It might be detailed knowledge of everything in the store, for example. Mine is humor. I'll be funny and try to make the customer laugh at least once. It helps that I've been at the Duck U. Bookstore for almost four years, AND a graduate of the U. to boot. I know the school like the back of my hand, I've been in the classes they're taking, and I'm on a first-name basis with a lot of the professors. And the duck collection gets mentioned every once in a while, too.
Hey, it works. I was the best salesman at the CowPuter store for the year I was there... mostly because I could be less-than-serious. Computers are 'serious bidness' for most people; newbies are often afraid of them. If they saw someone having fun talking about them, in English, they liked it. It's the same way at the Bookstore. Sure, the kids need the books, but they don't have to get 'em from us anymore. Plenty of online places to get 'em these days.
They still come to us, though... I'd like to think some of the reason for that is the humor.
And the free burrito. Don't forget that.
Posted by: Wonderduck at
09:25 PM
| Comments (2)
| Add Comment
Post contains 381 words, total size 2 kb.
Back at the hobby shop, Black Friday was nothing. The Saturday before Christmas was always the worst. 10-9 shift with two half-hour breaks to grab a lunch and dinner. The store wasn't very big, and there were times I was afraid we were over Fire Marshal capacity. We had two registers running non-stop for those eleven hours, and the line always filled an aisle all the way to the back of the store.
I unfortunately was working there right at the time checks were on the way out, but we still hadn't stopped accepting them. So every fourth customer (usually a grouchy retiree on fixed-income) I had stop hold everything up while I got their drivers license, check, and then phoned it all in to a verification service. God I hated that. It didn't really get better the next year when we stopped taking checks. Instead of wasting time with verification, the whole store got treated to a tirade of equal length.
Posted by: Will at January 15, 2008 08:14 AM (E3UGR)
Thank heavens for automated check verification services and external bad check recovery companies... otherwise we'd lose out on a buncha business!
Tuesday wasn't as bad as Monday... still long as crepe (well, 9-1/2 hours as opposed to 10), but only about half as much business, dollar-wise. Mind you, the day still beat our usual day in the store by a factor of about 20...
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 15, 2008 06:09 PM (UdB9M)
47 queries taking 0.3459 seconds, 278 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
