Just Plain Wrong

Ok, so up until now I have been attempting a light-hearted tone because really, in the grand scheme of things, all of the key item pushing, mystery shopping, etc. is just silly and there is no need to get truly upset about it. What is upsetting, is when "customer service" (as all of the silliness is called) gets put before employee well-being. For example:
Employee X is working the register when nature calls and she needs to take a bathroom break. Employee Y is "greeting" customers at the door and there are two more employees reshelving books and any one of them could easily run over to the registers while Employee X runs to the bathroom, but the service manager says "wait". 45 minutes later, Employee X still has not been allowed to leave the registers.

Or take another example:
As in our first example, Employee Y is "greeting" customers at the door. Now this position at the door is viewed as very important for the company because it ensures that everyone is getting acknowledged and offered help within seconds of entering the store. This person is also supposed to recommend key items to everyone that comes in. Super important. However, most people who walk in the door walk past the greeter as fast as their little legs can carry them because they just want to browse for a bit and then ask for help if and when they really need it. If the greeter is helping another customer, or not at the front for some reason, those people who do want help right away, can walk up to the registers and someone can call for customer service, or they could ask one of the people working on reshelving within the store, or the greeter can do a loop around the store and check to see how everyone is doing now and then. In other words, it is not the end of the world if that greeter is not in their spot for a few minutes. However, when Employee Y's stomach starts rumbling and she gets to feeling a bit light-headed because she didn't have quite enough for breakfast (not to mention the fact that breakfast was 5 hours ago) and she asks to take a two minute break to run to the office and grab a snack she is denied. And this even at a moment when there was already another person at the front who could have easily taken over for those two minutes. This isn't even the end of it. Employee Y resigns herself to a rumbling stomach for a while longer after her first request was denied and then is relieved when another employee comes to take over for her. As it turns out though, he was coming to take over so that Employee Y can go to the registers because there are three people in line and god forbid we make them wait for the one cashier who is there already (who by the way is Employee X who still has to pee).
There is no excuse for this shit. I quit.

Mystery Shopping

So a couple of weeks ago, my fellow workers were all abuzz because we had received a 100% score from a mystery shopper. What this means is that somebody comes into the store specifically to test whether or not we employees are doing everything that we are supposed to do. In this case that means greeting them within 6 seconds of entering the store, asking them an open-ended question, helping them find what they are looking for, recommending something in addition to what they are buying that is related, recommending one of the key items (which most of the time is not at all related), telling them our name, thanking them for their purchase, telling them to come back soon. And that's just for the person on the sales floor. The register person then has to tell their name, recommend another item or two, ask them if they want a gift card and/or gift receipt to go with their purchase, make sure they are a Rewards member, thank them for coming, say the customer's name, and tell them to come back soon. Phew! No wonder it is such a feat to get a 100% score.
In the case a couple of weeks ago, the two employees who accomplished this feat were given many pats on the back, kudos, and $25 gift cards to the store. Serious business.
And then, to everyones increased excitement and amazement we received another 100% score last week! Two in one month is suspicious enough, but what made it even more of a conundrum is the fact that sales floor winner was yours truly. When they told me I seriously thought it was a joke. It was early in the morning and they had all been in the store through the night rearranging books so in their delirium an email could have easily been misread.
But sure enough, even when the smoke and spiderwebs of the morning cleared, there was my name on the document. Am I becoming one of them despite all of my best efforts?

Happily, the description that the mystery shopper gave of her experience triggered the memory of that particular transaction and I am absolutely sure that I should not have gotten 100%. I certainly did help her find what she was looking for and even suggested additional items within that category (because it happened to be a genre that I get particularly excited about and like sharing recommendations of good books that I have actually read), but I am absolutely sure that I did not recommend one of our key items to her (because why on earth would she want me to tell her about some crappy novel that I have never read when she came in specifically to buy a cookbook). Phew. I am still a terrible employee after all.

Disorderly Conduct

So apparently the past year has been a bit tough on my employer what with competition from online marketplaces and other giant corporate bookstores. In an attempt to set themselves apart, they have recently decided to focus on "G.R.E.A.T" customer service (and yes, that does stand for something). This means that every customer entering the store must be greeted within 6 seconds and asked an open-ended question so that they can't get away with a simple "yes" or "no". At first, I thought that this was just incredibly annoying for both the customer and myself...ok. I still think it is annoying though sometimes I can get a bit of a laugh out of the confusion on people's faces when I ask "what brings you in today?" and they stumble over how to make "no thanks" the answer to that question.
The fact is that despite how obnoxious I seem when I leap out from behind a table of books to accost you as soon as you come in...you are going to need me. And the reason: It is really f-ing hard to find a book in this store.
Now one of the things that shocked (and bored) me when I started working here was the amount of time spent on training. I think the grand total came to 30 hours. And I am pretty sure that at least 8 of those hours were spent going over the nifty search engines that will magically help us to help you find the book you are looking for. Ha. Even if I manage to put together the perfect string of words and find what I am looking for, the system might tell me to look in "business" but may not specify to look in the "leadership" section within the business section. Or it may tell me that the book has been put on one of the special tables out front so that I am forced to wander aimlessly through the front of the store trying to search out one title amidst piles of un-alphebetized merchandise.
But then there is the wonderful moment when the system tells me that the book is in "computer programming" and "Java" and I know just where that is and I lead the customer there with a bounce in my step...only to find that all of the books in that section are dreadfully out of order and so a book by "Allen" is not in fact at the beginning of the section, but buried somewhere near the end. Yes, it is true. We have forgotten how to alphabetize. At least that is what I thought until I realized that the biggest problem area is the "Erotica" section. Think about it for a minute: You pick up "How to Have Great Sex" just to take a peak, but then forget exactly where you got it from and suddenly other people are walking by and you just want to get that book out of your hands and back onto the shelf as fast as possible!
It is all about time really.
See, most books either get put back on the shelves by customers in a hurry (as in our erotica example), or reshelved at the end of the night by employees who just want to get home and whose eyes are blurry from staring at the tiny print on book bindings all day. Thus we have a mess.
The moral of this posting? Hmmm...

Finding My Mind

Having recently started working at one of the many corporate box-stores that call themselves bookstores I have decided that instead of losing my mind in the poo deluge of "key items", customer rewards, coffee bean "donations", proper customer greeting form, etc. I will just blog about it. There are dangers to this of course. I could fall into an easy pattern of just complaining about my co-worker who tells stories about her homosexual cat and has an allergy to pretty much anything that would require actual work, or about how hard it is to encourage people who are looking at real literature to sign up to reserve a copy of P.C. Cast's new vampire book, much less "Going Rogue" by Sarah Palin!!!
But I will try not to do that.
I promise.
Meanwhile, I encourage you to read this blog, and then go to your local library knowing that you can probably get a really great book recommendation without being encouraged to buy a silly book about cats, try the new gingerbread mocha java triple latte, and donate a book called "Home" to our troops overseas.