More Trouble in Retail

Another lovely customer....

We were swamped one night not long ago at the bookstore. R was the only guy at the register and I was the only person on the floor. R called for backup; I finished up with the customers I was helping, then headed up to the front to help out. There was a woman there waiting to have some books wrapped.

Allow me to emphasize this: we gift wrap free of charge. There is no charge for the paper. It is FREE. There is no charge for our time spent wrapping your 17 books. It is FREE.

Back to the story... I ask this woman which of the 4 or 5 types of wrapping paper she would like me to use. The conversation proceeded:
"Those are the only ones you have?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"You should really hire some better designers."
"I'm sorry ma'am. We don't have much say over the designs. Those decisions are made by someone in the corporate office."
"You should talk to them about that."
"Would you still like me wrap your books?"
"It's hardly even worth it, with that paper. But I guess so."

Again, I ask: really? We're wrapping your presents FOR FREE. SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO WASTE YOUR PRECIOUS TIME AND MONEY DOING IT. Quit complaining about our poor selection of paper. If you really don't like it, go buy your own.

The end.

Erratum

I need to amend my Hurt Locker post. I have actually seen one other Best Picture nominee: Up. But I still think that Hurt Locker should win. Up will win Best Animated Feature, though, and I'm okay with that.

What I Watched -- The Hurt Locker

This is an amazing movie; I hope it wins the Oscar for Best Picture. In fairness, though, I haven't seen a lot of the other movies that have been nominated. Actually, that's not true. I haven't seen any of the other movies that have been nominated. But still, this is an amazing movie.

The viewer is following a three-man bomb squad as they attempt to diffuse roadside bombs and IEDs in Iraq. The emotional complexity arrives in the form of Staff Sergeant William James, who loves the thrill of the diffusing. His unspoken motto: the riskier, the better. His attitude begets conflict at every turn, and his emotional instability presents itself in surprising ways -- sometimes good, mostly bad.

If for no other reason, you should see this movie because it presents the Iraq war from the point of view of the soldiers who are living it every day. They are under immense strain and pressure, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. An existence like that, where danger awaits around every corner, is so far removed from what most of us know that it is truly an eye-opening adventure.

What I Watched -- Grace Is Gone

K had to watch this movie for a class she's taking on the Iraq War, and recommended it. The premise is fairly simple: John Cusack plays the father of two girls. His wife/their mother is killed in Iraq. What follows is his attempt to deal with his loss. John Cusack is, no doubt, wonderful in this role. His character's expression of grief is as heartbreaking and understandable as any I've seen.

For my money, though, the real winner is newcomer Shelan O'Keefe, who plays his 12-year-old daughter Heidi. She conveys both the innocence and curiosity of a child, as well as the skepticism and maturity of an oldest daughter who has taken on too much responsibility.

The story is slow-moving, but also eye-opening. It is the story of an Average Joe, just trying to make it through something terrible in his life. It's nothing extraordinary, until it is.

The trouble with cell phones...or maybe with retail...or maybe with people

I was working at the cash register at my bookstore last night. A woman approached the counter with 3 or 4 books, and was talking on her cell phone. I carried on as I would with any other customer, ringing up her purchases, asking her the appropriate questions, etc. Every time I asked her a question, she would answer me and then apologize to the person she was on the phone with for interrupting her phone conversation.

Really? Do I not qualify as a person worthy of having a conversation with? Or even if not a conversation, do I not qualify as a person worthy of just a smidgeon of respect?

I experience this a lot at my store. I'd say it has something to do with the neighborhood in which it's located, although I suspect the same is true in lots of other retail establishments in other neighborhoods as well. (And in restaurants -- don't forget about the waiters and waitresses. They're people too!)

This is usually how it goes: someone comes into the store looking for a book. So far, so good. They ask me to help them, and I do. Here one of two things can happen: (1) I give them their book and they carry on with their day without another thought about me; or (2) we start talking and they realize I'm older than I look. Then they learn that I have a graduate degree and something resembling a brain. Then they realize I'm someone who's perhaps worth 30 seconds of their precious time, and we chat.

In truth, either of these scenarios is okay with me. I understand that sometimes people are just busy, and sometimes they don't like talking to people they don't know. I don't have a problem with that; I fall into the latter category myself. But it's people like the woman who came in last night, who can't even do me the courtesy of asking the person on the phone to wait a minute while they have a face-to-face interaction with a real live person, who absolutely make me crazy.

So I end with a plea: please do me a favor and get off your phone (and take out your earphones, etc.) when dealing with someone face to face. It shows that you respect them as a person, even if they are just selling you books.

Besides, if what you have to say is really that important, shouldn't you be talking face-to-face with the person on the phone, rather than running your errands anyway?

What I Watched -- La Vie en Rose

I watched this one a while ago, but I thought it was worth writing about anyway. It's the tale of the (very sad) life of one Ms. Edith Piaf. Perhaps you've heard of her?

There was a lot of tragedy, a little bit of crazy, and some amazing music in her life, and hence also in this movie. If you're a casual jazz listener (like me), you probably just like her music and her ethereal voice, but this movie gives much more meaning to her songs.

But beware: it's long, and not terribly uplifting. There are moments of brightness, but they are inevitably eclipsed by the sadness of her demise.

Breck Pictures

A pre-injury family skiing adventure

The view on a sunny day

The Snow Sculpture Championships

Giving snowmen self-esteem issues for 20 years

Decisions, decisions...

Looking down Shock- my second Rocky Mountain black! (Cimarron was the first)

Looking down the hill towards town from the balcony

I am awesome!

A mid-mountain chat with Dad

The view on a cloudy day

Happy Birthday, E!

Happy birthday, little sis! I hope you have an awesome day, and that lots of people come to your party tonight! Sorry I can't be there :-(

Ski Trip

We went! And we came back! Mostly.

In attendance were brothers P and T (aka Dad). Also along were me and K, as well as J. Our journey to Breck via Denver was smooth, and we kicked off the trip with a heroic adventure at the grocery store.

The first afternoon and following morning of skiing went smoothly; P learned the basics, K got a refresher course, J and I tested our mettle, and Dad gave himself his own refresher course on the blue-blacks. It was our second afternoon that was a total bummer. K wins the prize for the most impressive battle scar, although it's not much to look at from the outside; she tore her ACL. She went to the medical clinic in Breck for a brace, x-rays, and pain meds, but that was the end of her skiing adventure. And worse, she couldn't even relax in the hot tub because to do so would increase the swelling in her knee! Boo hiss :-(

She did get some awesomely huge shorts from the clinic, though, which look like a 3XL on her, even though they're a small/medium. Or so they say???

We did manage to get out that night for a delicious dinner at Modis, which included (thank you very much) a deliciously chocolately dessert. And our waitress, noticing K's plight, informed us that she's had 3 ACL surgeries and is still skiing!

[For the uninjured...] Saturday and Sunday involved LOTS of skiing, and any time not spent doing that was passed doing one of three other things: eating, sitting on the couch, or sitting in the hot tub. We had a few afternoon flurries, and one decent night of snowfall while we were there, and had a lovely view from the patio looking towards town to the left and Bald Mountain to the right. Don't we all look thrilled about life?
There was about an hour of excitement on Sunday, when we considered changing our return flight from Monday to Tuesday, due to predicted inclement weather in Denver and St. Louis on Monday. This super-fun activity involved a lot of time on hold with the airline by T, and a lot of cursing by P when he lost his credit card. Which was found. On his bed. Cleverly camouflaged. In the end, we kept our original flight home, which was delayed by a couple of hours, but we made it "just before the window slammed shut."

By way of an update to those who haven't heard, K went to the doctor yesterday, and she's supposed to have surgery in about a month, after all the swelling has subsided.

What I'm Reading Now -- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Guilty as charged: I am a Harry Potter reader. But I have a pattern to my reading, and it started way back with the first book. I wasn't eager to read it, but someone gave it to me, so I gave it a try, and tore through it. Not long after that, the first movie came out, so I went to see it. Then I read the second book. I waited for the second movie before reading the third book, and so on.

A couple months ago, I finally (finally!) saw the sixth movie, and J gave me the last book for Christmas. So I'm reading it! And I'm reading it much more quickly than my last book; I've been working on it for about two days, and I'm about 1/3 of the way there. I hope to have a final report for you soon!

Stoner -- Take 2

Again, apologies for the delay on two counts: (1) time between posts and (2) time spent reading Stoner. By way of explanation:
(1) I'm skiing, and was enjoying my vacation rather than posting on my blog.
(2) I can't say for sure whether the book was slow going, or whether it was just that I didn't put enough time into it, but I think it was the latter.

Having said that, though, I very much enjoyed the book. The prose was plain and simple, which, as a general rule, I like as a writing style. Despite that, the author successfully conveyed the immense emotions felt by William Stoner. That emotion was mostly sadness, but never despair. Stoner, time after time, plods forward in reluctant acceptance of his situation, however different it is from what he had hoped.

A couple of my favorite passages:

"So Stoner began [his career as a professor] where he had started, a tall, thin, stooped man in the same room in which he had sat as a tall, thin, stooped boy listening to the words that had led him to where he had come. He never went into that room that he did not glance at the seat he had once occupied, and he was always slightly surprised to discover that he was not there."

"He had come to that moment in his age when there occurred to him, with increasing intensity, a question of such overwhelming simplicity that he had no means to face it. He found himself wondering if his life were worth the living; if it had ever been. It was a question, he suspected, that came to all men at one time or another; he wondered if it came to them with such impersonal force as it came to him. The question brought with it a sadness, but it was a general sadness which (he thought) had little to do with himself or with his particular fate; he was not even sure that the question sprang from the most immediate and obvious causes, from what his own life had become. It came, he believed, from the accretion of his years, from the density of accident and circumstance, and from what he had come to understand of them. He took a grim and ironic pleasure from the possibility that what little learning he had managed to acquire had led him to this knowledge: that in the long run all things, even the learning that let him know this, were futile and empty, and at last diminished into a nothingness they did not alter."

There are uplifting moments in the book, where Stoner realizes his talents or finds love, but those moments are not to last. It is not a particularly happy book, but it is the story of a life, and it is surely worth a read.

How to live in Hawaii

In case you're trying to move to Hawaii, here is one method of doing it (from a friend of E's):

The dad was terrified of flying. He lived in California, and eventually his kids convinced him to take them to Hawaii for spring break. So they flew to Hawaii, but he wouldn't get on another plane after that, so they just had all of their stuff shipped to Hawaii and now they live there!