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runupon cracker posted:it's been more than 20 years since I've worked retail and I still feel the urge to straighten a shelf.
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Jun 13, 2017 14:17
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Kelp Me! posted:OTOH the guy who prices the used books at the Barnes & Noble by me is easily the most insane retail employee I've ever encountered. He looks and dresses like if Colonel Sanders played The Mask (has the white hair/beard, glasses, big guy, but instead of a white suit it'll be a yellow blazer, green polka-dot slacks and a red striped tie). His pricing scheme is totally incomprehensible - at one point I was told it was based off online prices, but not where online (eBay? Amazon? Niche collectors' sites?). This leads to things like volumes 6, 7 and 8 of a comic book series (Preacher) being priced at $8, $35, and $18 respectively, for no real reason (they're out of print but the prices are pretty stable across all the volumes). I still find decent deals and cool finds, but not nearly as much as I used to. I once got a signed, uncorrected proof copy of one of the Science of Discworld books for $6, now they've had a signed, 1st-edition copy of Good Omens for $150 sitting on display for like 6 months that nobody will buy at that price.
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Jun 13, 2017 14:59
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Customers at major book chains are generally fine. It's the little independent stores that get the crazies. When you have an independent bookstore, you aren't really selling books. You can't out-compete the internet price-wise. It's a losing battle. Instead, you're selling the bookstore. You're selling the experience of browsing and spending time in it, and the sense of identity that comes with being the patron of a local bookstore. This means you have to be this weird meeting place, host book clubs, do signings, be part of community events, etc. Inevitably, you get people who are a little too tied up in your store. They start projecting onto it. It's their home away from home, their secret clubhouse, the Last Bastion Of Truth, the proof that they're a little more enlightened and intelligent than everyone else. Therefore, they assume you agree with all their insane bullshit. Every conspiracy theorist, every Nibiru nutjob, every alien abductee and burnout (barefoot elderly to be-dreadlocked college kid) comes to your store and pours their heart out while you nod and smile and pray they're not the violent kind of unstable. Also the management tends to be the "hates customers and the idea of selling products" type, so that's fun too. My old manager was an honest-to-god book hoarder.
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Jun 13, 2017 15:06
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Kelp Me! posted:It's absolutely bizarre and I'm sure he's pricing himself out of some sales and undercutting himself in others (that uncorrected proof I paid $6 for lists on eBay for >$100). It leads to situations like the above with those Preacher volumes; I bought the cheap one and completed the collection through Amazon. At this point the comics section is almost entirely super-overpriced stuff since everyone already bought everything worth buying. If you're tracking inventory, how long until you realize that dropping prices will increase sales? We also bought and sold vinyl, and if you think people can't price books, records are a million times worse. No, your Beatles record isn't worth anything. Yes, it's a very famous album. That's why it isn't worth anything.
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Jun 13, 2017 15:47
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yeah I eat rear end posted:I blame shows like those storage locker auction things where they see a box of books and say "man look at all these old books, I'll value the whole pile at 10-20,000 dollars" without even looking at what they are. My understanding is if a book isn't a first printing and/or very rare+signed it's generally not worth much of anything at all. Same with records - they see one that sells for a few thousand on pawn stars and next thing they do is load up their entire beat up old record collection and have it "appraised" and get pissed when they get offered like 5 bucks for the whole pile. The exceptions are extremely high-profile rarities like Action Comics 1, which sell mostly because they're status symbols. Books aren't useful to rich people wanting to display wealth the way art and other collectables are.
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Jun 13, 2017 15:59
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SpaceClown posted:dont work retail, sell drugs on a street corner
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Jun 15, 2017 01:33
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Ups_rail posted:So how did he file/mange inventory? We also had a basement no employee was allowed in that was worse. I found, while cleaning, two separate plastic bowls full of pinecones. At one point the first had become lost in the store and our boss bought another.
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Jun 15, 2017 20:37
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A woman invited me to join her book club. Verbatim "We read the Baghavad Gita and the Book of Revelations. But we use paper mail, 'cause they can gently caress with your email." A man came in once a week for months to find books on "Planet X. You know, Nibiru." He was convinced I knew what he was talking about. An extremely burned-out 20-something with mood swings came in every Sunday for several hours just to talk. He once got into a fight with a 60-some-year-old woman who came in to sit down after work, because she was rude to him. A woman got so upset that we were out of tickets to a local play that she broke down sobbing and refused to leave, believing the manager had done it deliberately. We ran a small Facebook page for the store, but as a person, not a page, so our boss - a 65-year-old Brooklynite who looked like a tiny shriveled Mario and had gotten out of the construction game decades earlier because "I could tell Reagan would gently caress it up," and once posed nude for a story about the store in a local paper - could refuse friend requests from customers he disliked.
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Jun 15, 2017 20:47
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DemonDarkhorse posted:someone set up a myspace for the store. everyone assumed it was me since i was the resident rear end in a top hat, but it wasn't. i did have the password to the account and posted things regularly, though.
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Jun 16, 2017 00:42
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Larry Parrish posted:i worked at a gas station for about a year, and i'm one of those poor bastards who always has kind of a dry monotone even when i'm trying really hard to do that faux-happy professional voice that 40 year old mothers insist on every retail slave having for some reason. anyway, occasionally i'd get complaints for having an 'attitude' from random people but its whatever. everyone gets those.
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Jun 16, 2017 14:11
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Applesnots posted:A few months later I found him working a kroger pushing carts and I yelled Pisser! for a good twenty minutes at him.
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Jun 18, 2017 14:45
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 15:32 |
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We can take heart knowing he'll die in the desert somewhere, begging an armed teenage girl to "not kinkshame" before she pulls the trigger. Quentin Tarantino directs.
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Jun 19, 2017 11:53
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