Vinylrichie’s Weblog

 The terrible curse of work is that most of us have to do it every single bloody day, working towards a retirement which gets further and further away with each generation: the proverbial dangling carrot. I don’t even really like carrots anyway, I’m more of a cabbage kind of guy. The repetitive nature of our mundane existences makes me gasp with wonder that there aren’t more suicides in this country as we run around like  dimwit hamsters on our eternal spinning wheels, getting nowhere and getting knackered in the process. These were the kind of thoughts that bothered me as I found myself embarking on my first whole week in the new job. What a sparkly start to a new ‘career’.

 My first week as highly knowledgable bookseller was spent ensconced on the tills for eight hours a day so I could get to try and figure out how to work them. The upstairs books floor is largely a haven of serenity compared to the hideous inferno of hades downstairs, therefore less customers meant less hot till action so the learning curve was slight. Due to this I was ringing my little bell for assistance from the established staff almost every transaction as some awkward customer would confuse the hell out of me by presenting vouchers at the wrong time whilst trying to return an item bought in a three for two deal whilst asking for the Lottery (I HATE HATE HATE IT) results from fucking June 1994 (in braille.) This action had one outcome: I was solidifying my reputation as pain-in-the-arse. I was met with the occasional glower  from my colleagues as they had to put down what they were doing to assist me for the hundreth time. With every ring of that little bell my self loathing grew but there was nothing I could do except hope that the customers would just pay for one item at a time. With the exact cash. Not a chance.

 It wasn’t long before I was acquainted with a new enemy: the books ordering system. Like some pedantic headmaster, our incredibly inefficient system will only find what you are looking for if all of the spelling and punctuation is totally spot on. Just a missing apostrophe is enough for the stupid thing to announce that that book doesn’t exist, so if you want to read ‘Gullivers Travels you can’t. But you can get ‘Gulliver’s Travels.’ I, for one, am a punctuation Nazi – I’m totally with Lynne Truss on this one – but a little leeway would be welcome. Sometimes one is just too busy to make sure everything is coloned correctly and a big problem with this is that the majority of staff are young, and young people on the whole are no longer encouraged or expected to spell properly. (I’m fighting the urge to rant further about this, and don’t get me started on anachronyms like LOL or the proliferation of exclamation marks used to denote humour or wackiness!!!!! LOL!)

 Another great trait of the ordering computer was that it would be very, very slow and then crash just as you were about to complete all the details of name and contact details. Therefore you had to boot up the thing again whilst apologising to the tutting old biddy as she looks at her watch and goes on about how she’s not got the time to hang around because ‘Cash in the Attic’ is about to start. Then there are the customer foibles. The ones that won’t give you their phone number or, as happened to me on Friday, the ones that won’t even give you their name. Like our aim in life is to spy on, and steal the identity of these blithering Dan Brown reading wankers. Thankfully our ordering system is now much faster, so we can let you know in seconds that we can’t get that book for you, so try Waterstone’s.

 Anyway, I was picking up on how it all worked quite well and was reassured by colleagues in their kind moments that I wasn’t thick, it was just an incredibly crap computer system which made life difficult. I began to realise that it seemed that everything was designed at this leading high street retailer (TM) to frustrate, annoy, antagonise and depress staff and customers alike. This has still yet to be usurped as head office’s main contribution to the company.

 After about a week, I earned the right to be let loose onto the shop floor to do some actual work, with maybe two or three hours on the till per day. I was naturally pleased to be amongst the books. Books are a passion of mine; fiction is my bag – the more depressing the better as it makes me feel like my life isn’t quite as shit as all that. I also love history books that are written with wit and verve, some travel writing is most entertaining too, and nature books enthrall me due to my proudly held obsession with the natural world and all of its incredibly diverse glories (except for horses – never trust an animal with a hair-do). So I eagerly await instructions from my supervisor as to what sections I will be given responsibility for….

I get given: business, computing (because I wear glasses which instantly makes me computer literate doesn’t it?) and sport (I only really know about football, the rest of it is quite boring. Cricket? Standing around is not a sport. Golf? Surely only invented as a way to get away from the wife or cement your reputation as a 1980s ‘comedian’. Motor Racing? Cars going round and round for five hours – you can do that on the M25 and no one watches that. Horse Racing? Tiny men on those afore mentioned coiffered beasts – very un-nerving and watched by ugly people with nicotine stained fingers and hoity toity idiots drinking Pimms whilst balancing what looks like an ostrich on their heads.) I also take control of the crossword and puzzle books which only the elderly buy whilst awaiting the bony hand of Death to grip their shoulder. (Shoot me if I get like that. That was an in joke for about three people, sorry.)

 Great. So I’m the one in charge of fielding questions about subjects of which I now nothing. If I knew about business I wouldn’t be working in a shop would I? I would be counting my gold on a yacht moored in Monaco whilst giggling bikini clad girls run their luscious long fingers down my tanned chest. If I was into computers I would be stuck in some grim open planned office talking about ‘thought showers’ or ‘blue sky thinking’ whilst working on a project to do with spatial futuremark adobe photoshop windbag applications version 0:2.

My hopes were lying prostate at my feet, sobbing. But small mercies, I was away from dealing CDs as that would be just too cruel to escape from the record shop only to be chucked straight back into a different one. Can you tell where this is leading? Thought so.