Yes, I understand the irony in the fact that yesterday I was bitching about retail employees and today I'm bitching about retail customers, so I don't want to hear it. The comic book store is, apparently, a magnet for crazy people. There are multiple halfway houses in the town, and every resident is a customer of ours. At least most of them are quiet, however. Here is a list of some of our wonderful patrons.
Napoleon Dynamite - This dude looks just like Napoleon Dynamite, hence the nickname. He's not a bad guy, but he comes into the store just to talk to me about Magic for hours at a time, which prevents me from getting my giant stack of work done. I'm there to serve the customer base and I love talking about Magic, but to be part of our customer base you actually have to buy stuff.
Chuckles - I gave this guy his nickname because he's constantly laughing at everything; he clearly thinks he's the funniest guy ever. As some of my friends have found out, he also doesn't mind sticking his ass in people's faces while he looks at the case of Magic cards, as some of them have gotten a faceful of ass while attending out Magic tournaments. He also is far more interested in showing off than actually playing the game, as on the rare occasion he attended tournaments he got his ass severely handed to him.
CD Guy - This is one of the halfway house residents. The only way he gets money is from the government, and the only thing he spends it on is lottery tickets and CDs. While it's slowed down a bit, he used to come in 4-5 times a day picking out CDs. He would grab a CD from the bins then very loudly and regardless of whether or not we were all helping other customers, ask: "Is this a lady singer?" While we never know who the bands he picks out are, it's usually easy to tell from the packaging if there's a female singer or not. That used to be enough, but now we have to answer if it's heavy metal, and if it's a studio album as opposed to live, and most puzzlingly "Does she sing out loud?" Um, yes? What the fuck else would she do, sing to herself? While that would make for an entertaining music video, it's not something you want on an album.
eBay - I can't nickname our eBay customers, but here's the most annoying one as of late: we posted a set of Magic cards in an auction with a $40 minimum bid and a $100 Buy It Now price. It was a 7 day auction, and with 6 days and 23 hours left, we got an e-mail from someone asking if we'd let them have it for a Buy It Now price of $40. In what fucking world would we let someone have the product for the minimum bid with 99.4% of the auction's duration left? If we were going to do that, wouldn't we have made that the Buy It Now? It's not like a lot changed in that hour.
Motorcycle Guy - As much as I dislike some of our ruder customers, this is the only guy that actually makes me mad just seeing him. Fortunately, he doesn't come in much but when he does I want to punch the douchebag in the face. While most people compliment us on how low our prices are compared to all the other area stores (though admittedly some of the prices are out of date as fixing prices on sets from 8 years ago that no one cares about isn't a priority), this guy complains about every single card. Even the cards that are twenty-five cents are too much. The most amusing part of this is that he actually tries lying to me about the prices of other stores in an attempt to get me to lower the prices, despite the fact that he's quoting prices from stores that I go to.
There are many, many more people I could discuss. There's the Boor, the Garbage Man, Fryguy, CD Guy 2: Electric Boogaloo, The Church Lady, and more, but they will have to wait for another time when I'm not late for work.
I'll gladly pay you Thursday for a cheeseburger today
© 2008 by Dr. Jeebus