Day Fifteen: End of Factotum

Her discount card is over two years old and has been used once. The original corporation that it sold it to her is long bankrupt, a victim of the financial crisis. The name on the front of the store is the same, but the owners, products and policies are all different. I try to tell her that she has to use the $24.10 all in one purchase, and that I have to take it from her. But this woman demands that she be able to use it in pieces and keep her card. If this woman knew what her request meant: the months of data entry, system reconfiguration and retraining, she might relent. She could buy a decent picture frame for twenty dollars. She could keep the card for some other time when she wanted to spend twenty four dollars and ten cents. She could save her and I the trouble of what she’s about to do.

She sees me across the counter, an actual person. But I’m wearing a store nametag, representing the brand. Now for her, I am the brand. And because I can speak, listen and reason she sees me as capable of changing her situation.

            But I can’t. I’m a factotum. I can only serve the corporate policy. I can’t change it. I know the system’s wrong. But I’m here to implement the system.

I don’t see her situation as much different than those of the hundreds of other customers that have passed through our store throughout the month of December. For me she’s just another speed bump, albeit the largest of the day, to get through my shift. I want to solve her problem or tell her that I can’t and be done with her. I’ve got nothing to gain by her satisfaction. I have everything to gain by her leaving me in peace for the rest of my shift.

            In reality I’m not much different than the ms-dos point of sale system that we use: I take information in, such as you would like to make a poster. Then I process it, by using the register to tell you that this order will cost $7.99. Then I effect it by taking your money and giving your order to the lab. I can change your order, I can cancel your order, I can double your order but I don’t do anything besides taking the order. The corporation has decided everything about our business, those of us who work for them simply make the connection to the consumer.

            Somehow this woman never gets this. She sees her lost investment. She sees a disinterested employee patiently repeating himself. And she decides someone must suffer. And so I do, I suffer her. She insults my attitude, my appearance and my intelligence by endlessly connecting me and the outdated emasculated corporate artifact that is her discount card. She hisses. She raises her voice. She tries to turn employee on employee. She does this for fifteen minutes until she walks out.

            When she changes her mind and returns five minutes later to pay for her photos, without her discount card, she declares, “I just couldn’t leave these pictures of my boys with YOU PEOPLE!”

Day Fourteen

The day begins auspiciously. A wealthy customer is in the store and he wants a tripod. I tell him the only brand I would sell him in the whole store is M------- because the others are crap. He agrees having used some of our other brands previously. But he wants a deal on the M-------- tripod. I ask Tammy but she says I can't give him a discount. He looks at me, trying to size me up like a fellow salesmen. "I just can't take it at this price. If you can't knock off at least the tax I'm not buying it" he proclaims to the store. He waits in silence for ten minutes for me to go talk to Tammy again to lower the price. But I'm not interested in being a salesman so I don't ask Tammy again and I wait with him until he walks out the door.

Sarah comes in. She says something about working with me next week. I check the schedule. It says I'm working new years day. The thought of being sickeningly hungover and being accosted by crabby geriatrics is too much. I tell Tammy I'm through after tomorrow.

Beatrice is back. She tries to pick up her calendars early but they're not ready. She looks at the staff like they're rotting vegetables. When she comes back an hour later she's even angrier, but at least her calendars are done right. Then she tells me "there should be a discount for doing six, like I did". "Why isn't there a discount?"

"Beatrice", I say as I look her in the eyes, "I'm gonna make sure to bring up your concerns to someone who can do something about it at the next available opportunity".

The entire lab staff is in the weeds because of the Christmas print rush. I start to look for a customer's order. When I can't find it in the bin that holds the orders for last names starting in C. But it's missing. Assuming it's still being made, I start to search for it in the back. Soon Paula joins the hunt. We go from pile to pile together checking every order in progress eventually pulling Katie and Jane into our frenzied search. Now four people are scouring every bin, every drawer, every surface for this customers prints like fire ants raiding a honey jar. When I realize that someone has simply extended the C bin back one column because of the overflow of orders I announce "Here it is!". Then, I turn around avoiding the menacing stares of my co-workers who have all dropped what they're doing to help me. For a moment I'm the store leper. I don't make eye contact with Jane for the rest of the shift.

At the end of the night Tammy is still in the store, much past her scheduled out time. Some customers are in the far corner of the store looking at frames. The clock strikes nine pm and she gives me the nod. I begin to chase them out of the store using our nighttime cleaning as a weapon, getting closer and closer with every annoying loud pass of the vacuum. Eventually they decide on a frame "Not what we wanted, but I guess, we'll have to settle. Now do you have a AAA discount?"

Day Thirteen

Her name was Beatrice. She appeared at the counter twitching. She wanted a calendar, but the calendar we had wasn’t right. Beatrice said it needed changing. I directed her to a kiosk where we both sat down. I knew this was going to be bad for me.
Beatrice wanted to do a very simple plain white calendar. We started to work through the program. But the machine was hiding her pictures from her. She blamed me. I showed her where they were. Then the color changed on her. She blamed the system, “It’s so complicated” she said as she jabbed at the touch screen with the pointy side of her pen. I looked back at the counter, searching for a staff member to feel my pain. Most of them tried to ignore my gaze. Then she cried out “Where’s page six? It’s disappeared!”

I explained attempting to maintain patience, “you’re on page six.”’

“No there’s page five and page seven…”

“Those are the buttons to go to pages five and seven. YOU are on page six.”

“But where is it?” she asked.

I stared off again desperately seeking eye contact from my co-workers. Paula gazed vacantly out in to the shop. Charlie hid behind the counter. I was the sacrificial lamb.

“Now it’s gone blue again, why is this thing trying to trick me?”

            She finished an hour later. I was spent. An entire hour spent attempting turn my brain off while I repeated the exact same instructions to her. But I had to ring her up. I waited the five minutes patiently behind the counter while she came up. “Thank you for being patient” she said. I said nothing.

Day Twelve

        

            When I came in today Tammy had the Christmas music on the stereo again. I changed the station but then she sent me to the bank to pick up pennies. At the bank I was able to take in a bit of the football game while the bank teller and I commiserated about our respective bureaucracies. When I returned, much later than I should have, she had changed it back to the Christmas music. But, eventually the store filled up with enough customers that I couldn’t hear it anymore.

In one particularly bitter rush, three out of four staff members were behind the sales counter while I faced the public alone from the prints area. Unable to leave behind a potential commission, Frank, Sarah and Tammy all lounged behind the sales counter while I float from the kiosks to the print bins to the registers, answering the phones while I find mislabeled orders. I use the strategy of staring vacantly into the computer monitor and walking slowly away from the counter whenever possible. If not for a practiced lackadaisical attitude, which is practiced by everyone at the store besides Katie, l would already have melted down at the keyboard.

            I walk in back and ask Sarah how she is doing. She has been attempting to sell a couple a small point and shoot camera. She makes the vomit sign. “Ohh you want to vomit?” I ask. She puts her finger down her throat.

This afternoon the customers came sporadically. In their absences I started to stare at the clock, willing it to be later. When I misread my lunch break I felt some of the vomit pre-ordained by Sarah slide up my throat. It happened again as I gave the thumbs up to a customer trying on a camera bag and hit big time when an older lady took a photo of me posing in front of the kiosk. 

One customer who had been making eyes at me earlier in the day, returned to pick the prints he had ordered for Christmas gifts. Then he sat at the counter and assembled tree ornaments with his own picture on them. He sent me the back twice to grab envelopes. One trip back had me encounter Jane, who shoved a cardboard box in my hands and puzzlingly yelped, “It’s not an emergency”.

When I returned he asked, “Are you Jewish or Italian?” I tried not to make eye contact with him after that.

At the end of the shift Frank, Sarah and I sat around with nothing to do. We ask Sarah what she’s going to do once she graduates and leaves the store. We tell her she’s going to find success as a college graduate, even though we both have degrees, and are still working with her. Then Frank decides to define, “My ten year old self’s ideal pastime was to ride around in my own car listening to the Toadies. Therefore in the mind of my ten year old self I am a success” he tells us. I start to talk about my ten year old self, but Frank plows through interrupting me. I’m starting to notice a pattern of this among the older employees.

Day Eleven

Note: This entry is not meant to be offensive. I apologize in advance to Christian readers. I do not hate Christians in any way. I do however hate Christmas, Christmas cards, Christmas lights, Christmas music, Christmas stories and Christmas cookies. Barring a Christmas Miracle I  will continue to hate it for as long as I live, except in South America where there’s a lot less Christmas trees and a lot more boogie.

The couple came in looking to make a Christmas card. I sat at a kiosk to help them. It was late and they were one of two groups in the store, so I was stuck with them. “Hon, Do you like this one?” asked the wife.

“Sure” the husband replied.

“What do you think…uuhhhh “ she finally found my nametag and read it.

“I dunno, I never celebrated Christmas.”

“Ohh I’m sorry”, the wife looked at me with pity.

“Yeah” I said. I wanted these people to know how much I hated making them Christmas cards. I wanted to tell them about how much Christmas envy I had as a child, constantly listening to Christmas music in December, having to hand my Teachers Christmas gifts from my parents, and on Christmas Day having to watch every Christmas special episode. Chanukah seemed like a cheap substitute. We eventually made it a tradition to turn to the Yule Log channel.

I wanted to tell her all these things and I could not. That would not be quality customer service.

She found the card she wanted on the kiosk

“What do you think?” she asked again about the size of the picture of her smiling children. I tried not to look too hard at the screen.

“Looks great,” I said, “how about the message. What would you like to write?” I wanted to scream “Fuck Christmas!” in these people’s faces.

“Good Man!” she said to me because she’s from New Zealand.  “Hon, what do you think, Merry Christmas from Jan, Jake, Jim, John and Joe?” She typed it out.

“No, I think it should be with a Happy New Year”, said her husband. She erased it and typed it again with “Happy New Year”.

“Now its too long”, she erased it again and retyped it. I switched the font for her.

“Do you like black?” she asked her husband.

“No, I like red.”

“But don’t you have Chanukah?” he asked.

“It’s not the same.” I admitted.

“I like black”. He was losing most of the option war. I was trying very hard to be somewhere else. In my mind I felt chased them out the door and beat my chest like a Gorilla.

“How many should we get?” she asked.

“There’s a price break at fifty” I said, “You save ten cents”.

“Good Man!” She was cheering me on again.

“Just enter in your personal information here.” I turned away from the screen. “And I'll meet you at the counter when you’re done.”

I rang them up and attempted not to hate them. When I got them the envelopes early so they could make sure and get their Christmas cards there on time for all the other lucky boys and girls out there, the wife told me “Good Man!” and I hated them all over again.

Day Ten

Yesterday I let a lady use our store phone, unsafely dragging the phone line across the counters, to talk to her credit card company. Today she is back and brings me deserts in a freezer bag that she tells me she’s defrosted. I only try one, which was good but soppy. Frank swipes them and puts them in the back where he devours all of the rest before I can get to them.

Today the Sixty-year-old Swedish lady who has lost her mother is also back. She has been back multiple times for the funeral notices, trying to get a specific red from the printer. She has enraged the entire staff to the point where only Paula will talk to her, and she sits on a stool by the wall waiting for her.

One customer comes in with an antique photo album, which looks like it has seen some rot. “Is Tammy in?” he asks. We tell him no, that it’s her day off. “I want to get this scanned. Do YOU think you can do that?” he asks as he cradles it.

“Sure” I say as I open my hands to receive the album, “We can scan it here, or I can show you how to scan it.”

“Can Tammy scan it?” he pleaded.

“No, Tammy’s not here” I remind him.

“I’d really prefer Tammy to scan it.” he looks as me suspiciously.

“You could leave it here. And Tammy can scan it tomorrow” I suggest.
“I’ll come back when Tammy’s in”, he says as he starts to back away.

“Great!” I shout as he scurries to the exit.

In the afternoon, a customer at one of the kiosks motioned for assistance. She looks like a professional.

“What I’m gonna ask you, isn’t about the store” she said softly.

“Sure, OK”.
“I know I shouldn’t be asking for dating advice.”

“Right”

“Should I not be asking you for dating advice?” she asked.

            I looked around the store, it was full of customers, but this could make an impact on the monotony. “Shoot”, I shrugged.

“What if someone called you just because they were happy, would you think that was weird?” she looks at me pleadingly.

I look at her like she had stepped out of a seventh grade classroom. “The first rule of relationships is to respect yourself. Now, can I help you with something photo related?”

            Tonight a customer asks me to “discontinue” his order. I ask if he’s sure. He nods. I restart the order, losing the twenty minutes of work he’s been doing. Then he realizes he wanted me to place his order. He becomes visibly upset. I apologize but mention the word “discontinue” to him repeatedly until he calms down and proceeds to spend twenty minutes to redo his order. This time he finishes it himself.           

At the end of the shift Paula and Frank and I gather to talk trash about John. I have decided to let John take all my sales work. I maintain that my conscience benefits from not being a salesman, but Frank is against it because he thinks this will only inflate John’s ego more. Then Paula decides to vent about the Swedish lady for the next twenty minutes and we suffer the Swedish lady through her.

Tonight after work I tell my sister on the phone “to have a good one”, which is my line for departing customers.

Day Nine

            It’s starts raining. Then John asks me to take out the trash. I try to let him know that this bothers me by being short and rough with my answers. He seems like he doesn’t care.

            This morning there is an irate customer in the store. John had sold this woman a phone sometime before and it had been stolen. At first he tries to refer her to a V-------- store, but failing to get her to leave, he dials V------- customer service putting himself on the phone navigating their automated system, waiting twenty minutes till he connect with representative.

“Hello, Yes this is John S., Store number 4334, I have a customer here who purchased a warranty on a M----- R------ phone and it was lost…”

“STOLEN” screams the woman from the top of her lungs. The rest of the staff fail to let on that they’ve noticed.

“Right, her customer number is 7722999343. I have her agreement right here. Yes it was lost…..”

“STOLEN!, the phone was STOLEN!”

Again, more out of spite for John than fear of the customer none of the other staff even came close. He had sold this lady the warranty and it was now his problem. And as the most-senior salesman in the store he was on his own as far as the rest of the staff was concerned.

John covered the mouthpiece and glared at the customer, “Maam, please let me handle this, OK, I’m trying to contact your warranty company. He uncovered the mouthpiece. “Hello, yes I’m back….that’s right the phone was lost last week….”

“It was STOLEN, STOLEN I told you STOLEN!?”

The corner of the store where this exchange is occurring is now vacant, the customers having taken the hint to leave these two alone.  I watch as John turns away from the woman and stares at the wall probably listening to muzac piped in from Mumbai. Eventually the woman leaves, exhausted, and without a phone.

After lunch we are hit with a serious Christmas rush. I teach three customers our kiosks, ring up six customers and deliver twelve sets of prints in twenty minutes. I am reminded of my days as a waiter, where one trip around the store has me interacting with six customers. I try to triage my work, putting quick questions and ring ups first and leaving the slow and incapable customers to suffer through the kiosk until I can clear out the store.

One of the customers is definitely hitting on me. Today she asks about my past. I tell her that I worked in “movies”. But, because of my current factotum status, she mis-understood and thinks that I had worked at a movie theater. She asks me if I’m in school, if I graduated with a degree in law. I tell her no, and “that’s why I work at a camera store”. After that I try to avoid her because I can’t stop staring at her hairlip. But she’s a regular, twice already in the last five days, so I’ll have to continue the small talk until I can quit the store.

At the end of the shift John wants me to learn how to input inventory into the store’s database. I tell him I’ll only be around for ten more days, and he decides it’s not worth it to teach me. He seems put off by this, but I try not to let on that I notice. I cannot bear the thought of being here, late into the evening, watching the fluorescents burn out.

Before I go I notice two large trash bags behind the counter. I leave them for John to take himself and clock out.