h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Re: The Library book due back during the holidays.

As the borrower of the book, it's your responsibility to look at the due date and figure out how to return it. If that date falls during a time when you know you can't get to the library, then it's your responsibility to either return it before the hols, or if you'll need it for homework over that time, to get an extension before the holidays so it doesn't come due/ up for renewal until after you return from the holidays.

It's like borrowing a book from a normal library, going away to Spain then complaining that it fell due during your holiday and you can't return it so they can't charge you anything because you couldn't get back.

university of Lethbridge: "If your account is not cleared, you will not be permitted to graduate and your transcript will be withheld. This includes tuition, library fines and housing charges (including Telecom charges)." http://www.uleth.ca/reg/convocation/outstanding_fees.html

university of Guelph: Outstanding Sanctions: "Graduands attending their ceremony who are on sanction for outstanding accounts will not receive their degree/diploma parchment until the outstanding accounts have been paid. Parchments for those not in attendance will not be mailed out until the accounts have been paid at Undergraduate Program Services."

University of Maine: "Outstanding Accounts: Transcripts will not be sent if you have an outstanding balance with the University of Maine System: Business Office, Library, Residential Life, Registrar's Office etc. or with a Student Loan."

Oxford University (yes... your Oxford): "Student Fees
14.1. No person shall be presented for a degree unless he or she has paid all the sums due from him or her to the University." http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/finance/finregs/index.shtml#_Toc21237768

Sorry, should have explained.

I told the librarian I was going away during the hols and asked for an extended loan so I could bring it back in the first week of the new term. This was not unusual for us and happened all the time.

The librarian said "No problem, bring it back by {end of week one}" but then booked it out using the standard system of a three week loan, so I got fined.

> this is the fault of the Academic Departments

Oh I quite agree. I was just trying to say that it isn't always the fault of the student. Some students are a bit thick (especially first years) and lets face it, quite a few of them are gits, but I was just trying to say that sometimes there is a perfectly sensible reason that a student asks a stupid question of the librarian.


To add, all of my librarians were wonderful and very helpful and they did waive the fine as the guy who served me that day was new and didn't know the system yet.

My sister got lost in her library once, it's the Appleton towers in Edinburgh University. Mine was only four floors high, hers is.... I don't know but let's put it this way: I wouldn't want to have to go to the top floor for a book when the lifts weren't working only to discover someone had nicked it.

I spent the evening out with my friend whose Chapters "leaving rant" I posted the other day. She filled me in on several of the things in the posting.

Apparently, one of the employees noticed that there seemed to be some odd "transactions" going on in various parts of the store.

The scenario. A man, looking for all the world like a pimp (lots of gold chains, etc,.), wanders up and down the main aisle of the store for about 20 mintutes. Eventually, a girl, heavily made up, comes up and the two go off to a corner of the store, huddle and whisper together for a few minutes. Then she leaves.

A few minutes later, a man sidles up to the guy in the gold chains. They whisper and he hands the gold chain guy some money. Then he leaves and meets up with the girl.

Scene repeats later with a different girl and another "customer".

Apparently, the got so brazen that they tried to "do the nasty" in quiet corners of the store and in the washrooms. Eventually, the police were called and they were charged.

The other story she filled me in on was the day the ceiling fell.

One Friday just into the New Year, she was the only manager in for the day shift. All the other managers were scheduled to come in overnight, as it was inventory.

Everything was humming along smoothly for a couple of hours, when she gets a panicked call from an employee about a torrential flood in one of the washrooms on the second floor. Apparently, some young jokesters decided to use the facilities and then stuff rolls of paper down all the men's toilets then flush. The result was that all of the toilets overflowwed, carrying with them the contents of the bowls.

As she headed off to the escalator, she was waved over by the guy at the info desk who waved frantically above his head. She looked up to see the entire ceiling above the New Releases section sagging with little leaks already starting to drip.

Then she gets a Starbuck's employee telling her that they have already called the helth department and that she has to close the store (Starbuck's in located almost below the women's washroom).

She mobilizes several employees to start loading the books from the New Releases section onto flatbeds and cordons off the area (because, of course, customers continue to wander into the area, oblivious to both the drips and the stench).

Suddenly, the lights, which have been reached by the water, start to spark, smoke, and burn.... then the power to those lights and the cashes goes out.

With lines of customers snaking practically out the doors, irate at the fact that the cashiers are having to do all the transactions using calculators and write out receipt by hand, and frantically trying to get hold of the General Manager, the District Manager, or, indeed, any manager to get permission to close the store (when she finally does get hold of them, they can't agree on whether to close or not), suddenly, the sagging roof gives way and gallons and gallons of water and sewage descends on the New Releases section. Luckily, no one is under it when it collapses, although she did get showered from the knees down with sewage.

At one point, and irate customer demands to "see a manager". One of the cashiers points my friend out and says "She's busy dealing with the collapsed ceiling, but feel free to make your complaint."

He approaches her and demands to know if she is the manager. She whips round, wearing a rubber apron, rubber gloves, carrying a shovelfull of crap and ceiling scraps, wipes her hair out of her face with a free shoulder and says "I'm the manager. What can I do for you?!"

"Ahhh... Ummmm" says he "I see you are having a bad day... I think this can wait until tomorrow...."

Eventually, several other managers finally make it into the store and she is able to take a breath. At that point, she loses it, burst into tears and said "I'm going home."

I knew a schoolfriend in the '70's who would go into confectionary shops and ask for "Twenty Cannabis Tipped ,and a packet of Bovril Toffees please,with varying degrees of success.He once also walked down the high street dressed in a wet suit and flippers ,snorkel and wander into the local Mothercare Shop .Don't ask me why I don't know,but it was certainly more entertaining than that so called comedy terrorist wose name i've forgotten.
pde'

Tom Greene, Canada's foremost "comedey terrorist" is from Ottawa, where I live. He used to do a lot of his ambushing in the Byward Market, near the Chapters where I worked. He really made me angry because he waould walk into stores with his camera and harass the the staff for a "laugh". Since he wasn't wll known yet, most people had no idea what was going on. Luckily, I was never the butt of one of his routines, but I knew people who were.

The one that really pi$$ed me off was the one where he lay on the sidewalk as though he had collapsed. Passersby would try and see if he was okay and he would be "unresponsive" staring at the sky. Of course, they would call an ambulance. Several times he got up and simply walked away either before the ambulance arrived or waited until the were examining him, get up, brush himself off, and walk away.

I did find it amusing the time he painted the outside of his parents' house while they were out of town..... plaid..... However, the time he put life-size statues of his parents on his parents lawn.... engaged in... ummm various acts, I thought.... "I hope his parents kill him."

yes does seem somewhat a self publicist .i think my friend was just 'eccentric' in a Viv Stanshall way .Nothing nasty.
Although his Mother did once invite upstairs to see her service revolver ( i didn't take her up on the offer i thought it might be a euphanism
pde'

That has the makings of a good shortstory...

I was in training to be a customer advisor for a bank and heard something that made me laugh. It has the start of a good joke.


We were trying to describe how we could sum up what the customer told us over the phone. I suggested we use synonyms to simplify.

My trainer walked up to the white board to make a bullet point, paused, then said:

"I can't think of another word for synonym."

That's a good one....

>>"I hope his parents kill him."<<
They'd be well justified!

Great thread!

I managed the pet dept within a garden centre and never realised how stupid the Brits could be until I worked in retail.

One afternoon I was merrily going about my business, stocking shelves, cleaning up etc etc, when a woman walked in. I smiled and asked if I could help her with anything, she said she was browsing and didnt need anything. After making bizarre baby noises and the young rabbits we had in she went outside to look at rabbit hutches. About 15 minutes later she came back in and demanded to know why I hadn't told her we sold rabbits or that we had any in stock!
I just looked at her!


Another woman walked up to the enquiry desk at about ten to six brandishing a houseplant and screaming blue murder. When she calmed down enough to be understood, she said; 'the label on this plant says you should feed it once a week, but it doesn't say on which day you should feed it'. The only member of staff with enugh composure left to speak looked her square in the face and said, 'thursday, after eastenders'.

One xmas, a lady walked into the main shop which was brimming with decs and adverts signposting the way to various accesories. She wandered around for a while and came up to me as I restocking the tinsel, she asked if we sold real trees and I pointed her in the right direction. After chosing her tree she wandered back in and asked if I would carry it to her car. I looked extremely confused as I knew there were at least 6 burly men working the real trees that day, but I went out with her anyway to find a guy to help her. I found said guy and turned back to point out the lady only to find she had vanished. The next thing I know, my radio crackles into life saying this woman is screaming that 'the tinsel girl' is refusing to help her. I go back to explain the situation and retrieve said woman only to find her vanished again! Someone found her about half an hour later in a garden shed refusing to leave until someone brought over her tree and decorated it for her! When security went to remove her from premises, she'd vanished yet again and we havent seen her since.

I think everyone in retail,has at some point been asked the 'do you work here?' question. In our case it was so blatanly obvious, our uniforms used to compose of bright yellow shirts with the company logo emblazoned on the front and green trousers. I actually heard one of the weekend staff answer this question with; "No, I dress like a canary for fun!"

We had aviaries in our pet shop, they were the first thing you saw when you walked in the door and bugies were in the 1st aviary. Ive lost count of how many times people would seriously ask if we sold budgies!

One of the most ridiculous questions, considering the circumstance went like so.....
I was feeding the rabbits before I started packing up for the day, filling their bowls with a food scoop. I'd taken the scoop behind the till so I could fill the shop bunny's bowl when a few customers decided they were ready to pay. I turned to throw the scoop back nto the food bin and smashed my hand on the fencing and broke all my fingers with an audible crack. As you can imagine, it hurt!!!! So Im sat on the floor trying to hold onto my lunch and not scream and swear while my hand is pouring blood from various cuts. One of my regular customers went off to get the manager and a woman who was standing all of 3 feet from me throughout, tapped me on the shoulder and told me to stop overreacting and lift a sack of rabbit food onto her trolley.
She was chased out of the shop in a mist of abuse and brolley waving by several old ladies and a rabbit!

A guy came to the advice desk with two different containers of tomato plant food asking if he could use them on tomato plants.

A regular customer came in one quiet day, and as usual made her way to the advice desk. She was forever being seperated from her husband and during a chat with the woman on the desk said she had lost him.
"Again? You really should be more careful and rememer where you last left him" came the usual response, imagine the awkwardness of the situation when the lady replied, "No, he died on tuesday"

Ive had people demanding refunds because they didn't like the colour of a dog lead, even though they are all in clear packaging, and the woman who went mad because she found the same lead cheaper in a store she has to drive past to get to us. We tried explaining that the company didnt offer a 'find it cheaper and we'll refund the difference' deal, if the lead was faulty we'd replace/refund her money but as she'd picked the colour and it worked we couldn't help her further and its not our fault that she didnt shop around. After being told the same thing by 3 different managers, including the area manager who was in that day, she launched into a torrent of abuse, saying she'd worked in retail all her life and had never recieved such poor service and the customer is always right. She stormed out slamming the doors so hard she broke 4 panes of glass. After finding the most expensive glazier in the area to give us a quote, we explained the story and he'd had a similar woman in and wrote us a bill to forward to her. We went round there, picked up 4 bits of glass and some putty and I replaced the windows myself for a neat sum of £12, we used the money from the bill to have a few drinks on her!
Funnily enough, she came in a few days later and apologised, becoming one of our best customers!

I don't know what it is about book stores that brings out complete lunatics.

I suppose it has something to do with the fact that people can buy books about just about anything under the sun, so people can feed their particular paranoia, peccadillo, fantasy, obsession or faith. Being as we work (In my case workED there.) they thought we had some sort of connection with the books.

Either they thought we had read all of them or that the company printed them, or something, but people would go on and on about something crackpot as though we should know what they were talikng about. I told you before about the woman who was obsessed with "Solar Effects" and called weekly, or sometimes daily looking for books about "Solar Effects" (as in like the full-moon affects people, but this was, apparently much, much more powerful).

We had people who would come in looking for "messages" in books.

Of course, we also had students who would call up wanting us to look up information, and either read it over the phone to them (sometimes entire chapters) or, better yet, photocopy the books and fax them to them. They would get really shirty when we said 1) we are not a library, 2) we do not have time to do this for you, nor is it in our job descriptions, and 3) it is illegal to photocopy books unless you are a library. "But I need this information, my paper is due tomorrow morning!"

"Gee, I guess you are going to fail, then."

The whole photocopying thing used to really burn me. I would have about 1 person per day asking "Where is your photocopier?"....

"Ummm... First of all, we don't have a photocopier (we didn't. We had to take things to a copy shop.)." .....

"But the girl over there told me you could photocopy for me...." As though this bit on information would magically make a photocopier appear in our store....

...."Seconldy, if you are wanting to photo copy something, that is illegal to photocopy books in a bookstore."

They would look at you like you were insane and stalk off to ask another employee. I usually gave them a lecture about copyright infringement and how stupid it would be for us to simply photocopy things. We wouldn't sell any books. "Oh... he he, I guess, eh?" Well DUH, College Boy!

The best was when they would say.... "Other libraries copy for you...."

"Okay. First, this is not a library. This is a bookstore. Secondly, you are an idiot!" (okay, that last bit was under my breath, but still. They could see it in my face....)

Better yet... "They let you copy at Coles (or Smithbooks)."

"Really? How odd. Since IT IS AGAINST THE LAW!!!!"

"They said it isn't.... It is company policy." (Just because they are stupid, they think everyone is going to be stupid enough to fall for that one."

"Funny. Coles and Smithbooks is owned by Chapters and you would think I would have heard that Chapters was willing risk being sued by publishers for billions of dollars, just so you could have a few copies for free.... Well, wonders never cease."

My favorite story is the guy who came into the first store I worked at, brought up a large text and said. "If I buy this and photcopy it, can I get a refund?"

"Not any more, you can't!" I said grinning.

"I turned to throw the scoop back nto the food bin and smashed my hand on the fencing and broke all my fingers with an audible crack."

OUCH!

The "i know my rights"(no you don't)/ "Ive seen it cheaper"(too bad),"somebody else got him the same present" brigade have always annoyed the hell out of me.

I always assumed, even before i worked in retail, that one you've parted with your cash, the goods are yours. Unless they are faulty, or you've been mis-sold (good not suitable for intended purpose), why on earth should you get a refund?! I wouldn't return half my weekly shopping to the supermarket, just because i had changed my mind, or forgotten i already had some of the stuff i had bought.. or i decided i didn't like something new i had tried...

Shops that operate a "refund if the customer asks for one" policy are stupid, in my humble opinion. they will become little more than a rental shop. People buy things, try them out, then return them when bored. Any shop that operates this policy deserves to fail! Remember Marks and Spencers, and all their recent troubles?- I believe it's a little harder to get a refund from them these days

Now how's that for a rant!

Of course, the reason i mention it is because we are coming up to this time of year, when the unwanted xmas pressies return. It doesn't give me any pleasure to tell customers that we wont give them a refund, but honestly, we do have several large signs about the place stating our refund policy (exchange, or get credit vouchers, but no refund), and i really do believe that it is the customer's responsibility to check a store's refund policy before they buy..

Rant over