More Hypocrisy Plus a Helping of Cliche

So I promised you people more hypocrisy, and I'm finally going to deliver. Today's episode involves rabid feminists, so if you have a weak stomach I recommend that you skip this installment.

If I had been paying attention when I walked up to the customer service desk, I would have seen the set look of anger on her face and girded myself for battle appropriately. As it was, I was perusing a new children's book and didn't notice. I was thinking of putting the book down as one of my staff recommendations and was bringing it to my co-workers to get their input, so I was utterly unprepared for the snarly reply I got when I tried to include her in the conversation. Personally, I hate it when clerks at stores stand there and talk amongst themselves so I try not to be guilty of the same thing. I even failed to notice that the girl trying to talk to this angry woman was nearly ready to bolt (she's a little shy and the really confrontational customers get to her pretty fast) so when I held up the book and asked the Angry Lady if she had seen this book and wasn't it adorable, she snapped. Like an expert swordsman, she saw her opening and went for the throat.

"I'm sure it's adorable but what is NOT adorable is that disgusting magazine you have on display where anyone can see it." Her bosom was literally heaving. Shy-co-worker flinched like she had been slapped, and the other girl at the counter whom I'll call Token-republican-co-worker (it's okay...she knows she's the only one at the bookstore and she knows we love her anyway) merely blinked. I looked at Shy-co-worker who said she had already called the manager on duty and then she fled. Not knowing what else to really say, I said "um....which one?"

Token-republican-co-worker gave me a look much like I have always imagined death row convicts give as they march down the hall to the room with all the killing devices. But we both listened attentively to the Angry Lady who was nearly sputtering with rage. Turns out she objected rather strenuously to the recent edition of FHM, which had a picture of some wrestler-babe in her underpants with nothing but a rope from a wrestling ring draped around her neck to cover her nipples. Angry Lady treated us to a lengthy diatribe on the various ways this was offensive.

1) As a Feminist and a Woman, she was shocked, I say SHOCKED that we would have something so degrading to women on prominent display. How DARE we perpetuate the oppression of woman and didn't we know that impressionable girls shop here and might see it and think that they too, had to be sluts to get attention

2) Bookstore-who-shall-remain-nameless is a family bookstore and we shouldn't even be selling such trash let alone displaying it face out on the featured title shelf where anyone, where CHILDREN could view it

3) She was going to take her business elsewhere if we didn't Do Something about it right now.

Token-republican-co-worker stepped on my foot to keep me from finishing the sentence that I started with 'then get-'. I took a deep cleansing breath and told her that I understood her point of view but that our bookstore was very firmly against censorship. Angry Lady then made a critical error. She said to me "Well you are too young to understand what being a woman really means and that it wasn't censorship to not sell degrading material".

The silence was deep. Token-republican-co-worker covered her mouth and looked at me with glee in her eyes. I could see that it was beginning to dawn on Angy Lady that she had just overstepped the bounds of customer/retail worker interaction. I truly hate being patronized, especially when people mistake me for a much younger person. There ought to be some compensations for getting old and I have always thought respect for life experience was among them. I bared my teeth in what can only be considered charitably a smile and with very pointy politeness said "Madam...as a grown woman of thirty-four, and a feminist trained to think of all humans equally since I came into this world, I believe any form of censorship is the first step down the road that leads to fascism."

Things would likely have gone from bad to shouting at this point, but thankfully the manager on duty showed up at this point and said pretty much the same thing I said, but without calling Angry Lady a fascist. After she stormed away in a huff, we all discussed the things we wish we could have said in response to her mistaken view of feminism and bookstores. For instance, just because a woman is comfortable with her sexuality and proud of her body, why would that make her a slut? Seems to me that's part of the point of being a feminist is to not be ashamed about liking sex. As for our bookstore being a "family bookstore" well, that's just nonsense. It is first of all, a business...a money making enterprise. It is not for us to decide who can or should buy what because when it comes right down to it, we don't care. It's all money. Secondly, how could we possibly decide what should be sold at a "family bookstore"? What is fine, and good and right for one family could easily be abhorrent to another.

I pointed out to my co-workers that I dearly wished I could have walked the Angry Lady back over to the magazine section to show her the things that make my hackles rise. A skimpy babe on the cover of a rather tame men's interest mag who is making a fortune by being pretty doesn't offend me. A magazine titled 'Shopping' in the women's interest section does. Teeny-bopper mags aimed at pre-teen girls that feature covers detailing Lindsey Lohan's 'amazing' weight loss makes me want to set stacks of them on fire. But here's the thing. I don't have to buy them, and I don't have to like them. I just have to suffer their existence and hope that some day they go out of business because no one cares how thin a teen-star has gotten.

Oh! I almost forgot! I promised a dose of cliche as well. Imagine the above interaction, but substitute Angry Irish Lady for Angry Feminist lady. And instead of a men's magazine, put in it's place the version of the Kama Sutra published by Cosmo. It has nothing but the words 'Cosmo-Sutra...Cosmo magazine presents the Kama Sutra' on the cover and in fact, most of them are sealed in red paper with nothing but a bar code on it. I have pretty much the same conversation with Angry Irish Lady as I had with Angry Feminist Lady, but this time I saw her coming so I never resorted to calling her a fascist. I offered to call the manager so she could speak with them about her problem and then asked what I could help her find in the mean time. Oh little children....darling readers...life seldom gets better than this. She asked me to find the Compendium of Catholic Catechism. That's right, a real flesh and blood red-headed freckle-nosed Irish woman simultaneously got pissed about sex and asked for the catechism. I nearly broke out into hysterical laughter, but I somehow thought she wouldn't care for that. My manager did get her to calm down and stop shouting but when I handed the catechism book over I did hear her say that she was just "going to have to take this to the next level" and I couldn't help but think she really must want to be told to shut up and go away (in the nicest of possible terms, or course) by people higher up the corporate food chain than our general manager.

Golden Moments in Hypocrisy

To me, hypocrisy isn't about the minor falling down we all do from time to time. Most people want to be good people and activley strive to go through the world causing as little harm as they can, but everyone has bad moments. Suddenly the tight rein we keep on our "inside voice" slips and we say something needlessly mean. Perhaps we indulge in some "justice" by walking by the loaf of bread the lady ahead of you drops out her grocery bag because the annoying cow took cuts in the check out line and didn't even say pardon me. But these kinds of things are the failings of people who at least try. So I suppose I shouldn't be so quick to judge the following people. For all I know, they are people who have merely slipped from the path, not the dyed-in-the-wool habitual yet unaware offenders that make the true hypocrite. On the plus side, I have learned how to spell "Hypocrisy". Here are some examples for the connoisseur of public jackassery.

The call came over the intercom asking for more help at customer service just as I passed it with another customer in tow. Sure enough, there were two people clustered around the kiosk, waiting for help. One was an older black man, one of our regulars who is so pleasant we have been known to argue over who will help him. The other was a very old woman weilding a purse I swear was bigger than she was. I wouldn't have thought she had the strength, but I suppose it's never safe to assume that. Anyhow, I showed my person the section she asked for and hurried back to help the next in line. When I arrived I noted a new person at the counter, a young man in a college football sweatshirt and baseball cap whom I was certain had not been there moments before. Taking the customers in order of arrival , I asked the gentleman first and he allowed as how he was already being helped and pointed to the lady behind him as needing help next. She politely told me that she, too, was being helped. I turned to the young man and before I could even ask what I could find for him, his whole face contored in a look of self-righteous anger, like my attention had awakened him from slumber, like he was saving his anger just for me and wasn't about to spend it on thin air.

"Oh, so you'll ask everyone else if they need help before me?!" I'm sure he believed he dripped disdain, but he resembled nothing more than a spoiled child on the edge of a tantrum. Now, if I had any sense at all I would have apologized and moved us along on his errand, but I was just so stunned at this sudden attack. It was like someone angrily informing me that rain falls down. I know I blinked at him for a moment but even in that moment of thinking I couldn't manage to come up with anything better than to say "Well of course. They were here first." This was the old red flag and bull scenario and I was treated to a detailed timeline which barely left out the n-word when speaking of the black gentleman. Strangely, I wasn't mad, even when my own eyesight was questioned. I began to feel some sympathy for the umpire having dirt kicked at him over the plate. Mostly I kept thinking to myself geez, this guy is going to yell at me for the next ten years and still expect me to help him find a book. When he stopped for breath I quickly asked what I could help him find. "I want the Christian section" he snarled at me. I managed not to comment that his soul obviously needed more help a mere book could provide and I listened calmly as he berated me personally for the store moving the Christian section 'all the time' ( it was once. Two years ago). I so badly wanted to ask him WWJDIABS? As in, What would Jesus do in a bookstore. To be fair, I would be making just as much fun of the twit if he asked me for the Buddhist section. I may be a hypocrite, but I'm not prejudiced about religion.

I have two more beautiful examples of Jackus Assius in their natural habitat, but I'll put those down in the next post. Don't worry, I won't forget. I take notes.

It's not always them

Yep. Somtimes it's me being the total moron. Well that's not unusual, but from the perspective of retail, it tends to be me being stunned (or entertained) by the antics of my customers, not the other way around. This happened some time ago but it is the event that finally prompted me to start a blog, for better or worse, and I feel that since most of my writting will likely focus on how the rest of the world is off it's rocker, it's only fair to recognize when I'm being a boob. So let's begin.

It was a pretty standard day at the bookstore and I was thanking my lucky stars that I was scheduled to spend my whole shift at the customer service desk. I hate being trapped behind the cash register - it's boring unless we're slammed and makes my back ache to stand in one place for so long. We were fairly busy during the afternoon and since I hadn't had to clean up anything disgusting I was counting it as a good day in retail. As fun as it is, working customer service has it's dangers...For example, one has to talk to the customers and this can lead to very serious foot-in-mouth problems. Think Ann Coulter is a handmaiden to satan and quite possibly Dick Cheney's own personal succubus? Better not mention that to the nice little old lady asking where the 'Murder She Wrote' mystery series is. Next thing you know, she's taking her autographed copy of Godless: The Church of Liberalism out of her purse and physically assaulting you with it. Besides, nobody likes to be told that the people/ideas they admire and believe in are an anathema to someone else. So I don't know what possessed me to say what I did when the neat and tidy older gentleman asked me to find him a copy of a book called Final Exit. I looked at him and raised my eyebrows slightly, my mouth in a little moue of delicate humor, commuicating with my very molecules that this was humor for you and I, sir, the smart and clever people above the hoi polloi, the people of the Dry Wit.

I said "Oh dear. I hope this isn't a call for help?" I smiled. He smiled back. I looked at what my search engine brought forth, to find his book and put it in his hands, to complete my mission as a bookseller. I read the title. I nearly threw up. You see, the full title for his requested book is Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying. I know I turned white because when I turned my agonized eyes to my customer he looked at with concern. Stammering something along the lines of follow me please it's this way, I led him to the Death & Grieving section, found the book, and handed it to him. I even managed to ask him if there was anything else I could help him find. Then I fled.

I mean it, I RAN like Klan was one step behind me. I achieved the safety of the employee breakroom and collapsed in a chair alternatley laughing and crying. Pretty much the only way to get over something like that is to tell everyone, and my co-workers were a great audience. Utterly horrified at what I had done, but these are smart people and they know when to be amused at an absurdity. My friends outside of work were ruthless of course, but that's what I love them for. They now tell it amongst themselves that I am such tough retail worker that I actually drove a customer to suicide. I used to rate how good or bad a day in retail was by what nasty mystery substance I had to clean up, but now it's how many customers I've left alive that day.

Tune in next time for more horrors from the Wonderful World of My Bookstore.