Thursday Thief

Thursday Thief

Mr Hard Drive.
We call him that, 
Coz that's what he nicks.
He likes to visit us on Thursdays,
So he's also known as
Mr Predictable.
We think he knows, that we know.
So he'll likely change up,
Maybe come in on a Saturday,
Just to confuse us.
Just to be different. 
So far, this Thursday,
We haven't seen him,
Yet. 

Post Script;
Friday, 14:37.
He's back.
The police are called.
Wanted for a number of incidents,
He's led away.
Thursdays will never be as exciting again   

Hello, Hello, it's good to be back...

Yes, so. It's been over a year since I've posted in this blog. There's good reason, I was made redundant in December 09, and the month or so preceding that was just so horrible that I could not bear to write about it. Ah, but, you say, you have not posted since June!! I had a whole pile of half written blogs on my iphone that I was gonna complete and upload here, and then the server my email address was on closed and I had to move it. Now the poxy iphone can't find the new server, despite several attempts to fix it. Then the redundancy process started and I wasn't able to look at this blog for months, to the point of completely forgetting my login.

My blog title has proven to be somewhat prophetic, as in April of this year my doctor signed me off from my new job for a few weeks as I was suffering from depression. It's not the first time, and it probably won't be the last in my life that depression hits me, but this time it has been exacerbated by the fact I lost a job I loved, and am now in a soul crushingly bad job.

Since it's dead and gone and not coming back, I assume it's ok to tell you, most of my posts on here have been about Borders Books in Glasgow city centre. Over 100 people were made redundant on Xmas eve, and it's a situation I never, EVER want to go through, ever again.

Seven types of customer?

I've recently become addicted to reading the Guardian newspaper's website book section. They have a 'book blog', and through it I discovered a blog written by an American guy named Matt, who not only works in a book store but is in fact a manager. His blog varies from the usual 'customer drove me nuts' thing to quite boring (in my opinion) stuff about Manga and stats and whatnot. The first post I ever read was entitled 'The Seven Types of Customer' and I totally identified with it, I thought 'this guy's hit the nail on the head!' What I didn't expect (although I really should have after reading this) was the comments, most were 'I work in retail and I identify with you!' but there were a fair few that are downright nasty.

Rocket Bomber

I think the guy has the general customer base of a book store down pat. As he says at one point, a book shop isn't really like any other retail experience, supermarkets and clothes shops don't have information desks, they don't have all their stock listed in a searchable database.

Obviously we don't really have the 'Oprah-ites' in Britain, probably the nearest equivalent would be the Richard and Judy Book Club, although I doubt they command such a zealous following!

FBI's Most Wanted!!

Years ago I worked in a photo lab, in a rather 'well off' area. The customers were, not to put too fine a point on it, snooty bastards, with the odd exception of a nice person here and there.

This one certainly was not. She came in the shop clutching her pack of photos and demanded to see the manager, who was out on lunch. So I as I was on my own I asked if there was anything I could do for her. She told me she'd been in that morning to collect her photos and had just been looking through them to order some reprints. However, she informed me, she was appalled at the state of her negatives. There were "fingerprints all over them", and they certainly weren't her fault, as she "doesn't leave fingerprints!!!!" It took all my strength not to burst into a fit of laughter at this proclamation, all I could do was apologise profusely and wipe some negative cleaner over them to remove said fingerprints, and since she only wanted 5 reprints, I gave her them for free.

Reminds me of 'Seven', when Kevin Spacey's character turns up at the police station to hand himself in and they find he's been grating his fingertips off...

Sale!!

Started the annual clear out sale today, which is basically an exercise in getting rid of ageing stock which is doing nothing other than taking up room on the shelf and attracting dust. It's mostly books you've never heard of, or books about artists or musicians you've never heard of. This does not seem to dissuade the canny bargain hunter. As I was attempting to put some books in the clearance boxes earlier I was actually jostled out of the way by at least two people deliberately, and accidentally with a heartfelt apology by another. The phrase 'flies round shite' springs to mind.