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I am permanently bemused. I come in from work and Dave’s room next to mine is full of noise: roars, explosions. Every now and again a voice intones: ‘A new giant has risen!’ I can only assume that it must be some kind of computer game. Meanwhile, Mat is downstairs at his laptop, topless, with a plastic gun.
Similiarly, at work, Paula is involved with some event at a local school. A notable children’s author is attending. ‘Will she want me to lay on some sandwiches?’, Paula asks someone over the phone. What an odd request. Paula's horoscope for that day told her that she was a tank, but that she should pop her head out of the turret occasionally.
On Tuesday we had a visit from Tim, a ‘Phoenix trainer’ (Phoenix being, as regular readers will know, the IT system favored by Waterstone’s and HMV). Curiously, he brought with him a big black musical instrument case, resembling a medieval instrument of torture. Perhaps he was going to gather us round for a campfire singalong about Phoenix. ‘Well if you press f7, tab down to column B/There’s a neat thing that you all should see…’ And so on.
This did not happen. Like all the people who come along to train us, he knew bits and pieces of things, but never the whole story and, after he’d run out of stuff to teach us, it wound up with four of us in the office discussing door-to-door atheism (why on earth not?) and leaving sick people to die on top of mountains. Then the lonesome Phoenix trainer dragged his guitar case into the night; or rather, early afternoon.
So things haven’t really got much easier. A customer rang asking where the French book she needed for her adult education class was (it was in, but she hadn’t got the message we left). ‘My friend ordered it from Amazon’, she said. ‘It arrived the next day. And it was cheaper.’ She went on to point out, as such people always do, that she only came to us out of the goodness of her heart because she ‘likes to keep the bookshops going’. ‘Madam’, I felt like saying, ‘I would rather that this bookshop closed tomorrow than that I should have to listen to your whining voice for even another second.’
In fact, of course, I said: ‘Sorry.’
Similiarly, at work, Paula is involved with some event at a local school. A notable children’s author is attending. ‘Will she want me to lay on some sandwiches?’, Paula asks someone over the phone. What an odd request. Paula's horoscope for that day told her that she was a tank, but that she should pop her head out of the turret occasionally.
On Tuesday we had a visit from Tim, a ‘Phoenix trainer’ (Phoenix being, as regular readers will know, the IT system favored by Waterstone’s and HMV). Curiously, he brought with him a big black musical instrument case, resembling a medieval instrument of torture. Perhaps he was going to gather us round for a campfire singalong about Phoenix. ‘Well if you press f7, tab down to column B/There’s a neat thing that you all should see…’ And so on.
This did not happen. Like all the people who come along to train us, he knew bits and pieces of things, but never the whole story and, after he’d run out of stuff to teach us, it wound up with four of us in the office discussing door-to-door atheism (why on earth not?) and leaving sick people to die on top of mountains. Then the lonesome Phoenix trainer dragged his guitar case into the night; or rather, early afternoon.
So things haven’t really got much easier. A customer rang asking where the French book she needed for her adult education class was (it was in, but she hadn’t got the message we left). ‘My friend ordered it from Amazon’, she said. ‘It arrived the next day. And it was cheaper.’ She went on to point out, as such people always do, that she only came to us out of the goodness of her heart because she ‘likes to keep the bookshops going’. ‘Madam’, I felt like saying, ‘I would rather that this bookshop closed tomorrow than that I should have to listen to your whining voice for even another second.’
In fact, of course, I said: ‘Sorry.’
posted by martin at 12:56 PM
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