Last week, I was covering Heather's lunch break at the registers, and as I was ringing up a VERY pregnant woman, she started going into labor! Seriously! Totally not trained in child birth! Good thing North Florida Regional Hospital was right across the street!!
A woman came in with her elderly father. She had to push him in a wheelchair and he had one of those oxygen tanks. He asked if I could show him where our books on wills and estate planning were. He said that he would try to find them himself, but because of the store's size, he might die before he found them. He laughed at his joke, I smiled at it, and his daugher looked so sad. I showed them the books and they thanked me. After helping some other customers, I saw that he was still looking at the books, so I went over to make sure he didn't need anymore help. His daughter wasn't with him. Walking back to the info desk, I spotted her sitting on the bench we have outside the bathroom hallway crying. If I had to guess, I would say that it was really emotional for her to be planning for her father's death. It made me sad.
Yesterday, the first customer of the morning asked me if we had books on... wait for it... cattle slaughtering! ARE YOU KIDDING! For some crazy reason, I almost started crying at the thought of having to find such books. I felt the blood drain from my face and cold sweat. It was way extreme. But then again, I've become very sensitive to animal welfare. Blame it on the animal ethics assignments I had to do for my ethics class last spring. I dare you to go to the PETA website and not have the urge to throw-up! I hoped that Borders didn't have these books because I didn't want this guy to learn how to kill animals. I really wished I had been wearing my "Vegetarian" t-shirt. That would have been perfect. As much as I wanted to say that we didn't have animal slaughtering books, I had to make some sort of effort to check and see if we did have any. I tried using different keywords/phrases to check our inventory, including: cattle slaughtering, livestock, meat processing, butchering cattle. Why couldn't this guy come in on a different day. Luckily, Borders doesn't carry Cattle Slaughtering for Dummies! One small victory!
I was helping a 50-something-year old man order a book and we somehow started talking about drugs and how this generation's drugs are "pussy drugs" compared to those of his generation. And when I say "we started talking", I mean he talked while I added "Oh goodness" and "Wow" when it was my turn to contribute to the convo. His claim was that today's drugs, namely, esctacy and cocaine are nothing compared to the shit he took in the 70's. He told me stories about taking acid in 'Nam, almost blowing up his house with a homemade bomb while tripping on acid, and LSD-fueled hunting trips. He asked if I ever took drugs. When I said no, he said something like "Oh really. Well trust me, it's always the goody-good girls who have the most fun while high." I wasn't sure if this was an invitation to experiment with him, but I started working on his book order a little bit faster.
Elderly woman in her 70's and her daughter ask if I had the book "When God Winks: How the Power of Coincidence Guides Your Life", we did, I brought them to the section, and the elderly woman told me her story. In February, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 lung cancer, inoperable, and was told that the only way to beat it was chemo. She wasn't sure if she wanted to go through it. She had two options. OPTION 1) Get the chemo treatments, hope it kills the cancer, and live cancer-free for the rest of her life. OPTION 2) Forgo the chemo and spend her final weeks with family. She was in her 70's, and had lived a long, happy life. Why go through the hardships of chemo if it would only add a couple years to her life. Spend the money on grandkids rather than chemo.
She was waiting for a sign from God, telling her what to do. Months went by, and no message. One day, she went to the bank to order more checks and got the sign she was waiting for. The mother of the bank employee who was helping her also had Stage 3 lung cancer and did the chemo. The chemo wiped out the cancer and she was living cancer free for I forget how long. My customer chose to do chemo and she found out last week that her cancer is gone. She also just found out that she's expecting her first great-grandson. The book she was getting was a thank you present for the bank teller, who the woman calls "her angel". She was ready to die, but "her angel" spoke to her and gave her her life back. The customer started crying. Her daugher started crying. I started crying because I cry whenever I see other people cry!
Borders' lack of CD stock is contributing to the "bastard-ization" of the music industry according to one customer. Not 100% sure what he meant by this, but I bet it's not all our fault.
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