What is Wrong With People?

Let me start off with a disclaimer - I'm having a bad week. Our vehicle is a money pit and continues to have issues. Our house hasn't sold and the contract is running out, meanwhile the tree guy STILL hasn't called to cut the mangy tree down AND the neighbor's gutter continues to leak into our basement. This has been a slow week at the store, Diamond screwed up our shipment and it was a day late, AND it's one of the biggest invoices we've seen in a while. So, I'm crabby. OK. If I come across in this post as nasty or bitter or just plain mean, forgive me but I've been impacted by a slew of bad luck.

So yesterday Craig was running around most of the afternoon with is dad looking for a used car we could purchase (now he wants to hold off, but whatever). That left me to run the store by myself, on a Wednesday, which wasn't a big deal since we didn't get most of our comics. I mostly apologized, handed out "we're sorry" coupons and asked people to come back tomorrow pretty pretty please. It took every fiber of my being to keep on smiling and being positive while I dealt out bad news to person after person with the register sitting silent.

This couple comes in and the guy begins to dig through the $1. He's at it a while and his wife/girlfriend just grabs a chair we had closed up off in a corner, WITHOUT ASKING and plops down in the middle of the room. He continues to flip through the $1 bin. Then after about half an hour he moves over to the back issue bins. The woman moves the chair to a different spot and sits down. THEN she gets up and walks back by the back issues. As someone else comes into the store and I deliver bad news I hear one of the store's back room doors slam shut. Quickly I look up and see this woman opening every door in the back of the store, even though one is marked "Emergency Exit" and the other two are marked "Employees Only." Then she wanders up and asks if she can use our bathroom - which was inside one of the doors she opened. I said "No. You have to use the one in the George Web, next door." (Since we don't sell food we don't have to allow people to use our rest room, and since we've got a lot of junk hiding in there, we tend to not let anyone use it - but the restaurant is right next door with a nice bathroom.) She was gone for a good 10 minutes! Thank goodness I sent her over there!

When she comes back she goes up to the guy who is still looking through our back issue bins. They whisper to each other and she sits down again in the chair she left in the middle of the back part of the store. He continues to look and she wanders again, looking behind every shelf - who knows for what.

Then the guy moves over to our work counter where we have some of that silver age collection we purchased as well as other books waiting to go into the back issue bin. He doesn't ask and just starts digging into those. Well, I let him since all that stuff is for sale, but he really should have asked, especially since he's never been in the store before. Anyway, she comes over and leans way up on the glass counter, like right in my space, and asks me if we'll give them a deal if we buy a bunch. I say that I'll see what I can do depending upon what he gets. Then, instead of going back and telling him, she just stays there, leaning up on the counter and right in my face, with nothing much more to say. Finally when I take a couple of steps backwards and look distracted she walks back and sits down again.

The guy takes quite a while fishing through those boxes. THEN he goes to our drawer box display and opens all of them, looking for comics. I tell him that's just a display so people can see the drawer boxes, and he nods and then walks to the back of the store after I turned around to go to the front. When I turn around I see him WAY in the back looking at the boxes that have excess inventory and some that are empty and ready to get thrown out. People are NOT supposed to go back there, but he sees me make a move to come back to him and exits that area.

The phone rings and it's Craig wanting me to look up a car on Kelly Blue Book on-line. While I'm on the phone the guy goes and grabs a large plastic tote that was closed up and "stored" under the $1 bin. All that is in there are the "leftovers" from the silver age collection that don't have covers and many are shreaded or in really bad shape - we just haven't had the heart to throw them away yet. The totes are NOT meant to be gone through by the average person, and again he NEVER ASKED if he could open them. They were UNDER a table level bin - not out in the open. I let him dig while I look online.

As I said, the comics in those plastic totes are in bad shape. That whole collection had that really bad paper smell, and those loose ones are really bad. His wife/girlfriend started to sneeze up a storm a few minutes into the guy's investigation of the totes. And she kept on sneezing. She gets up and walks to the graphic novels and lets a big sneeze go - no need to cover her nose of course. Finally after a few more sneezes she comes up to me, once again leaning way to close in for comfort, and asks if I have a tissue. I gave her paper towel - that's all I have up here at the counter. She blows her nose as I put it away. The next thing I know she's throwing the used paper towel over the counter in an attempt to get it into the garbage. Luckily she made it but MY GOSH how gross and rude. If she'd missed I'm pretty sure I'd have lost it and gone off on both of them. She sneezes a couple more times and I give her another paper towel. Then she blows her nose right at me and continues to hang out right in my face. Finally when the phone rings again she walks away.

After over an hour the guy brings up his comic finds and asks me what I can do for him. I sort through what he has, putting them in a couple of stacks organized by price. He grabs one and starts shuffling it around before I even say anything - so I tell him "I'm not done with those." Some of the comics are already priced really low, so I tell him I can't do anything on those. But, there was a group that I told him I could do 30% off if he buys them all. Well, he then just walks away from the counter and says "no thanks." He doesn't even pick out the ones he really likes or ask me if there's any way I could do better or offer to put them away or ANYTHING. Just heads toward the door. Before they leave he tells me that he really likes the store. I say "thanks" through gritted teeth.

Over the 3+ years we've been in business I've not had any couple be that rude while in the store. I had the mentally challenged guy act up (he hasn't come back) and we've had some teens be obnoxious and some parents who don't watch their kids as the kids go crazy - but those are all to be expected. But not couple who APPEARED to be of average intelligence and income acting like they own the place and have absolutly no manners. And on a bad day of all days too. It was almost more than I could take. If I hadn't been busy with cars and customers I'm sure I would have lost my temper with those two.

Oh, and I almost forgot, when they left he still had those plastic bins pulled out - didn't put them back and the woman left the chair right in the middle of the back issue section - never bothering to put it back where she took it from.

And on Heidi's blog Comics Fairplay she has some nut in front of her in the grocery store take forever to use food stamps for groceries but then pulls out a $100 bill for cigarettes & beer. And at the Taco Bell drive through the person in front of her orders like 10 combo meals instead of going in for that order or, gods forbid, calling ahead.

I ask you - WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?