snacky | (no subject)

Here is a story from my life as a bookseller:

Back when I was newbie bookseller, a customer called on the phone and told me a long story about how her car got broken into and her cassette tapes were stolen and one of the tapes was an audio version of The Bhagavad Gita, read by some famous author. Unfortunately, she couldn't remember the famous author's name ("But you must know him! He's that famous guy! From Oprah!"). But she had bought it at our bookstore, and she was sure we still had it and she wanted to replace it.

Now, I was, as I said, new to the job. I had never heard of The Bhagavad Gita. And since she didn't know the author's name, I was going to have to look the book up in the computer by the title. The way I spell something, I just try to picture the word in my mind, and take it from there. But for some reason, I couldn't wrap my mind around Bhagavad Gita. I kept wanting to spell it "b-g-a-d-i-..." and I knew it wasn't right. So I asked her if she could spell it for me.

Customer: "I don't know how to spell it!"
Me: "Well, I don't know either, and I need to spell it to look it up in the computer."
Customer: "You work in a bookstore! How can you not know how to spell?"

Here I was thinking, "You owned the book! How can you not know the author or how to spell the title?" Instead I said: "Ma'am, I do know how to spell. But I'm just not familiar with the title. So I'm not sure how to spell it."

And now we entered the part of the conversation where the woman felt it would be helpful to just repeat "Bhagavad Gita" over and over again.

Customer: "Bhagavad Gita!"
Me: "Bah, bava-"
Customer: "Bhagavad Gita!"
Me: "B-a-d?"
Customer: "Bhagavad Gita!"
Me: "Okay, ma'am? Can you hold for --"
Customer: "Bhagavad Gita!"

I, of course, started to lose it at this point.

Me: "Bagga Daggita?"
Customer: "Bhagavad Gita!"
Me: "Battlestar Galactica?"
Customer: "Bhagavad Gita!"
Me: "Inna Gadda Da Vida?"
Customer: "Bhagavad Gita!"
Me: "Bag of margaritas?"
Customer: "Bhagavad Gita!"
Me: "Babaganoush pizza?!"
Customer: "BHAGAVAD GITA!"

This was, I feel, a career highlight in customer service.

Luckily, at that moment, the manager who handled all the religion and philosophy books walked up, and I thrust the phone at him in a panic. He proceeded to order an audio cassette of Deepak Chopra reading The Bhagavad Gita for the woman. And when he hung up, I made him teach me how to spell it. *g*