Retail Sucks!

I have a part time job at bookstore at the local Mall. It's really not that bad of a job. It's not that hard, I like the people I work with and if it wasn't for the customers it would be a great! I firmly believe that everyone should work in retail once in their life. Then maybe people would be a little more understanding and not so rude and self-centered. One customer, today, got all upset because I told him that he had to go the end of the line because he came in the exit. It turned out that after he waited in line he just came back to my register. I joked with him, just to be friendly, that I sent him away just for him to come right back. His response was "I'm never coming back" What? Why? Because I didn't stop what I was doing right then and there. Tell the people that were able to read the signs and were waiting in line, that I can't wait on them until I check out this asshole that is just WAY to important to stand in line like the rest of them. And then he complained that we didn't have a music department. Well, sorry, the bookstore that I work for is not big enough to have a music department. There isn't anything I can do about that, except to stage a hostile take over of the PretzelMaker next door, they are just going to have buy what little music we have or go someplace else. There was also the usual stupid questions yesterday too. One women asked me where she would find the coffee. Silly me, I thought it would be pretty obvious that the Cafe is where the coffee would be at but I guess not. That was even the really stupid question of the day. Someone asked my friend Elizabeth how a bookmark worked? I am not kidding. It was a little stuff animal bookmark that has movable arms. I guess the customer that the arms had some exciting function but really it's just there for ascetic reasons. Of course what makes all of this worse is that it's only October 26. We haven't gotten to Halloween yet. It's going to 10 times worse by the time we get to Thanksgiving and don't even get me started on Crowds at Christmas! At least, I don't work in food service but then again I would get tips.

Hi, My name is Beth. I'm a history major at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. I've been thinking about starting a blog for a while now and finally had the courage to do it. I just hope that people don't find me to boring. *lol* I guess wanted to start something like this from a conversation I had with my sister Kat. She's into journaling and scrapbooking and I, not so much. I could never keep a diary going for more then two weeks when I was younger. It's kinda odd, when you think that I am a student of history and much of what I study is the documents that people leave behind. What do I have for future students and historians to read? What can I say about living in Iowa at the beginning of the 21st Century that will help future generations understand what it is like? I don't know. I don't even know that what I say is really all that important now, let alone will it be years later but then again it's not what you say in the present that is thought of to be important, right? Did Anne Frank know that her diary would be published and studied and still read by millions of school age kids more the 60 years after she died? Probably not. All we know of history is what we have been able to piece together from the documents that have been left behind. I doubt that this blog will be around long enough to make any historical impact but it's a start. I'm really not that sure what I want to do with this and what I want to write about but I hope it will be fun for me and for those of you who wondered over here. This should be quite the experience. :D

Beth