I am currently assembling the last of the equipment I need which will eat up about $800 (wonder if there are any venture capitalists out there wanting to throw me money….)

Anyway, once all that is taken care of and I have a proper workstation and tools I will begin production on some 1911, Hi-Power, Beretta and even a Ruger SP101 set of grips. These are what I am starting with because they are the pistols I have available.  I will probably be able to get hold of a Model 60 and do some S&W grips too,

If anyone has a special request for a set, feel free to let me know, I am always open to expanding my range of skills and I will back my work with a 100% money back guarantee.  I plan to be up and running by March and as things get closer I’ll let you know about the website, product designs and what I have available in inventory for immediate sale (I’m positive that this will include some full and compact 1911 grips as well as some Brownings).

I look forward to putting some work into your hands very soon.

Don’t get me wrong, I am very, very grateful to have a job, and to have one that has medical benefits, but my problem is that the more I work at my current job the more I realize that management doesn’t really give a crap about anything BUT the numbers.  Everything to them is just another number.  If you are absent it is 10 points off your record, show up the whole week – +2, the whole month +15; If you are at 0 – your fired, no exceptions.

When I asked why a system was being put in charge of who is hired and fired instead of the persons manager I was told “We tried that and the managers weren’t doing what they were supposed to do.”

“So,” asks me,” why didn’t you fire the managers and get people in who would actually manage?”

Blank stare followed by a change of subject.

See, I want to work for a company that actually has a real game plan, not just one that says “We are putting you in charge of you!” as a way of really saying “We don’t want to take responsibility to manage so instead we have set up the computer to manage for us..”

Everything I deal with right now ends up with the same answer “What does the system say” as if it is some sort of Oracle of Delphi or, more likely, the Wizard of Oz.  Many times in my day I am asked questions by customers that they system does not have a nice neat answer laid out for, or if you do search for an answer it comes back with 364 answers.  I don’t know about you, but when you are on a call with a customer you generally don’t have time to dig through 300+ answers HOPING that one of them is what you are needing.

Nope, I need to find something different so today I am off on the hunt.  Maybe in the near future as my grip making and checkering skills get better I can live off that, but right now I’m gonna have to work for someone else a little while longer.

For those who might remember, I mentioned in an earlier post that I was thinking of making my wife some grips for her pistol.  Well, that’s what the wood is for and so I picked up a linear foot each of African Padauk and Jatoba.

The Padauk has a wonderful red color to it that I think will work very well on its own as the entire grip, or also as an accent wood to a grip.

The Jatoba on the other hand is a very nice chocolate brown color that will be great for give the grip a nice classic feel with a rich, dark color to it.

In either case, though, both of these are VERY hard woods so if this takes off I’ll probably start looking for a bandsaw to help make my life a lot easier.

You would be wrong.

Someone decided that would take much too long and instead set all the vendors up in one large room, we were all shuffled in there by team and then given five minutes at each vendors table so they could blast out as much info as possible before the people running it blew an airhorn and told us to move to the next table.  Yep, speed dating with cell phones.

When each vendor has multiple phones with different features and capabilities I’m sure you can guess how much information they were really able to give us.  Not a lot.  Then as we were hurried to the next table they would shove some swag in our hands as we hurried on.

You want to know what I retained out of it all?  Blackberry gives away Frisbees and that goes well with the sunscreen Kyocera was passing out.

Finally our GM goes over and asks him if he is planning on purchasing any of them.

“No, I’m just doing some research for a paper I have in my marketing class.”

“Well” says my GM, “We are actually trying to sell these books and that’s pretty hard to do when you have taken them all.  I’d appreciate it if you would put them back if you aren’t going to buy them.”

And what does douche-bag marketing student say?

“That’s not very good customer service, man.  I may not shop here again.”

You ain’t shopping here NOW, jackass.

*********

Overheard a customer trying to remember a book title with his girlfriend so I stepped in.

“Are you thinking of ‘Germs, Guns and Steel?”

“Yeah, that’s the title.”

“It’s upstairs in the Biology section.” I point out where it is since I am at the register and can’t take them up there myself.

Five minutes later he’s back with his book and a smart ass look on his face. “It wasn’t in Biology.  It was in the SCIENCE section.”

I gave him a flat look. “Right.  BIOLOGY is a SCIENCE.”

I think I confused him.

***********

To all you wanna be interior decorators, wedding planners, personal trainers, chefs, fashion designers, web designer, MCST’s, and prospective grad students.  BUY THE DAMN BOOK OR PUT IT BACK!

***********

I have not, nor will I, read the Twilight ‘Saga’, The Sookie Stackhouse books, anything by Nora Roberts, or the Vampire Diaries.  I have entirely the wrong set of chromosomes for that.

***********

“There’s a book you guys had here last week and I can’t find it now.”

Now the sad part here is I saw this guy last week with the book he is wanting.  He had a cup of coffee too.  Just a few minutes after he left the store I found the same book in the corner with coffee spilled all over it.

“Yes sir, we did but someone spilled coffee on it so we had to throw it away.”

“Well when will you get a new one?”  Not even an ‘oh, really’.  I knew he did it and he knew I knew.

“We probably wont for a while. I could order it for you.”

“Dang.  I really wanted to read it.”

“Well, sir” I said, “I could special order it and we would have it here in a few days.”

“I don’t want to buy it, I just want to read it.”

And people wonder why I hate our customers sometimes.

That way, when I kill one of our customers at the store for making a mess people won’t say “Oh my god, he just killed that guy!!!”

Instead they would just say “Well what do you expect, he’s a ogre.”

Yeah, I want to be an ogre.

No idea why.

This one’s pretty damn good too

I really don’t understand how these douche-bag morons are able to function in the world. I see them doing shit like pushing their strollers onto the escalator while ignoring the sign that says “Please use the elevator behind you for strollers or wheelchairs”. Then, when you point it out to them they pull a fucking attitude on you. Yeah, because you KNOW that when they lose control of it and junior takes the big fall back to the first floor that they will be suing us, but how dare we stop them from being dumbshits.

Or the dickhead teenager who thinks that A) Skateboarding in the store is cool and is trying to practice his kick flips in the Manga section while hanging out with his waste-of-an-orgasm friends or B) thinks that doing stupid shit on the escalator that will most likely result in stitches in his head is a good way to impress the ladies.  While I do enjoy throwing them out (which I do) there is always one who tries the “This is a public place, we have a right to be here.  Wrong, niou-se, we are a PRIVATELY OWNED COMPANY and we can throw your ass out if we want to.

I also like it when they decide that since, in their school, no one can lay a hand on them that it must be true with the rest of the world too and they get ballsy enough to try and challenge me.  I usually tell them that yes, I will kick your ass and then call the cops to arrest you for trespassing.  Always nice to see the look in their eyes when they realize that they have suddenly walked their virgin asses into a situation that they aren’t going to win.

My other favorite customer: The parents who drop the kids off in the kids section while they head over to sit and have a coffee while their little tax deduction tears books, destroys merchandise and draw on the walls with the crayons they ripped open from one of the coloring books. But OH MY GOD if you tell them to get control of the little Liou coe shway duh biao-tze huh hoe-tze duh ur-tze they (once again) pull the offended act. Yeah, how dare we stop your monster from destroying something that YOU AREN’T GOING TO PAY FOR!!!

Get the fuck out of my store capullo!

I had one woman who’s brat was running in the kids section pulling books off the shelves by the handful and when we told her to stop her mom’s response was “She’s not hurting anyone. Besides, it’s your job to clean up so I don’t see what your problem is.”

The problem, bitch, is that we have other shit to do like, oh gee, help customers that are actually buying shit. Seriously, how fucking stupid are you people that you think we are here to just clean up after you while you walk around with your nose in the fucking air because SOMEHOW you must be smarter, better and more socially acceptable that I am because I work in a bookstore while you have some fucking office job.  We are just here to serve you coffee and pamper you while you crap all over the place and fuck up our magazines?  Don’t think so.

How God Damn difficult is it to put your shit back where you got it from?  Do you just let your kids drop crap all over your house to and it just stays where it hits?  Or are you just showing a double standard that it’s OK to shit on people who you don’t know because your such a stummer arsch?

The worst part, the VERY WORST FUCKING PART, is that it’s FIVE PERCENT of our customers that do this shit and it fucks the whole store up, makes us spend more time fixing shit than being able to help people and if we could just ban that five percent from the store the whole place would be cleaner, would take less time to close up at night, and we would be able to provide better service to the rest of our customers.

I really wish you jackasses would just stay the hell our of my store. Really, just go watch TV or something, books are wasted on you anyway.

“I want a book for my son, he’s ten years old.  The thing is that he doesn’t like to read that much.”  A simple enough request, and problem, and one that I got often.

“OK,” I said, “What’s he interested in?”

“Well, he likes sports but I don’t want any sports books.  I want him to grow up to be a scientist so do you have anything like that for a boy?”

“Well,” I said, trying to appeal to logic,”if he doesn’t like to read then it might be a good idea to get him a book with a subject he is interested in.  That way he looks at it as something fun rather than work.”

“No, because all he is interested in is sports and there’s no future in just being able to do some stupid thing with a ball.” She huffed.  “Look at you, you were probably a jock and now you work at a bookstore.”

And yet she was still asking for my advice.

***************

“Could you help me find this CD?”

“Sure.”  I look at the piece of paper in her hand and know exactly where the CD she wants is at.  “Right this way”

As I walk her over to the spot in Pop/Rock I automatically straighten out the disks that are scattered around from other customers that had browsed, destroyed and left.

“Wow, it’s a mess over here.” My customer said. “Don’t these people know how to clean up after themselves?”

“Sometimes I wonder.” I say, pulling out the disk she is looking for. “My parents always told me ‘If you take it out, put it back where you got it from’”.

“Good rule to follow.” She says,”I can’t see just leaving your stuff laying around for someone else to put away.”

I shrug my shoulders in a ‘what can you do’ sort of way.

“Thanks for finding this disk” She says, holding it up, “And could you put this book away for me?  I’ve decided I don’t want it after all.”

I watch as she drops the book on the CD rack and heads towards the checkout counter.

**************

Our bookstore has a teddy bear name Chaucer for sale that is very soft and very furry.  I’ve been carrying one around with me all day because it’s a perfect way to get people to buy them.  They see me with it, ask about it and I sell it.  One of my co-workers wasn’t aware of this tactic.

“What are you doing with a bear under your arm?”

“He’s the only one that understands me.”

There’s a long pause as she wonders if I am serious or not.

“You are so weird.”

“Yea, but Chaucer likes me anyway.”

I was behind him on the escalator and was looking at his jacket when he looked back at me and said,”What?”

“Oh, nothing.  I just used to have a teddy bear that was made of corduroy.  Same color as your jacket too.”

“So are you saying that I remind you of your teddy bear?”

I paused for a moment and thought about it.

“Well that bear was an asshole too, so yea.”

One upping your co-worker is good.  Making them spew soda is even better.