![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Gratitude Post
Aug. 5th, 2007 02:58 pmToday I'm grateful for my crazy customers. Why crazy? Lemme explain.
Our distributor uses a rather horrid and slow search engine, so much so I can typically run a google check in less. There are very limited search parameters: such as Author, ISBN, Title, Keywords. You'll notice nowhere in there does it mention useful items like Subject, Fiction/Non-fiction or type of product (i.e. paperback, hard cover, CD, etc.) For a bonus amount of glee, the search engine will only allow you to search on one parameter at a time, not multiples for more exact searching. This means, dear readers, that I can search on Author OR Title, not both. Gah. Hell, it doesn't even use Boolean. Its that shitty.
This afternoon I get a call from one of our darling older residents. I can tell he's older by the 'smoker for life' huskiness in his voice and the fact he insisted on yelling the entire time we were on the phone. The continued remarks like "we didn't have computers in my day, you sure you running this on the computer? They're quicker than this" sort of helped, too. Further comments were helpful like "I'd just supposed the book would be more popular so you'd know it already". He just kept yacking away while the search ran, so much so I put the phone down on the counter and could still hear him just fine.
He wants a book he's read reviews about in a few magazines, unfortunately ones he's already regifted to others. *sigh* The book is a fictional yet scientific view of the world if the human race died out, possibly with the last words of "without people" in the title. That's it. That's all he's got. Just the idea of the story. And, of course, our connection to the internet has been slower than all hell all afternoon. I apologized and explained the delay while I desperately ran Google searches. After about fifteen minutes I find the book he's looking for, so I ask if he wants me to order him a copy. His response is: "Oh no, I don't read books. I only read Bartlett's Quotations". He then proceeds to shower me with Mark Twain quotes, thanks me and hangs up.
0.o
Our distributor uses a rather horrid and slow search engine, so much so I can typically run a google check in less. There are very limited search parameters: such as Author, ISBN, Title, Keywords. You'll notice nowhere in there does it mention useful items like Subject, Fiction/Non-fiction or type of product (i.e. paperback, hard cover, CD, etc.) For a bonus amount of glee, the search engine will only allow you to search on one parameter at a time, not multiples for more exact searching. This means, dear readers, that I can search on Author OR Title, not both. Gah. Hell, it doesn't even use Boolean. Its that shitty.
This afternoon I get a call from one of our darling older residents. I can tell he's older by the 'smoker for life' huskiness in his voice and the fact he insisted on yelling the entire time we were on the phone. The continued remarks like "we didn't have computers in my day, you sure you running this on the computer? They're quicker than this" sort of helped, too. Further comments were helpful like "I'd just supposed the book would be more popular so you'd know it already". He just kept yacking away while the search ran, so much so I put the phone down on the counter and could still hear him just fine.
He wants a book he's read reviews about in a few magazines, unfortunately ones he's already regifted to others. *sigh* The book is a fictional yet scientific view of the world if the human race died out, possibly with the last words of "without people" in the title. That's it. That's all he's got. Just the idea of the story. And, of course, our connection to the internet has been slower than all hell all afternoon. I apologized and explained the delay while I desperately ran Google searches. After about fifteen minutes I find the book he's looking for, so I ask if he wants me to order him a copy. His response is: "Oh no, I don't read books. I only read Bartlett's Quotations". He then proceeds to shower me with Mark Twain quotes, thanks me and hangs up.
0.o
