Playing Favorites

About a year ago, we learned our beloved Borders would be closing.  Over five years we shared a lot of laughs, love and met some very interesting customers.  For this week's group post, I polled the BWOBNY crew and asked them to share their favorite customer service moment.

"One was when a very lovely lady bought a book about how to find the right man, and then asked me out for coffee. But probably the most memorable moment was when another woman paid for a book by dumping about 5 dollars worth of pennies out of her bag, and an old soda bottle, right on the counter, along with old soda residue, and a suspicious looking hair."




Jennifer P: "Mine is from [when I was working at] Waldenbooks, there was a little boy who would not let go of his book, so mom picked him up and we scanned him too. It's the little things."  

Jess B: "Mine was the day that a customer yelled at me since Einstein was shelved in science and not psychology and that Einstein was a psychologist. After I explained that physicist's study physics and that psychologist study psychology, she still didn't believe me and walked off."


"A woman walked into the kids room where I was working and whispered to me 'I need help finding a book for my little girl about the changes.' I brought her over to the section and then stayed with her until she had gotten the right book for her. I sat on the floor with her and went through the section book by book. She was appreciative for the effort and thanked me profusely, and even told [my boss] about what a big help I was to her."




Rachel: "... my favorite customer is obviously [Giovanni] because he was always so sweet and genuinely cared about all of us."  

Note: Giovanni aka pastry guy was a  generous customer who always brought us tons of goodies from his bakery and tried to help us clean up the store, even though it was our job.  If you're reading this Giovanni, we miss you and hope you're doing well.


 

"... when a young girl, maybe 12 or so came up to me and asked for help with her summer reading list because 'you helped me pick a book out last year and it was really good so I trust you to help me find a good one again.' That one actually made me tear up a little."

As for me, I loved helping customers find just the book they were looking for.  One of my favorites was a teenaged girl who came in once a week with her dad.  She reminded me of myself, at that age, as her dad purchased a stack of books for her that she polished off by the following week.  After awhile, she was looking for new suggestions and I was more than happy to recommend my favorite YA titles.  She'd come back the following week and tell me how much she liked them and wanted to know what I was reading this week.  


As you can see, most of our experiences were positive.  Perhaps, next time we'll share some more customer horror stories?  Jess B's was actually pretty tame.