Two refreshing tales of honesty

For the first time in my long tenure as a register jockey at the game store, somebody actually brought back what they stole. A kid had grabbed a bunch of DS games, and her mom dragged her back into the store and told me:

"I THINK MY DAUGHTER WOULD LIKE TO BUY SOMETHING."

I was like, whoa. You're new at this, aren't you? I've never seen an honest customer before.

Around the same time, a teenager came in with his grandma and was looking at used 360s. As we may remember from my super helpful guide, there are a couple different models of 360. The kid of course grabbed the cheapest one and came up to the register.

"What are you planning on using the 360 for?" I asked.

"To play games," the kid said, like I was stupid.

"Which games are you planning on playing?"

"I dunno."

"This model doesn't come with any memory or wireless internet capability- you would have to buy those separately. The next-most-expensive model comes with 4 GB of flash memory and a built-in wireless adapter, but some games require a full hard drive. The next-next-most-expensive model comes with a built-in wireless adapter and a 250 GB hard drive."

The teenager stared at me blankly.

"Ok, I'm not doing this," said Grandma. "Figure out what you're buying and come back with your parents."

I wanted to give her a high-five. THANK YOU FOR NOT BUYING THE WRONG THING AND THEN RETURNING IT BECAUSE I HATE THAT! YOU ARE MY HERO, RANDOM GRANDMA! I WISH EVERY CUSTOMER WAS YOU!

I like the good customers.

Call of Duty is here

Got home from the midnight release. It was surprisingly calm, as was the double release for Battlefield 4 and Assassin's Creed IV. I have a creeping sense of dread that everyone's waiting to buy all this crap for the new consoles, a week from now.

If I get mauled by holiday shoppers, tell my family that I love them.

We have a sort of tradition at my store where we give out prizes to people who know our names. Sometimes we have real trivia, or a raffle, but we always do the super secret special trivia question:

"WHAT IS MY NAME?"

Our names print at the top of every receipt for every transaction we do, so even if we're not wearing name tags, it's easy to find if you think about it. And all of us except The Veteran have extremely common names. Besides, it's a fun Get To Know Your Game Store Register Jockey activity, and it's all in good fun.

None of the people in the first line group knew who I was. It's the Call of Duty people- they come in once a year.

"It's a really common name," I hinted. "Really common." Someone guessed it almost immediately. We gave him his prize- a Call of Duty tchotchke. He didn't even want it, so he gave it to a kid in line. And while all this is happening, an older gentleman in the front shouts:

"THAT IS NOT A COMMON NAME."

Trust me when I say I have a common name. There were at least three of me in every class growing up.

"It is for people my age," I said. "It was the number one girl's name in the country every year for over a decade in the 80s and 90s." He grumbled a bit, took his game, and left.

On the plus side, almost everyone in that first group thanked me by name when I handed them their games. It was actually really sweet.

Thanks, customers! You're all right.

Even if you do play Call of Duty.

Solidarity, bro

We've recently acquired a gaggle of teenage boys from a nearby high school who come in and heckle the employees by asking a lot of questions about games that don't exist. Grand Theft Auto VI is their favorite- I pointed out that they wouldn't be allowed to buy it even if it existed- but they just cycle through fake sequel titles until they get bored and leave. Today, while they were doing their thing, a Real Customer came in and was shopping around.

"THIS IS TERRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE," one of the teenage bros shouted.

"You're not customers," I said.

"WE ARE TOO CUSTOMERS!"

"Customers buy things."

"WELL, I WAS GOING TO BUY SOMETHING, BUT NOW I'M OFFENDED SO I WON'T."

As they were huffing about in fake offense, the Real Customer picked out a game and came up to the register. He spoke quietly so the bros wouldn't hear him.

"I'm a high school teacher," he said sympathetically. "I know what it's like to get harassed on the job."

Thanks, guy! It's always good to have a reminder that the public isn't all bad.