Is there any way to find a CD based on the cover design? A friend of mine had me listen to one of her CD's for a day with the promise of, if I liked it, burning me a copy. This was about a year ago. I don't remember the name of the artist, other than that it was a folky guy. I don't remember the name of the CD, but the cover looked like hundreds of little tiny dark green painted leaves. I think one of the songs was about being a lumberjack, or a carpenter, or something like that.
The obvious thing would be to get hold of my friend, but that's gotten to be nigh unto impossible anymore. I've honestly thought of walking into a Barnes and Noble (the same chain from which she bought it), and waiting for the guy to walk up to me and ask me if he can help me, and give him that description, just to see what happens.
I hate it when people ask me if they can help me in stores. Ninety percent of the time it's just lip service because, no, they don't actually know anything any better than I do.
I've been trying to find clock works for a long while now. I have a clock face that was made for a play and it doesn't actually work, but if I could put works into it, it would. So anytime I'm in a hobby, craft, or hardware store I wander around just to check if such things are avaliable. I look first with the clocks, and then I look in the section where they put doorbell kits and other sorts of things.
In a bookstore, I will go look for a book by the author, but some books have the possibility of being in fiction, mystery, classics, and literature. I don't necessarily know which one I'll actually find the book in.
When approached by the clerk, asking if he can help me find anything, I sometimes explain what I'm looking for with the hopes that they will go to some computer (you see the damned things all over stores, you'd think they might have information in them) and find the thing I am looking for and tell me where it is located. It makes sense to me that national chains, where everything is the same in every single store, would be able to make catlouges of this information. Then they go to the computer, they type in clock works, and they say, "Oh, yes, we have clock works in aisle three with the door bell kits, but we're all sold out. Those ship on Monday, come back on Wednesday and we'll have them."
But no. Instead they go, with me trailing behind, to each individual section of the store that I'd already checked and discover with surprise what I already know: it's not there. Then they look at me dumbfounded and tell me if they had it, it'd be right there, so they must not have it. Well, thanks, I'm so glad you "helped".
The equivilent to this for my job would be a three day run with one night sold out. If someone calls asking for tickets for that night, you tell them it's sold out, and then you tell them the other nights are still open. You don't just tell them it's a sold out show and leave them hanging on the line. You give them a helpful option. This we can't do, but this we can. It's called customer service, and this is America, where that sort of thing is held in high regard.
One of my favourite things to do in a Wal-Mart is go find the little old person who works the toy aisles and ask them whether they carry Ouija boards. Wal-Mart doesn't, and the little old people have always been shocked at the request. A variation on this, though more difficult so I haven't tried it, would be to weasel out which employee is the born again Christian and ask them.
Sometimes it's hard to be a pain in the ass in the abstract; every now and again you have to do it for real.