Record Store Tales

Part 106: My Favourite Aunt

NOTE:  I do not actually have a favourite aunt!  But there is one that we CALL “my favourite aunt”!  I love both my aunts equally. 

Christmas Eve.  The year is now forgotten.

I always worked Christmas Eve.  It was usually a fun day, people were usually in good spirits.  There’d be the odd disgruntled shopper who was upset that you were sold out of Shania.  Most people were pretty cool and didn’t want to act like a jerk at Christmas to a stranger.

It was getting close to the end of the day.   Everything had gone pretty well.  I was dressed up in suit and tie.  I always did, on Christmas Eve.  It was a tradition my boss had started, but I was the only one who carried on with it.  (The only thing that bugged me:  He made me wear my big, ugly store tag with my suit and tie.  This thing was huge, like the size of a post card, laminated, hanging from a string around my neck.  The idea was, how were people to know that you worked here if you weren’t wearing your tag?  Well, hell, maybe the guy wearing the suit and tie behind the counter knows?)

I was tired, but my Favourite Aunt from Calgary was coming to town!  I’ve written about her in past chapters.  I only get to see her about twice a year, but it was always nice to have her around at Christmas.  It didn’t happen every year.

The previous evening, the 23rd, had been marred by a last-minute crackhead woman trying to sell us a garbage bag full of crap CDs at closing time.  By comparison the 24th was a cakewalk.  Until 5:00.

An hour before closing, I got a phone call from a calm sounding but clearly upset woman.  I can’t remember the scenario anymore.  All I can remember is that it was a no-win situation.  We’d messed something up that couldn’t be fixed.  We probably promised to hold something for her that was clearly gone.  I can remember that it was for her son, whatever the missing item was.

I apologized, I tried to explain how something like this might have happened, but my apology was not going to be enough.

“That’s not a satisfactory answer,” she said.  “You’re going to have to make this right.”

I was tired and there was an hour until closing…and now this.  Jesus Christ!

Suddenly, a giggle…a snicker…a laugh.

The woman on the other end of the phone goes, “Michael.  Don’t you know who this is?”

I didn’t know whether to be relieved or pissed off!  It was Aunt Lynda.  My Favourite Aunt.

“You handled that very well,” she added helpfully.

“Thanks a lot!” I said.  “I nearly had a heart attack!”

“Oh you’re welcome,” she said, and giggled again.  Aww hell, it was nice she was back in town.  And it was also nice I wasn’t in shit.  If something like that had happened an hour before closing on Christmas Eve for real, that would have haunted me all Christmas, I swear to God.

So, to my Aunt Lynda, who is actually in town again this week, this one goes out to you!  It’s good to see you again!

Part 105: 9/11

I slept in.  For me, sleeping in meant waking up at 7:30 instead of 5:30.  I didn’t have to go to work in the morning; I was working the afternoon.  Instead, I had an oil change booked for my car.  My dad and I headed out early, had a coffee at Mr. Lube, got the oil changed, and headed back home.

When we got home, my mom was watching the news.  “An airplane just crashed into the World Trade Center!” she said.

“What, like an accident?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.  “They haven’t said.  But it was a big plane.  A passenger plane.”

The second plane collided around this time, because when we all got to the TV, both towers were burning.  We just sat there, watching events unfold in shock.

I phoned up Matty K, who was working the morning shift at our store.  He was cut off from the outside world, as he didn’t have TV, radio or internet at the store.  I let him know what was going on.  He had not heard about it yet.  I kept him posted throughout the morning any time there was significant news.

I went into work at 1 in the afternoon.  It was all anybody wanted to talk about, customers and staff, understandably so.  Everybody was freaked out, especially when it became obvious that this was a well coordinated attack.  Some were scared, some were concerned for family members traveling, but most of us were just freaked right out.

It was a weird day to work, and the store was pretty dead that afternoon as everyone stayed home to watch the news.  In the end, we all just wanted to go home and do the same thing.

We couldn’t just go home and watch the news.  There was a meeting scheduled that night at 9:30 pm, that store managers had to attend.  None of us really wanted to be there, but it was decided not to cancel the meeting, even though our minds were anywhere else but work.  Our thoughts were with the lost, the survivors, the families, and trying to make sense out of those tragic events.

Part 104: A Nightmare on Cocknuckles Street

Please, people:  Before you pick up your phone, and call and swear at someone, please make sure you’re calling the RIGHT DAMN PLACE!
 
In December 2005, an angry guy called.  He had a CD order that he was waiting for.  Three discs.  He had been waiting a week.  I checked inventory, and there was nothing in stock.  This pissed him off a lot.  These were gifts.  I began trying to solve this by retracing the order steps.
 
I double checked the titles — nothing.  I checked orders in our system — nothing for this guy, and nothing for the titles he was asking for.  I checked everything under his name to see if we had anything he’d requested, at all!  Nothing.  Nothing with this guy’s name on it, nothing with the titles he had ordered.  What happened?  Had we cocked it up?
 
“How is that fucking possible?  I was standing right there in front of you geniuses!  You told me it was available, and it would be there in a week!  Are you saying you morons screwed up?”
 
I just love that kind of language!   

“No, I’m not saying we screwed up, I’m just trying to figure this out.  There’s something missing here.  You say you were standing here?  As in, you didn’t phone in this order?”
 
“I was standing right there in front of you idiots.  I asked for those discs and you said a week!”
 
“OK, again, I’m just trying to clarify here:  You were standing right here where I am, at our store on Cocknuckles Street?” (Address changed for blog.)
 
“No!  I was at the one at Dicklock Street!  Jesus Christ!” (Address also changed for blog…I hope you figured that on your own though.)
 
“Well, that’s the problem right there.  You just called Cocknuckles Street.  We wouldn’t have any record of another store’s order.”
 
“Well FUCK!”
 
And then he hung up.  No, “I’m sorry for being rude,” or “Sorry for the mistake,” or “Sorry for yelling.”  Just “FUCK!” and then a hang up.
 
I called the other store on Dicklock Street a little later.  I asked if this guy called for his order.  He did, and he was polite as can be.
 
Jerkoff.


“Boring conversation anyway…”

Part 103: Grubby

The same things happened more than once, but my old writings from back in the day still survive, and are remarkably detailed.  It is for that reason that I can relay to you this delightful day that I had with a guy that I shall dub Grubby.

One afternoon, this grubby looking guy walked into the store with a cardboard box of discs.  He was wearing track paints and a stained T-shirt.

 “I wanna sell these,” he said.

 Glancing at the box, estimating how many were in there, and how long it might take to go through them, I said, “OK, no problem.  Give me 20-30 minutes to go through them all.”

 “20 or 30 minutes?  Why so long?  Can’t you just tell me what they’re worth?”

 “Not without going through them,” I said.  “I have to check them all for quality and then check to see what we have in stock, and what we pay for it.”

“They all sound fine.  I listened to them on the way here,” he assured me.  Needless to say, I could not accept that at face value, especially when I started looking at them.  Many looked like a well-used hockey rink, before the zamboni comes out to resurface the ice!

 “What do you think?” he asked me after a few moments.

I was starting to lose my patience.  I hadn’t gotten through more than a dozen yet.  I said “I don’t know yet.  I haven’t even started thinking about pricing yet, I’m still checking out the condition.  If you want to look around, I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”

“No, I’m not interested in buying anything.  I said they all play.”

“I’m sure that they do.  But we have to be sure of that, and we also have visual standards that all our discs have to hold,” I said.  I hated the kind of customer that would stand there and watch every move I make!  It’s distracting.  It really pushed my buttons.

“You can play them if you want,” he answered.

“Well, I don’t have time for that.  It would take days to play them all.”

“Well you don’t play them all the way through!  You just skip through them!”

Obviously, you can samples bits and pieces of a CD without hearing a single skip, because a skip can be anywhere on the album.

The guy huffed and then finally started looking around.  This allowed me to actually check the discs for quality with a careful visual once-over.  Then, I arranged them into piles based on that criteria.  Some were mint, some not, and some were just hacked.  The guy looked around for 5 or 6 minutes and came back.  By this time, I was at the computer, pricing the discs.  Before I knew it though, Grubby was into my price piles, and re-arranging the discs!  He was putting similar things together, but he was mixing up the system I had.  

When I saw this, I said, “Oh, can you please leave them in those piles?  I had them all organized.”

“What’s this pile?” he asked.

“Those are discs I am passing on.  They are all just a little too scratched for us to take, and some are pretty common titles.”

“I already told you they all play fine!”  He was raising his voice now.

“I know,” I said, trying to stay patient.  “The thing is, all the discs we sell, we try to keep them a certain quality standard.  They all have to look as new as possible.  These ones are just not good enough for the standards.  Sorry…I don’t make up these rules.  I know they probably play fine, but you can always try selling them at a pawn shop.  They don’t care how a discs looks.”

“Fuck,” he said.  “I don’t want to have to go someplace else.  I want to get rid of them all right now.”

“At best,” I said, “I think I’ll be able to take a little more then half of these.”

“What?” the guy yelled.  “That’s fucked!  They’re all fine!  They all play fine!  This is so fucking stupid.”

“I’m sorry about that, but I’m not done going through them.  I might be able to do better.  Just give me a little more time.  I’m almost ready.”

“Forget it.  I want to sell them all, or nothing.”  He began packing his discs back into the box.  

I hated when this happened, because 7 times out of 10, they’d be back.  And because he put the discs away, messing up my system of price piles, if he came back I’d have to look at them all again.  Which is what happened.  He came back later that evening.  Maybe he was hoping somebody else (less picky) would be working, but at least the second time he came in, I didn’t have to explain everything twice.  I did however have to explain that I couldn’t remember how I had the discs organized, so I’d have to look at them again.

All told, I probably spent an hour with Grubby that day, buying a bunch of crappy discs that would sit for months.

Yep.  Just an average day of a Record Store Guy!

Part 102.5: Coda – “Dumped In Barrie”

After getting Dumped in Barrie, I came back home and began the process of “getting over it”.  I was now sick with a cold, too.  My immune system had gone to shit, working those crazy hours.

I ran into Dandy at one of the stores, while doing a stock transfer.

“Hey,” he said.  “I think I saw that chick JJJulie at the mall with some fat guy.”

“Really?” I said.  “Are you sure?  She’s not from here.  She lives in Etobicoke.”

“Yeah,” he replied.  “She had pink in her hair right?  But, like, faded?”

“Yeah,” I growled.  She just dumped me the weekend before, and I knew who the fat guy was, too.  “This fat guy.  Did he have a shaved head?”

“Yeah dude,” nodded Dandy.

So we just broke up, and she was already seeing this other dude!  I confronted her about it, and she eventually admitted to coming to town to “see” him.  This is five days after dumping me.  Five days!  Well, she wasn’t just “seeing him”.  I later found out that they “did the deed” that day, before his shift at the local McDonalds.

When he found out that I knew about this, he came into my store to make amends, because he genuinely wanted to make up and be friends.  He delivered me a tray of two McDonalds triple thick McShakes as a peace offering.

True story!

Part 102: Dumped in Barrie

Once again, I found myself on the road.  CDs were not completely dead and we were still expanding.  We opened a new location in Barrie, Ontario. It seemed like a good location, and the store had a good layout, with plenty of space and a huge back room for storage.  The shelves were well stocked and the place looked great.  They didn’t have a lot of great, unique stock yet:  It usually took time for a store to grow that way.

As usual I was chosen to do a large share of staff training.  I was sent there for 7 days in total, split over two weekends, training 3 or 4 people.  The higher-ups who sent me there chose not to be there on the weekends themselves.  That’s why they sent me.  I understand that this arrangement was considered “funny” by those who didn’t have to spend their weekends there, or so I was told.

I packed a cooler bag full of lunches and drinks so I wouldn’t have to keep buying food and charging it to the company.  It was easier than running out for food, and it was better for the company.  I was the only one who did this.  All I charged to the company at the end of it all was one meal at Burger King, while others charged wine and expensive meals, so it was alleged to me.  I didn’t even charge my use of Highway 407 to the company, since it was my personal, last-minute choice to use the highway to get home faster.  Nobody cleared me to use it, therefore I chose to foot the bill myself.

I was also at the tail end of another relationship.  I was going out with this chick who called herself “JJJewels”.  She was generous and fun, but not ready to be in a relationship with a guy who hated his job and every waking moment he was at work.  I don’t hold the breakup against her, just the way she went about it.

After a grueling 12 hour day of training and work, I checked into my hotel room.  I wandered around for 20 minutes lugging my cooler bag full of food before I found the actual room.  I went to bed immediately, exhausted, when my cell phone rang.  It was JJJulie.  She was dumping me over the phone while I was in a hotel room in Barrie.  I couldn’t believe it!

I sat there in bed, just shocked that anybody could dump another person while sitting miserably alone in a hotel room in Barrie.  On the other hand, it was inevitable, so there was also a sense of relief.

I called my good friend Shannon the next day and told her what had happened.  It was now Saturday, and I was really lonely stuck in a Barrie hotel room with nobody around to talk to.  The room had two beds, so I asked Shannon if she wanted to come up Saturday night.  Kindly, she grabbed some board games and drove up.  That little gesture meant a lot and it was the only ray of light in the whole time I was in Barrie.  The others who came to Barrie during the week were already with their friends and significant others, because they worked with them.  I took Shannon out to dinner at Red Lobster (paying for it myself, not asking the company to pay for my dinner) and we played Monopoly.  It really helped a lot.

That night, we were awakened by the sound of a hockey team partying in the hallways.  I woke up, and stuck my face out the door and scowled.  There were half a dozen hockey players.

“Hey man!  Want a beer?”

I shook my head and closed the door.  They got the hint and moved it into their room.

The following weekend was much like the first; a cooler bag full of lunches, driving up Highway 400 with Gordon Lightfoot, and Guns N’ Roses on the deck.  The second weekend was marginally better than the first; at least I didn’t get dumped this time.  I didn’t want to spend another Saturday night in a hotel room though.  Saturday night we closed at 6, and we didn’t open again until Sunday at noon.  I wanted to drive home Saturday night and spend it at home, not alone in exile in Barrie.  However the hotel room was already reserved for Friday and Saturday nights.

I told my boss that I preferred driving home on Saturday night, and back on Sunday. I’m guessing the hotel room must have been cheaper than the mileage, because he said no.  I should have just done it anyway, but I followed orders and spent a miserably lonely Saturday night by myself in Barrie.  It just indicated to me that the powers that be had lost the plot and had no understanding of morale.  It would have done me a world of good to spend Saturday night with friends, like everyone else does.

When it was all said and done, after two weeks of no time off, and two weekends of exile in Barrie, they rewarded me with a Monday off.  I spent that bitter Monday in my pajamas watching movies and stuffing my face full of junk food.  The day was over before I knew it, my one day of rest was done.  Back to the grind.

If memory serves, this was the very last time we opened a new store.  The decline of brick-and-mortar music sales meant that I wouldn’t be doing anymore of those weekend training missions.  Thank God!

Part 101: Record Store Long Weekends

There was never a guarantee that you were going to get a long weekend off.  But when you did, and the temperature was above 12 degrees, you went to the cottage!

Going to the cottage, in the era when I only had a cassette deck in the car, meant picking out the best “road tapes” for the mood.  Depending on the time of day (some music works best on evening drives), my favourites for the cottage were these:

SLOAN: 4 Nights at the Palais Royale

From driveway to driveway, this album is exactly the length of the drive!  Plus it’s one of my top five live albums of all time. Day or night, this was my #1 pick.

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE:  Songs for the Deaf

It’s pretty much designed for a road trip, but it also just captures that vibe of the long highways at night, and serves to keep you awake!  This was a night drive album.

BLUE RODEO:  Tremelo

Also a night album.  Very mellow, for those laid back cottage weekends.

THE BEATLES:  The Beatles (the White Album)

I don’t always listen to the Beatles.  But when I do, I prefer the White Album.

JOHNNY CASH:  At San Quentin

My favourite Cash album of all time.  Of all time!  This was great for the weekends that I drove my grandma up.  I have it in box set form now, so it’s a real nice extended treat today.

Have a great, safe long weekend, folks!

Part 100: Five Record Store Memories

corsair

RECORD STORE TALES PART 100:  Five Record Store Memories

1. One customer, Captain Jack (so-named because he dressed as a WWII Corsair pilot) once offered to work for us part time, just straightening the discs in the bargain bin so they’d all face in the same direction.  That was all he wanted to be.  Bargain Bin Straightener.

2. Two young girls were listening to Gwen Stefani on the listening stations.  Both of them decided to sing, “This shit is bananas!” at the top of their lungs.  When told to stop, they just said, “But we’re just repeating the words of the song!”  Parents, step up please.

3. Because we had a staff dinner there once, Jack Astor’s popped in one day with a “Jack Attack”:  A bucket of wings and a six-pack of pop.  At first I was going to say, “Sorry man, I didn’t order any food,” until they said it was FREE!  I was working alone, and I managed to eat most of the wings and drink 4 bottles of pop myself!  My boss would have shit if he saw me pigging out in the store…but there was nowhere else to go to eat, when you’re working alone all day.

4. One of the most unique discs we ever saw come in stock was a disc of Russian folk songs, recorded over a century ago.  One employee, Wiseman, liked playing it at closing time because it got people out of the store.

5. Other artists Wiseman enjoyed:  Brushy One-String, a reggae artist so named because he played a one-stringed guitar!  This also received store play, but reportedly was “not very good”.  He would often pair this with Tarkus, by E.L.P.  It was always interesting working nights with Wiseman!

Part 99: Cover Thief!

RECORD STORE TALES PART 99:  Cover Thief!

Because our cases were kept empty, thieves didn’t have a lot to steal.  Some stole empty cases thinking they were getting the disc, true.  Some, however, just wanted the cover.  That’s all.

They’d leave the case behind and just steal the booklet.  You could understand why, in some circumstances.  Usually it would be, say, the new Beyonce CD that loses its cover mysteriously.  I imagine today, perhaps Ms. Perry or Ms. Rihanna would go missing from their cases.  In rare cases, it might be, say, the cover to And Justice For All that goes missing, because it’s a badass picture.

The creepiest thing that ever happened was when the cover to Kathryn Ladano’s CD got stolen.  I think I know who stole it, too.  And I think it was the one known as Wiseman.  He was always telling me my sister is hot.  Why he would do this, I do not know.  The fact that I never punched him proves I’m a nice guy.

One day, the cover just went missing.  Poof.  Gone.  A Recital of Works for Bass Clarinet, cover only, disappeared into thin air.  You got the bare minimum of cover thieves rocking the classical section of the store, too.

With Wiseman giving me all the creepy talk about my sister, I think it was him.  Gaaah!

To Wiseman:  You only hurt the artist, you know!  Your creepy ways only means my sister couldn’t sell that CD anymore!  Jerk.

Part 98: Five Fun Facts

 

RECORD STORE TALES PART 98:  Five Fun Facts

1. Columbia House used to manufacture their own CDs.  That’s how they gave away 12 for free.  They’d purchase rights to the master tapes, and manufacture their own discs.  Collectors avoid these, considering them to be of lesser quality and value.  At the store, we used to offer a buck less if your CD was from Columbia House.  Some stores didn’t even buy CDs from Columbia House!

2. Places like Best Buy and Future Shop used to sell new releases at a loss, making it tough for us to compete.  A new release might have cost the store $11.90 to get in.  We’d mark it up marginally, barely even covering the shipping and handling cost for the box of discs to be sent to us.  Best Buy and Future Shop would sell them at $9.99 for a day, or even a week, making a loss but creating customer traffic.  And presumeably those customers would buy something else, too.  In the old days, we’d sometimes go to Best Buy and Future Shop to buy copies for our own stock!

3. People used to stick a weighted ring to the top of their CDs to “balance” them.  I can find no further information out about this, but I clearly remember old CDs made in the 1980’s being modified this way.  Customers modified them on their own, with a kit.  A burgundy plastic ring, maybe 1 or 2 mm thick, would be stuck to the outer edge of a CD.  A customer once told me he applied this ring itself to “balance the CD and make it play better”.  I saw these modified CDs fairly frequently, usually with jazz and classical customers so this must have been somewhat commonplace for a time.

4. CDs play from the inside out, not outside in like a record.  This always surprised people.  If you had scratches on the outer edges of your CD, you might be OK.  If you look carefully at the shiny rainbow rings on your disc, you can actually make out how much of the disc is playing surface.

5. Products advertized to “fix” your CD will not.  But they can clean it, and maybe that is all that is wrong.  Most scratches won’t effect the play of your disc.  Your laser can read through a lot of stuff.  One thing it can’t read through is a dried bead of Coca-Cola, so make sure your skipping disc has been cleaned before you give up on it.  But don’t waste your money on a “repair” kit, which will do more harm than good.

Don’t be fooled!