Customer: “I want a book about the maintenance of tractors.”
Me: “Okay, I can search the database for—”
Customer: “—and it has to be a picture book.”
Me: “Okay, I’m not sure that—”
Customer: “—for kids.”
Me: “Well, I—”
Customer: “—in Welsh.”
I did not find that book.
It’s summertime at the city library, and I’m wearing a pair of light canvas shoes. I’m pulling a book from the top shelf, which is above my head. The book next to it also slides out, and before I can catch it, it rockets down and its edge lands right on the joint in my big toe.
Tears coming to my eyes, I reach down to get the book and see the title: “A Good Walk Spoiled.”
Customer: “I want an Acalas.”
Me: “An atlas?”
Customer: “No, an Acalas.”
Me: “What is the Acalas about?”
Customer: “It isn’t about anything; it is maps and stuff.”
Me: “I am reasonably certain that is called an atlas.”
Customer: “You think you are so smart ‘cause you work in a bookshop.”
Me: “No, this store is no different from any other retail environment; working here does not make me smarter than the city beach employee next door. Perhaps we can have a look at the atlases and see if that is what you are chasing?”
Customer: “Fine.”
We walk to the atlas section. The customer picks one up.
Customer: “This is what I am after. See?”
They point at the word “Atlas” on the front.
Customer: “Acalas.”
Me: “That clearly says ‘Atlas’.”
Customer: “Stupid blonde b****, who hired you in a bookstore if you can’t f****** read?”
Me: “You can’t read the word ‘atlas’, so please know I won’t be taking your comments to heart.”
This is when the “Harry Potter” books are still coming out. The sixth book had been released about a month before this conversation.
Customer: “I’ve just finished the sixth book! I can’t find the next one on your shelves.”
Me: “It hasn’t been released yet.”
Customer: “Can you go to the back and get me a copy?”
Me: “There are none back there, either, because the book is not yet for sale, because it has not yet been written.”
Customer: “It’s not been printed yet? Oh, that’s okay, just go to the back and print a copy. I can wait.”
Me: *Thoroughly dumbstruck* “Ma’am, we don’t print the books here; we just sell them. And the next Harry Potter book hasn’t been written by the author yet, so even if I had a printing press back there, I couldn’t make you a copy.”
She looked around, her face turned redder than I thought a human face could turn, and then she yelled:
Customer: “You are useless!“
With that, she stormed out of the building, hitting things with her handbag as she passed them.
My manager then came over to me, asked me what the h*** I had said to her, and proceeded to laugh hysterically.
One time at my bookstore, we had a traveling group come through that was putting on a show at all the stores in the chain. It was all about the children’s book series “Junie B. Jones”, which is about a Pre-K kid. The person playing Junie B. was a somewhat short girl in her twenties. She came out and told stories and sang, and the kids had a great time.
Afterward, the kids could get their books “signed” by Junie B. In reality, it was just a rubber stamp, but the kids didn’t care; they were just amped to talk to her.
But one father was kind of grumpy about it.
Father: “You’re just stamping the books? You don’t even sign them?”
Junie B.: “I’m only five.”
The father clammed up immediately and looked embarrassed. We could tell she had gotten that question before with the speed and ease of her reply.
