We have a very friendly regular who seems to buy books by the metre. She seems to be lost in a book when I approach her.

Me: “Sorry, [Regular], we’re closing in five minutes. Want me to check out the books in your bag while you decide on that last one?”

Regular: “I don’t think I can decide in five minutes. I’ll just come back.”

Me: “Yeah, I don’t want to rush you, but we do have to lock the doors soon and I don’t want to accidentally lock you in here all night.”

The regular then starts looking around the store longingly.

Me: “You’re imagining being locked in here all night, aren’t you?”

Regular: “Did I look that happy?”

The regular did leave, sadly, at closing time. She was back the next day to buy the book!

I’m working in a museum, running the coat check. A woman turns to her teenage daughter and says:

Patron: “This is why I’m making you go to college — so you aren’t an uneducated idiot who hangs coats.”

I just so happen to have my graduate school textbook, “Strategic Planning for Arts Non-Profits”, under the counter. I slam it on the counter.

Me: “Would you like to discuss the regulations for 501c3 organizations, or maybe you’d like to edit my graduate thesis?”

The jerk took her coat and just walked out.

I was a subject librarian at a university. I received an email from a professor who had recently retired from another school and moved to our city. He wanted to donate decades worth of books and journals to the library.

This sort of thing is often a LOT more trouble than it is worth since much of the material will be old, duplicate, or online, but some of the stuff he described sounded good, and frankly, he might be someone willing to donate money to the university in the future if we built a relationship. Also, he understood and didn’t mind that much of the material would end up being discarded, so it seemed like it would be worth the trouble of a few months of sorting through the material.

Being a cautious soul, I checked all of this with the collection management librarian, the dean, and probably half a dozen others. Everyone agreed that it seemed like a reasonable decision and gave me the go-ahead.

I contacted the professor.

Me: “I have the approval to accept the gift. Where are the materials?”

Professor: “In my old house in [State halfway across the country].”

None of us had thought to ask that. The library had to pay for shipping.

CONTENT WARNING: Gross

I run a bookshop. Some years ago — before the Internet became so widespread — I received a phone call from a man looking for books on breastfeeding.

Okay, some guys like to understand what’s going on and feel involved. I find a book.

Man: “Are there lots of pictures?”

Turns out his sister had just had a baby and watching her feed the little one had gotten him rather excited. He wanted something he could… enjoy himself… with.

To this day, I’m still not sure if this was a prank call or not. (He never came in for the book.)

Related:
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 30
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 29
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 28
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 27
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 26

I learned how to read before preschool, so when I was around four or five. If I remember it correctly, I was the only child in preschool that could read. Once a day, we sat down in a circle to sing. Every day, a kid got to pick the song by pulling a card out of a stack of ten, completely at random if you couldn’t read the lyrics on the back. When my turn was up, I quickly read the lyrics and then picked my favorite song. My teacher lost it and yelled at me in front of everyone.

Teacher #1: “You can’t do that! It’s unfair and it’s cheating!”

I was sent to timeout and wasn’t allowed to play with the rest of the kids in the “activity room”.

In first or second grade, we had a book to read. Our homework was usually to read a few pages of that book. I was bored at my afterschool care because the other kids were several years younger, so I read the entire book. Of course, this teacher also lost it and yelled at me.

Teacher #2: “Don’t read ahead! Reading ahead gives you an unfair advantage over the other kids!”

In fifth grade, our teacher gave the entire class a challenge. After reading a book, we were encouraged to write a short review and stick it to the classroom wall. If we wrote enough reviews to make it around the entire room, she’d prepare a surprise for us at the end of the year. Guess what? The teacher got mad because I read too much — three or four books a week — and told me that my book reviews didn’t count.

Looking back, I find it sad that none of these teachers just gave me extra books or assignments, when it was obvious that I enjoy reading. Instead, they actively tried to stop me from reading.

Luckily, none of this dissuaded me from enjoying reading!