The Book Is There, You Just Have To Go There And Back Again

Me: *To customer about to leave empty-handed.* “Is there anything you were looking for and not finding?”

Customer: “I was looking for a nice hardcover copy of The Hobbit.”

Me: *With evil grin.* “Nice? How nice?”

She ended up buying the $195 leather-bound boxed edition, plus another new hardcover Tolkien I pointed out to her and which she hadn’t read. (The posthumous one about Gondolin.)

I always start with the hope that anybody about to leave a bookstore empty-handed has just not been helped sufficiently. In an ideal world, both the customer and I should end the transaction feeling like we have won.