Tales from the Bookstore

For the sanity of booksellers everywhere

This entry is not about any recent customer or one customer in particular, but it is rather a plea to all you customers out there. Please, please please put you books, calanders, and whatnot back where you got them. If you can't find where you got whatever you were looking at, at least put it in the right section. That's all I ask. The following are examples of this annoying behavior.

Last Christmas, when my older brother still worked with me at the store, this lady comes up to the cashwrap and asks him how much as calender was. He told her and then she, for the next 5 minutes, tries to shove the rather large calender in amongst the small books and impusle buys on the cashwrap. Not only it horribly obvious this is not where the calender goes, the woman does it right in front of my brother's confused eyes.

One night, I was at the cashwrap and all was quiet. Then in a whirlwind of backpacks and foreign babble and pack of asian kids zoom into the store. I stood, overwhelmed for an instant, then I put on my customer service smile. My smile froze as I watched the children systematically take the calenders from the display spinner, look at them, turn around and place them amoung the hardback sci-fi books. I was in shock. Then with the same whirlwind feeling they left like a bad, noisy, asian dream, leaving me with the job of replacing all the calanders.

We have a section which contains the sexual relationship books, including the Kama Sutra (large and pocket size) the Ultimate Sex book, and various letters to Penthouse and other 'adult' books. Well, every so often we have to take a little trip back to that section because the books like the Kama Sutra and Ultimate Sex have a tendancy to travel. For some reason people don't like to be seen looking at those books in that section. I mean its perfectly okay, apparantly, to look at them in another section, like nature, or spanish, or even children's (which is really annoying), and of course the sports section, which I suppose some people could consider reading those books in that section appropriate. But the point is they never put them back in the appropriate 'adult' section. So we, as booksellers, have to go on scavanger hunts around the store looking for those books. Especially the pocket Kama Sutra. I mean, sometimes its fun trying to find where in the store these books went...but often times its just a hassle. So, if you are compelled to read these books please put them back in the right section.