NP, Amusing Piece on Book Store Customer

[Henry Musikar]

More Funnies From the World of Bookstores

By Bob Levey, Washington Post

Friday, October 26, 2001; Page C09

Ro-bare has been remiss. For more than three months, he has been sitting on
sidesplitting submissions about life in bookstores. It is high time to put
Robert's remiss-ness into remission.

The following tales floated my way because of a column I did early in the
summer about how dopey bookstore customers can be.

"Has Shakespeare written anything new lately?" one hopeless customer wanted
to know.

Or how about:

"What is nonfiction?"

"I need a book for my wife. It has 'water' in the title."

"Do you have 'The Diary of Ben Frank'?"

And, as the saying goes, others too numerous to mention.

I asked whether bookstore employees might want to add to this list. They
did, in droves. Here are some of their best submissions.

Cammie Backus recalls a time when her employer offered a half-price sale. A
customer fished a volume off a shelf and tried to pay for it. Both she and
Cammie discovered that the price was given in pounds, not dollars.

The customer asked Cammie why this would be. "I replied that it had probably
been published in Britain," she wrote.

"A thoughtful pause," and the customer exclaimed: "But it's in English!"

Kate Flegal is still trying to get over the customer who asked her how the
books in her bookstore were organized. Alphabetically by author, Kate
replied.

"Well, that's stupid," said the customer. "How are you supposed to find
stuff?"

Then there was the time Kate worked for a large discount chain bookstore in
Reston. A male phone caller asked if the store carried "X-rated magazines."

Kate replied that it did. He asked her to go see whether certain volumes of
Playboy were in stock. But he didn't supply dates. "He just had descriptions
of the pictures on the cover!" Kate said.

You will need to have stayed awake in English class to appreciate this one,
from Mary Julius. She says that sometimes it's bookstore clerks who are out
to lunch, not customers.

Proof: "I remember asking for a copy of a particular book by George Eliot,"
Mary writes. The clerk said they were fresh out, but "they did have several
of his other books."

(Mercy paragraph for those who napped through English: George Eliot was the
nom de plume of a female writer.)

>From James D. Souza, a former Library of Congress employee who's now retired
and living in Honokaa, Hawaii:

"At Trover's Book and Card Shop near the Library of Congress, a customer
wanted to know if the store had 'The Diary of Anais Nin.'

"A clerk replied, 'When did she leave it?' "

This one happened during Michelle C. Scott's "college job." Some poor loon
walked in and asked for 'Less Miserable.' "

Bob Nolan weighed in from the B. Dalton in Columbia Mall with this classic
telephone exchange:

Bob: "Hello, B. Dalton, Columbia Mall, Bob speaking. How can I help you?"

Dingdong on the other end: "Do you deliver mulch?"

Bob: "Ummmmm, no. We're a bookstore. B. Dalton. In Columbia."

Dingdong: "Soooo, you don't deliver mulch?"

And finally, C. Richard Kotulak weighs in with a goodie that happened in a
downtown office but might well have happened in a bookstore.

Richard was working as a clerk. A fellow clerk wasn't sure how to spell a
certain word. The boss told him to look it up in the dictionary.

"When the clerk came back with the dictionary, he said to the boss: 'How did
Webster ever learn all these words?' "

Speaking of books and the culture they contain, here's a neat story from
Scott Douglas, of Bethesda.

Scott recently tried to sell some secondhand books. As usual, the used
bookstores in his neighborhood wanted only a small fraction of what he
offered. So he was left with two full boxes.

What to do? Scott left them all at a nearby street corner, with a sign that
said:

"Free books. Get yourself some culture."

He reports that nearly all the books were gone within a short time.

,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_

Keep Cool, but Care

Henry