NP, Amusing Piece on Book Store Customer

[cj hurtt]

i work in a bookstore. this stuff happens to me all the time.


>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