Friday, February 04, 2011

Out of the mouths of babes, er, customers

For anyone new to my blog (anyone?), I work in a bookstore and these are the things that really happen there.

Two gentlemen come into the store. My co-worker and I are busy, so I just keep an ear out in case they need help.

"so how do you find anything?"
"oh look, it says alphabetical by author, so let's start here"

To co-worker "You'd better go check them out, they're in the psychology/self-help section"

Overhearing co-worker "Who are you looking for"

"Tom Clancy"

Yeah, we keep him in psychology ... Doesn't everyone?


"How are the books shelved" the customer asks me. "Alphabetical by author within their genre".
"By first or last name?"
For today only, we have put them by the author's first name. You'll find Michael Connolly, Michael Palmer and Michael Crichton all together; same with John Connelly, John Grisham, John Sandford .........

Saturday, July 3 .....
Customer enters store where I and two co-workers, along with a smattering of customers are gathered in the front. She walks up to one co-worker at the front counter. "Are you open today?"
No comment from the peanut gallery ... except for the fact that she was blonde and was looking for a book on how to increase your brain power. Honest ....

Young girl barely out of tweens, texting the entire time while with mother. Up at the counter as mom checks out ... looks up suddenly as if she's just noticed where she was. "We have to pay for these?"
Look below ...

"Can we just borrow the magazines?"

No, we don't charge. In fact, the payroll fairy hands us money from our non-sales.

"What do you mean we have to pay something? Doesn't our credit cover the entire bill?"
Yeah, the phone company/electric company loves it when we pay our bills in books .....

"I'm looking for a book." Oh oh, I've heard this one before.
"yes?"
"I can't remember the author" Yeah, she/he writes a lot of books.
"Do you remember the title of the book?"
"No, but it's a romance" Uh uh, done this, been there ... got the headache to prove it.

"Where do you keep your historical romances?"
"In the romance section."
Blank stare
"All of our romances are shelved together ... we don't seperate the contemporary romances from the historical ones"
Another blank stare ..... yeah, I was lying, we do .. and in the mysteries, we divide them by courtroom dramas, medical mysteries, coroner's, police, animals who solve mysteries ........

11 comments:

Bailey Stewart said...

hmmm, the black background doesn't work well with the bolding. Might have to change this.

Bailey Stewart said...

that's better for now ...

Bebo said...

You really do have some doozy customers... And thanks for clarifying why the orangy background. It's better than all the glaring white outside! :)

catslady said...

Truth being funnier than fiction lol.

Brandy said...

The blonde one-good grief! I like the new background.

Bailey Stewart said...

I'm not too happy with it .. I miss by old one, but it's not available in the new templates. I really liked the black one I had, but stuff doesn't show up. Oh well ...

Alexa said...

LOL, Bailey! Thanks for these! People really are strange, aren't they? Except us, of course!

Bailey Stewart said...

yeah, we're not strange at all ..... my voices told me ...

CamsShel said...

Hate to tell you this...I have actually started coversations with, "I'm looking for a book, but don't remember the title or the author..." I've come away several times with the book, a couple times with the title, and only once with nothing. ;-)

Bailey Stewart said...

Actually, if you had seen other entries on this through the years, the joke is ... "but it's a romance, there's a man and a woman, they fall in love ... something comes between them and they break up. At the end they get back together" ... yeah ...then they look at me like I should know exactly which book that is. Now, if they can describe the storyline a little better ... I've often come up with the book out of the blue.

Bailey Stewart said...

My favorite one, though, was the customer that came in and asked for that Christian fiction book about the shed .. um, "The Shack"?