'Tis the Season: I got your anecdata here

Holidays are winding down.  The store is filthy from winter mess, covered with bargain bins and half-off signs, and full of customers.

The cutest customers ever were two teen sisters (maybe twins - at most only 1 year apart) who share a room because they converted the other bedroom into a library.  A library.  The whole room is filled with books.  They were in spending Christmas book-buying money (and think about the buying power when there are two of you and you can pool your money since you like similar things) and having a hoot while doing it.  So cool.

I had a customer looking for I am Malala.  To my surprise (and delight), it turned out that we had sold out on Christmas Eve and were waiting for more stock.  I may have done the "yes!" thing a little too enthusiastically.
Customer: Why are you so happy that you're out of Malala's book?
Me (oops, that probably didn't look so good): Oh, sorry, not happy that we're out but happy that it sold out.  We sold out of all the conservative-white-dude books earlier this month and got a ton of restock.  But I've been trying to get people to buy more Malala for weeks.  Nice to see that it finally kicked in.
Customer: Awesome.
And we high-fived.  And she ordered it (it'll probably come Monday anyway since we had a boatload on order).

The Fifty Shades of Gray Party Game and expansion packs went in the post-Christmas bargain sale.  In 24 hours we hadn't sold any copies of the actual game but all the expansion packs sold.  Uh.....

And, lastly, here's your anecdata (a term borrowed off Rebecca and Jeff of BookRiot) about using bookstores to browse but buying from Amazon:
I spent the first twenty minutes of my shift yesterday looking for books on Norse language and history for a customer (male, college-age-ish).  We didn't have any language books on Old Norse since those are academic textbooks (he didn't want Norwegian or Swedish language-learning books) but I did eventually find a few books about the history of the Vikings, one of the Eddas, and Bengtsson's The Long Ships (a novel, yes, but well-researched).  I handed the books to the customer...who then took pictures of the covers and bar codes and handed them back.
Me (pretty well stunned, because no one has ever done that in front of me): Do you want me to hold these for you?
Customer: No, I'm just going to buy them on Amazon.
Then he walked out the front door.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you induce a murderous rage in a bookseller.

'Tis the Season: Do you know all the capitals in the world?

We are now into the hellish part of the holiday shopping season, the part where people have the most oddball requests and we have zero time in which to fulfill them before Christmas Day.

Sometimes we just get lucky.

Dad (with two teenage girls in tow): Do you have books about Portugal?
Me (Reminder: we are in Iowa): Well....I'm pretty sure we have some travel guides right now.
One of the girls (with a voice to match all her A&F gear):  We want a book about Portugal.
Dad: Like about where the country came from.  We have a themed Christmas and they picked Portugal this year.
Me (WTF, I bet you knew about this more than three days before Christmas, and who is "they" because I want to "have a discussion" with them): Well, let's head over to the history section and see what we have.
Dad: You have a history section?
(Excuse me while my eyes roll out of my head.  So we get to history and lo, there with the books about Spain is one about Lisbon.  It's the only book about Portugal in any way.)
Me: Here you go.  This is about Lisbon, the capital of Portugal.
Dad: Wow, do you know all the capitals in the world?
Me: Probably.  At least most of them.
Other teenage girl: Do you know where we can buy things made in Portugal?

We are the whitest white people ever.  Oy.

'Tis the Season: "Classics" isn't really a genre

The "Where are your classics?" question is a late-breaker this year.  I hadn't got that one until yesterday when I had three of them.

A sample conversation goes a bit like this:
Customer: Where are your classics?
Me: Well, we don't have a separate section.  Some titles are on a display, but most are in their specific subject arranged by author.  Is there a specific title or type of book you're looking for?
Customer: *blink blink blink* A classic.
Me: *headdesk*

"Classic" really isn't a genre.  If you talk to a Classics major, then you get the Greek and Roman Classics which encompass philosophy, history, and drama.  In more general terms, a classic work of literature is basically something approaching at least 100 years of age and is still read (more or less - this is one of those "definitions" that's become very elastic) and those span every conceivable genre and subject.  Plain old fiction, romance, mystery, science fiction and fantasy, mythology, western, drama, poetry, essays, history, philosophy, cooking, sporting, economics, travel, religion, and on and on and on.

All classics are not alike.  If you want something sort of crazypants and are a Lovecraft (who, depending on definition, is approaching classic author status) fan, then you're probably not going to be over the moon with Dickens.  You'd be happier with Kafka or Stevenson.  If you are easily offended, then don't read DH Lawrence.  If you're looking for something short then Eliot or Milton are not good choices.

So when the bookseller asks if you are looking for a particular book or subject that might happen to be a classic piece of writing don't just say "classic."  We do actually want to help you find something you like (or find something the recipient of your gift will like).  Put some thought into your answers to our questions.  "Anything" doesn't count as an answer.

Otherwise, we'll leave you alone in the corner to cry over the thickness of Don Quixote and War and Peace (and be assured, we have found the thickest copies we have).

'Tis the Season: Hey, she's a girl...

I haven't had that many whacktacular customer encounters this season, but I had one on Monday that nearly had me in stitches (when I wasn't steamed).

I was near the front of the store, madly stickering books for the big display there when one of the merch managers came up with a customer (male, mid-50s).
Merch Manager: Well, a lot of women buy this.
And he handed the customer a copy of the new Nicholas Sparks novel.
Customer:  They do, huh?
Merch Manager: Yep.
Customer (points at me): Hey, she's a girl, why don't we ask her?
Me (immediately, and with a touch of the "oh hell no" in my voice): I wouldn't read that.
Customer: You wouldn't?
Me: Nope. Who are you shopping for?
Merch Manager: His wife.
Customer: She's in her fifties, sort of religious but not really, and she's a librarian.
Me: Does she normally like maudlin, weepy romances?
Customer: Oh, no!  No, she wouldn't like that.
Me (HA!):  Well, let me see...Ok, what sorts of things does she like to do?  Does she like outdoorsy things, like camping or sports?
Customer:  She's a girl.
Me (would like to kick him in the shins right about now): Oh now, just because you're a girl doesn't mean you can't like those things....do you think she'd like something quiet and reflective, maybe not religious per se?
Customer: Sure.
And this is how I hand-sold two volumes of Alice Munro short stories (Dear Life and Too Much Happiness - unfortunately, I was out of Hateship Friendship Loveship Courtship Marriage, which is my favorite) on the off-chance that she hadn't jumped into short fiction (he actually wasn't much help beyond the description he had already given me).  Take that, sexism.

'Tis the Season: Surviving Black Friday

For the first time since starting work as a part-time bookseller, I opened on Black Friday.  It was also the first year the store opened at midnight, so I volunteered to work a 12-hour split shift.

Making dollars, yo.  It actually wasn't so bad.  I lived.  And didn't even really have any nasty customers.

Although I did kind of want to punch the ones who came up to the registers, yawned, then commented about how tired they were and how awful it was that I had to work so early in the morning.

And there was the dude who tried to convince me that the hardcover graphic novel he was holding was the same as a paperback box set advertised as 50% off (because "a graphic novel is called a trade in the business" - direct quote) and, therefore, it should also be 50% off.  Uh, no.  It's 3:30 am and I'm tired, not brain-dead, and since I put up the signs on Wednesday night I know exactly what they say.

A customer informed me that our bathroom wasn't "pretty".  It's a bathroom, not a lounge.  Go down the hall for "pretty" bathrooms.

Teenage girl: *SQUEALS* IT'S A TABLE FULL OF PERFECTION!!!
(it was a display of John Green novels, huzzah for enthusiasm on Black Friday)

Exhausted-looking mom: I need the Richard the III book.
Me:  Ehrrrr....are you looking for the play, a historical novel, or a biography.
Exhausted-looking mom: You mean there's more than one?
(Yup.  Definitely.  After some discussion, she disclosed that it was for her son's high-school English class - process of elimination concluded that he was most likely in need of the Shakespeare play.)

Grumpy mom at the register: This book is $7 at Target. (Holds up new Wimpy Kid book)
Me: I'm sorry, we don't price match.
Grumpy mom: Never?
Me: Never.
(She bought the book - I wanted to high five her kid for whining about how he didn't want to walk alllllllllll the way back to Target and he wanted his book noooooowwwwwww)

So many customers bought JJ Abrams S that I wanted to kiss them all and tell them how much of a sensory experience they were getting or giving. (Yeah, OK, that's a little weird, but you understand.)

Customer:  I need an inspirational book for my little niece.  She's 17 and she doesn't really know what she wants to do or if she wants to go to college.  She's pretty quiet.
Me: *thinks that teenagers hate it when adults try and tell them how to plan their lives* Well, we have a self-improvement section...
(after going through section, we conclude that none would really work)
Me (has a brain wave - this was going on, like, hour 10 of work): Would you like to look at a novel? (Explains all about Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl with much enthusiasm - customer looks over the book and thinks this is a great idea.  Score!)

In my favorite encounter of probably the entire weekend (I worked Friday, Saturday, and Sunday), I helped a mom and her eighth-grade daughter for about thirty minutes.  They were looking for a book to buy that day (car ride) and ideas for later, especially series.  We went through all the YA series - nothing too violent, not too much romance....hmmmmm.  She thought Hunger Games was too scary and Twilight was "gross" (agreed, honey) and she hadn't read more than book 1 in each series; mom thought Divergent would be too scary also (+1 to mom for reading a book ahead of her kid to make an informed decision).  She hadn't read Harry Potter or Rick Riordan - interested, but not really sold on either.  After talking so much with her, it became apparent that she was a really young eighth grade....and she was wearing a GLEE t-shirt.
Me:  Do you...watch GLEE?
Kid:  YES!!!!!  I love GLEE!
Me: Who's your favorite character?
(because I had a feeling...)
Kid:  Kurt!! No, Rachel.  Ok, I like Kurt and Rachel best.
Me:  Did you know that Chris Colfer has started writing a series called Land of Stories?
Kid:  *emits sound in the frequency range of a dog whistle*  NOOOO!!!  HE DID!??!??!
And just like that she had found her book for the day - The Wishing Spell.  I don't think I could have pried it back out of her hands (good thing our scanners at the register can stretch).  Luckily for mom, there's book 2 to purchase for Christmas - I also had them interested in Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles, Cat Valente's Girl Who series, Wonder, and The One and Only Ivan.

'Tis the Season: My child has a Lexile score of...

October has arrived.  Cool weather, pretty fall color, yummy drinks composed of apple cider or hot cocoa, and I get to wear scarves (I like scarves as an accessory).

And standardized testing, if you are or have a school-age child.

In my area of the country, it seems school districts have chosen testing that calculates a Lexile score for a child's reading level with an associated score range.  Lexile is a company that uses a software program to analyze books for word usage, sentence length, etc. and produce a Lexile Text Measure for each book (I copied the description from the Lexile Analyzer site):

The Lexile ® measure of text is determined using the Lexile Analyzer ®, a software program that evaluates the reading demand—or readability—of books, articles and other materials. The Lexile Analyzer ® measures the complexity of the text by breaking down the entire piece and studying its characteristics, such as sentence length and word frequency, which represent the syntactic and semantic challenges that the text presents to a reader. The outcome is the text complexity, expressed as a Lexile ® measure, along with information on the word count, mean sentence length and mean log frequency.
Generally, longer sentences and words of lower frequency lead to higher Lexile ® measures; shorter sentences and words of higher frequency lead to lower Lexile ® measures. Texts such as lists, recipes, poetry and song lyrics are not analyzed because they lack conventional punctuation.

I'm not a huge fan of putting a "score" on a book based simply on a computer generated metric because the software doesn't take into account context or content of a book.  Or form, cf poetry.  But this seems to be accepted by the educational powers-that-be, so it's here for the time being.  However, I don't know how well or often the scores are explained to parents, because I wind up in a lot of parent-bookseller conversations like this:

Parent: My child has a Lexile score of XXXX.  She has to read books in the range of XXXX-XXXX.  Will this work?
Bookseller [thinks]: Fuuuuuuck.
Bookseller [says]: Well, lets pull up the Lexile site to see what it suggests for that range and go from there.

The major problem here is that the parent hasn't THE FOGGIEST IDEA what books go with the child's Lexile score or how score ranges line up with likely grade-levels.  They don't have/haven't been provided with a list of suggestions for the range.  They haven't looked up Lexile on the Internet to get a handle on what this thing is (I mean, hello, the Internet is the Information Superhighway, Google it).  And their poor child is off in the corner trying desperately to read another Warriors book by Erin Hunter or Wimpy Kid or the new Babymouse before the "grown-ups" force her into reading stuff that she thinks she doesn't want to read.

As booksellers (and by extension librarians, a population I am not a member of but respect greatly), we are the information gatekeepers the parents turn to in this situation.  We are the ones to take an abstract range of numbers and turn it into a physical pile of titles and authors.  We have to differentiate between editions because scores can fluctuate wildly and Lexile isn't very informative (type "The Sun Also Rises" into Lexile - the old Scribner edition has a score of 610L, the ISBN for the reprint isn't found, and the Modern Critical Interpretations edition is listed with a score of 1420L....confusing, right?).  And we are the ones who have to know what stories lay between the covers of those books so we can explain the contents to the parents. 

In almost every customer interaction regarding Lexile, I have had to find books for a child who reads significantly above grade level (at grade level is generally pretty easy and parents with children under grade level often have a list of recommended titles as a starting point; for some reason, those children who read above grade level don't have many recommendations).  For reference, Lexile gives a grade approximation for the score ranges:

Even though the approximate ranges are pretty wide, a book or series that is popular among peers isn't often in the "right" score range for an advanced reader.  Some titles are marked "NC" meaning a non-conforming score (higher than intended audience) but it's hard to tease those out of a range during a search (I've tried).  It can get pretty emotional when the child cannot find anything he or she wants to read or that parents will allow them to read that "counts" for their Lexile score.

The biggest grade-to-score discrepancy I've come across was a seventh grade boy (and a bit young socially for his age) who had a Lexile score greater than 1100.  His Lexile range was approximately 1150 - 1210.  The boy had to read at least five books that semester in his range to pass English and he was already behind. His father had done some online research and was at a loss - he was having trouble finding content-appropriate books in that score range (there was also a religious consideration, so a lot of recommended fantasy titles were automatically out).  The boy was very open to reading Stephen King, who has a lot of high-Lexile score titles, but the idea was vetoed by Dad due to language (and probably the religious consideration as well).  Dostoevsky was perfectly acceptable to Dad, but the kiddo really couldn't get excited about it (he was into Gary Paulsen's Brian series, but that wasn't even close).  Some Dumas was in the right range but not the more appealing titles (The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask are both under 1000).  Gary Paulsen's My Life in Dog Years was just in range, so I was able to interest both parent and child in that.  I sold them on The Hound of the Baskervilles and then hit paydirt with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.  The boy had a friend with an Asperger-like syndrome and they were friends in their advanced math classes. Whew.  Finally, three books and a reasonably happy father.  But I couldn't help but think - what are they going to do as the child continues through the school system?

You're probably wondering where I'm going with all this since this isn't quite the usual tone for a "'Tis the Season" post.

Well, I really just wanted to put this out there to maybe help save parents, children, and teachers (and possibly other booksellers and librarians) some grief.  I would like to ask school administrators and teachers to work with children and parents to come up with lists of possible books appropriate to both grade-level and Lexile range (and I understand if you do this and the parents forget, are obstinate, or leave the list at home when they head to the bookstore).  For parents, Lexile provides a map with lists of titles for score ranges.  It's a good place to start when trying to find books.

I would also like to ask teachers to be less rigid when assigning Lexile-related reading assignments because this seems to be where children have the most trouble.  I have so often helped kids who love, love to read but have found that none of the books they find appealing "count" for a reading assignment because they aren't in the "right" Lexile range or have no score because either the book is too new or has an un-evaluable format.  These kids feel disheartened, that they're failing, that the things they love are unimportant, and I hate seeing their disappointment when I've gone through the entire stack of books they've picked out and not a single one was in the right range.  I had a little girl just burst into tears once when I told her The Last Olympian  - the book she so desperately wanted to read - had a score of 620L; she had to have books greater than 700 or her teacher wouldn't count them at all.  Please let children with high Lexile ranges count some of those lower-scoring books toward their reading assignment (say, an exchange of two non-Lexile books for one Lexile book, not to exceed half the assignment) or perhaps give them extra credit for those books as long as they're keeping up with the Lexile assignment (if you're already doing that, bravo!).  These kids are reading because they love reading and they're already reading outside of school, which is sort of the point of those types of assignments.   I rarely hear of a child being penalized for reading above his or her range so I think there's a compromise that can be reached for those kids who want to read but have trouble finding books due to age or content.

So bring your Lexile ranges to me and I and my fellow booksellers and librarians will do our best to find what you like to read as well as what you need to read - if we're very good, that book will fill both requirements.  'Tis that sort of season.

'Tis the Season: As the school year winds down...

The end of the school year (both K-12 and college) brings a flurry of odd bookstore encounters.

Two high schoolers (likely boyfriend/girlfriend) are looking around the history section with that utterly lost look on their faces.
Me:  Can I help you find something?
Girl:  Well...we need to read 1984 but it's not here. (Waves at US History)
(Oh honey, no....)

Two teachers are wandering around in the fiction section.
Male teacher:  Do you have any Faulkner?
Me: Yes we do - which book are you looking for?
Female teacher:  Oh, any are fine.
(I showed them the shelf of Faulkner, they made appreciative noises, and I left them to browse.  About 15 minutes later, they come find me.)
Female teacher:  Do you have any shorter Faulkner?
Me (shorter?):  Are you looking for short stories?
Female teacher:  Not really.  These are pretty dense.  (Shows me Absalom, Absalom, As I Lay Dying, and The Sound and the Fury)  We were hoping for something like this but shorter.
Me: Well...I don't see any abridgements available in the catalogue.  There are literature guides like Sparknotes.
Male teacher: Oh, those will work.  We just need it for Contest Speech.
(I've never come across a kid who did Faulkner for Contest Speech - I can't decide if that would be interesting or just plain nuts)

Parent with an armload of AP biology and calculus study guides: Are these books guaranteed?  The tests are next week and my son needs a 5.
(Unless the courses and exams have changed greatly since 1996, which I doubt, the result is more dependent on whether one paid attention in class all year rather than the cram session but, no, a study guide is not a guarantee of a perfect score.)

Customer (college-aged male): You don't have any copies of Paradise Lost.
Me (finding this very hard to believe because I saw some not long ago): Well, let's go look on the shelves in poetry.
Customer: Poetry?? But I don't want to read a poem.
Me: Here it is, under Milton in poetry.
Customer: Do you have one that isn't a poem?
Me: No. Milton wrote a poem about the fall of Satan.
Customer: Do you have it in English?
(Give up while you're ahead, big guy)

Very pleasant college student on the phone:  Do you have a copy of Ulysses?
Me: We do, do you need a particular edition?
(She needs the Knopf with the 1961 text, which we had on hand)
Student: Great! I'll be in to pick it up tonight.  Will it take long to read?  I have to have my paper done by the end of finals.
(Finals were about 10 days away when she called.  Um....)

Most often-heard response to the statement "Unfortunately, I don't have a copy in the store but I can get one in about a week":
"But I need it tomorrow!"
(And then when I mention things like libraries and ebooks I get a withering look in return)

I also have a more generalized comment about Lexile scores, but will save that for a different post.

'Tis the Season: My favorite request of 2012

This request from Christmas Eve pretty much took the cake:

A very smart-looking, well-appointed lady (chic overcoat, lots of jewelry, conservative haircut, good handbag) asked:
Can you recommend a book for an aging, leftist hippie who likes Carl Hiaassen?  Oh, and he's really smart.  He's a genius.

Hot. Damn. 

Aside from the fact that on Christmas Eve I was extremely limited in what I could recommend since I couldn't order anything and get it from the warehouse by the time we closed (which was in about 3 hours), what does one recommend in this instance.  Is Carl Hiaassen a hippie?  He doesn't look like a hippie.  Is it the mystery what he likes?  The only things I could come up with that were hippie-ish and genius-ish were John Irving and WP Kinsella.  Would those be good for Carl Hiaassen fans?  Especially aging ones?  What about geniuses?

I was torn between recommending something really snobbish like Naked Lunch (which an aging, leftist, genius, hippie has likely already read), laughing because everyone is a genius (I mean everyone - if granny asks for a book for her 11 year old grandchild, he/she is always an advanced reader, always, and therefore needs Dickens even if the poor kid is trying to suture the Wimpy Kid box set to his/her arm), and just grabbing a whole load of thrillers in the let's-throw-some-things-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks philosophy.

'Tis the Season: The "Things You Want But Can't Have" Edition

So, amongst all the gift requests for "I need a book about wolves for my fourth grade son" and "Where's the Oprah book?" we get requests to order books that are existentially challenged.  They are either in process, planned, or completely non-existent, but completely unavailable to me as a bookseller.

Welcome to a list of "Things you want but can't have":

• Entwined With You (available in May, sorry)
• The fourth Fifty Shades of Gray book (announced but likely unwritten as yet)
• A Dance With Dragons in paperback (maybe May, since the last release date got pushed back)
• The sixth A Song of Ice and Fire book (in progress, not finished yet - GRRM has a blog where he occasionally posts tidbits and updates)
• The new Robert Jordan book (A Memory of Light is not available until January 8 - save your gift cards)
• The new Patrick Rothfuss book (I'm not sure when The Doors of Stone will be available; I have heard May but the date hasn't been officially announced)
• The new Rick Riordan book (well, since your kid already read The Mark of Athena I don't have any newer than that)
• A new book by Christopher Paolini (sorry, no dice)
• Catching Fire and Mockingjay in paperback (unfortunately that format is not available for retail sale, blame Scholastic)
• Any Wimpy Kid books in paperback (again, blame Scholastic)
• The Twilight-from-Edward's-perspective book (likely never to be published since it got "leaked" years ago)
• The new Harry Potter (which was really a request for The Casual Vacancy, which the customer didn't want after learning it wasn't a Harry Potter book)

And in the line of regular, random, crazy-pants requests/incidents:

• A non-fiction novel (eh? And what he actually wanted was a local-yokel author's book of history)
• A book about Ohio State football (which we don't have on hand since we're in Iowa and the University of Iowa is down the road making OSU football anathema)
• Gabby Gifford's gymnastics book (er, do you mean Gabrielle Douglas?)
• A customer told me how much more he gets laid now that the Fifty Shades & Co. books are out.  (TMI, dude, beyond TMI.  Also, please bathe.  Ack.)
• Books on panning for gold (which have to be ordered since we don't really have a market for those here in a breadbasket state)
• I tried to hand-sell Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks to a woman who told me it sounded "weird" then turned around and bought Gaiman's Coraline (which is also a "weird" book, but whatever)

Only five more bookselling days until Christmas!

'Tis the Season: Football, School, and *sigh*

Weekends are heating up at the store.  Lots of traffic, lots of questions, and lots of *headdesk*

Related to football season:
- "Why don't you have books on [insert name of visiting football team from across the country here]?"  Because they aren't the home team or even in the same state.
- "Do you have a book that explains football to kids?" The child in question is using a teething ring, no lie.
- "Do you have the game score?" And he wasn't even interested in the game being played in town, which was the game I had up on ESPN.

Related to school:
Customer: "Do you have books on Egypt?"
Me: "Like a travel book?"
Customer: "Uh...sure!"
So we go to the travel section and I get out all six books on travelling in Egypt.
Customer: "My daughter has to write a report on the Sphinx."
And I turn to see a kid who is maybe ten years old, possibly eleven.  Unfortunately, we do not have books about the Sphinx specifically in the store, at all, or at any store in the area, and none of the books in the history section (adult or child) have much information on the Sphinx at all.
Customer: "Well, how is [my child] going to get her report done by Monday???"
*headdesk*
Seriously???!???!!  Perhaps you could try the library since those books are already purchased with your tax dollars.  

Customer on phone:  "Do you have City of Glass?  It's a graphic novel."
Checks computer - unfortunately we don't have Paul Auster's graphic novel adaptation of his novella.
Customer on phone:  "Isn't that by Cassie Clare?"
Me: "I believe there are planned graphic novel adaptations of the Mortal Instruments series but those aren't available, yet."
Customer on phone: "Oh, yeah, so I guess it is by that guy you mentioned.  Do you know where I could get this? I have to have it read for class by Tuesday."
*headdesk* Ugh, seriously?  Library?  Has the general population forgotten about this very valuable resource for getting homework and school work done on time?

Customer (walks up to me): "Chaucer."
Legit, that was the opening to the conversation.  No, "Excuse me" or "Can you help me find something?" just a word.
Me:  "Er, are you looking for something specific?"
Customer: "Chaucer."
Me (ARGH!):  "Do you need a specific title or translation?" 
Customer (blinks a bit at me):  "Poetry?"
Me (not the answer I was expecting): "Er, right.  There are a couple of different major poems.  The Parliament of Fowls or The Canterbury Tales, perhaps?"
Customer:  "Oh, yes, tales!" 
And hands me a Post-It with "Chaucer Wife's Tail" written on it.  And, yes, it was spelled like that.
Me: "OK.  This edition here is probably the cheapest if you don't need a specific edition."
Customer:  "I need an easy one."
Me:  "OK." (hands her a different volume) "This is the No Fear edition which will have a modern English translation on the facing page.  It's pretty user-friendly."
Customer: "Does it have the Wife's Tale?"
Me:  "Yes, it has the entire set of Tales so that would include the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale."  And I show her where they are in the book.
Customer: "Oh, good.  Do you know where I could get a summary?  I'm a tutor and don't have time to read this."
*headdesk*  I hope they aren't paying her very much.

Customer:  "Where are your Christmas sales?"
Me:  "We don't have our holiday sales out yet, ma'am."
Customer (aghast):  "Why not??"
Um, because it isn't even Hallowe'en yet?  Keep your shirt on, we'll have them out the first week in November.

And in the "Awwwww" department:
I'm back in the Kids' section and the cutest little girl with pigtails and glasses comes up to me.
Girl: "Excuse me please, could you show me where you keep the Percy Jackson books?"
(and of course she has the cutest lisp, too)
So I show her where the books are on display.  She very solemnly looks over the table, chooses Percy Jackson #4, and turns to me with a great big smile.
Girl: "I love books!  Don't you?"
Me: "I do!"
Girl: "When I grow up I want to read books all day!" 
She hugs the book and scampers off but turns around and comes straight back.
Girl: "I forgot to say thank you!  Thank you for helping me!"
And off she goes again. Dear parents of this child - your kid is adorable and I hope she stays that way.  Kids like her go a ways toward making a long day shorter.

'Tis the Season: Are we there, yet?

The bookstore has been batshit crazy as of late.  People have suddenly remembered THEY NEED TO BUY CHRISTMAS PRESENTS and RIGHT NOW!  Which is a) a good thing for business, but b) kindergarten rules apply at the bookstore:

1.  If you (as a customer) see me (a bookseller) woking with another customer (showing him/her books, listening as the customer describes what he/she is looking for, looking something up on the computer while said customer looks over my shoulder, etc) DO NOT butt into the bookseller-customer conversation by saying "I just have a question."  Congratulations, so does the person I am currently helping.  Now you look like an inconsiderate jerk and makes me not want to help you at all.  The only exceptions are emergencies like "Call 911!", "I think there's a fire!", "I'm having a heart attack!", or "I lost my child!"  Trust me - I, and my fellow booksellers, will drop everything to help you in those situations.  Your need to find Paula Deen's Southern Cooking Bible does not constitute an emergency.

2.  Remember having to line up to go to the lunchroom?  The same principles apply to queue lines during Christmas (or any time of the year, really, and are totally not limited to bookstores).  Line-jumping because you are "in a hurry" only gets you redirected to the back of the line.  Pretty sure the people who lined up politely are also "in a hurry" but will be put-out because you budged in front of them.  And some of those polite customers are vocal if you do!

For the chuckles, some random gems from the season:

• "I need a copy of Wine Spectacular."  (How about Wine Spectator?)
• "Does the Elf on the Shelf come with the shelf?"  (Er, no.)
• Related:  "Elf on the Shelf looks like it was resurrected from my Grandma's garage sale." (I completely agree...tacky and creepy...yet, I must sell them, boo.)
• "Do you sell Wal-mart gift cards?"  (No, Wal-mart's up the road.)
• "Do you sell Amazon gift cards?"  (This one always tempts me to just be really rude.)
• "Do you have my class textbooks?"  (It was finals last week.  Some college student just assumed we would have copies of her $300 economics textbook on hand for her to use.  Because we're the library, donchaknow.)
• "I need the book for the TV show."  (For serious, which TV show?  Game of Thrones?  The Walking Dead?  Simpsons?  Mad Men?  Downton Abbey?)
• "Do you have books about South Carolina ghost stories?"  (Says the customer with the "Shop Locally" button from the Chamber of Commerce; dudes, we are in IOWA...unless you want Flannery O'Connor, which is about as close as I can come with on-hand stock, we have to get that from one of the stores in South Carolina.  It took nearly 10 minutes for me to convince her that paying for the item in store and having it shipped directly to the recipient from our warehouse was equivalent to "Shopping Locally".)
• "I need a book for my [insert middle-grade age here] grandson/granddaughter.  He's/She's an advanced reader."  (They're ALL advanced readers, every single one of them, yet when I actually get books that would be high school level - which is the level claimed - for a fifth grader those are always "too hard"; be honest with yourself and pick out something the child will actually read.)
• "Do you have an abridged version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone?"  (Considering thsi is a children's book, written around a 4th grade reading level...no...but I do have a Sparknotes if you'd like that instead.)
• "I want the English translation of Romeo and Juliet for my daughter in high school."  (Must. Control. Fist. Of. Death.  Please, take this No Fear Shakespeare edition and run before the literature snob comes bursting out of my chest to hurl vitriol at you.)
• "Do you sell athletic socks?" (Not yet.)
• "Do you have The Self?" (This was a toughie...after going around and around with some questions, I figured out she wanted The Help.)
• "Do you have the book I Killed Lincoln?"  (Close...so very close....)
• "This book is too long."  (It's George RR Martin, what did you expect?  We've only been waiting for YEARS for it.  Also, this was said about the new Stephen King...nothing out of the ordinary there, either.)
• "This book doesn't have a Lexile score."  (Take it up with Lexile - and then tell your child's teacher to stop relying on a computerized system that downgrades Hemingway because he uses short sentences and won't score books in blank verse because the computer can't "analyze" them.)

Bonus:  Overhead at the hospital on Hanukkah:  "That's a mariachi band - it has an accordion." (No, that's a klezmer band - accordions are not exclusive to South of the Border.)

'Tis the Season: But it's only Halloween!!

Yes.

Two, count 'em, TWO customers asked where our Christmas sales were at in the store.

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS LITTLE BABY JESUS - IT'S HALLOWEEN!!  GAH!!

Also, I have dealt with myriad "But I need to have that book read by tomorrow for school, why don't you have it?" whiners.  Standard answer:  "Because your fellow classmates beat you here, the University/JCollege/High School doesn't order your course books for this store, and it is available as an ebook."  I need a button that says "I am totally not responsible for your irresponsibility".

Other random gems:

• A Dance With Dragons is so not available in paperback.  Yes, I know it weighs a lot and isn't cheap.  I have no control over either if we are talking books made of paper, ink, and paste.  If we are talking ebooks, it's maybe half the cost and the weight of only tens of thousands of bytes.  Your choice.
• I don't care about your political views.  I sell the books.  I am highly unlikely to read book.  There are so many other better things to read.
• I mended all the plush in the store last week and sewed all the hermit crabs back into their shells.  Totally worth it to watch customers warily approach the info desk when the bookseller standing there is armed with needles, pins, and oversize dressmakers' shears (I forgot the embroidery snips, oops) and barricaded by a pile of plush.

Who needs love?

So every year at the store we go from Christmas signage to Valentine's Day signage - with a brief stop-over for New Year's resolution-type books - in a blink.  So for six weeks we get to live with the Valentine's Day table brimming with relationship, sex, and dating books in varying shades of pink, pink-er pink, and red.  For someone who is always acutely aware that Valentine's Day is SAD (Singles Awareness Day) it can get old fast.

So I got to thinking "Why not an anti-Valentine's Day type of display?" Not neccessarily against Valentine's Day, per se, but one where the love stories don't end happily or not as the reader would wish.  Also known as no HEAs (Happily Ever Afters).  Just for a little balance.  And would be full of good books to read.  Why not, indeed.  So I made one (with input from a few other booksellers - the display is buried in the fiction section but I plan on catching unsuspecting book browsers with the sign "Who needs love?"):

The Time-Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
On Love by Alain de Botton

I deliberately went with more recent novels than classics (because if I did classics, Anna Karenina would be front and center followed by Jude the Obscure and Wuthering Heights as well as very obvious plays from Shakespeare).  Do you think I'm missing anything essential?


(Looking at this list again I must have had Booker awards on the brain....)
ETA: One or two things on the display that slipped my mind writing this post.

'Tis the Season: That's more like it

The season is heating up - customers, customers everywhere and nary a place to walk without running into/over someone.  All the phone lines are blinking angrily and everyone has "Just one question" which is best interperted as 100 questions and 10 minutes of time.

Elderly lady on the telephone: "I'm looking for Packing for Mars by Mark Twain."
Me: "Packing for Mars is by Mary Roach - it's a science book about space travel."
Elderly lady on the telephone: "Are you sure it's not by Mark Twain?"
Me [grrrrrr....]: "Yes, I'm sure.  In fact, I'm looking right at it."
Elderly lady on the telephone: "Oh....does Mark Twain have a new book about Mars?"
Me: "Uh, no.  Mark Twain's autobiography was recently published according to the tenets of his will."
Elderly lady on the telephone: "Oh...does he talk about Mars in that book?"
Me [holy crap]: "I'm not sure, I'm not that far into it but this is Mark Twain and I suppose he can talk about whatever he wants in his own autobiography." [pause] "Are you perhaps thinking about A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court?  That one is about a man who travels back in time to Camelot."
Elderly lady on the telephone: "Is that one new?"
*headdesk*

Graduate student-aged man: "I'm looking for a book but I don't know much about it so this could be hard.:
Me: "Shoot."
Graduate student-aged man: "The title is The Immortal Life of something something something..."
Me (and the two other booksellers at the desk with me, in unison):  "Henrietta Lacks"
So I fetched the book off the table and he asked: "So what is a hard question?"
Me: "A hard question is 'Do you have this book I saw six months ago? It's blue.' And it turns out the book they want is actually yellow and we haven't had a copy in the store in three years."
Graduate student-aged man: "People really ask you things like that??"
Me: "Yep.  All the time."
*fer shiz*

On Friday I was working with a customer in a wheelchair - it was so crowded it was easier for me to run around and bring everything to her than try and navigate all the people since no one seemed terribly interested in making way for her.  On my way back, I was stopped by a middle-aged man:
Him: "Hey, I have a question."
Me: "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm with a customer right now. [Gestures toward my customer] If you'll wait at the customer service desk a bookseller will be with you shortly." [The customer service desk is maybe 15 feet away across the aisle]
Him: "But it won't take long - that other person can wait."
Me: "I'm sorry but I don't think it would be polite of me to assume that." [And walked the last few feet to my customer who made a very loud fuss about how nice it was to have booksellers who give such wonderful personal service...the man had the good sense to look embarassed before slinking off to the customer service desk]

I was accosted by a teenage couple who proceeded to pick each others' teeth with their fingernails while I looked up a book for them.  I am not kidding.  I stared at them until they stopped then I handed them the bottle of hand sanitizer to use.  The epidemiologist in me was winning that one no matter what.

Last night, the manager did a final sweep of the store and then locked the doors at close - she announced on the PA that the doors were locked and what closing tasks each person was doing.  Turns out we almost locked a customer into our store.  I only found her because she scared the hell out of me - she just popped out of the gift section while I was gathering up some new titles for display and asked if I had a magnetic dart board. [We don't]  I pointed out that it was well after closing and that I'd be happy to see about ordering a magnetic dart board...I was gesturing toward the front doors and trying to call the manager at the same time.  We finally got the customer checked out but none of us could figure out how we missed her in the first place.  None of us had seen her come in and she didn't make a peep when the "Doors are locked" announcement was made - she was so "meh" about it.  I'm pretty sure I would squawk loudly were I locked in a store as a customer.

A few choice bon mots:

• "I'm looking for a book in a series.  I don't know the name, or the author, or what it's about...where do you keep your series?" [sigh]
• "Do you have something that would make my parents happy?" [Er....]
• "Do you have books about that woman who says Brett Favre sent her naked pictures?" [said with waaay too much enthusiasm]
• "You close at midnight, right?" [Hellz no]
• "Can I print my paper on your computer?" [Guess who...it's finals week here]
• "There's something unidentifiable on a shelf." [We couldn't determine if it was mud or a chewed wad of tobacco or poop or what....it was about eye-level on a shelf and none of us were willing to examine it closely.]

'Tis the Season: It could be worse

Oddly enough, holiday season this year has had fewer incidents of customer craziness (at least for me, I have plenty to complain about when it comes to employees).

I've had a customer ask me what exit you take to get to Cedar Rapids from Iowa City. [There's no exit.  You get on I-80 and follow the signs for I-380 Northbound...it goes straight through the center of Cedar Rapids.]

I spent a good twenty minutes with a grandma who had absolutely zero idea what her grandchildren like at all.  The list she got from her daughter wasn't very informative, either, being full of errors and conflations.  I suggested gift cards; grandma decided to call her daughter again. [I still stand by the gift card idea.]

I had a customer ask me if all the millions of ebooks come preloaded on the e-reader. [Er, no.  I don't even want to think about how many gigabytes that would be.]

Another bookseller told me he had a customer who insisted the e-reader "made it's own Internet." [He swears he's not making that up.]

Someone asked if we sold paint...as in the kind you put on the wall. [Lowe's is across the highway.]

A coworker observed that Tuesday was "Little Old Lady with Very Long List" day - she said the LOLs always keep their VLLs on an old steno pad in their purse.  Next to the Kleenex.

I also had a very (very) bashful little boy who wanted to thank me for hosting his school's bookfair. [I personally didn't host it the store did, but he was so darn cute and shy.]

Once again, student fun!

• I was asked if we had a "quiet study room".  She didn't seem to understand the sentence "No, we do not have a study area, we are a bookstore not a library." [I hear all three public libraries and all the University branch libraries have very lovely study carrells/rooms...I've made use of them from time to time.]
• I keep getting the "But my paper is due tomorrow! Why don't you have my book??" line. [Nope, still don't care about your lack of time-management skills.]
• Some idiot actually told me he doesn't like to go to the library and wanted to know what his options were for getting access to a rather expensive, and what seemed like, academic book. [I really wanted to say "Well, I guess you're shit-outta-luck" but I didn't since I was working.  What I really did was hop on the UI libraries site, pull up the catalog, and find the book he wanted...which is on reserve as a book for his course.  I suggested he start by making use of the reserve copy at the library.  I don't think that was the answer he was looking for.]

'Tis the Season: Already?

Unfortunately.

Exhibit #1:  Customer looking for a new book by Bruce Springsteen, of where there is none.  Customer huffs up to the desk some time later and slaps a book onto the counter, interrupting my conversation with another customer.  She wants to prove that I was lying.
Me: You asked me for Bruce Springsteen, ma'am, that book is by Rick Springfield.  If you had asked for Rick Springfield it would have made my job much easier.  If you'll excuse me, I am assisting this gentleman with his purchase.
Her:  Oh *little voice* sorry.
In a masterful twist, the customer had wanted to take the Rick Springfield book to the concert he was giving in Riverside so she could have it signed.  A friend of mine was at the meet-and-greet - Rick Springfield didn't sign a thing.  Karma's a bitch.

Exhibit #2:  Horrid child screaming in the aisle "I wanna PRINCESS BOOK!!!!!" 
Harried mother: "Santa doesn't bring presents for greedy children." 
Horrid child: "I don't care about Sanna, I wanna PRINCESS BOOK!!!!!" 
Hey lady, please take your child out; on the way, could I interest you in a lovely item called "Elf on the Shelf" - it will spy on your child and report to Santa, so we can make her neurotic as well as spoiled.

Exhibit #3:  Too many books that play some sort of Christmas song when you open them.  Add one child to start them all playing at the same time and watch the booksellers twitch.

And we still have students underfoot:
- a request for Owl Moon by Jane "Wollen" for a class project (how about Jane "YOLEN"?)
- I was asked for a "less hard" copy of A Wrinkle in Time....dude, CHILDREN IN GRADE SCHOOL are able to read that book, that's the target audience, you are IN COLLEGE (but I want to take that class if Madeline L'Engle is on the syllabus)

On the plus side, I got to spend an hour assisting a special ed teacher who works with disadvantaged teens; she bought lots of books and we had fun.

'Tis the Season: Cue the returns!

Now we enter the part of the holiday season where we become lucky to even make money because people are returning their holiday gifts.  The season of returns is greatly complicated by:

• people who do not read the return policy printed on the back of the receipt
• people who did not get a receipt and wish to return their gift (for which you get store credit at the lowest-selling price at the discretion of the manager; we absolutely will not give you cash for the list-price of the item so if you have an issue with your gift you need to be honest with the giver and ask for the receipt...or just suck it up and quit whining)
• people who got a gift receipt and only want cash for the item (gift receipt = store credit for the purchased price or you can exchange for a different item and we'll credit the purchased price of the returned item; take it or leave it)

Repeat the above three ad nauseum.  But now some funnies:

• An embarassed customer asked for the nearest location of a competitor bookstore; she'd been gifted with their gift certificates and we don't have one of their stores in the area, closest is about 90 minutes away (awkward)
• A little kid hugged me after I helped him find the Percy Jackson books (I generally don't like being touched by strangers but happy little kids who like to read books....I'll make an exception)
• Totally gave some 10-year-old-ish kid the death-glare for getting a boat-load of manga off the shelf and leaving it everywhere in the graphic novel aisle...then I asked if there was anything he wanted us to hold at the cashwrap for him to purchase (he said no); came back 5 minutes later and the kid was gone but he'd put all the books back (never underestimate the power of learning how the death-glare and "mom" voice work on children)
• A mom dragged her teenage daughter over to have the poor kid thank me for helping Mom find the books the daughter loves so much (I felt sorry for the daughter because, yeah, being forced to thank someone you don't know is pretty awkward and it's doubly awkward when you're desperately trying to be cool; I told her she was quite welcome, I was glad she liked the books, and, PS, mothers do grow out of the "embarassing" phase)
• A college student asked if we "had the textbooks for his class" and I said I could order them if he would give me the titles; he looked confused and asked why I needed the titles (yup, this is our future; having to explain to a college student that I am not clairvoyant was the highlight of the conversation...I also had to explain that the UI has a campus bookstore and most of the professors order the textbooks there; which begs the question...what did he do during the fall semester?)

And that does it for holiday season 2009.  Have a Happy New Year!

'Tis the Season: Part 4 and Happy Holidays

I didn't work this last Saturday (it was the weekend before Christmas and the "powers that be" decided it would be so-much-better-for-desperate-customers to staff the customer service desk with people who have less than one months' experience rather than have the experienced booksellers even working at all; Merry Christmas and ho-ho-ho).  On to the funnies (or not so funny as you'll see):

• A customer kept exclaiming "Epic!" at the end of every sentence while I was explaining how store orders work; it got so bad I started wondering whether he had Tourette's or a drug problem (maybe he just gets really excited about the little things, who knows)
• Some lady complained that we didn't have enough staff working (lemme explain some basic economics to ya...)
• A toddler was having a completely serious half-English/half-gibberish conversation with a plush Cookie Monster in the midst of the chaos that is the children's section during Christmas; outside of my own nieces, that's probably the cutest thing I've seen in a very long time
• At an author signing, someone asked the author's publisher (publicist? didn't quite catch who that guy was) if the book had any vampires in it; the publisher/publicist said "No" and the author jumped right in and said "Yes, tell them yes! It can have anything they want in it!" (the book is a novel about a father-son relationship; the author was being completely sarcastic but the publisher/publicist didn't look terribly amused)
• A mom had a long list of classics her English-major daughter wanted for Christmas (Jane Eyre, Northanger Abbey, Adam Bede, Barchester Towers, Mrs. Dalloway, Sons and Lovers, etc); I had everything in the store but two titles (out of about 14, she bought nine of them); she was so happy I found everything for her in under 5 minutes, without having to look it all up on the computer, that she asked me to recommend a book for her to read for fun "just for myself" - I had her buy The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (having a happy customer ask for a personal recommendation is as good as a gushing "thank you" in my book)
• "I need a book that tells you how to use those sticks" - dead serious, that's an exact quote; so I'm like sticks....chopsticks? um, I-ching? camping?....  Nope, knitting needles; his wife wanted to learn to knit (oh boy, do I have a lot of knitting books and, BTW, here's a card for my favorite LYS, the owner loves to teach new knitters)
• Someone was looking for books to take to a friend living in a foreign country and read me off a list of "banned" authors she found online but didn't know anything about: Khalil Gibran, Chinua Achebe, Milan Kundera, Iris Chang, JD Salinger, and Salman Rushdie; I didn't even have to type anything to find books for those authors in the store because, well, I know who all of them are and at least one of them has a notorious literary history (you guessed it, I went straight for The Satanic Verses because the customer had no idea Rushdie had a fatwa issued against his life in the 1980s...and that's like OMG, HUGE...and then she asked me what a fatwa is/was so I explained...and then she told me she grew up in a Muslim country...and now I'm thinking "What the hell?"  I recommended a few other titles - Midnight's Children, The Prophet, Things Fall Apart, The Unbearable Lightness of Being - but she went with The Satanic Verses; never underestimate the power of banning a book/threatening the life of an author on the ability to attract attention like a black hole)
• two days before Christmas a customer complained that we had nothing he wanted to buy as gifts; he wanted all the popular stuff we sold out of over the weekend and are waiting on a re-stock to arrive (it's not my fault you saved your Christmas-gift shopping until the last minute and you want the hot items your fellow humans beat you to because they were smart and went shopping over the weekend; you need to shut up and buy some gift cards)
• I don't know what's in the water lately but customers keep asking about my "I read banned books" button attached to my name tag (I wear it all the time; no one asked me about it during Banned Books Week); best question came from an older man who asked me what banned book had I read most recently (I'm still reading The Satanic Verses and finished American Psycho in September)
• also had a customer get snotty with me because I refused to sell her a copy of a book we were holding for another customer (lemme explain the concept of first-come-first-served: we take holds over the phone and Internet so next time call ahead before you drive two hours to buy something we can't sell you because another customer asked for it before you did; PS: I am impervious to whining, complaining, and bribery)
• a very lovely specimen of the human race smeared feces all over a stall in the women's room (we didn't find it until after close because no one told us about it and I can guarantee it happened after 930pm because that was the last time I checked the bathroom for messes; none of us are paid enough to clean up dried-on shit)

And a little creep factor, just because it's Christmas:

• A man who was previously observed "pleasuring" himself in the children's section of the store, and who got away before we could confront him (or have him arrested), was observed AGAIN in kids reading pornographic magazines and watching the little kids play with Thomas trains; a customer pointed him out but he got away before our kids' bookseller confronted him (consider this a PSA: we can't do much about this creeper/pedophile until we can get a good description/picture to the police - he disappears before we get a good look at him and the general description of "old white dude with a ball cap" isn't very specific - so please don't leave your children unattended in our store or in any store, period; we're not babysitters and there are some seriously bad people hanging around)

That's it until after the holidays.  Merry Christmas everyone!

'Tis the season: Part Three

Now we come upon that part of the Christmas shopping season where it becomes impossible to have any sort of real conversation with a customer without being interrupted by some other "customer" who "just has one question" (usually about the location of some other store in the mall or the store/mall hours).  Come on, people, kindergarten rules apply at all times, and unless your "question" is a medical emergency/lost child you need to wait your turn.

• I had a pair of very nice grandmas in (separately) buying books for their graddaughters (who are probably college-age judging by the wish lists); the first needed books by that "Gerald Lewis" guy who wrote the "Chronicles of Nautica" but not those books...there was one on divorce (errr, yeah, we've got all of CS Lewis's theological works); the second was looking for some "Chuck Pontiac" books but not the diary one (she bought a gift card instead once I summarized the plots of a few of Chuck Palahniuk's books, I tried to get her to buy Fight Club)
• some girl was sprawled out on the floor smack in the middle of our fiction section reading an ancient mass market - completely oblivious to the customers trying to shop around her; I finally had to tell her to find a chair after the customers complained she was blocking their access to the shelves and aisles (which she was - I had to step over her three times and she didn't take the hint)
• someone was looking for books on DIY taxidermy as a gift (I've got books on how to field dress and use all of your deer, but no taxidermy)
• this was the weekend before finals and the STUDENTS (grrr) were out in force hogging the tables and asking if we had their course textbooks in stock (which we don't for this reason); one girl even plugged her laptop into an outlet in some random corner of the store and left it there for at least three hours (I have never in my life been so tempted to take a customer's "abandoned" belongings and lock them in the office just to teach her a lesson)
• A lady about my age showed me the Twilight-themed Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights editions and asked if I knew anything about the books (only that they're like my favorite books ever, sheesh); I talked her out of those editions and into ones that were slightly cheaper and annotated (important when trying to decipher Joseph's ramblings in WH)

And, once again, I have an "I am not even remotely responsible for your homework" entry:

• a ninth-grader (maybe, she looked kind of young) showed me a copy of a teen paranormal fantasy/romance book and asked if it counted as science fiction (not really) because she has to write a book report about an SF novel; so I went and showed her all sorts of SF things (Ender's Game, Leviathan, Boneshaker, etc; I was pretty partial to Phillip K. Dick about her age) and then she says "But my teacher said we could use Twilight" in a snotty-pouty way (grrr, you know what, you asked me a question and I gave you an answer; if your teacher is willing to let you use Twilight then you're going to have to take up the question of appropriate choice of project with him/her; I don't think Twilight is SF at all, I'm completely not responsible for your homework, and I have more paying customers than I can shake a stick at right now; stop wasting my time)

PS: I probably logged 8-10 miles running up and down the store for 8 hours.  We got slammed.

'Tis the Season: Part 2

I survived Black Friday and Saturday and lived to tell about it (more or less because I came in at 2pm and closed - the major shopping rushes were finished by then).  I actually had a lot of really nice customers - a blessing for a change - but there were a few amusing incidents:

• a customer asked if we sell scarves....we do sell book-themed umbrellas but no scarves (we did have some Harry Potter-themed ties when the seventh book came out 2 1/2 years ago)
• a customer complained because we didn't have Sarah Palin's book displayed prominently (it's #1 on the bestseller list for non-fiction, do we need to wrap it in fairy-lights or something?)
• later, another customer complained because we were actually selling the Sarah Palin book and we shouldn't sell crap (hey dude, I only find the books and take the money, I don't particularly care about anyone's politics, if you don't like it, don't buy it; I know I won't buy it and, by-the-way, we sell a lot of "crap" in varying degrees of taste, just fyi)
• a tweener walked all the way around the Twilight Saga display (aka "the shrine"), picked up a few items, looked at them, and then came over to me to ask where Eclipse was....she had actually picked up the book and looked at it before coming to ask me for it (I fear for the future of our country)
• helped a very nice grandma find books for all her grandkids; she was doing pretty good until she couldn't remember how old the last one was (I got her to narrow it down to "middle school girl" who "seems to read pretty good" - I suggested The Westing Game and Redwall with gift receipts just in case)

And, once again, we have some students among the contributors:

• at least two students/cafe-table-hogs-with-laptops complained about the lack of outlets (gee, this store was built before Wi-Fi networks were even a thought...if you'd like to contribute to the Capital Improvements fund for the store - aka BUY SOMETHING YOU LITTLE BRAT - we might be able to upgrade the wiring sometime in the next 15 years)
• an undergrad needed a copy of The Pilgrim Hawk so she could finish her homework (we don't have a copy onhand because her professor ordered all the course books through the local indie bookstore, which is closed by 9pm on Saturday nights); when I informed her that we would need to order it, she bugged out her eyes and asked (incredulously) "But how will I get my homework done?" - I suggested she hit the library as soon as it opened on Sunday, but she didn't quite like that answer (this falls back under the categories of either a) I am not even remotely responsible for your homework or b) maybe you should get your act together before you fail out of school)