Bookish Things & Bookseller Rants

If you've been a recent reader of my blog, you'd be forgiven for thinking that I write a travel blog and that's that. I don't mean to whine (at least not much), but life has been on the hard side for the last 5-6 weeks.  I've been working 10-14 day stretches at a time with precious little time off.  At home we've battled black mold, power outages, no hot water, no heat, no internet, all topped off with a little flooding in that same time period. We were without a washing machine or dryer for that entire period, so I've had to get a little creative when it comes to laundry. (Hint: that's code for "I washed my underwear in the sink and just kept wearing the same 4 pairs of jeans without washing them.")

And did I mention that my bookstore just celebrated its 50th anniversary?  That's a pretty big milestone for any business, peoples, but for an independent bookstore?  That's practically unheard of.  We had mad fun but it was insanely busy in the long run-up to it. We capped it all off with a 1960s dance party and it looked a lot like this:

Or maybe this:

It's been so long since I've written a book review that the task somehow seems too monumental to tackle right now, so I'm just going to share some bookselling things that have happened to me recently. They range from adorably delightful to a little odd to unspeakable rudeness:

Customer calls and wants to know if we can order a book that she wants to buy that she has checked out of the library.  I ask for the title.  She says, "Oh, I left the book in the other room.  Should I go get it?" No, that's okay.  I've got ALL DAY.  Let me just try to guess what it is.

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Customer calls before the store opens and leaves message on the store answering machine, wondering if we have a certain book.  I call him back about 15 minutes after the store opens and say no, we don't, but I can have the book here in two days if you'd like to special order it.  He says, "Well, that's just a terrible way to run a business." Confused, I ask him what he means.  He actually raises his voice and say, "I shouldn't have to leave a message just to see if you have a book.  When I call Barnes & Noble, I get a real person to talk to." I try to explain that he called after hours.  He says, "Oh, no I didn't!  I called at 9:15 this morning and I had to leave that message." "Sir," I explain, "the store doesn't open until 10:00."  LONG pause. "Well, then I guess that makes me the terrible one," he chuckles.

Most upset customers don't recognize if they're ever in the wrong, so I really appreciated his saying that.  "Well, I'd say 'terrible' is putting it a little too strongly, sir," was my reply and he laughed. And then he ordered the book.

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Customer on phone: Can you get me X book?
    Me: No, I'm afraid that book is out of print, but we have somebody on staff who does those searches. Shall I have her take a look and call you back?
Customer, worried: Oh, dear.  I have to leave the house for a while.  I'd hate for her to be offended by leaving a message.  I have an answering machine.  Do you think that would be okay?
   Me: Yes, of course.
Customer: Are you sure she won't be offended?
  Me: Yes, quite sure.

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For our store's 50th anniversary, we gave away over $50 worth of books & goodies every hour at the :50 minute mark (get it?). We even let people decide whether they wanted a grab-bag of books for adults or children. One woman who won opted for a kids bag, but she called back the next day, quite irritated and asked if she could return them.  When asked what the problem was, she said that one book was too old for her 5-year-old son (the $40 Mo Willems book called Don't Pigeonhole Me) and that the other ones her son wouldn't be interested in because they were about a girl.  Never mind that it was a complete set of Madeline books in hardcover. In other words, picture book classics. We asked if maybe her son had a friend to share the books with, but nope. The woman said if she couldn't return them to us that she'd just throw the books away.  Excuse me?

It is the height of rudeness to call and complain about the free books that you've won, and in this instance it's an extreme case of gender bias. I mean, heaven forbid we encourage our children to read anything that doesn't reflect themselves back in the pages. But to then threaten to just throw those books away?

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But not all of my customer stories are quite so ugh. One of them is, as promised, adorably delightful. A father and his little girl walk into my store for the first time.  When the father asks if we have a children's department, we direct him to the lower level.  There's an interior stairway connecting the floors, with a landing in the middle, from which one can see the kids' department sprawled out below.  When the little girl reached the landing and saw all of the books and games, she gasped, "Oh, this is my paradise!" Except she was young enough to still have a slight lisp, so it came out, "Oh, thith is my paradithe!" I'm sure if I'd ever wanted children I would have wanted to take her home with me. 

She might not have been as cute as this panda ball, but it was close...

How about y'all?  What interesting bookish and/or work stories do you have to share?