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Nov
15
What looks like crazy…(Adventures in Bookselling, v.8)
2008 at 8am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
We now return to The Book Lady’s regular programming. Without further ado, I give you Adventures in Bookselling, volume 8,
What looks like crazy…
Last Friday afternoon, with only 20 minutes left in my workday, I stopped at the Info desk to look for something, and a customer asked me to help him find a book…turns out it’s one of his favorites, about China and how they’re evil. Right. Then he asked for Strong’s concordance to the Bible. So we go to the Christian reference/inspiration aisle, and I pull several different concordances. He then asks for a book I’d never heard of, but another customer on the aisle says she’d just seen it and pulls a copy out for him. Then my customer, who up until this point seemed normal enough, starts talking to the other customer.
He tells her all about how “TV, movies, and hard pornography are leading people by their noses into chambers of sin,” and about how the destruction of the world is coming soon unless we do something. Then he starts talking about drugs and how awful they are (ok, he’s right on that point), to which the customer replies that she’s a psych nurse and has seen firsthand the horrible things that happen to people. Then my crazy guy says that he’s been staying in hotels for the last fourteen years (read: living in hotels) and that he’s been drugged several times by the vapors from other people’s drugs coming through the vents. Riiiiight.
I realize things are starting to get weird, but oddly enough, the other customer appears, despite her psych ward experience, not to notice that this guy’s a nutjob. I walk back to the Info desk to hide….five minutes go by, then ten, and they’re still talking. He’s asking her where she goes to church, and then he’s lecturing her on why she should not, in fact, become a Catholic, as she has planned to do formally this weekend.
And then the woman takes out a piece of paper and actually starts writing down the things this guy is saying! So I leave. I couldn’t take it anymore. My coworkers told me the next day that they stood there for at least another half hour, then the guy returned on Saturday and tried to start the same conversation with a different customer, who was smart enough to run away.
On Sunday, my store hosted a big author for a book signing. His family lives in the area, so even though we’re not the biggest store in town, we get his appearances because we’re his “home store,” so to speak. We do this twice a year and have it down to a science, so things generally run very smoothly. All was good until, about halfway through the author’s talk, I noticed this same character standing near the back of the ground. I alerted my colleagues to keep an eye on him, and the next I looked up, he had walked away.
Then he appeared in the book signing line, and when he got up to me, I asked him to open his book so I could turn it to the correct page, and he informed me that he didn’t have a book but wanted to speak to the author about something else. Uh-oh. So he approached the table, shook the author’s hand, and said he had something important to talk to him about and would wait until everyone else had had their books signed. At least he was polite about that.
When all the books had been signed, he went back up to the table and gave the author a “gift,” a copy of his favorite book, the one about why the Chinese are evil, and a large journal in which he had written all of his “knowledge” about the “very important topics” that he thought this author should be writing about. He also pulled out his driver’s license and handed it to the author’s manager, so she could write down his contact information. Throughout the whole encounter, which lasted only 8 minutes despite my worries it would go on forever, the author was very gracious (I suppose he gets this kind of thing all the time), and the customer left without getting upset.
It could have been a lot worse, but seriously, how crazy do you have to be to think a) that your conspiracy theory is the undeniable truth and that b) this major bestselling author has the time and/or interest to care about your craziness? Good grief.
In the bathroom…
I don’t know what it is, but it seems that our bathrooms are hotbeds of craziness. Here are a few things I’ve overheard in the ladies’ room:
- Numerous cell phone conversations in which the person doesn’t seem to care that whoever she’s talking to hears flushing and knows they’re being called from a public bathroom
- Children telling their mothers they’re afraid of the pink toilet bowl cleaners that hang inside the toilets and are worried that “it’s going to get me.”
- A woman singing a Mary J. Blige song at the top of her lungs. I coughed to let her know she wasn’t alone, and that didn’t deter her, so I flushed, and she just kept on going.
- Every possible variation on “No honey, don’t touch that. In fact, don’t touch anything. Bathrooms are dirty.” The best is when I overhear this but then realize that the person does not make her children wash their hands. Ugh.
Things that have happened in our bathrooms:
- A flasher. ’nuff said.
- One of our booksellers once found a woman bottlefeeding a kitten in the ladies’ room. Why, I ask you, why?
- A customer rushed out of the men’s room to inform us that a man was having a seizure on the floor in the handicap stall. It turns out that the man had stripped naked, and the convulsing was actually, well, the result of the fact that he was masturbating. I’m not sure what’s creepier–the fact that he was masturbating naked in a public restroom, or the fact that he willingly laid his naked body on the floor of public restroom.
- A customer asked a bookseller to help him find a book…while they were both actively using the urinals. Doesn’t this violate several clauses of the man code?
Obama Nation
Don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled about our new president for several reasons, including the fact that it’s about damn time Americans acknowledged the fact that we are a diverse nation that needs diverse leadership. Electing our first African-American president is a monumental event, and we should celebrate and commemorate it. But people are getting a little nutty about it.
Time, Newsweek, and several other magazines released limited-printing collectors’ editions featuring their coverage of the historic election. And everybody wanted a copy. We had to set a 2-per-customer limit and keep them behind the cash registers so people wouldn’t get too excited and just run off with them. One guy came in three times throughout the day, I suppose in hopes that there would be a different person at the register each time and that no one would recognize him. Other people got angry that we only had a limited number, and then they got angry that we were sold out when they waited 5 days after the election to come look for the magazines.
But what takes the cake is that one customer stood outside the store and tried to buy other customers’ copies from them. And he didn’t seem to understand why that wasn’t OK. As luck would have it, a police officer arrived at the store around that time (to tell us a flasher had been seen had the mall down the street and might be coming our way), and the customer thought we’d called the cops on him. I’ve never seen a person change directions so quickly.
When one of our booksellers commented on all this craziness to a customer yesterday who asked why we’re keeping certain things behind the registers, the customer responded, “Well, that just goes to show you what kind of people support Obama.” Since when did it become okay to make comments like this in public and to assume that everyone around you agrees? I’m very sure that if McCain and Palin had won, there would have been equally hysterical reactions from our Republican customers regarding their victory and the historic election of our first female vice-president, and the exact same craziness would be happening around Palin-related materials.
Some people just shouldn’t be allowed to leave their houses.
No related posts.
Very funny stuff!
Hilarous stories, and a nice change of pace from all the intense conversations of late. I hope that’s over
Re Obama Nation…I am a bit worried about all this adulation. The poor man has enough on his plate the need to live up to all these outragrous expectations. But is does illustrate how hungry we all were for a leader we could respect.
Ok, there is just too much to comment on here! I’m thinking you must live in a large city to get so many flashers/weirdos in your store. Total craziness!
that gal worked in a psych ward right? Maybe she wasn’t scared of him, but rather believed giving into his delusions was the best way to handle it.
re: political comments…I never fail to be amazed that people think everyone agrees with them! My students all have very different positions, but they always talk to me like they assume I agree with them. Even when what they are saing is what I would consider inappropriate to say. Freedom of speech…gotta love it.
From the same store:
As one of the only male members of staff around one evening, I had to brave the inner sanctum of the men’s restroom to retrieve five magazines that had been stuffed into the toilet bowl.
So what did I retrieve? Assorted Playboy magazines? No, there were two car magazines (of the more conservative nature), a computer magazine, a travel magazine and a daily newspaper. Oh, and a pocket edition of an iPhone user’s guide was sitting nearby.
The other day I was covering someone’s break in the music department. An 80 year-old man came up to the counter to pay for two classical music CDs. All was going smoothly until I asked him if he had a store membership card.
“No I damn well do not!” he snapped.
Okay, fair enough. I guess some customers get tired of being asked the same question over and over again (although if you’re shopping frequently enough to be annoyed by the question then you’re probably shopping frequently enough for it to save you money). So, I didn’t pursue the matter further and continued ringing up his transaction.
When I handed him the portion of the receipt he needed to sign, he grabbed the pen and began furiously scribbling something out. I assumed he was trying to scribble out the price information, so I asked him if he was giving these CDs as a gift and needed a gift receipt.
“No I’m damn well not! They’re my CDs!”
I asked him what he was so frantically crossing out and he indicated the part of the receipt that shows customers how much the purchase would have saved them if they had a store membership card.
“I hate it when you put that on my receipt!” he cried.
“Well, we put that there as a courtesy to customers to show them how much money they can save. Some customers find it beneficial.”
“Well, I damn well don’t,” he spat. “I find it insulting and you should tell your manager I don’t want to see that on my receipt.”
With that, he threw the signed/bescribbled receipt back at me, snatched his receipt from out of my hand (which contained the same information, which for some reason he decided not to cross out) and stormed out of the music department.
I guess grandpa forgot to take his meds that morning.
Finally, to follow on from all the Obama hysterics, I had a customer approach the info desk and ask, “Have you got the Obama book?”
I indicated the display behind her which contained about a dozen Obama-related books.
“So which one is it?” she enquired.
“Which one do you need?”
“The Obama book.”
Resigning myself to having “one of those” to deal with, I asked her if she wanted a book written by Obama, or a book written by someone else about Obama.
“One he wrote,” she replied.
Okay, that makes it easier. That narrows things down to two. “Do you want the one that’s more of a memoir, or the one about his political beliefs?”
“Which one is it?” she asked again.
“Is there a particular one you need?”
“Yeah, the Obama book.”
I sighed, picked up a copy of Dreams from my Father and handed it to her. “This is the Obama book,” I said.
She looked at it for a few seconds, handed it back to me and said, “Well, I don’t want to buy it!” before wandering off towards the cookbooks.
Book selling sure is swell!
OMG I love your posts about bookselilng. Bookseller and librarian blogs are HILARIOUS!
You know what’s scary? I’m not surprised by any of this stuff. People are whack jobs! Sure makes for funny reading though.
This is one of my favorite features on your blog. They make me laugh and shake my head in disbelief at the same time.
Hahaha! Wow these just keep getting better!
Hilarious as always!
My boyfriend had a man ask him to help him find a book… when they were both using the urinals. This is why I always take my name badge off before I use the restroom! A woman opened a dialogue with me about WHY our shelves were always half-stocked and WHY she can never seem to get any assistance in our bookstore… from the next stall over. While I was minding my own business, trying to get in and get the heck out of there. I felt like saying, “How bad can the customer service be if I’m right here with you while you’re peeing?”
Okay, vulgar, I know… but seriously!
I love crazy conspiracy theory people… they’re always trying to “convert” me! And other customers, too. We’ve actually had to ask people to leave because they were getting extremely loud and “preachy,” as one customer said, and this overzealous couple was creeping people out. Can’t argue with that!
I so look forward to these posts!
I loved the anecdote, as a psychologist you can bet I see more than a few like that, guess I kind of get used to it. Did you know that Charlotte Hughes had a book out with that title (What Looks Like Crazy)
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