Connect
Sponsors
Currently Reading
-
Terms
The Book Lady's Blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Reviews and articles posted here are property of The Book Lady's Blog and are not to be posted elsewhere without permission. Please contact me if you wish to post any of my work, or any excerpt thereof, in any other location or format.
Miscellaneous
Meet Bookrageous!
Technical Stuff
Design Credits
Feb
08
A Slip of the Tongue: Adventures in Bookselling v. 16 [guest post]
2010 at 9am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
If you don’t know Melissa from Scuffed Slippers and Wormy Books (on Twitter as @balletbookworm), you really should. She writes great reviews and frequently shares stories from her life as a bookseller in Iowa (working for the same company I used to work for), and I’m thrilled to be welcoming her today for the first in a series of Adventures in Bookselling guest posts from my bookseller friends.
As a bookseller I’ve been privy to some rather odd requests. Some require a bit of interpretation – a slip of the tongue or neuron and confusion (hilarity) ensues – while others make you wonder how the human race survives. Observe:
Exhibit #1 – The “being-accosted-by-someone-questionably-sober” scenario
Male Undergrad: “Hey, I need The Odyssey.”
Me: “Sure – do you need a particular translation?”
Male Undergrad: “Yeah, the Faggy one.”
Me (keeping a straight face): “You mean ‘Fagles’, right? It’s here on the shelf next to you.”
Male Undergrad’s Possibly Drunk/High Friend (who is looking at comic books): “See, I said we should be in this aisle and you didn’t believe me.” [cue uncontrollable giggling from both of them]
Exhibit #2 – The “character-as-author-of-their-own-book” scenario
Female Customer: “Excuse me, I need Anna Karenina’s book.”
Assistant Manager: “By Tolstoy, right?”
Female Customer: “No, she’s the author.”
Exhibit #3 – The “get-your-mind-out-of-the-gutter” scenario
Adult Customer: “Do you have The Chronicles of Narnia?”
Children’s Bookseller: “Yes, do you want the regular children’s edition or the one-volume adult edition?”
Adult Customer (whispering): “Is the adult edition….dirty?”
Exhibit #4 – The “book-and-movie-are-different-entities” scenario
Mom Customer: “I need to pick up this book for my son’s class.”
Me: “OK, what book are you looking for?”
Mom Customer: “Legion by Paul Bettany.”
Me (how do I explain this?): “………………….er, Paul Bettany is an actor in a movie called “Legion” – there are several graphic novels available either titled Legion or with “Legion” in the title.”
Mom Customer: “Oh……”
Me: “Would a graphic novel be something your son’s teacher have on the reading list? What grade is your son in? I could recommend something with a similar subject.”
Mom Customer: “No, I guess I’ll have to call him and check.” [she never came back with a different book or question so I’m not sure what she eventually purchased, if anything]
Exhibit #4.5 – the “cover-art-is-different-the-book-is-the-same” scenario
Dad Customer: “Do you have The Lovely Bones?”
Me: “Yes, right this way, its on our display with other books adapted into movies.”
Dad Customer: “But this is the movie version, I’ve already seen the movie.”
Me: “Oh, no, this is the original novel, the cover just has the art from the movie poster.”
Dad Customer: “Well, this is for my ten-year-old daughter – would this be appropriate?”
Me [almost dies because there is a graphically violent rape/murder scene in the first chapter and that would totally scare the poor kid]: “Um, if you’ve seen the movie then you know that Susie, the narrator, is violently raped and murdered; it happens in the first chapter. Has she seen the movie?”
Dad Customer: “Yes. Oh, so they didn’t add that part for the movie?” (gaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!)
Exhibit #5 – The “how-did-you-ever-pass-kindergarten” scenario
If you are a student ordering course texts, it helps to bring your syllabus (syllabi, as the case may be) to the bookstore so you don’t wind up looking like this guy (who is probably wasting his tuition money):
Male Undergrad: “Do you know what textbooks I need for my class?”
Me (totally not clairvoyant): “I’m sorry, no, but I can order them for you. Do you have your syllabus?”
Male Undergrad: “No, because you guys are supposed to know what books I need.”
Me: “Well, the professors usually place textbook orders with the campus bookstore – which we are not. Do you know your course number?”
Male Undergrad: “No, why?”
Me (hates all students right now): “Because I need your course number to look up your textbook on the campus bookstore website.”
Male Undergrad: “Oh….so you can order my books through school?”
Me: “No. You can do that yourself. I can order you a textbook to be sent directly from our warehouse to your dorm.” [Male Undergrad finally remembers the name of his class so I am able to look up the course number at the University website then look up the required texts on the campus bookstore site and then look up the textbook in our computer]
Me: “I can order your textbook, it’s [insert price around $100, which is actually pretty cheap for a brand-new, 900-page textbook] and we can ship it to you for free.”
Male Undergrad: “What!!?!?!?! That’s too expensive. I’m not going to buy that.” [and he stomps off; jerk, I just spend 20 minutes looking that up]
Exhibit #6 – The “I-can’t-believe-I-just-heard-that-lemme-collect-my-jaw-from-the-floor” scenario
(right after J.D. Salinger’s death)
Says one ditzy teenage girl to another: “So this Saliva guy who wrote a book about baseball died this week…everyone’s talking about it. I have no idea who that is.” [must….restrain….fist….of….death]
Thanks again, Melissa!
No related posts.
The Narnia version is my favorite…lol b/c the adult version has sex scenes involving Aslan.
Customer service brings out the best in customers. If only I had written down all the tales from working at Movie Gallery. As a movie buff it killed me everytime someone would ask me a question that just made me go “seriously?”. The best was the debates between Widescreen and Fullscreen.
I think I would go nuts doing that a bookstore though. Since I love books so much, I would be baffled as to why people don’t know as much as I did. (Not trying to sound pompous!) Working at the library was pretty much like that.
Looking forward to more of this series!
I will have to add this to my list of great bookselling stories. We have a cafe in ours too so we also have “can I have a [insert name of drink] without any [insert name of crucial ingredient without which this drink is not really itself, but another one entirely]” stories.
I really should write a book about it. Now if I could just remember 10+ years worth of these stories I haven’t written down… (*facepalm*)
Ha! Thanks for the first thing in the morning laugh – I’ve had the fortune/misfortune to have overheard slightly different versions of these conversations in my own store. Le sigh.
Having taught high school English, all I can say is that none of these sound too weird to me. I’ve heard way worse! One of my favorites – “Ms. F., did you know that someone wrote a book about that movie, Of Mice and Men?
hilarious. oh my goodness i loved this post!
I adore adventures in bookselling! YAY!
Thanks for the laughs!
I have to say, I’m pretty impressed you restrained your fist of death.
1-5: Hilarious. #6, just plain sad. Sigh.
There are days when I nearly bite a hole in my tongue to keep the snarky comments from escaping. You just want to shake people….
Yeah, the “do you have the book based on this movie” (when obviously the movie was based on the book) is a very common scenario (sadly enough).
re #6: I really wanted to drag them out of the store by their ratty hair extensions and knock their heads together. Multiple times.
But I didn’t – jail isn’t that appealing.
We’ve got a cafe, too, and I’m pretty sure some of our baristas could contribute a few zingers.
(my favorite being:
“this cappucino isn’t very sweet”
“do you usually get cappucino at the gas station?”
“yes”
“oh, so what you really want is a caramel latte”)
OMG…This was too funny. No way would I have the patience for customer service.
I second this one, along w/ the confusion people have when the cover changes between hardcover and paperback release. They see the paperback of a book they read in hardcover and think something textual is changed also just because the cover has been redesigned. I eventually gave up on explaining marketing principles to them and let them buy the second book.
Oh my gosh, I can’t believe the dad and The Lovely Bones. Get real, people!
Yeah, the Lovely Bones one is insane. That scene scared the bejebus out of me and I was in my 20′s. Maybe he can top it with a bedtime reading of Salem’s Lot.
Yay! I’m so glad to see that Adventures in Bookselling are back! Melissa-love the stories, they really make me question the average IQ of our nation!
Is the adult edition dirty – I laughed so hard when I read that I got tears in my eyes. Mercy.
Ooh, that last one! I don’t know if I would have been able to restrain myself. Your bookselling stories are so fun!
The kids’ bookseller who got that customer actually had to excuse herself and go to receiving so she could laugh. It came from so far out of left field.
This was fun!
I’ll compile another batch of funnies for Rebecca in a few months.
The student one is my fave. I work for a university and I cannot believe the stuff that comes out of a student’s mouth. I mean, they go to school!! They are educated! Sigh.
These are just too cute. Thanks for sharing. Really brought a smile to my face. GL
I love it when kids send their parents into a book store for their school reading books. Nine times out of ten the parent has no idea what they’re asking for. Here’s something that happened today:
Customer: Do you have a copy of Juliet Shakespeare?
Me: Erm, do you mean Romeo & Juliet?
Customer: No, Juliet Shakespeare!
Me: Juliet Shakespeare is the actual title of the book?
Customer: Yes! My daughter has to read it for school. I can’t believe you don’t have it.
Me: (lightbulb) Do you mean Julius Caesar?
Customer: Yes, Juliet Caesar. That’s what i said.
Me: (bodypalm)
Oh, and a few hours later another parent called to ask for 1964 by Georgia Wells. (Yes, she spelled the last name out.)
Reminds me of the time I had a customer who was convinced that Julius Caesar WROTE the play he was supposed to be reading for class. Georgia Wells takes the cake, though. I would have given her The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells, which takes place partly in the 60s.
LOL! Thank you so much for posting this.
When I worked at the library I had so many weird requests. Like this one:
20-year-old man: Can I buy batteries here?
ME: no.
Him: Why not?
Me: Because this is a library?
Hilarious! I used to think I’d love working in a bookstore but I had imagined that I could just sit around and read books. That would be so cool. Dealing with annoying people, not so much
In my experience, there is no reading on the job. But it’s a common misperception. Dealing with stupid people? Yep, there’s lots of that.
Nope no reading on the clock – time is money and money is time…all that jazz
I was cracking up reading this post! People are hilarious and rather ridiculous. The Saliva scene and Get your mind out of the gutter, along with the student wanting his textbooks ordered were too funny! Thanks for a laugh and sorry that you have to deal with such crazy people. I would have probably bitten my tongue off by now if I had to deal with these scenarios.
“Is the adult edition….dirty?”
OH MY GOD I want to use that line in some bookstore someday. hahahaha!!
Maybe I’d better not think about a job in a bookstore after all!
I couldn’t stop laughing after I read this post. Never underestimated the stupidity of the general public.
[cue uncontrollable giggles]
It freightens me that so many of the children and young adults referenced in this post are going to be in charge of something. I just hope it’s not anything related to me!
Thanks for the laugh ladies.
[...] A Slip of the Tongue: Adventures in Bookselling v. 16 [guest post] [...]
[...] them all here. Tags: homepost Mike Lawson hates writing in the third-person. He has some journalism [...]
I worked in a bookstore for a few years and loved it! My favorite stupid customer saying was heard often:
Me (on ladder shelving overstock)
Customer: “Do you work here?”
-or-
Customer: (after looking at my name tag several times)
“Do you work here?”
I always wanted to say something like “No, I just like to climb ladders with an armful of books, shh don’t tell on me” or “Nah, I just have a problem remembering my name and since I am in the store all the time they gave me a name tag.”