Well, He is Hilarious...

"Hello, do you have awakenings?"

"The book or the film?"

"The film."

"Let me just see... No, I'm afraid we don't. We do have the book, if that's any use to you?"

"Oh no, I really needed the film. It's a classic for psychology students."

I apparently live in a world where a fucking Robin Williams movie is given more credit that the text on which it's based. This is like saying: "Don't worry about reading Molecular Biology of the Cell, we'll just rent Patch Adams instead."

Man of Mystery.

"Hello, this is Dave calling from Goliath books to let you know that your order has arrived."

"What?"

"I'm sorry, I'm calling for a Mr. Edwards to confirm arrival of an order that was placed with us."

"I'm her son."

"The details we have quite specifically state that this is for a Mr. Edwards."

"I don't know who that is. What is it?"

"It's a book about wiring regulations."

"Oh yeah! That was me, I ordered that."

"So, you would be Mr. Edwards then?"

"Yeah. Oh great. I'll come in and get that then. Bye."

So, to reiterate, I spent this afternoon talking to someone whose surname was Edwards, was male, and was singularly unaware that others might refer to him as Mr. Edwards.

Sometimes, I cry myself to sleep.

No, Really.

"Where do you keep your latin textbooks that you don't keep on the shelves?"

"We don't."

"Really?"

What?

"You're just a computer terminal, aren't you?"

Usually, they just can't read.

In many ways, this doesn't count. But it was just so fucking surreal that I have to share.

Picture the scene: a crowded Caffe Nero at lunchtime, queue snaking out of the door, the smell of coffee, the serving of coffee, the smell and serving of virtually nothing else. It's one of those ubiquitous chain coffee places you get in, um, the world.

A spotty, nebulously European teenager barges to the front of the queue.

"Excuse me," he says, which is a promising, and unusual start "You have fish and chips here?"

Turns out, thirty or so caffeine-hungry shoppers collectively making a What The Fuck? face has some kind of perceptible psychosocial ripple. Pity the kid's head didn't pop.

Confusion.

"I want a book with all the algebra equations in."

"All of them?"

"Yeah, all of them."

Do you know what algebra is?"

Late Night Tales

This happened to a colleague of mine a few years ago. working on a late night shift, he got into a conversation with one of the many people that hang around bookshops at night simply because they have nothing better to do. After a while talking to my colleague, the (it should be said, reasonably elderly) customer looked slightly panicked for a moment, before uttering the immortal:

"Oh dear, I seem to have crapped myself. Oh well, some people like to wipe. I like to chat."

He continued to talk amiably to my increasingly concerned colleague, until excuses that weren't "I'm sorry sir, you don't smell quite right." could be made, and they went they're seperate ways.

An hour in the life of a UAE sales assistant (abridged)

[Five minutes after the end of our shift, my housemate and co-worker Miss N and myself are waiting for our lift home, and walk into our shoe department. Big mistake.]

Customer: "I bought these shoes for my son. They don't suit him, they're too bright. I want my money back."
Miss N: "I'm sorry, we can't give cash refunds on shoes [or anything]. As long as they're not damaged we can give you a credit note or an exchange."
Customer: "I don't want a credit note and I don't like your other shoes. I want my money back."
Miss N: "We can't give you your money back. Well, we can, but then I lose my job."
Customer: "That's not fair, you're holding my money for me, I took the shoes, and they're too bright for him."
Me: "Too bright?"
Customer: "I mean wide. Or narrow. Anyway, I want my money back."
Miss N: "We can't give your money back, but we can give you a credit note."
Child: "Mummy, are we going to get the other shoes I saw at school?"
Customer: [to child] "Quiet, you"
Customer: [to us] "Why would I want a credit note? I've bought all I'll ever need. I'm a loyal customer. You're holding my money for me and now I want it back."
[Repeat for a further 30 minutes or so. In the background, another customer is berating staff for being too helpful and tidy]
Miss N: "Oh good God, I'm so very bored of this, let me check with our accounts department."
[Phones head office]
Miss N: "I've got a customer who wants a cash refund. Her son wasn't measured for his shoes and doesn't like them. She says she's a loyal customer but won't take a credit note."
The Boss: "I'll check with accounts tomorrow, but no."
[Information is relayed to customer. Customer flounces out, pointedly leaving shoes behind. Mr Aedan and Miss N go home 50 minutes late.]

Chutzpah

Customer at cash desk, holding computer studies book, speaking loudly into mobile: "Just to check, when do you need the book by... and when is the exam? Tomorrow? Thanks!"
To cashier: "So, what's your returns policy?"

Ramadan repeat season

Hello Children. I'm Mr Aedan. I sell books in Dubai. It's the same nonsense as anywhere else in the world, except it's actually against the law for me to tell people they're wrong.

As most of my customers are currently hiding in bed during the daytime, pretending that it counts as fasting if you just sleep all day, I don't have much to offer today apart from a variant on a classic theme:

"Hello, I'm looking for Middlemarch by Silas Marner."

I'd also like to point out that our best selling non-fiction book was Mein Kampf, until The Secret displaced it.

No Kidding.

"I'm just calling to let you know you're going to want to remove all your copies of the Daily Telegraph Bumper Beach Fun Wordgame Book. All the clues are wrong."

"Sorry, wrong how exactly?"

"They don't match the answers I'm coming up with."

Providing Needles For Your Balloons.

"Do you have any more recent books by the guy who wrote The Art of War?"

An Old Favourite.

Girl: "Do you sell textbooks?"

Me: "Er, yes."

Girl: "Where are they?"

Me: "Well, that would depend on the topic. What do you need textbooks for?"

Girl: "University."

A retort.

Having told someone that whatever they were looking was upstairs, I was of course asked, "Where's that?"

Similar to the time someone asked me why there wasn't an exit on the 2nd floor.

"can I," I have been asked "use the escalator to get upstairs?"

Welcome.

The Shambling Horde in question is the great British public, possibly the great publics of other nations, should other authors join me.

Here's an example of something I've had to face in a 'retail capacity'. This is a true story, I wish it wasn't.

A customer, women in her mid-forties, came into the bookshop I work in, and asked me for any books we had by Enoch Powell. I was, as ever, staggeringly professional and did not punch her in the throat at all. "No, I'm afraid we don't." I said, "We may have books about Powell, but we've certainly nothing by him."

"Oh no, I'm afraid that won't do. You see, it's for my father's bithday. He's quite elderly, and he likes that sort of thing. You know - racism."

I've never heard of racism described as a hobby before.