Friday, November 30, 2007

The Doozy.

There've been a few post-worthy comments in the past few days, but one was so good I thought I should share it before I get the others together.

"Your religion section seems to be subdivided into categories. How does that work?"

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Ruminant Botherers.

It's been a ripe week for Harry Potter related stupidity. Aside from the usual (such as asking if we stock the Harry Potter books, a question I've taken to answering by pretending I'm on fire, and emitting a high-pitched scream until they go away), a couple have really stood out. For your delectation:

"Is it the Harry Potter books that have the character Harry Potter in them?"

"What do you mean there's more than one of them? I just want Harry Potter."

An interesting thing I've found as a result of this sort of thing is that if you stare at the monitor intently, typing furiously, the customer inevitably thinks you're looking things up for them. It never occurs to them that you might be typing the words "goat-felating malcontent" over and over again.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Sunday Morning Lamentations

It's always a bad sign when the phone rings before a shop opens: only a total wanker would ring a shop that's open for 12+ hours a day outside opening hours. Unfortunately, the world is full of berks, and in this case someone else picked up and redirected to me, sabotaging my attempts to "not hear" the ringing. A transcript follows:

"Good Morning, The Family Bookshop, Jumeirah"
"Ah, hello, is this The Family?"
"Yes"
"And are you a book shop?"
"...Yes"
[lengthy discussion of ordering many copies of a tedious Steven Covey book. I mention that the shop's not actually open and that I'll call back once I've rounded up enough copies.]
"Can I take your details so I can call you back?"
"OK, do you have my number?"

I'll reiterate that he called me.
I pointed this out to him, found the books after an appropriate vengeance delay, called back and discovered that he's one of this country's endless fax-chauvinists: people who when offered the opportunity to conduct business by the efficient, infinitely useful medium of email, vehemently insist instead on having documents faxed to them, inevitably two or three times due to the tendency of both originals and sent copies to be consumed at some point between sending and receiving by some kind of kobold that has evidently acquired a taste for warm invoices.

This strange terror of emails on the part of the Horde also led me on one occasion to give out my work mobile number, despite misgivings that turned out to be entirely correct, to a customer who desperately wanted to SMS me book details. I now have a stalker, who rings up once a day and asks the same question every time, even after several lengthy explanations of what "out of print" means. Why can't I just have a sex pest like everyone else?

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

One from about a year ago...

Me: "Would you like a bag?"
Him: "In French?"

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Respect Mah Authoritah.

I've not posted in a while, mainly due to the fact that I've been far too angry to find anything funny. I am back now, and it's a doozy.

While stood facing the entrance to the store, with people going in and out, a customer came up to me and asked:

"Can I go through those doors?"

After a good five-second pause I could only answer "Yes."

Old School

"Do you have any O-Level textbooks for Economics?"

Why yes madam, of course we have out of print books, in a subject that I'm fairly sure was never taught at O-Level, which at any rate hasn't existed for over twenty years.

Friday, November 9, 2007

Sale shopping 101

Surely everyone knows the basic principles of a clearance sale. Old editions, old hardbacks, damaged books and occasional buyer errors (500 copies of the Frankie Dettori biography, anyone?) are the rule of the day. So why is there always one smartarse who comes up and asks something along the lines of "Do you have Snakehead in this sale?"

Still two days to go...