Schoolboy Error.

"Do you have The Shellfish Gene?"

Finest Minds.

Overheard, two guys wandering up the stairs to the top floor of the store:

"I could so make you touch my penis if I wanted to."

"Dude, don't be such a fucking bender."

"Right, where's the philosophy section?"

People in Glass Houses Shouldn't Crap on the Floor.

"A member of your staff told me to come up to this floor, turn right, and head in a straight line to get to your astronomy section. I came up here, turned right, and I've found myself in astrology. Can you people not tell the difference between the two?"

"Sorry, you came up where?"

"The stairs over there. I turned right..."

"That would be left."

A Small Misunderstanding.

After a long and fruitless search for a book, I asked the customer:

"Is that definitely the title?"

"Yes, definitely. That or something else."

When the lights go out

Nothing like a power cut - I've just spent the entire day being told "the lights aren't on" by more observant members of The Horde. Interestingly, quite a few people also asked "are you open?", a courtesy they never extend when they amble in at 8.30 when we're bringing stock in and blearily fail to notice the absence of lights, functioning tills and terrible Ronan Keating songs. Unfortunately, in this case we were open, forced to find books by torchlight in the darker corners and warn customers not to hold their lighters too close to the books, please.

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?"

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.

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?

One from about a year ago...

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

I Can't Take Much More.

"Can I walk down those stairs?"

Bespoke Signage for the Retail Despot.

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.

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...

Customer-salesperson confidentiality

Today, I thought I had actually dealt with an almost-normal member of the public, for whom I was ordering an expensive specialist business book of some kind from the UK. This process, from order to delivery at the shop, via air-freight and the censor board (of course), takes about two weeks. When people don't like this, they normally say "Amazon can get it to me quicker" (sometimes true, although Amazon packages are generally quite thoroughly searched by the thought police, which adds to the advertised time), or just "Oh really? Well forget it then" (though not as many as one might think, given the number of Goliath Books customers who don't even want to wait two days in the UK). However, this charming man simply enquired:
"Can you give me the details of anyone else who has ordered this book, so I can check if they're one of my colleagues?"
Eep.

Niche Market

"Do you have any Dilbert SAT practice papers?"

Cunning Experiments.

Stood behind the patented Goliath Books^TM information desk, shovelling crap from a trolley, I heard the bell, not two feet from me, rung with some force. Spinning around to see my new nemesis, I was presented with a middle-aged woman, who upon seeing my glaring face, declared:

"I'm sorry, I didn't think it would ring so soon."

Sometimes, talking to people makes me very sad.

My Own Worst Enemy.

This is an old classic that happened to a colleague of mine. He was stood behind one of the patented Goliath Books information desks, when a customer spotted a huge pile of the book she wanted. She strode over, picked on up, turned to him and said:

"Excuse me, where do I find a copy of this?"

I know what I like...

The first customer I served today gestured enthusiastically towards our gardening section and asked:

"Are these the only art books you have?"

*Sigh*.

"Do you sell paperbacks?"

The Motherlode.

Overheard by a colleague:

"Is fiction the one where it's real or made up?"

How many angels can dance on a pinhead?

"I'm very surprised you don't have any books by Doreen Virtue... she has a PhD you know."

Fit To Burn.

"Do you have the news on CD-ROM?"

"Todays news?"

"Yes. I need to listen to it."

"No, you can't get the news on CD-ROM. Why don't you read a paper, or read it online?"

"I really want to listen to it."

"You can listen to it online, in Realplayer."

"I don't have an internet connection. That's why I wanted to buy a disc with it all on."

By this point, I was so despairing, I couldn't even explain to him the concept of 'radio'.

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.