Adieu.

It seems like it's time to leave this all behind. While gaining these anecdotes was almost never fun, writing about them was.

Should anyone require more tales of faintly productive employment and the effluvia one will tend to brush against in it's execution, I direct you to the mighty Not Always Right, repository of some fine and baffling tales of retail terror.

A Call To Arms.

We are at an impasse. The Horde have brought joy to many several, but we three no longer encounter them on a day-to-day basis, and can no longer report on their fertile leavings. In short, we need a new generation of retail anthropologists to, for all intents and purposes, spy on random strangers and kick them while they're down.

Applicants should possess:

• A burning hatred for all mankind, borne forth like a torrent from their black, barren hearts.


• A genuine belief in their own superiority, despite working as low-level retail drones for longer than can reasonably be considered an extended adolescence.


• Access to firearms. It can get messy out there. A few claymores would not go amiss.


• Excellent grammar and spelling.

This fabulous offer is open to anyone in retail who can spin a good yarn, has an eye or ear for the absurd, and who thrives on the humiliation of people whose only crime was to be slightly daft.

Nobody's Business but the...

I'm not sure my prose alone is enough to convey the grunting wretchedness of this particular customer, but I shall try, dear readers, I shall try.

Said troglodyte came bounding up to one of the patented Goliath^tm information desks, red in the face. How could he, he asked, be expected to write the article he had due for the next morning when our books are in such a state? The spit-flecked golem in question apparently needed a Lonely Planet guide to Turkey. For his article on Turkey. For some reason, it was imperative that he essentially copy out selected highlights of a travel guide and pass it off as his own work right then and there.

Feigning sympathy to his predicament, or at least blood pressure, I wandered over to the Travel section with him. Along the way, he explained to me that he had found books on Turkey in two completely separate places. I nodded, and made the appropriate cooing noises to soothe him. Arriving at the shelves, he indicated these places. He pointed to the end of one shelf. "There," he said, casting his eyes about for the rest of the books, "and there."

Triumphantly, he pointed to the beginning of the shelf below the first he'd indicated. He clearly believed he'd discovered an example of the most gross stupidity. So, when I pointed out to him that this was merely the next shelf, his face fell.

And it was fucking glorious. He stumbled about for a while, making bold claims that, really, the alphabet should run along the whole length of the section at the same height (about fifteen metres or so in this case), then go down a row of shelves. I didn't have the heart to explain that the system we were using has been tried and tested by bookstores and libraries the world over.

I could see that part of him had died that day. And, until my self-righteousness is similarly punctured by some carpeted homonculus, that thought will keep me warm at night.

Guest post - Orwell on the universality of cretinism

I came across this on the facebook page of a fellow bookseller. As my newly office-bound life has been short of good Horde stories so far, thought I'd share George Orwell's thoughts on bookselling. Interesting that George Eliot seems to be a sticking point.

http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/bookshop.html

'Cause Sick People Are Hi - Larious.

"Why doesn't your medical reference section have any humour books?"

Thanks for Noticing.

On the phone with an American gentleman, about two years ago:

"Hey, I was looking for (such and such) study bible, would you guys happen to have that?"

I looked it up, and no we did not.

"No, I'm afraid we don't. We can order you one, but it's only published in the US, so it'll take a few weeks."

"No, that's fine. I should have expected as much from your godless, secular society."

He rather abruptly hung up. I was left bemused and joyous.

Schmoking.

A couple of nights ago, a woman stopped me by the art books, and started, quite frantically, to ask a series of questions. I stood and stared at her blankly. She then added wild gesticulation to the mix, and seemed genuinely surprised to be getting no response at all. She stopped for a moment, sighed, and then said: "I'm sorry, I was speaking Dutch, wasn't I?"

Yes. Yes, you were.

Quite Literally No.

"Hello, can I have an information?"

Turned out she was buying books on teaching English. Weep with me.

Good Question.

"What exactly do you mean when you say 'Removed from sale'?"

Impossible Geographies.

Another one from the mists of time (last August, which currently seems an eternity away); a guy looking for Evelyn Waugh books, off which we have a great many.

Gent: 'Er, yeah, so you don't have what I'm looking for, and I know there's a Waterstones, but I'm from Lincoln.'

Me: 'It's pretty much right outside our front door. We have almost everything by Waugh, what was it you wanted?'

Gent: 'I don't know. I'll know it when I see it. I'm from Lincoln.'

Me: 'OK. Did you actually look at the bookshelves?'

Gent: 'Yeah. You don't have any books by Evelyn Waugh. I'm from Lincoln. Where's Waterstones?'

You Raise a Good Point.

One from the archives:

"Will this DVD play in the U.S?"

"No, I'm afraid not, it's region 2, it'll only play in Europe."

"Then why does it say Universal on the case?"

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?"