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.

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.

'Cause Sick People Are Hi - Larious.

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

Quite Literally No.

"Hello, can I have an information?"

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

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?"

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."

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?

I Can't Take Much More.

"Can I walk down those stairs?"

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."

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?"

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.]

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.

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.