Day one….

…went better than I expected. Having conked out last night, long before midnight. I got up at 7 am and cranked out an impressive 2,100 words before leaving for work.

Since coming home this evening I’ve racked that up to 5,126 – and because I’ve done over the 5k, I am hereby rewarding myself with the rest of the evening off, in the company of Season 2 of House. (Yeah, I know, I got into it late…and even then only because my friend Mark made me watch it at his place. I thank him for it.).

I finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest last night. Capsule review: any misgivings I had about anything in the book were laid to rest by the sheer brilliance of the court scenes. For those alone it’s worth reading the entire trilogy, with it’s odd compulsion to list everything a character eats, wears or thinks (Did these by any chance start out as nano novels? I keep picturing Steig Larsson, on a cold Swedish November night eking out an extra 200 words by listing cupboard contents, then breathing a sigh of relief, uploading his wordcount to the Nanowrimo site and closing his iBook for the night). I had quibbles about a few things, but I’ll detail them some other time. For now, it deserves to be outselling everything else (especially Dan Brown) by four to one.

The Nanowrimo2009 tab above should be working, complete with a bit of what I wrote today. The wordcount widget server has gone into its ritual November meltdown, so there’s no widget there yet. I’ll fix that when it starts working again.

As a side note, and this made me smile, my boss came over to me yesterday and told me that she knew she should be rooting for me, but is it bad if she hopes I fail to meet the terms of my onerosity coupon?

Nope, it’s not bad, but I swear, if I hit 30k words by the 21st, I’m not re-alphabetising the kids picture books until at least December. And the same goes for the God-books if I have 20k written by the 14th, a coupon I gave another colleague. I’m not sure how much good declaring myself exempt from those two tasks will do me, but a girl’s gotta try!

Todat at work was made head-wrecking by the fact that people have already started their Christmas shopping, for which we were not wholly prepared (or staffed). Most common thing to happen today was a customer wandering over with one of our Christmas catalogues and demanding we fetch them “this, this, this and that”. Inevitably, at least one of the books has not been published yet. They then glare at us suspiciously and say “But it’s in the catalogue!”.

Yeah, I know, it’s in the catalogue, but that’s because all the big books with pub dates from September to  early December are in the catalogue. Yesterday was Saturday, the last day of October. Many, many books in the catalogue won’t be out til mid-November. I think there’s even a disclaimer to that effect in the catalogue. Then they say “But there’s a picture of the book, you must have one somewhere.” to which one can only reply, “A jacket cover photo doesn’t mean anything other than that the cover has been designed. The book is not out yet, I’m sorry. I can look up the publication date for you, and keep a copy aside for you when it comes in if you like?”. They never, ever believe me. And it’s not just me, they don’t believe any of us. One woman went through the same rigmarole today with me and another member of staff. She probably still thinks we were both lying to her….

We weren’t though.

 

 

 

 

“I can’t shop under these conditions”

…Has to be my favourite quote from last week at work.
Poor customer, wanting to buy two US-published guitar magazines. They tallied up to around the €12 mark and he was most unhappy. I explained to him that the retail price of the magazines is set by the magazine wholesaler, and not by us, and then explained that the mags are first imported into the UK and then imported here – hence getting double the hammering on taxes that UK mags get – hence the higher prices. He wouldn’t accept that and kept on at me. I told him that it is not within my power, or my manager’s power, to change the pricing, basically, it is what it is. He kept going away and coming back like I’d change my mind every time he came up to the counter. Eventually I suggested that he look around and see if other local stores carried the magazine, and compare what they were charging to what we were charging. He responded with “But if you’re telling me the truth they’ll be the same price everywhere.”

Yup, that’s true. Took him a while, but he got the point. That was when he told me “I can’t shop under these conditions” and demanded to see my manager. The manager was out on lunch, so he complained to two other staff members, at length, then went away and came back only to find the manager was in a meeting. I still don’t get what he thought he’d accomplish by speaking to a manager, but I guess we’ll find out someday soon.

A workmate also told me about a customer she had who wanted to buy a book, the only information they had being that it was “translated from something into something else”. Um? Okaaay. We can assume it was translated into English, but they had no idea what language it was translated from, or even what the book was about. The bookseller tried all the hot titles (Steig Larsson, Vikas Swarup etc.) to no avail, and eventually had to gently let the customer know that their request was simply too vague, and that a bit more information would prove useful. On hearing that story, I’m beginning to reconsider the whole “cream and written by a woman” school of looking for books. At least a cover colour and an author gender gives us something….

Then yesterday I was accosted by a customer who wanted to know if there was a Mind Body & Spirit festival going on locally. I told him I didn’t know. He told me he was sure there was. I told him I was really sorry, but I could only help him find Mind Body & Spirit books, but had no knowledge of any such festival. He was adamant that it was going on. He was also adamant that I had this information and was being obtuse in refusing to share it with him. (Oh yeah, I like to hoard all the Mind Body & Spirit goodies all for myself, obviously. My persistent woo-allergy does not preclude me from doing this, oh no!).

I told him that the only thing I knew about that was happening locally was the weekly organic market and told him how to get there, also suggesting that he try checking on the web to see if what he was talking about was actually happening. That was a mistake. He then wanted to use our computers to google it. I said that wasn’t possible and directed him to an internet café. He told me I wasn’t very helpful. I bit my tongue to keep from telling him that a bookstore does not equal a tourist office, and instead said that if I had known anything about any such festival, I would have told him. Because I didn’t, I couldn’t. As a last ditch effort, I directed him to the shopping centre and advised him to ask in the health food store there, or to pick up one of the local free-sheets which would surely contain any information he was looking for. Apparently I should also have had one of those free-sheets on my person because telling him where to get them was just not good enough (sing it with me now…). Eventually he went away.

People who cannot recognize the illogic of their actions hurt my brain.

This is how you open a door….

I know I have ranted and rambled about the annoyance of constantly being asked for the restroom key by our customers who do not bother to read the sign on the door telling them to ask for the key at the coffee shop.

What I did not go into in that rant and ramble was the (far, far) sadder fact that some of our customers do not seem to know how to operate doors. Several times we have seen people trying to put the restroom key into a dummy lock on the door into which it patently would not fit. We have had to rescue people from inside the restroom who could not get out due to there being two handles on the door. Yes, rescue. They bang on the walls and bellow for assistance.

I’m going to let that sink in for a minute.

You see, these are people who have managed to get up, negotiate the intricacies of putting on clothes, have exited their own home (presumably through a door…) and quite possibly navigated to the shop in a vehicle of some description, maybe even a car, which they drove. And yet…. they are defeated utterly by the necessity of pushing down on the push handle and twisting the twist handle simultaneously. And then pulling the door towards themselves.

Not rocket science.

The scary thing is, that there have been enough incidents to merit a further instructional notice being put on the door (presumably also to be ignored, but at least we’re trying…). When I first saw the sign I had to run off into the staffroom to catch my breath as I was laughing so much.

I’m sharing it here, because I think everyone could use a good smile.
Here, in all its glory, is (one of) the exterior restroom door signs:

*headdesk*

Retail frustration #18464731

…or thereabouts.

I work in a bookstore. We sell books. Therefore one would assume that most people who come into the store like reading, from this comes the not-too-unreasonable assumption that they can read.

It may be a bad assumption.

Several times a day I see people standing in front of the locked bathroom door, staring at the sign that tells them the bathroom key can be obtained from the coffee shop. If I’m shelving in that area they inevitably ask me for the key (not just me, any bookseller in the general area can be swooped upon). When we point out that we don’t carry the key, they get narky. Refer them to the sign they’ve just been staring at and you get called a “smartass”. I had a woman yesterday tell me to “get the key” for her. I advised her to go to the coffee shop and she glared at me. I didn’t doubt she had read the sign, and it occurred to me afterwards that this is yet another example of the entitlement problem; she didn’t feel like walking all the way to the coffee shop, so I should have obliged and skipped off there to get a key for her. Er, nope.

Add to that the number of people who stare at the sign at customer services, advising them to go downstairs to pay, and then say “Can you take for these books here?” and we’re looking at serious reading comprehension failure. Either that or they think the signs are an elaborate ruse we’ve cooked up to entertain ourselves…

And one from a co-worker who was working the customer service desk when a woman came upstairs and made a beeline for her and a colleague, blurting out as she reached them, “I’m looking for a book that’s downstairs at the till, where can I find it?” (I kid you not). Co-worker one was busily trying to think of a way to explain politely what that meant, when co-worker two asked, with arched eyebrow; “Downstairs at the till maybe?” From what I heard, that customer at least had the grace to be embarrassed for not having listened to what she’d been told in the first place.

People, seriously, there’s no point in getting all cranky with booksellers when you refuse to believe clearly printed signs, or even listen to what we’re telling you.

Deranged and demanding…

Some dispatches from co-workers.

Firstly, the deranged:

Customer comes into the shop (evidently having worked up a full head of steam), marches to the till, slaps down a Collins World Atlas, and informs the hapless bookseller at the till that he is going to sue the shop.

She is puzzled by this and asks why.

His response? He bought the atlas (note: ATLAS not map) because he was planning a trip to Spain and wanted to check whether or not a particular road was finished or not. He didn’t ask any of the booksellers present at the time whether an atlas (that will be revised once every 4-5 years, and that will be sent for formatting months before it hits the shelves) would be the best way to find such up-to-the-minute information. Nope. Nor did it occur to him to use t’internets to double-check whatever the atlas said.  He went to Spain and the road wasn’t finished, even though the atlas said it was (funnily, I think it probably said somewhere that the road was “due” to have been completed by the time the atlas went on sale, but anyone with a passing familiarity with road projects would know that “due” is not the same as “will be”. In Spain or anywhere else.)

Recognising that he was not liable to be swayed by logic, the bookseller offered him his money back on the Atlas. Nope, not good enough (really, I’m going to write a song called “not good enough” with a refrain we can all hum as a calming mantra when dealing with people like him). He was determined to sue us. Now, the bookseller gently suggested he might consider suing Collins instead since they produced the atlas, but he was having none of it. We sold him the book and we “didn’t warn him” that it may contain inaccurate information with relation to roads in Spain.

Now, I ask you – how were we supposed to know what he was buying it *for* if he didn’t consult with us? How can we “warn people” about content idiosyncratically specific to them? Like the lady who wanted the dictionary with only “hard words” (by her own unique definition of what they are), there is an expectation that when we sell something to someone we should be somehow psychically aware of what they want it for – no matter how bizarre – and be able to warn them if it may not fit the bill.

I guess if he wants to waste money on suing the shop, that gentleman (and I use the term strictly as a matter of politesse) may learn that the judiciary are a bit smarter about realistic retail expectations that he is.  Or maybe he would then sue them too? Who knows.

Now to the customer that takes the cake for most demanding ever which, as you can guess if you’ve read any of the guff on here, is no mean feat.

Picture the scene, there is a book launch about to start upstairs in the shop, apart from the trainee manager, there are two staff in the entire shop. The lift (as we all know by now) is out of order. Said managerial type is busily trying to figure out the PA system, set out chairs, wineglasses, and put together the lectern and back-drop, all on his lonesome. He is VERY busy. Upstairs there’s one staff member fielding inquiries and selling books to people who have come for the launch. Downstairs there is one bookseller at the front tills.

In marches woman with pram. She wanders around, discovers the lift is out of order and demands someone help her bring the pram upstairs (it was a demand, not a request, I am assured of this). Bookseller at till explains that she can’t leave the tills unattended, but rings upstairs to get bookseller no. 2 down to carry the pram upstairs.  This he does.

When upstairs the woman makes a beeline for the obviously extremely busy manager and proceeds to waste his time with inane questions. He played along, getting increasingly frazzled as the launch was due to start any second. Eventually, he had to excuse himself to attend to that, and Ms. Demanding did not approve of this at all. No, she needed to go back downstairs, and required both him and the other bookseller to help her since she had one book and one magazine to carry, and couldn’t be expected to do that. They boggled, both of them, but like the princes they are, one carried the buggy down and the other carried the book and magazine for her.

Downstairs, the bookseller behind the till watched this with incredulity. She was busily serving customers, and Ms. Demanding joined the queue with a mere 2 people ahead of her. Guess what? Not Good Enough (sing it with me now!).  After ten seconds she piped up: “Is there no-one to serve me????”

Uh, think she’d had quite enough service for one evening…

Anyway, bookseller at till explains that there is only her down there (obviously), but is brow-beaten by customer into getting the poor beleaguered manager back downstairs to serve her. This he does, and the woman decided not to buy the book after all while at the till (thus rendering null and void any trip upstairs and all the distraction she has caused) and leaves with her cheap magazine, muttering about how her child has been made fractious by all the delays. Um, I’m presuming here she meant her “inner child” since according to all present, the baby in the pram slept through everything. Lucky kid.

So she leaves, and they all breathe a sigh of relief. Not ten minutes later, bookseller at till notices a flashy car is double parked on the road outside the store, hazards flashing. In marches Ms. Demanding (minus child, presumably left out in the CAR which is DOUBLE-PARKED, with the engine running…so, yeah, the kid is obviously a priority) runs around the store, saying nothing but giving the evils to all the staff before running out again. They think this is odd, but hope it’s the last they’ve seen of her.

At about 20 mins to closing a customer approaches the till with an iphone in their hand. Someone has left it behind. The bookseller at the till roots through the phone-book (we always do this), looking for a number listed as “Home” or some other way to contact the owner. The phone is obviously new as there are only about six numbers listed, and none leap out as family contacts for the owner. She shrugs and pops the phone under the counter, to keep it safe until it can be locked in the safe awaiting it’s owner.

5 minutes to closing the phone rings, manager answers it and is met with a panicked “Did someone hand in a phone???”. He recognises the voice instantly. He says he’s not sure and passes the phone over to the downstairs bookseller (with an eye-roll). She is asked the same question, in the same tone. And responds with one of her own: “What kind of phone?”

Ms. Demanding starts berating her for having had the temerity to ask a question without having answered what she was asked first, but is met with a calm and level: “We get several phones handed in every day. It would help me to answer your question if I knew what type of phone you meant.” Huffily the customer manages “An iphone, not that it’s any of your business” (?!?).

She is told that an iphone was indeed handed in. Next question: “When do you close?”

Simple answer “In 5 minutes.”

Guess what? “Not good enough.” (It did occur to me to make this a drinking game, instead of a song, but anyone reading several posts here would end up with liver damage). “I can’t get to you in time. Someone should wait for me to come down and pick up my phone.”

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” (We do have lives, y’know, and if she’d been a bit less demanding someone may have hung around with the phone. She just wasn’t the type to generate extra-mile goodwill from anyone.)

“Well then, someone should drop it up to me.”

The bookseller was stunned and spoke without thinking: “Are you serious?”

She was. She was also making a heck of an assumption that anyone working at the store (a) has a car or (b) drove to work or (c) good customer service means acting as a courier service out of work hours for customers with a severe entitlement complex.

“I’m afraid that would not be possible.”

“Why not? I need my phone. I only live in (location a 25 minute drive away)”

“Best I can do for you madam, is put your phone in our safe and you can collect it when we open in the morning.”

“That’s not..”

“It’s the best we can do.”

(Grudgingly) “Alright then but I need it put in the safe right now, immediately. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you, but I can’t put it there now as I’m on the phone to you and the safe is elsewhere in the building. But I will put it there as soon as humanly possible.”

“And your name is?”

Bookseller duly furnishes her name.

“Right, I’ll see you at 9am tomorrow.”

“Er, I’m not working tomorrow, but-” (she was going to say that any manager or senior bookseller could retrieve the phone from the safe but was cut off)

“What do you mean not working???? You’ll have to come in to give me my phone!!!”

Eventually Ms Demanding grasps that her phone can be retrieved from other staff members and gets off the phone after several minutes complaining about our useless customer service.

It was then 20 minutes after the store should have closed.

And thus Ms. Demanding has set a new gold-standard for “unreasonable expectations of service”. I really really hope no-one else comes along to raise the bar still higher. And if they do, I really hope I’m not dealing with them…

Some things never change…

Remember when you were a child and some grown-up accused you of lying because you had a black spot on your tongue?

I used to think this was a uniquely Irish Catholic phenomenon but it seems there are variations on it globally. I also thought, like the whole notion of  a place called limbo full of dead, un-baptized babies, that it had faded away and was now only there as proof of how screwy things were in the past.

My bad. There I was at work, with a couple of sweet kids and their grandmother buying some books. The boy decided he wanted some Match Attacks (what kid doesn’t these days) and his grandmother (not much over 40) told him he’d already gotten some earlier in the week. He said he hadn’t (he really wanted them, they’re like paper-based crack for boys that age) and she said he was lying. And then proceeded to tell him she knew because his tongue was “turning black” and that if he kept it up his tongue “will wither away and fall off” (wtf?! That’s taking it to a new level. Bitch!). She went on and on about blackened tongues and not being able to speak, while I stood there grinding my teeth and trying to remember the lyrics to “Black Tongue” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs so I wouldn’t feel tempted to wallop her.

How is it ok to feed kids with such rampant stupidly scary-making misinformation in this day and age? Why do clueless parents get all up in arms about “the dangers of videogames” when kids are having worse crap fed to them by people they trust and are supposed not to question?

I don’t know why it annoyed me so much, but I know that it did.

I had a customer yesterday inform me (as though my creaking knees hadn’t noticed) that our lift has been out of order “for a few days now”. Her tone was dripping with the potential for nastiness. I explained that the repair company needed to get parts for it from the UK and offered to carry anything she needed help with. She frowned at me and told me that (the favourite expression of our snootier-than-thou customers) “is not good enough”. I was rather tired and so merely boggled at her til she went away (saying she’d come back in a few days and “it had better be fixed”).

We’ve already seen customers who expect me, personally, to fix the damn thing because they are inconvenienced, now I’m expected to craft specialist replacement parts on the spot, and out of thin air? Wtf?

I have alts that are smiths/engineers in WoW, but even if they had very high skill levels I’d never be out of it enough to think that their skills could translate to reality. What prompts silly members of the public to think that booksellers are also multi-skilled part-making, lift-fixing wonders? And if they are inconvenienced by having to take the stairs on their rare trips into the shop, how do they think we feel about having to run up and down them umpteen times a day? Honestly, my knees are less happy about there not being a lift than they are.

Hello, I’m a chancer…

Ok, he didn’t actually say that, but he might as well have. On a day when we were severely low on staff (darned flu/virus thing that everybody seems to be catching all at once) a man comes up to the counter and demands to know how much is off the book he wants in the sale. Short answer, nothing as there is not a bloody great SALE sticker on the front of it (can you tell I’m getting tired of explaining that?) but he was treated to a calm explanation of the concept of sale stock by one of the booksellers at the till.

He goes away, muttering. Next thing he spots another bookseller at the till and comes up to her demanding she make an offer on the book price for him as the book is “damaged”. She takes the book from him and examines it. It is, in fact, pristine. Mint, you could say. She tells him that the book is perfect and she can’t offer a reduction for shop-soiling on a book that is pristine. He harangues her, asking how she can claim the book is perfect: “Look at it! You think that’s not damaged?!” Er, yeah, she did. He kept on and on at her, but she didn’t bend, and he left in a strop, minus the book. She didn’t know he’d tried to get money off it already, and being a conscientious sort she nabbed me as soon as I came in from the coffee shop down the road (I was on a break) to check she’d done the right thing. The book (a collection of 60’s and 70’s film posters, with a glossy black cover) was indeed mint. There were some fingerprints on it, but they could be wiped off. Allegedly, if you tilted it towards the light at an odd angle there was what seemed to be a tiny scuff-mark on it. A wipe with some pledge and a duster, and the mark vanished. She didn’t know about the pledge method – but she’ll know to use it next time. I’m actually sorry I wasn’t there to wipe it down in front of him and ask him where the “mark” was…

Another one today, woman says her son bought a cookbook for his wife and got it for 50% off. She wants it today. I explain that the sale is over and the book is now 25% off (it was never actually 50% off, but that’s another story…). She says she was only coming in at 10.30 this morning because it was hard to find parking (?!), I point out that the sale actually ended a few days ago. She again says she doesn’t want to pay more than he did. I raise an eyebrow at her and point out that I cannot just sell her the book at 50% off. She wants to know why. I explain that the sale was for a limited time only and the prices today are different to the prices during the sale (amazing how people don’t “get” the notion of a sale). She wants a special exception made for her. At this point I knew she knew she was pushing it, so told her that if she didn’t want the book, she didn’t have to buy it, but I could not sell it at a price other than the one on the cover. She caved and bought it.

Next the parade of people who refuse to understand the terms and conditions for redeeming those €10 vouchers we’ve been having such fun with (there would be sarcasm dripping out your screens about now if it were possible). They keep telling us that they already spent €30 before Christmas to get their vouchers and why should they have to spend another €30 now to get the “money back” (it’s not money, it’s a piece of paper with terms and conditions attached to it)? One lady went so far as to produce tears and her original receipt from when she was given the voucher. Lovely.

Wouldn’t mind, but we all foresaw this, and so all booksellers (in our store)told people to check the Terms and Conditions on the vouchers when we gave them out. It would appear that people are not inclined to listen, or read the Ts&Cs, they just want to buy one book that is €8.95 and have us give them change from their €10 voucher. Fat chance.

One day to go til my holidays. Boy, do I need that break!

Oh for God’s sake, get back in your boxes!

*cough*

Sorry. That is a plea to the weirdos who have been making life difficult in work over the past while.

It is a weird feeling to be working in a shop that sells books and wanting to say (several times a day) “Learn to read, why dontcha!”.

Examples? Let me show you them:

Customer comes in, says she wants to return books she bought from us. Proceeds to take a load of books out of a Hodges Figgis bag. With Hodges Figgis price stickers on them. Bookseller looks at her, eyebrows raised, “Er, sorry. We’re not Hodges Figgis.” Customer disagrees.

Eh, there’s a bloody great sign over the door with the shop’s name on it, and it ain’t HF. There’s also promo matieral everywhere you look in the shop, none of which is for Hodges Figgis. Bookseller gently explains that Hodges Figgis are in town, on Dawson Street, that there is only one branch. She also points out that we have never stocked any of the (highly specialised academic) textbooks she’s trying to return. When that fails, she points to the HF price stickers. Customer finally accepts defeat.

You’d think. Nope, she leaves the shop only to come back 10 mins later and insist that she had bought the books in this very store.

Eeeep?

Next a customer who wants a book that she knows nothing about, so far so familiar, right? But this one had a special spin. She made the bookseller look up an author because the book was part of a series and this guy had written one of the books. He didn’t exist anywhere on the databases we have. Then she wanted a phrase searched for as it was the series umbrella title. No joy. Then she wanted a publisher searched for. Fine, we found them, but it transpired they weren’t the people who published the series. It would seem that she knew this, but thought she should ask for the search in case the bookseller didn’t know how to google. Next she wanted a search for books on photography, because there are photographs in this nebulous book. That threw back about 10,000 results. From what she said the book seemed to be a publication from a small local press. We couldn’t find them either. At this point the bookseller’s head was near implosion, and the woman looks at her with a  smile and says “I know I should probably look it up myself, but it’s not like you’re busy or anything…”. Oh really? We were incredibly short-handed in work today, and everyone was trying to do about 10 things at once. So, there weren’t a lot of customers at that particular time, but oddly enough, we all had better things to do than wasting 25 minutes on a wild-goose chase.

Then there was angry lady with cane, who bellowed at me while I was doing a book search for another customer. She wanted to know where the books on pets were. I told her I was helping someone at that moment, but I could direct her to the section and would help her when I had finished locating/ordering the book for the customer I was with. She went away and came back 2 mins later saying there were no books on pets in the natural history / pets  section. I was still serving the same customer. I told her I was sorry if my directions were wrong, but I would bring her over to the books when I was finished with the person I was helping. She brandished her cane at me and bellowed about how difficult it was for her to walk. I suggested she sit down on a stool beside the counter and wait. She looked daggers at me. The customer I was serving made the grave error of giving me a wry smile, only for her to round on him, waving her came and shouting at him “Do you think this is funny? Do you? What is so bloody amusing?”.  I thought she was going to wallop the poor man. To defuse matters I asked a young chap who is with us for work-experience to bring her over and show her the section on pets, and to bring the stool with him so she could sit and browse at her leisure. Thankfully she didn’t come back over, and the customer I was dealing with eventually got his two books ordered in relative peace and quiet.

So… business as usual in the retail trenches. I’m off to cook dinner now, but there are more tales from the epic struggle to sell books without killing customers to come. Stay tuned!

“I’m not just intolerant”

Announced a customer to me, out of the blue the other day.

I boggled. Then she decided to expand: “I’m not just gluten intolerant, I’m lactose intolerant.”

Again a boggle. I mean, why walk up to a bookseller and announce this? Next she starts wittering about the Patrick Holford clinic in London (I think I was supposed to be impressed) and how they had “diagnosed” her (quelle surprise etc.) as having food issues that they could treat for her. So she wanted a book (eventually this came out) that they had told her to buy (along with a bucketload of Holford snake oil pills). Oddly enough the book  wasn’t readily available, which caused her to have a strop, which I guess proved that she is intolerant… and that what Holford says doesn’t make books sell. Thankfully.

Then today, a co-worker tells me that they had a customer the other day who had a complaint about dictionaries. It was unique in that she wanted a dictionary that contained only “hard words”. As an example she opened a dictionary to an random entry and announced “Hygiene! See I already know what that means. That’s no use to me. I need something that only has words that I don’t already know.”  The bookseller boggled a bit before explaining that dictionaries contain all kinds of words, and that people who are learning english (for example) may not know the words she considered to be “too simple” for inclusion. Not good enough. Apparently the dons of Oxford should psychically produce personalized dictionaries for customers like her. And possibly label hers with her name too, and only produce one copy and arrange to have it shelved somewhere she’ll be sure to come across it. Yeah….

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, people manage to surprise you.

One from a workmate….

Customer walks into shop, ipod blaring, walks up to the counter, grabs a copy of the “Dalkey Anthology”, shouts (ipod was loud) at co-worker “What does Anthology mean?” co-worker explains what the word means.  Customer puts down book without a word in response,  and walks straight out of the shop.

Odd.

She did give them the correct meaning but we spent a bit of time wondering what alternative definitions could have been given. Best I could come up with was that it’s a discussion of the religious beliefs of small insects, but that would be ant-theology really…