“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.

Urrrrrffffff…

New year, slack on posting as  I have been busy at work, and having a birthday and stuff.

One thing that struck me, and that is possibly worth a mention, is the lunacy that overtakes bookworms at bookstore sales time. Today is the 8th of January and so far this year I have purchased 15 books, plus I have more set aside at work (I think there are 5 under my name…) – so that’s around 20, not counting the bounty of books recieved as gifts for Christmas/birthday…. so when will I get to read all of them? And what on earth possessed me to dive into the bucket of proofs at work and root out another 4 books to add to the pile? I am hereby banning myself from buying any more books until at least March, when I should have some of this lot read. Let’s see if I can stick to that….

Joy from work – before Christmas (yeah, I’m a slacker) a customer confounded a manager at work by looking for a book about the American Revolution that he’d heard a lot about. A trawl through he history section produced nothing. He was asked if he was sure of the subject, yes of course he was. Did he know the author by any chance? Yep, someone called “Bates”. After much to-ing and fro-ing it transpired that he was after “Revolutionary Road” by Richard Yates….which is not about the American Revolution at all at all… but I suppose it has “Revolution” in the title and is set in America…. sigh.

And my top bookseller moment of 2008 was – selling a mystery shopper a copy of “What was Lost” (which contains a hilarious section devoted to the increasingly insane ramblings of a mystery shopper on the edge) without knowing they were a mystery shopper. They were looking for a book for a book club, allegedly. There were very nice about me in their report though…. I wonder why?

So far this year I have managed to read one book, Tom Bedlam by George Hagen, which is a grand read, an old-fashioned page-turner where you can forgive the strikingly small-world-ness of people crossing paths on different continents because it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling, and where you really do care about the characters, which always matters.

I have also partly re-read Toni Morrison’s Jazz for the book-club at work (last read it in college just after it came out) and now I want to re-read Paradise as well (read Beloved again a year or two ago) since I’d forgotten how much I love that trilogy (of sorts). Have to finish Jazz again first though.

I also skimmed through Hayden Herrera’s book on Frida Kahlo’s paintings (on sale for €10!) which a colleague very kindly made sure was kept for me. I’ll give it a proper read when I have time, though a lot of the text seems to come straight from the bio, which I have owned three times since 1992 – it has become one of those books I refuse to let people borrow. I just bought this one for the colour plates of the paintings though, so I’m not fussed if the text does turn out to be a rehash.

Next up on the to-be-read pile is “Due Preparations for the Plague” by Janette Turner Hospital, which I’ve been intrigued by for a while. Picked up the hardback for a song (yay for sales!) so I’ll finally get to have my curiosity sated.

So if I’m quiet for a while it’s because I’m working my way through thirty books – although I’ll post the good the bad (but not the indifferent) as I go. Also, stupendously silly/irritating/angry customers will always merit mention, if only because it feels good to vent into cyber-nothingness!

Pwnt…

If anyone doubted booksellers are sarky sorts – I couldn’t resist putting this zinger from a co-worker up here.

We were whining in work about not having gotten any proofs in a while (makes a difference from whining about it being cold etc.) and a co-worker mentioned that a “few” had come through that I missed. How did I miss them, I wondered.

Well, she took them all, that’s why. To my half-hearted protest of “But I may have wanted to read one of them!” she raised an eyebrow and replied, deadpan; “Nah, you wouldn’t have. I looked at all the covers and none of them had a corpse on the front.”

Ah, that’s alright then…. (and to further redeem herself, she rescued the new Jo Nesbo proof from the bunch that eventually arrived and stowed it safely in my locker for me – making me a very happy camper!).

On the daft customers front, answered a call the other day with my usual greeting, “Good (whatever time of day it was), thank you for calling (company name, store location), (my name) speaking, how can I help you?”

Customer on phone says: “(Our store location)?”

I reply: “Yes, that’s right.”

A pause, then: “But I was looking for (totally other location), why did I get through to you?”

Now I’m thinking “Because you dialled our number?” but it wouldn’t do to say that, so instead I offer to give them the correct phone number for the branch they want. Nope, they want to be transferred. Not possible. They are not happy. My flabber is gasted by their lack of understanding of the basics of telephonic communication, but I give them the right number anyway. Bless ‘em, they made me feel kind of clever by comparison.

A classic…

This one is thanks to Martin, my manager….

While working in Waterstones Martin heard of a customer who came to the store repeatedly, looking for a classic book about a shopkeeper from County Clare.

The staff were baffled as he kept insisting it was a classic, a set text, canonical (etc. etc.) and kept getting more and more frustrated with the helpless staff who racked their brains trying to think of something, anything, that sounded like what he was after.

Weeks into this, the customer runs into the shop, face aglow, he’d remembered the title!

And it was – “The Merchant of Ennis” (say it quickly).

I wonder who he thought it was by? Britney Spears?