Re-Tales: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

As an employee for any corporation, you have to keep any personal feelings and politics behind. But there are times when even a saint's patience can be tested. I've already said that customers aren't always right, but that isn't the half of it. Customers are people, and people can be downright opinionated, cruel and ignorant, such as in the following example:

With the ever increasing awareness of global warming, and its effects on every living being on this planet, a lot of companies, products and people are 'going green.' As such, we had a 'green living' display of books. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that our world is changing dramatically. In fact, if one wanted proof from that kind of credential, one only need look as far as last year's Nobel Peace Prize winners, shared by Al Gore and the IPCC, a panel of over 600 reputable authorities from over 40 countries. And yet, there are still people in the dark corners of this country who refuse to believe it.

One day, a customer decided to make his opinions known about the 'scam' known as global warming. Turns out, that's what his favorite conservative radio host had said. He held up a copy of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth mere inches from my face, in a very aggressive manner, telling me what a 'load of hogwash' it was and how it was the biggest scam since, well I don't remember what, but I was starting to boil over. As politely as I could, I said that I wouldn't discuss that topic as I disagreed with him. Quite rudely, he responded, "that's because you don't know ANYTHING." At that point, I felt like abandoning the customer as, since I don't know anything, I surely can't help him any further. But, somehow, I continued. He kept talking about the subject with his friend, all the way to the book he requested. He simply couldn't accept that someone didn't feel the same way he did and had to vocally represent that dissent. To me, those are the actions of someone who is very insecure with his opinions.

Someone who is completely secure with their own ideas lets everyone have their say. Instead, bookstores are besotted with people we call 'book-turners.' These people, mostly conservatives, come in and willfully hide books by or about left wing politicians. Lately, their usual target is Hillary Clinton. If there's a stack of her books on a table, the top one gets turned over. A faceout on a display? Turned over. A spine showing on the shelf, turned so the pages face the customer. The really paranoid ones do a massive amount of shuffling so that Democratic books are pushed way back and covered with books about their own favorites. Is all this really necessary?

I've seen much worse than this, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, with people saying the most horrible things about coworkers who didn't happen to be 'American' in their eyes. It's simply deplorable. Books are supposed to be tools of learning, not tools of ignorance, and bookstores should be a place where everyone can come together. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening in our near future.

Re-Tales: The Customer is Always Stupid

I've never believed in the old maxim that 'the customer is always right.' In fact, I haven't met anyone in the business, on any level, who believed even remotely in that statement. This kind of thing becomes even more relatively false in the world of entertainment retail. Why? Because we're dealing not with absolutes such as expired vs. fresh food or it fits vs. it doesn't fit. Books, music and movies are always a matter of taste. Most attempted returns are made simply because the customer didn't like it. (Or because Oprah implied that customers should return their copies of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections or James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.) But, in this installment of retail, I'm not even going to get into taste. Maybe one of these days I'll get into the Oprah thing, but for now, I'm just going to concentrate on stubbornness and ignorance.

Before I go on, let me just say that I've had my own stupid moments. I'm not perfect. And one of these days, aside from the promised Oprah material, I'll reveal the one horrifically stupid moment that somewhat made me what I am today, a book snob. The difference between my gaffe and most by customers is that I'll admit I'm wrong. I remember one particular customer in a bookstore in Delaware. She was in her late 30's, early 40's, buying a book for her daughter's English class. She came to me at the counter and fairly rudely demanded a copy of, in her words, 'Jane Eyre by Jane Austen.' Well, if you know anything about books you know what's wrong with this request. I told her that I wouldn't be able to conjure up that particular book, but I could get her Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. We could have easily left it at that, she could have taken the book, purchased it, and been on her merry way. But, she wasn't about to be 'corrected' by a 25-year-old snob, so she lashed out. "I know who wrote Jane Eyre. It was Jane Austen!!" I had no other choice but to show her the complete written works of Jane Austen, pointing out the absence of said book, and then to give her a copy of Charlotte Bronte's well-known novel. In the end, she still turned up her nose at me and left in a huff.

Next Week: Feeling Blue in a Red County....

Re-Tales: You Don't Read?

Many of the Re-Tales stories I intend to tell revolve around the idea of the customer not only being wrong, but being fairly ignorant. It used to be that bookstores and libraries employed those who were the most knowledgeable and passionate about books. Libraries might still be the exception, but with the onset of computers, the cutting of costs and the shrinking of profit margins, bookstores have fairly well dumbed it down.

I was working in one of the many bookstores from my past, one that definitely employed some of the creme de la creme of passionate book people. A dowdy woman came in wearing a large straw hat, oversized sunglasses, too much perfume, and overall coated with attitude. (I should say that this was in an airport bookstore and she was traveling, I believe, to Hawaii. But, who knows.) She asked the young lady I was working with whether we had a copy of "The Bridges of Madison County." There are two things you need to know about before I end this story. For one, this novel, one of the most popular books of 1992, was already somewhat passé by the time this event occurred. The second thing you need to know is that the young lady who was assisting the dowdy woman was a grad student at UCLA. She was incredibly intelligent, well read and outspoken.

OK. So, now that you know those things, here's the rest. The young lady bookseller found the title, placed it in the customer's hand and then asked if there was anything else the woman needed. The woman then proceeded to ask, "What did you think of this book?" As politely as possible, the young lady responded, "I'm sorry, I haven't read that book." The dowdy replied with bile in her voice, "What? You work in a bookstore and you don't read?" The young lady kept her composure, looked down at the woman (the young lady was also intimidatingly tall, like a woman's basketball star) and retorted, "Yes ma'am, I read. I just don't crap like that."

It was priceless, one of those moments you wish you could have been a part of. I was there, but I sure wish I had said it.

Re-Tales: Noah, Your Pictures Are Ready

Not all of my bookstore tales mock the religious, but sometimes those turn out to be the funniest. My last "Re-Tales" post is hard to top, but this one comes close.

The holidays are always stressful in a bookstore. Not only do you have to perform all the same tasks that were required throughout the year, but you also have to help thousands upon thousands of people, most of whom only set foot in a bookstore once a year. These are the people who generally ask the oddball, nutbar questions. I was manning the information desk during the holidays when I was approached by a middle-aged woman. She informed me that she was looking for a book on Noah's Ark. I immediately told her that we had a number of children's books on Noah's Ark and she just as quickly rejected the idea. "I don't want a book on Noah's Ark for kids." Knowing that the only books I had seen in the store on the subject were kids books I asked, "Okay, what kind of book did you have in mind?" "I'm looking for a coffee table photography book on Noah's Ark," she replied. I stood agape. "Seriously?" I asked. She seemed offended. I debated letting her know that I think Noah forgot his Polaroid or Digital Camera that day. I think one of the giraffes might have eaten it.

To this day, I don't know what scares me more, the fact that this one woman seemed to think there were somehow photographs of this allegorical story, or that two-thirds of Americans believe the Noah's Ark story to be true, and that every year people try to form expeditions to look for artifacts on Mt. Ararat. Later, another bookselling friend told me that she had once been asked for a photography book on angels. Sometimes I feel like telling the customers that they should look next to the photography books of the Easter Bunny, Leprechauns and Unicorns.

Re-Tales: The Little Red Book

No, I'm not talking about Mao's manifesto. I was in one of the many retail bookstores I've worked for, and was called up to the front register to approve a return. I arrived to find a middle-aged woman with a leather-bound Bible. At the time, bookstores were still asking why customers were returning their purchases. So, I asked. She stated that the Bible was supposed to have the words of Christ in red print. I picked up the Bible and did, indeed, see that she was right. The binding of the Bible claimed that the words of Christ were supposed to be in red. I opened the Bible to find out if it was misprinted. However, I found that those passages were, in fact, in red. I pointed this out to the customer to show her the proof. Her response? "But he's not even in the whole first half!" Honest to God....