Kennedy told me that I should be keeping track of my wacky experiences at the book store, and while I don't know if they're all that wacky, I do have a brief story and a small complaint to share today. The story:
A youngish guy came in today -- he had on a tank top and wore an oversized trucker's cap at a tilt, he had black outline tattoos (no colour-fill or shading, if that's a style) covering a good bit of him (including up his neck), and while I would definitely not say he was scary looking, he didn't look like our average book shop customer -- and when I smiled at him, he approached with a question. In his hand he had a couple of board books on potty training, and as he waved them in the air, he said, "I know that you have these books on potty training for little kids, but do you have anything for me? Like, something I could use?" It honestly took me a couple of seconds to realise that he wasn't looking for books on how to potty train himself, and I was able to lead him over to the Parenting section where there were, indeed, books that he could use to potty train some little one. That was the story that made Kennedy laugh, and I hope I've done justice to how absurd the situation was in my own mind (and I totally acknowledge that the only misunderstanding was entirely in my own mind). To the complaint:
Whichever bookseller is working the closing shift is expected to have the shelves all neat and tidy before going home. That includes reshelving the books that customers abandon throughout the store, and most especially, those books that are placed sideways across the top of a row of books. It's amazing how far these books can travel from the section they belong in, and although it's a bit annoying to do this cleanup, it's much better for one of us to put these books back where they belong than to have a customer stick them on random shelves where they can be lost for weeks or months.
As I said, it's much better for us to do the reshelving when books are decided against -- and I accept it as part of the job -- but what drives me bonkers are the books that people think they are being clever by placing strategically across certain shelves. As the Humour section is beside that for Religion, I have often found On Bullshit placed across the Bibles or other Christian material. I'm sure some wag feels smug over that little prank, but it's just a couple of steps for me to fix. I've been seeing that gag since I started at the store, but what has become a bigger problem lately is a book of poetry called I Wrote This For You and Only You by pleasefindthis, and someone(s) out there obviously thinks it's clever to stick it on random shelves throughout the store for others to "find". I get the intention behind that, but I found it on a random shelf tonight, put it back where it belonged, and within a half hour, I had found it somewhere else and had to put it back in Poetry again. How do I know it's the same copy as before? Because, although the kiosk tells me that we have four copies of that book, there's only one in the proper place, and when I reshelved it for the second time, it was still the only copy in its proper place. See the problem? If someone actually wanted to buy that book, it would be unfindable, and as helping people find books is the largest part of my job, I resent anyone making that harder for me (and the customer, obviously). Because I had to reshelf that twice within half an hour, I naturally wonder if it was the same person who moved it twice. Was this one person, very determined to delight someone with the experience of finding such a book in an unexpected place? Or was this two separate people? And is there somewhere online that people are suggesting this be done? One thing I know: if this is some movement in support of the author, it's having the opposite effect: I can't sell a book that I can't find. /endrant
