Sometimes I can’t handle the questions and situations I get myself into working at a bookstore:

“There was a book on a table at Christmas time and it had a flower on the cover.  What was it?” — Do you really expect me to remember every single book that was on every single display that we ever had in the store?

“Do you have back issues of magazines?” — No.  Do you see how cramped the Newsstand is already and you want us to keep back issues of everything as well?  Plus, no one wants back issues except for you.  If you wanted it so bad, you should have bought it when it was current.

“Where’s the non-fiction section?” — You see the signs that say Fiction, it’s pretty much everything else.

You need an old, unpopular book by tomorrow?  And you figured that this old, unpopular book would just magically be on the shelf?  Well, no.  We only stock books that we can sell.  I’d be happy to order it for you, but it will be 3-4 days.  You’ll just check somewhere else?  Ok, good luck with that as I told you that all our other local stores don’t have it in stock either and most of the smaller bookstores probably also don’t stock the old, unpopular book.

No we do not price match with our website.  I know, this might be confusing.  But the publishers set the in-store price, not the company…look, you can see the price printed on the book.  We don’t do that.  Ok, you just go buy it online.  It’s going to be the same price when you pay for shipping anyways.

You’re looking for a book?  That’s great, you are in the right place.  Oh, wait, you don’t know the title, author or really even what it’s about?  How am I supposed to help you?  Why do you want to buy a book that you know absolutely nothing about?

Please don’t take the plastic off of the Playboy and leave in it the bathroom.  That’s gross.

You have a pile of books that you don’t want to buy or are in a hurry?  Leaving them at the info desk or at any of the registers makes us happy.  Please don’t shove them into some random section for us to find later.

The magazine displays are not racks for you to leave magazines on.  They are for specific titles.  Please just leave them on the bench, or even better, bring them up to the info desk, we would be happy to put them away for you!

“We don’t have that book in stock, sir/ma’am, would you like me to order it for you?”…”Could you just check in the back?”  No.  It’s not there.  Trust me.  We don’t have it in stock, that includes our back room.  Sure, I’ll go stand back there for a minute and come back to tell you we don’t have it.  It’ll give me a chance to sit down for a minute.

Please don’t get mad at me that we don’t carry something, that we don’t price match, that we don’t take Starbucks gift cards.  It’s not my fault.  I have absolutely no control over these things.  I’m not even a manager, I’m just a lowly bookseller.

And finally, the best question ever that one of my co-workers got today:

“I’m looking for this book.  I don’t remember the title or author.  But it’s about a haunted house in the 1950’s.  I think the dad was a lawyer.  It had prejudice in it.  There might have been rabbit in the title.”

Do you have any guesses to what this book might be?  I do not know how my co-worker figured out what book this person was actually looking for.  It was To Kill a Mockingbird.

Thanks for reading my rant.