Originally Posted: 2003-12-31 19:43 (no longer live)
print

You There, Bookstore Customer

You there, Bookstore Customer. Yeah you, Miss Stylish, with the funky hair and the fur trimmed skirt, slumped in the easy chair with your legs draped over the arm swinging your kicky toe nail polish. You look ever so delish and cosmopolitan reading your ELLE magazine, but your feet stink. Please put your shoes back on.

Hey Mom! Not you, I’m talking to the mom pouring over the cookbooks on the other side of the store. Your kid just cleared every bottom shelf in the Toddler’s Book section onto the floor. He has a fine future as a demolitions expert. Be proud.

And for you, Mr. Pretentious, in your de rigueur black turtleneck and John Lennon glasses looking for a book by a poet who’s name I can’t even pronounce, much less spell. No, I’ve never heard of him, and no, I DIDN’T go to college, obviously, or I wouldn’t be HERE standing under a Customer Service sign putting up with your fucking insults for the princely sum of $6.75 an hour. Sneering a little harder won’t infuse my brain with the necessary knowledge to type your "famous poet" into the search computer to ascertain whether or not we have a goddam copy, so will you PLEASE just spell it for me so I can get rid of you and get on to the 20 morons needing help piling up in a line behind you?

To the panicked kid who couldn’t find the one and only copy of Astrophysics Made Easy, which has been sitting on "that shelf right there forever and I HAVE to use it to study for a test tomorrow!". Your classmate bought it. Perhaps you got confused at the door. I know the signs for ‘bookstore’ and ‘library’ are startlingly similar.

To the two chicks in their hiphugger pants and cropped tops giggling their way through the Sex section. There’s a drooling pervert in the café watching your every move. I hope you parked in the front, because the lot in the back is dark. Please do be careful leaving the building.

And for the lady who wants a copy of a book you loved for your friend, I need a LITTLE more information than it has a blue cover, it’s about a woman in trouble, and was written by that lady with the curly hair. I don’t CARE how "awesome" the book was, nor can I memorize every bestseller list published in the past ten years, and no, I probably HAVEN’T read it, so I don’t have a fucking clue and no matter how pathetically you beg, I’m not going to be able to pull that title out of my ass. I can, however, recommend some very effective memory enhancing books for you to take home for yourself.

To the college student trying to save a dime on your textbook, it was wonderful of you to bring an ISBN, but that book is not in our available stock and it’ll take three weeks for it to ship here. Your class begins tomorrow, you say? For a price, we can put a rush on it, I tell you, helpfully. Well! There’s no need to get snotty about it, Missy. _I_ wasn’t the one who waited until the last fucking minute bargain hunting to save a measly ten bucks on a hundred dollar book. Get a student loan, get a pal to share, but don’t you DARE get huffy with me because the Corporate-Powers-That-Be chose not to stock this book. This is a commercial bookstore by a mall, you dumbfuck. Did you ACTUALLY believe a college textbook would be on the shelves?

And for every teacher who sends an entire class of 50 students to pick up a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, would it have killed YOU to make a simple phone call to our staff to let us know so we’d have the copies on hand? The tears were horrendous, and when one kid found out he’d have to wait a week to acquire his own copy, he barfed on the Bargain Books table. You must be one wicked BITCH of a teacher.

And you, the huge slob in spandex slurping the frappaccino with whipped cream. There are trashcans all over the store. Waddle your fat ass over to one and deposit your empty cup there. The exercise will do you good.

To the homeless family camped out in the café. We don’t mind you getting in out of the cold from opening to closing everyday, and your children are quite well behaved, but you MUST stop eating the scraps that people leave on the tables and if you dig through the garbage one more time, we’re going to have to ask you to leave. PS, there’s soap in the restrooms. You’re more than welcome to use it. As a matter of fact, we insist.

And finally, for the freak who hangs around the tables outside, spouting off about your spiritual beliefs to people who don’t give a flying fuck, we aren’t fooled by the changing disguises every week. Whether you’re Biker Guy or Construction Dude or the Cool Cowboy, the police are on their way.

Do have a nice day. And thank you for shopping!




post id: 21655486