Shelf Awareness posted these customer comments twittered by book store employees. Enjoy!
Apparently, quite a few customers just didn't pay attention in school:
"Do you have (pause, consult reading list) Hamlet? It's by (pause, consult list again) Shakespeare?"
Overheard: "Can you tell me who the author of Shakespeare is?"
"Do you have Shakespeare in English?"
"I'm looking for a book but I only know the title, not the author. It's called Dante's Inferno."
"Who wrote Jane Austen?"
Watermarkbooks had a summer-long Jane Austen bookclub. I had someone ask when she would be there.
"Where do yall keep the true fiction?"
"I definitely don't want nonfiction. I like autobiographies and history."
Then there's those memorably weird (sometimes unsettling) queries:
"Do you have books on monkeys, monkeys doing things like people?" (turns out they wanted monkeys having sex)
“This is the only bookstore I've ever been in that didn't have a popcorn machine."
"I'm here for a Bible, not the KJV or anything. I'm looking for the original. You know the one that God wrote."
"My new girlfriend is pretty churchy. Would a Gutenberg Bible be a good gift?"
"Do you have any books with red covers? I'm redecorating my living room in red."
Cust asks about return policy so I ask her why.... "Well if I don't lose weight I should be able to return the book right?"
"I'm looking for white supremacy books. I tried to order them and they were stopped at the border. Can you imagine?!"
"What do you mean? Why can't I leave my 3-5 yo (unattended) in your shop while I go next door?!?"
Customer asks where 'nonfiction' is. I say it's broken up into history/bio etc. She calls us a bad bookstore. Really?
And that saying about how "the customer is always right"? Not so much.
My favorite mistaken title: The Glass Menage a Trois.
Customer asked for THE ONION IN THE CLOSET; wanted INDIAN IN THE CUPBOARD.
Woman asked for CRUCIBLE, I gave it to her, she said "not the screenplay. The REAL one."
2nd week as bkseller, lady looking for the KITE WALKER. Was pissed when I suggested that KITE RUNNER might be a quicker read.
Oooo Ooo - Tillers of the Earth. Was completely insulted when I suggested she might be looking for Pillars of the Earth.
"Do you have Atlas Rugged?". "Uh. No, don't you mean Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand?". "No. I need Atlas Rugged."
Sometimes, these experiences lead to rewarding moments of win:
"I'm looking for a book. It had a chicken on the cover & my sister really liked it." Total WIN. With no more info, we found it.
"Do you have those mystery novels by Angela Lansbury?" I said yes and showed him the books by "Jessica Fletcher." He was happy.
And perhaps my favorite:
Someone once told me that the US government classified ANGELS & DEMONS as fiction to help the Vatican with the cover-up.
