helpful hints for bookstore customers, part 8

Best beloved bookstore customers,

While I love books, and love talking about books, and even love spirited and lively debate over books, it really is not necessary for you to call the bookstore and tell me -- for a lengthy and dreary ten minutes -- exactly why a particular book did not plant an undying love in your own reader's heart.

I don't need for you to tell me that you think the author is not "the right sort of person." Or for you to describe exactly how disappointed you are that the bookstore gave him the time and space for an author event. I don't need for you to describe your astonishment that such a person, with such differing views from your illustrious self, ever had a book published at all.

Please remember: We are a bookstore. We mostly like you. We are not, however, your friends. Those ten minutes that you spent with the perforated plastic of your phone pressed to the folds of your ear are now irretrievably lost. They would have been so much better, so much more satisfying, if they had been shared with a friend. Over coffee maybe. Or tea. And in the forgiving company of someone who might actually say how your displeasure makes them feel.

With warmest regards,
Me

helpful hints for bookstore customers, part 5

If you see a girl standing at the register, please know that this is not an invitation for you to approach her with conversation that insults both the event that the store is hosting and the girl herself.

Please do not imagine that you should say things like:

"These women, they are telling lies. Lies. I am a perceptive kind of guy, real perceptive, you know? And I can tell you that these women are lying. I can tell when people are the sincere sort and when they're liars. You're too young to know this sort of thing. You just don't know. How old are you? Huh. When I was your age, I was travelling India. You should travel. You don't know anything about the world, you just got your eye closed and they need to be opened. You may think you've got them open, but you can't see anything."

And then, when the girl, rather tight-lipped, says that, actually, she has travelled, please don't say:

"Well, you're only talking the western world. That's not going to help. Your eyes are still closed. You don't know anything still. You don't know anything about Asia."

And then, when the girl points out the (rather obvious) fact that she is, in fact, Asian don't then say:

"Well, it's not like you know anything about it. There's that culture and that history and that language, and you're just ignorant of it all. You need to learn something about the world."

And then, when the girl tells you that she really can't stay there and talk to you any longer, and that you might have your opinions, but she really doesn't agree with them or want to hear them anymore, please do not say:

"God bless you. You'll learn."

So much rage. Also, disbelief.

Many thanks.