Few things are as peaceful or enjoyable to me as just hanging out at the bookstore for a while. Unless you’re there. And by “you,” I mean one of the nine groups of people on this list, increasingly driving me toward Amazon. You are, in no particular order of annoyance …
COFFEE DRINKERS
Who goes for a bookstore just to get coffee? Isn’t that like going to an AutoZone for a Coke? I don’t do the java, so I’m more than a little put off by how fucking noisily you drink it. But, hey, at least you’re buying something to compensate for all those magazines you hauled over to your table to read while you suck down the joe. Just please stop smacking after every slurp. And since coffee moves the bowels, something tells me you’re part of the next group, too.
DUMPERS
If I’m going to be browsing at a bookstore for a bit, I’ll run into the restroom to pee so I’m not dancing around the aisles uncomfortably. But every damn time, you’re there sitting in the stall, voiding your bowels, offending my nose, ears and very being. Unless there’s some stomach virus epidemic, isn’t this something that could wait for the privacy of your own home? Did you have to have the Grand Slam Breakfast just before coming over? It’d be one thing if you’d just get your business done and get out, but instead, you smuggled in newspapers, magazines and even entire books to read as you poo leisurely, as if you were under your own roof. Once you’re done wiping, who will want to buy those things you touched? Answer: nobody. (I’m bringing my own LumaLight.)
OVERLY EAGER EMPLOYEES
No, I don’t need your help, but thanks. (Five minutes pass.) No, I still don’t need your help. I mean, you’re still shelving books in alphabetical order, right? However, I think there’s a first-timer coming in the doors now that probably only reads books recommended by Oprah. What’s a first-timer, you ask? Easy …
FIRST-TIMERS
Hey, you who stormed in. Have you really never been to a bookstore before, or do you just enjoy drawing attention? You remind me of the old people I see at the post office who make buying a roll of stamps a 10-minute process of discovery and indecision. You gaze around in faux confusion for a moment before making a beeline for the help desk – or, aggravatingly to those of us waiting patiently in line, the checkout counter – and half-angrily ask, “Where’s (insert title here)?” as if you just arrived at the hospital emergency room and were looking for your trauma-victim daughter. Hey, Magellan, see those big signs hanging from the ceiling that point out the subject sections? That’s where you’ll find it. You’re in a nicely organized bookstore, not a vast warehouse of a Sam’s Club or Costco.
AISLE SITTERS
I’d love to look at those books on that shelf right there, but you’re sitting in front of it, your back leaning against it, reading material in your hand, making yourself perfectly comfortable. Odds are, your coat and purse/backpack and whatever else you can litter about your person are. Can’t you at least be like our next group and get out of the way?
COUCH SITTERS
But don’t think you’re immune to my ire, all of you who plop your fat ass on a couch, next to a pile of stuff – often manga, for some reason – you have every intention of reading and no intention of buying. This isn’t a library.
STUDY GROUPS
Didn’t you hear me? I said this isn’t a library! How can you study any way when all you’re doing is talking? Shouldn’t you buy something to make nice for that free wifi you’re using and all the space you’re taking up for hours and hours?
HALITOSIS CHECKOUT GUY
Dude, you really gotta do something about that. They have books on it, you know. You could get one cheap with your employee discount.
OL’ WHISTLENOSE
What’s wrong with your honker, old man? I can hear air literally whistling in and out of it as you breathe. The first time I heard you, it was so ominous as your two-note snout song grew ever so closer to me as you proceeded aisle by aisle. Now, I can’t escape you, because no matter where I am in the place, your repetitive nostril ballad follows. Please, at least work up a chorus. –Rod Lott
{ 1 trackback }
{ 71 comments… read them below or add one }
You left out the most important one:
Cellphone talker:
Nothing more annoying. I go to bookstores during my lunch hour to get 20 minutes of browsing peace. Why do I need to hear some lady cackling into her phone about what Little Johnny did at school?
Grrrrr…
Confession time: I’ve been guilty of at least two of these things.
However, in my defense, I’ve only ever bought coffee as an afterthought, it wasn’t my reason to go to the bookstore, and I don’t do it often. (Can’t afford it for one thing.)
And while I have been a dumper, it’s usually in an emergency case, and I’ve never smuggled books magazine, etc. in there. That’s disgusting, though it made for a great episode of “Seinfeld”.
I think you should just stick to amazon.
What about “Pocket Change Jangling Old Dude”?
Or “Cell Phone Yakking Jerk”?
Or “Annoying (insert folk band of choice)”?
Great blog today!
Take care,
Troy
Why not just use Amazon, then?
That’s a good list. Store where I worked had no couches. The manga readers just occupied the aisles. I don’t know why we carried manga, since more of those were stolen than purchased.
Since we were a downtown store, you can add to this list for our particular location: those who shoot up in the corners.
You must have worked in Seattle. I lived there for a couple of years and, not to make it a stereotype, there seemed to be needles everywhere in that city. Gutters, public restrooms of ritzy hotels, bookshelves at bookstores… It’s a beautiful city, but I don’t think I could live there again.
How about those bookstore concerts?
My favorite time to go to Borders is on Friday nights during the winter (I really have the world by a string, don’t I?). Inevitably, there is someone playing music in the cafe. Which is sometimes all right. Sometimes it’s just some guy strumming quietly on an acoustic guitar while some songbird sings along at a nice subdued volume. Which is nice enough, I guess. But there have been a few times I’ve had to literally shout to be heard at the register. This isn’t a nightclub.
To add to King Rat’s second pick, add in the great unwashed. Nothing I like better then going into a nice bookstore and then turn a corner and getting a whiff of rotting flesh and bad body odor.
Here are some more:
1. “Alternative” teenagers who go to the kids section and actually lay down and nap.
2. People who listen to their music devices waaaay too loud.
3. Moms who drop their kids off in the kids section for hours at a time, as though it were a babysitting service.
4. When you do need help, clerks that are busy hitting on some girl to notice you.
5. Petchouli.
6. Grown-ups who get excited about Harry Potter.
Or how about the dirty old men at the art/photography section leering over the books of artistic nudes? They’re too embarrassed to buy it, so they’ll stand there blocking the section and read through a nude book, cover to cover while their brow gets sweaty and pupils dilate.
What about minimum-wage book clerks who try to suppress free speech? These are almost exclusively liberal feminist clerks who hide books or magazines they personally do not like(usually by conservative authors, but can also include Maxim magazine).
Peter, I’m fairly liberal myself, though not hardcore, and I never have worked at a book store, but to me it would be like any other job. You follow directions. If A authors come before B authors, then that’s where they go.
(Insert the mocking laughter of Nelson Muntz) I see someone couldn’t think up another form of jackassery in order to compose the much-more conventional Top Ten list.
Although several other commentators have given you great options to fill in that missing spot, I think I’ve come up with the most singularly annoying–namely, over-excited authors who cannot stop themselves from pointing to their books on the shelves and loudly announcing to whoever is close to them, “Hey, I wrote that!”
Seriously, you should see the dirty looks I get from people whenever I do it.
And here I thought I was helping my sales by doing that…
I know what you mean…but as a part timer at bookstore, we’re kind of encouraged to greet customers and ask them if they need help (although we don’t badger them constantly). We have to do this more so now with our competitors opening up a bigger store right across the street. Our boss tells us that we not be able to hold as much inventory-wise but we should kick ass in customer service, hence the “can I help you?”.
By the way, how about people who leave “gas bombs” in certain sections of the store. Guy cuts the cheese and evacuates to another section of the store leaving his pungent stink to linger and mercilessly attack ninja-style another customer’s (or innocent book shelving employee’s) olfactory senses to a point where you collapse as if punched in the solar plexus in a fetal position trying to claw your eyes out because of the constant irritation to your eyes from the fumes.
Solar plexus alert!
“You gaze around in faux confusion for a moment before making a beeline for the help desk ”
Ok, I don’t remember my first time in a bookstore, but, I know this feeling. It comes from reading books that cross genres. Will Omnivore’s Dilemma be in cooking or sociology or general science? Are Jasper Fforde’s books in sci-fi/fantasy, mystery or fiction? What about the Charlaine Harris books? Horror, mystery or romance?
Sorry, but those big signs are not always helpful. Sure, I could spend 20 minutes working my way through each section and, assuming the store has the books in stock, come away with knowledge of where it is, but, the books aren’t always in stock, so sometimes you need to ask to see where a particular book would be filed.
Now, the people who ask the sales clerk and not the help desk (assuming there is a help desk, not all independents have them, y’know), feel free to heap ire on them, assuming they didn’t wait in line to ask. Those people suck. But if they waited in line and just happened to be in front of you? Get over it, at least they didn’t ignore the line.
You might be spot on with the rest of this list, but that particular entry isn’t one of them. Sorry.
Oh, no, the first-timers *never* stand in line. They’re cutters as well. And I’m not referring to people who genuinely can’t find something, but those who are simply lazy and demanding.
This is why I like Border’s, cause the one that I go to has computers for self-look up. In the Google Age I think most of us have the ability to search in this fashion as well. People should really at least try to find what they are looking for. People should really leave themselves enough time in case it gets confusing. In fact sometimes I find more interesting things by browsing in a certain section. On the other hand if I am looking for a particular book, I go to the self-help computer to find out what general area it is in, then I look there. On the other hand people that look and put back should really put things back where they belong. Workers don’t always notice if a1127a.1 has been placed before a11276.6.
Most big stores like Borders and Barnes & Noble have computer stations scattered all over the place where you can look up a book and see whether the store has it in stock and where it’s shelved. Or at least they did back when I used to patronize bookstores. But for the reasons you mention and several others, I now stay out of bookstores altogether and buy on Amazon. It’s easier and cheaper, and even though I do miss the physical pleasures of looking around in a good bookstore, it just isn’t worth dealing with the rude assholes you have to put up with.
Borders still has those stations, and I love them for it. But B&N does not. If there’s something you can’t find, you are forced to go wait in line at the help desk and have someone look it up for you. And, more often than not, have them scowl at your choice of reading material.
One more: Clueless clerks.
Tell me how it is possible that the clerks at Books-A-Million, on the first day of Oprah’s A New Earth webcast, don’t understand why the phone has been ringing off the hook all day with people asking for Ekhart Tolle books. You work in a bookstore and have no clue what Oprah’s latest book club stunt is? Whether you watch Oprah or not, you just know what she’s reading. Time for a career move.
One: No one works at a book store to make it into a career, unless they want to own one some day. Two: Most people who think for themselves aren’t going to make sure they know what the mainstream is doing. Three: Oprah is always on when these people have to work to be there for those who are going shopping at all hours of the day and night. Four: Oprah is an egotistical maniac and anyone who is so obsessed with what she’s reading can just go to the bookstore and find the book on their own. Calling a place to ‘shop’ is ridiculous and a waste of a clerks time. People in the store are already badgering them enough.
Easy: Because it’s Books-A-Million.
It’s partially the quality of bookstore you’re going to for your books. Never mind Amazon, go to one of the online independents. Powells, AbeBooks, etc.
My local Borders has had a puddle of urine in front of the urinal for the past ten years. I kid you not. I can’t explain it.
Give me a break. If people aren’t supposed to sit on the couches and read before they buy, why are there couches? Sometimes there are not enough couches for everyone, and hey – I’m not plopping down $30 for a book if I do not know what’s in it, so I’m going to take a look at it before I buy it. If you have a problem with that, I’m sorry, but I don’t have money to throw away, so I’m going to sit in the aisle and browse. So if I’m in your way, open your mouth and ask me to move.
If we’re not allowed to drink coffee, why do they sell coffee? I like coffee, and I do not slurp – thank you very much. Sometimes, the book store has the best coffee around, so I go there to get coffee. Is that a crime?
And what, exactly, is wrong with manga? I have a wide and varied interest in my reading material, and I happen to enjoy manga every once in awhile. And yes, I buy mine.
Dude if you get offended by a list like this you’re taking it too seriously. Its obvious its humor!! I think there is a big diff between sitting on the couch to ‘check out’ a book and sitting there for ever. He did not say there is anything wrong with manga
“And what, exactly, is wrong with manga?”
There is nothing wrong with manga, per se, only the people who read it.
The most annoying thing about bookstores are pretentious a–holes who view people as fodder for their pathetic lists.
A-hole? How’d you get my business card?
How about “Where’s the latest Oprah Book?” zombies that read one book a month & expect to find it exactly two feet inside the front door & directly to the right by the check-out counter??? Do you have a mind of your own?? Personal tastes?? Individual interests you’ve always wanted to pursue & now you’re here, in a bookstore, with how many tens-of-thousands of books at your imminent disposal & this is what you come up with?? Some people, including bookstore employees, scoff at the idea that they “have to know the latest Oprah pick.” Hasn’t your sixty year old grandmother been suggesting books to you for years that you should have read by now?? Oh wait…Oprah’s a celebrity…who got her start in exploitive television programs….that’s right…let’s go to Tower Records & expect to find the latest Maury dance tracks that played while some woman falsely claimed paternity rights or that one hip bass track Jerry Springer was playing when that limping veteran came back to find his ex-fiance all trailered-up in a lesbian relationship with his grandmother. I lump these people right beside JK Rowling & Dan Brown fanatics….which is directly to the back & in a large pile right outside the leaky urinal….
Unfortunatly Oprah’s books are 2 feet inside the door and directly to the left at my local Barnes and Noble.
here’s another “you forgot one” (coming from a former bookstore employee):
superficial annoying bookstore lover. you know, the one that just looooves books. she expresses envy at your job, saying “you must be in heaven, surrounded by all these BOOKS. if i worked here, i’d spend my whole paycheck on books/never leave!”
you wanna take my job, mistress positive? please do, so i can go outside and shoot myself, now.
I’m sure you would rather I dump in the bathroom than in my underwear, which is where it would be if I didn’t go to the bathroom immediately.
lol — for sure. u forgot #10 though, “Entitled Guy,” the one who thinks everyone he encounters should think of nothing before his own comfort and convenience. What a prick!
RE: OVERLY EAGER EMPLOYEES
Hey, go easy on the booksellers. Corporate mandates that we ask browsing shoppers if they need assistance. We would be much happier ignoring you outright to get other tasks done.
Also, next time a book has trouble scanning at the register do not, SERIOUSLY, do not even think about saying “Guess it’s free” or some variation thereof; lest I jump over the counter and cram the book down your screaming maw. Thank you.
so…. you’re saying it’s not free?
I worked at a particular craft store where the policy was to talk to the customers as much as possible and I found out after about five minutes that they were much happier when they came and sought you out and asked you for help than you badgering them about if they needed help or not. Just because it’s store policy or company policy to question people about their needs doesn’t mean you have to do it. I would be very happy if I walked into a store and was never accosted by another employee for the rest of my life. If I need help, I will find you.
Not only can I not understand the coffee drinkers, but I have just as much trouble with the couch sitters. It’s like they’re sitting in their living room reading a book, but they’re not. The living room is in the middle of a book store. Can’t they see that?
I’ve never been an aisle sitter, but I’ve been an aisle stander. Right there in front of the shelf where I picked up the book, facing the shelf, almost touching it, in fact, so I don’t take up any more aisle space than absolutely necessary. And usually after about five seconds, someone wants to get at one of the twenty books I’m blocking. In a store filled with 10,000 books, I’m blocking the one he wants to get at. Now, THAT is annoying.
Actually, though I used to easily spend an hour to an hour and a half in a bookstore and have a good time there, it’s much easier finding good books through the links at Amazon. I can’t imagine that I would have found even half the books I’ve read in the last five years without being linked to similar books through Amazon or just through the Internet.
I now buy all books online and haven’t been to a bookstore more than a couple times in the last five years. It’s cheaper online, too. You can get new or like new books for four or five dollars. And you don’t have to listen to pretentious classical music, either.
Sadly, I must admit to occasionally falling into the aisle sitters category. However, I only do this when I’m seriously attempting to look through the books on a very low shelf (my back isn’t about to take stooping over/squatting down for that long), and I try to keep an eye out in case someone needs to get past me or reach the shelf I’m at.
chances are, if you’re being asked more than once if you need help, you look suspicious
and I second the commenter who despises the parents who deposit their children in the kids’ section as if it’s a drop-off center; they also never pick up after said children because “there are employees who do that”
wow, what a complete loser. Rod, it seems as if you just need a reality check. If you don’t like “people” don’t go outside. The dumper? There are bathrooms for a reason, you jerk. Not everyone can shit on your schedule. To me, it sounds like your social anxiety disorder prevents you from pooping in public! The couch sitter? Maybe book stores should remove all seating. Maybe they should form one giant line that keeps moving so you can grab your book off the shelf while you move. Wouldn’t want people to loiter in the aisles!
You are a snob. There is a reason why you blog. No one actually sits around to listen to your angsty drivel.
These are all EXCELLENT ideas, James!
James – Boo Hoo I’ve got a masters in English and I work at Borders
“You are a snob. There is a reason why you blog. No one actually sits around to listen to your angsty drivel.”
Actually, we all do love Rod’s “angsty drivel”, and regularily gather to listen to his diatribes every other Friday in the Borders cafe area, usually around 9 PM. You could bring your acoustic guitar and perform your new protest song “I Ain’t Gonna Shit On Your Schedule, Mr, President Man”!
This is a great post and the follow-up comments are just as funny. I think your list is spot-on and the angry comments in response are hilarious. The clueless clerk is one who must be added, though, and not just because he/she doesn’t know what book Oprah is shilling this week. It would seem apparent to me that, if you work in a bookstore, you should know something about books. Maybe even that you should “like” books? I know it’s a low-paying, menial job, but come on, people. Mis-shelving fantasy titles in the mystery section or putting mystery books in the “literature” aisles doesn’t cut it. And, yes, I realize that the corporate headquarters probably dictates where books are supposed to go, but can’t you apply just a little personal initiative?
you are way too angry. you need God.
God is far too busy sitting in the aisle of the manga section to really care.
’cause God knows how to bust some wrath on a minion
I agree about the clueless clerks. I was so annoyed the other day at Barnes and Noble that the clerks had no idea where a particular book a customer wanted was located, let alone the genre it belonged to. Why work at a bookstore if you’re not even remotely familiar with books? Also, the other group of people who annoys me are the mothers who bring their annoyingly loud and rowdy children to the bookstore, drop them off in the children’s section so that they (the mothers) can be coffee drinkers. Has no one any respect any more enough to be quiet in a book store?
Rod’s initail list? Funny.
The fuckwits who actually seem to be offended by said list? Hillarious.
I was in a bookstore once where they put MAUS in the humor section. The poor chump who picks that one up looking for a laugh is gonna be disapointed.
I’m late coming to this, but I freaking love it! I worked in bookstores for 6 years and these are the same people who bugged the crap out of me!
“I ain’t gonna shit on your schedule, Mr. President Man!”!!!!!!!
I love you, whoever wrote that.
Thanks!
Initial List – Hilarious
Clueless Clerks – There are thousands of books in a bookstore. Surely you don’t expect the clerk to be familiar with ever single title?
Hey – couldn’t you pee at home? How dare you clog up the bathrooms needing to pee? Don’t most intelligent people know enough to go pee before they go to the bookstore.
I mean, really.
(You know, you could be very funny if you didn’t try so hard to be offensive…)
cjh
When I worked at Books-A-Million, we had a lady who came in every night, grabbed a book, took her shoes off, and then propped her feet up on whatever she could find. One night she came up to the manager and actually complained that we had sold the book that she was reading.
You forgot another one. The Remerchandisers or rearrangers, whatever you want to call them. These are the people who will come in and pick up a whole stack of books or magazines and then go put them on a shelf somewhere on the other side of the store.
Hehe great list. I’m an aisle sitter I admit, if there were chairs I would use them but not many book shops I go to have them. I don’t have much money so I feel I need to have a bit of a read before I buy. Oh yes so I fit into the treating the place like a library too. Damn! I just don’t like taking the books over to the coffee section, I get scared of damaging them.
My personal dislike are those that walk around at the speed of a stoned slug and take up as much space as their ass and rucksack allow. I want to get to my section! Whaaa!
Kira x
These are decent, though there are a few I disagree with. If people sitting quietly on couches reading (not stealing or physically ruining the book) is so much of an issue maybe you should buy off of amazon or some other online source. If I want to spend time reading a book at a bookstore, often times the longer I look at it the more apt I am to purchase it even after I read it.
I love this! Has made me laugh so much. Our bookstores in Britain seem to be a little different but we still have similar characters. However, another character that seems to have been forgotten are the pram pushers! why take a huge pram into a small bookstore, where the aisle only just fits the width of the pram through? no-body can get past so to get out the shop a lap of the whole shop is needed.
To be honest, i find any character amusing that is why i worked in pubs for so many years. I great way to read people. Plus i love books and the stores and have to say i am an aisle hogger and a browser.
These comments have given me a great idea for a uni project! you never know i may be the illustrator one day who saids ‘that’s my book on that shelf! the one that was inspired by the niggles of the consumer!’
Thanks guys! xx
You’re welcome, Laura! I admit, however, I had to look up “pram.” Different side of the pond, you know.
Keep looking for things to complain about, and you’ll keep finding them. Look for things to rejoice about, and you’ll find those instead.
I went to B&N recently and was forced by no choice to sit in the aisle along with someone else. Why? It was crowded and not an open seat to be found not even in the cafe. More than half the seats were taken by single people who probably utilized the bookstore like a library. I merely wanted enough time to take a good look at the book to see if I wanted to buy it. But each time I found an empty aisle to sit in, someone, from out of no where, came into the aisle and conveniently the book they wanted was right in my vicinity.
Its not aisle sitters that are the problem. Believe me, we don’t want to sit on the floor. Its all the single people that take up precious seats and then don’t really utilize the seats. Or how about the fact that some B&Ns do not even bother to place enough seating in their store in the first place?
The experience was bad enough to make me walk away without buying anything and I was more than willing to buy 2 books that day too.
This reply is NOT intended to be an insult or start some kind of fight. Internets got boring sometime around 2003 or so.
But…
I honestly can’t understand why anyone can’t remain standing up for the half-hour or hour that they’re in a bookstore. For years, I used to go to B & N about twice a month, finding it hard to get out in less than an hour, and there were plenty of seats available, but I never had to sit down.
That was supposed to be “Internet fights,” although the Internets as a whole are getting more and more boring every year.
For me, comfort is part of the package. If I am going to spend more money at B&N instead of saving money at Amazon, then I at least expect a couple of things that a bookstore can provide that I can’t get via the internet. In this case, if I have to stand, especially if I am tired, its not as fun trying to read a book. I get dizzy when I try and read while standing.
If I can’t find a seat so that I can spend some time analyzing the book to see if its worth buying, then I am not going to waste money at that store. I prefer not to give money to a business undeserving of it. And in my book, when comfort is a very high priority.
And for the record, not all B&Ns are the same. Some are very busy on certain days at certain hours during certain events. Some lack seating either because they are smaller or because of ill-advised policies.
So when you state that your experience is that there is plenty of seating is misguided because that is your store, not the ones I go to.
Yeah, yeah, I’m “misguided.” We’re talking about seats at a bookstore for God’s sake, not something important. Yeesh.
Bitch bitch bitch. Don’t like it? Stay home