I’m not sure what the title is but…

At any bookshop customers have odd requests that we just cannot help with. They are looking for a green book, or a book with ‘Tree’ in the title. At this bookshop, a theological bookshop, the book descriptions that make us giggle come in slightly different flavours.

This month a customer who’d never been to our shop before came in and asked for our religion section. Not wanting to laugh at the poor man’s honest question we pointed out that the whole store was basically one big religion section. Did he have something more specific in mind? He looked confused as well. We suggested he give us the title of the book he wanted so we could tell him which of our sub-sections of religion it would be in.

Another customer came in. She didn’t remember the title of the book she was looking for, but assured my colleague that it had Jesus and God in it.

Today a student came in looking for a recommended book in his course. Again, he couldn’t remember the title, but it was about Roman Catholicism. He looked expectantly and trustingly at my colleague who had to tell him to go away and find the title on his syllabus as his description didn’t narrow it down sufficiently.

Advertisement

Textbook Season, part 1

Things staff at Crux like to hear during the textbook rush:

• “Thanks for all your help.”
• “I just read one of Crux’s recommended reads and I loved it. Thanks.”
• “You’ll call me when that comes in? That’s great, thanks!”

Things staff at Crux are not fond of hearing (multiple times) during the textbook rush:

• “I am going to call every day until my book arrives. Can you make it come any faster?” (No! We can’t control distributors and courier companies!)
• “But the professor said you’d have that book!” (This is especially irritating when the prof didn’t place a class order for the book in question.)
• “Don’t you order enough textbooks for everyone in the class?” (Drop/Adds give us all problems.)

Smile at your local bookseller and always remember to say Thank You.