Gal called with the usual WHAT WILL YOU PAY ME FOR THIS BOOK line. A ten minute conversation ended with her hanging up in a huff because she ignored the first thing out of my mouth- "I need to see the book, we do not quote prices over the phone."
"Well let me just, well, what if, well, are you..." blah blah blah.
The aggravating thing was she had an interesting book, about breeding Macaws, but her collection of delusions doomed the transaction. I tried to steer her toward selling it herself on Amazon, which triggered an fit of mannered disbelief at the suggestion anyone but menials would soil their hands with trade.
Moments after escaping that mess, an elderly man came to the counter with his family.
"Do you have any books of AMERICAN poetry?"
"Everything we have is in the poetry section, right this way."
When we arrived he leaned in and muttered to me under his breath "There's supposed to be SECRETS in it!"
Later, a 40'ish lady I took to be his daughter sought me out.
"I think what he's after is a magazine called The American Poetry Journal?"
We returned to the section and I helped her scour the ephemera rack. The thing about a good used shop is that while it's unlikely to have any one specific thing you're after, you never know for sure until you look. We didn't turn up any issues, but I did find a hardcover collection of the complete run from 1982 in our anthology section.
The old guy groused that it didn't have the one he wanted, but shelled out $7 anyway.
And just now a nice lady asked me if we had a book on learning to read, she couldn't remember the title but it had a PARAKEET on the first page.
Just another day in paradise.
/edit
shortly after posting this, a small, dark & seemingly disoriented gal came up looking for a book on Winslow Homer.
"I...I just got back to the states, I've been living overseas for several years. I'm an expat? Uh...what happened to bookstores in America? Where did they all go? I was talking to a friend and they said I had to get an ebook? What's that? Do you mind if I go next door and get some tea so I can browse? Oh thank you!"
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