This Is Why Your Used Bookstore Clerk Hates You
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Although bookstore workers love their customers, or are at least morally obligated to, sometimes the love is so great it turns murderous. Ever tried to finish all-you-can-eat coconut shrimp? That’s the love we’re dealing with here. Although your narrator worked at a used bookstore just outside of the city more than a decade ago, he shut his eyes tight, remembered three years of Fat Slice Pizza, and relived some moments of quiet desperation.
You Stole All Our Bukowski
It’s hard to keep Bukowski on the shelf when he keeps getting stuffed in the pants of street punks when no one is looking (but we are looking!). Although punks love him (he’s so easy to read) so does the staff (Hank worked a menial job for years, drank an eternity, and stillended up famous). He provides hope for apprentice alcoholics who are going to start writing sometime tomorrow or Thursday for sure. If you do steal him, please sell him back to us when you’re finished.
You’re Spending Too Much Time in the Erotica Section
Huh, and you’re totally and creepily not moving.
You Camp Out in the Self-Help Section
What is it about the self-help section that attracts people who take off their shoes and eat fruit salad right in the stacks? Or what is it that doesn’t attract them, amirite? Though we don’t mind you blocking the aisle, making your little piles of books and scribbling action items in your notepads (this means we can avoid the section), at least tidy up when you’re finished for the night. This goes for everyone in the spiritualism section, too. See you all tomorrow.
You’re Asleep
You know that’s weird, right? Barnes & Noble may have the square footage to stock recliners, but used bookstores don’t. Used bookstores use their space to sell books. Ever notice how much empty air a superbookstore contains that could be going to books? Of course you don’t, because you’re asleep on our footstool.
You Were Our Favorite English Professor
Oh look, it’s the bastard who inspired us to skip a useful degree for one in contemporary American fiction, here to again dash through the store with a comely grad student in tow and witness, once again, how well we are doing with our crack alphabetization. Looking for Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex? Try the Ds. College!