Write enough

The daily onslaught of customers and Sisyphean tasks that make up every hour spent working as a bookseller would be enough to sustain a thousand and one blogs for ever more.

However, I'd like to let my little group of readers know that I will not be posting regularly anymore.

I don't want to call an end to I WORK IN A SHOP. I am sure that the stupidity, hilarity, wit and kindness of the great Glasgow public will move me to write here again.

But, in the past few months, I have been working earnestly at writing fiction. And, given full-time work, a squillion chores and shoogly health, I don't always have a lot of time left to do the things I love. I've realised that I need to blog less to leave myself space for fiction.

I am aiming, within a year or two, to maintain a new blog or site for my stories, so watch this space for the link.

Meanwhile, it is still possible to contact me on the email address in my profile. I'm also on Facebook.

Bookseller, Female, 24. WLTM...

A dashing Guardian journalist who writes freely about things she had decided to refrain from commenting upon.

Borders UK's new online dating service.

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Many thanks to John for the link.

Anecdote antidote

Hearing about the startling, horrifying and hilarious things that have happened to other folk in customer service can sometimes be enough to get you through a bad shift on the job.

Enjoy.

Thanks to Kate for the recommendation!

Arse over tit

In the shop this weekend one man caught me checking out another man's arse.

There was a queue at the tills and I was serving a tall, heavily built blond guy in his thirties. He was buying a couple of outdoor sports magazines and wearing close-cut sports wear.

He smiled when I put his change in his big hands, then shrugged his bag over his shoulder and walked away.

This is where I stared at his arse.

I don't think I made a big deal of it - in fact, I was just checking him out the way you casually check out anything you like.

But then my next customer came to my till, a jaunty, mid-fifties wee Glaswegian guy. Too tanned, quite short, gold rings on his fingers.

You finished yet? he said cheekily, flicking his eyes towards the big blond and grinning at me.

I laughed and he knew that I knew that he knew I'd been looking at the guy's arse*. This was doubly startling for me because I wasn't really thinking about it. Just ... looking.

Oh no, I said, trying not to smile and bringing my hands to my face. Was I that obvious?

He piled his shopping down onto the counter, leaned towards me for emphasis, and said: Aye!

This was one of those times when the customer has struck just the right note and can get away with being a bit cheeky and, nine times out of ten, you're on safe ground having a laugh. We joked about it and, when I handed him his change, he winked at me and marched off happily.

Subtlety: 1/10
Professionalism: 2/10
Customer banter: 8/10
That blond's arse: 11/10

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* My boyfriend has just informed me that he is going to start a photo blog called Titwatch.

Sense and Sensibility

Int. Fiction section of a Scottish bookshop. Day

Camera follows the slow progress of a heatwave-weary BOOKSELLER as she shelves books in Fiction and the sun beats down. Michael Jackson music is playing over the sound system while the sounds of a bellowing street magician echo from outside. A CUSTOMER, chirpy, female and blonde, bounces confidently up to the BOOKSELLER.

CUSTOMER: Hiya!

BOOKSELLER (attempting a smile): Hello.

CUSTOMER: Hi! You know how Jane Austen?

BOOKSELLER: Yes?

CUSTOMER: Whereabouts will all her books be? Ah’ve been told it’s either Fiction or… eh..

BOOKSELLER: …Classics?

CUSTOMER: Aye!

BOOKSELLER walks with the CUSTOMER to the Classic section.

CUSTOMER: Aw, thanks a million, I get lost in here! (touches BOOKSELLER's arm girlishly)What new ones does she have?

BOOKSELLER and CUSTOMER arrive in front of shelves of Austen's books. BOOKSELLER looks startled at the CUSTOMER's last question.

BOOKSELLER: Ehhh… well, Pride and Prejudice is the obvious recommendation, they teach it on all the (drops judicious, tactful hint) Victorian literature courses.

CUSTOMER (dismayed): Aw, are they all history?

BOOKSELLER: Well, you know what it’s like when they adapt them on the telly –

CUSTOMER: Aye! That’s where I saw it. Have you seen it? (touches BOOKSELLER’s arm again) On Sky? Whit’s it called again?

BOOKSELLER: Ah, is it the Jane Austen Book Club?

CUSTOMER (squealing): Aye! That’s one of hers!

BOOKSELLER: No, I think it’s someone else that wrote that one. One about people all bonding by reading her books I think?

CUSTOMER (turning abruptly away from Austen’s oeuvre): Aye! It was just wonderful. Where’s that one?

BOOKSELLER checks the stock database and takes the CUSTOMER to Karen Joy Fowler’s books in Fiction.

CUSTOMER: Aw, brilliant! Thanks a lot.

Camera pans out as the gently amused BOOKSELLER returns to her shelving work amd the satisfied CUSTOMER stands reading a copy of Jane Austen Book Club enthusiastically in the next aisle. View lifts up high above the shop floor and out of the window, to pan across the village of idiots staring slackjawed at the beardy magic bloke outside.

Cultural aggression

A cheerful guy in his mid-thirties came up to my till yesterday afternoon, triumphantly deposited a cut-price Goodfellas DVD on the counter and said:

How many times have you seen this film, come on! How many times!

I said: Um, none. I haven’t seen it.

His girlfriend was standing a few feet away at the end of the queue and he turned to her, made a mad incredulous face, turned back to me and hooted:

What! What do you mean you haven’t seen it!

I said: Not much of a film fan?

He lost a bit of his cheer, sputtered a few amazed noises, a sort of faux-outrage, and eventually came up with this retort:

Ha! Well, I haven’t ever read a book!

Great.

I will hate you until the day I die

I feel this way about many customers - particularly the ghoulish, resentful ones that seem to populate the shop from about 10am to 12 noon on a Sunday.

But I WORK IN A SHOP's favourite philosopher* feels this way about Caleb Crain, the New York Times book reviewer who disliked his latest book.

You know the one.

But what I'd like to draw your attention to, once you have perused our old tuna** philosopher's latest tantrum, is Francis Fukuyama's New York Times review of a little book called Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B Crawford.

I particularly liked this part:

"Rather than achieving self-mastery by confronting a “hard discipline” like gardening or structural engineering or learning Russian, people are offered the fake autonomy of consumer choice, expressing their inner selves by sitting in front of a Harley-­Davidson catalog and deciding how to trick out their bikes."

Worth a look, I think. I'll post about it if I get the chance to read a copy.

Also: more, customer-inspired posting to follow in the next few days at I WORK IN A SHOP.

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*I think he gets a bit lonely and Googles himself, so I should probably come straight out and say it's Alain de Botton I'm talking about here, and his book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. Hi, Alain!

** I found that his musings on the tuna industry form a substantial, and conspicuously cod-free, part of his new book.