Summer of the Slobs

It was a difficult night last night at Rhymes with Farnes and Goble – summers usually are. It’s the time of the year when it’s hot outside, and people would rather be indoors where it’s air conditioned. So what do they do? They go to the mall, park their butts in Rhymes with Harnes and Doble, make a huge mess but rarely ever buy anything, then walk out, leaving their piles of books, coffee cups, and other assorted trash behind for me to clean up, like I was really dying to be their manservant. Gee, thanks.

Now, normally Rhymes with Sarnes and Yoble is a pretty mellow place to hang out. And we don’t mind – usually. Pick up a book or magazine, don’t spill crap all over it, and sit and stay a while. Don’t make a huge mess, don’t make a scene and yell out loud while you peruse the sex books, and don’t get huffy when we don’t have an in-store copy of “Barney Goes To The Brothel” that you remember from your childhood 20 years ago, and we’ll get along just dandy.

But it’s the people who come in and hang out all day long and never buy a damn thing who drive me nuts. We have many “regulars” who do this, and they all seemed to be there last evening. They’ll take 10 – 15 books off the shelf at a time, like we were the freaking public library or something, then they spill coffee on everything, or they thumb through the magazines, getting greasy fingerprints on everything. Then they’ll walk off and leave the piles of books for me to pick up. Pigs. Don’t you people have homes of your own? Just once I’d love to come over, go through your stuff, pick out a dozen or so items that I’d like to look at, spill a Grande Latte on it, then just walk out. See how you like it.

The ones that drive me battiest are the people who come in demanding a certain book title. And you spend a good 5 minutes tracking it down, and when you finally hand it to them...they look at it for 5 seconds, then ditch it on a shelf. You find it abandoned a half hour later, shoved in the wrong section. God. Worse yet are the people who want an obscure book that’s been out of print since the 70’s, and they’re pissed that we don’t have a copy in the store. Sometimes we can order them, but books have shelf lives – not every book ever printed is available for me to magically pull out of my bookselling ass. I do what I can, but God knows I’m not THAT good.

So I spent my evening cleaning up after Sioux City’s slobs, not-so-secretly wishing they had the courtesy to not leave such a huge mess in the first place.

Manners, people. They teach them. Hell, I can even point you to the section in the store where you'll find plenty of books on them. Try it – you might like it.