A Sign of the Apocalypse

I was at Barnes and Noble looking for a copy of Slaughterhouse-Five. (The summer reading for 11th grade was either S5 or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--Danger Boy read the latter, but the teacher wants a paper on the former. Ouch).

Jenn: Will you check the computer and see if you have any copies of Slaughterhouse-Five anywhere besides under V? There are none on the shelf with other Vonnegut books.

Clerk (taps furiously away for a very long time; she finally looks up quizzically): Do you spell Lighthouse as one word or two?

Jenn: (reaches across the counter and grabs clerk by throat): How can you work in a bookstore and be unfamiliar with name of a famous American novel. How?! The word is S-L-A-U-G-H-T-E-R-H-O-U-S-E. It's a pretty well-known book.

Comments

[K.]

I've never understood how the majority of people working in bookstores know zilch about books.

[Smalltown Mom]

If an independent bookseller still exists in your area, go there and save their business!

[Shelley]

Dang, I should go apply at a bookstore. I've actually read both of those. And so it goes.

[Little Miss Sunshine State]

When I worked at Barnes and Noble we had an employee who had a cheat sheet that said...
Fiction is made up
Non-Fiction is real

[jenn]

Oy. So sad.

[busy bee suz]

WoW. And she can't spell lighthouse either?

[Manic Mommy]

Yep. We'll wait for the locusts.

Little Miss Sunshine State = OMG!

[jenrantsraves]

I'm sorry, but I'm stuck on the first paragraph. How is that fair?!

[allmycke]

Little Miss Sunshine State reminds me of a story my Dad told me years ago - about a forest warden who reputedly looked in his top drawer on the desk every morning and then locked it before going out to work. When he died they opened the drawer - only to find a piece of paper saying:
short needles - spruce
long needles - pine

Other than that - what a sad comment on the state of affairs!

[phd in yogurtry]

Slaughter Clerk One. This one.

[Green Girl]

Ouch. Which is why I despise the big box stores where they just lay people out there for minimum wage, no actual expectation of a knowledge base or passion or anything like that.I've had very similar experiences in Home Depot.

[Madge]

people scare me. such a great book too....

[Brightside-Susan]

What a great reading list! My junior had to read Scarlett Letter this summer, but she also got to read Into Thin Air which we enjoyed reading when it came out.

[suburbancorrespondent]

I have to say here that most people working in the chain bookstores are being paid very little. When the manager of the bookstore where I worked complained to her superiors that she was having difficulty hiring decent workers at such a low wage, they told her, "Who cares? A trained monkey can shelve books!"

She did say, "But I don't want to work with trained monkeys!" But really, the higher-ups don't care...

[Jason]

OH, no. No, no, no.

[gary]

oh gosh....

[Lisa @ Boondock Ramblings]

You're going to encounter this more and more. Trust me.

[Jodi Anderson]

If one needs a hearing aid, shouldn't one be required to wear it for a job where they TALK TO CUSTOMERS?!

Aargh.

[Jenn @ Juggling Life]

I was just so taken aback that she didn't connect the word sounding like
"lighthouse" with the words "five" and "Vonnegut" and figure it out!
Jenn

On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 4:36 PM, wrote:

[Jocelyn]

...at which point she handed you something written by Virginia Woolf.