Emilie:

"A coworker sent me a link to your "Barnes and Noble Experience" page when I left my lovely B&N job to go to a B&N-owned college bookstore so I could go to school. Needless to say--or maybe it does need to be said, hence the email--you are hilarious. While I've never had every single exact experience you have, I've had a good many experiences that were hauntingly familiar and equally as...well excruciatingly moronic.

For instance. I once had a matriarc-esque old lady insist for no less than 15/20 minutes that my sevens were un-American because I crossed them in the French fashion. She lectured me on my "affectation" as she called it and basically browbeat me to high heaven in order to try and convince me to not write my sevens the way I had written my sevens for the past 4 years and found perfectly serviceable. At which point, all I could say was (in a fed up, but still trying to be polite tone of voice) "Ma'am I'm sorry my sevens aren't American enough." The worst part of the story is that apparently, for some random reason, she liked my "spunk" in talking back to her and kept coming specifically to me every time she was in the store, thoroughly annoying me each and every time."

"I, too, work in a barnes and nobles, and wierd shit happens ALL THE TIME. I enjoy your stories, they make me feel as though I am not alone. last week we had a drunken 13 year old puke all over the books and pass out in front of the main octagon in the front of the store. we had to call an ambulance and the store manager had to clean up the puke! ha! the cast of characters that we have working at store 2555 in rochester, mn, are quite a motley crue. why is it that so many eccentric crazy book people actually get jobs working for a corporate bookstore? I hate customers more and more every day, let me tell you, if one more person asks for the INDWELLING I'm going to tell them they can find it IN HELL. Oh that sounds a little mean. Anyway, I had to sound off before work to a sympathetic screen.