The longer I work with the public, the less grumpy I find Shaun Bythell and his bookshop diaries. I treated myself to his latest one––Remainders of the Day (2022)––and am reading it in the sunny window of a nearby coffee shop. Two other people in this small café are reading books too—the rest are talking to someone. I’d come here more often, but a cup of tea is four dollars, plus tax—then you throw the change in the tip jar and that’s five bucks gone for a teabag. But once in a while, it's worth it for a sunny window.
I stopped keeping the thrift-store diary, (it was upsetting me too much), but this book does inspire me to keep better record of BOOK’s (my section of the store ). Plenty of material there—and plenty of human behavior to note (complain about).
Do I need to read those?
ReplyDeleteFRESCA here. Bythell can be a bit unkind sometimes m, but I enjoy his record of life in a Scottish bookshop, day by day.
DeleteAnd I truly am more disgusted with people myself, being on the receiving end of their little ways, so I sympathize with Bythell more now.
Starts with “Diary of a Bookseller”.
Sounds like a good series of books. I shall hunt them down.
ReplyDeletei'll have to look for these at my library. until i worked retail (pottery barn and the limited) i never knew what absolute snots (replaced a profanity) people can be when shopping.
ReplyDeletethe one i loved was the person who expected two of us to have wrapped 60 dishes in 10 minutes --never mind you double wrap them, double bag and make sure the bags aren't too heavy. of course, we didn't tell him that he was lucky we had the dishes as it was the day before thanksgiving.
record of book's is a good thing. i love tracking stuff.
kirsten
KIRSTEN: “snots” is a good word for it.
ReplyDelete