Day One Hundred and Fifty-One
The Brothers Karamazov Page: 115
It’s been a long day. No particular reason why, just a combination of difficult stuff. Alex is still teething and he’s got a runny nose but no other cold symptoms. I had an amazingly clueless customer today. She wanted to exchange a book that she had bought a few days before. Some of the pages fell out and she wanted to trade it in for another. I told that we didn’t do that because of the nature of our business and she slammed the book down on the counter and walked out saying that we had just lost her business. And while I was very frustrated I’m also just surprised that she thought we guaranteed the books. It’s used merchandise…by definition it’s, well, used. And if I let people bring books back and exchange them I’d stop making new sales. And if you could return a book every time it exhibited damage, you could just read it and bring it back and get your money back. Anyway, I don’t know of any used bookstore that takes returns nor do I know any secondhand store that allows exchanges. And my business philosophy has always included the maxim that the customer is only right when they are right, otherwise they’re wrong.
So now the boys are down for the night but I don’t feel like reading. Unusual I know, but I just want to watch a movie and eat junk food. No movie, no junk food and no way to get them…sad.