Bookstore etiquette 101

Ahem.

If you find yourself in a largish national chain-type bookstore, please observe the following suggestions in order to keep your booksellers from wanting to hurt you.

~Feel free to take a book off the shelf to browse/peruse/consider purchasing. If you do not wish to buy said tome and are not 100% certain where you pulled it from, please don't just stuff it somewhere hoping we won't notice. We'll notice. We'll be pissy. Please be a grownup and hand the book to a bookseller nicely. We'll reshelve it.

~Speaking of being a grownup, please don't turn your children loose in the kids' department. The train table only distracts them for so long and then they just start grabbing shit and screaming. I get paid to play with books, not your kids.

~On a related note: if you can't find anything free to do on a Sunday and can't grow a sack big enough to tell your kids to turn off the t.v. and go play, please do not come camp out with them in the bookstore children's department. All effing day. Yes, I do see you napping in the corner and/or reading an entire book for free while your brilliant offspring chuck every Spongebob Easy Reader from the spinner onto the floor and wipe snot on the stuffed Despereaux.

~And, while we are happy to see you browse and read a book, it is really bad form to sit for three hours and read the whole thing and then hide it on a shelf no where near the area you pulled it from. Or spill coffee on it. And dogear it. Yes, we do see you. Also, we are not a battery-charging center.

~Please do not get snotty with your bookseller. Yes, some of the booksellers seem snotty but that's only because being someone who loves books goes hand in hand with being slightly socially awkward. But if you come in looking for a book that you think you heard about on NPR maybe and you don't know the author's name but you think the title starts with the word "The" and the cover might be red and gold or maybe green and pink and we don't know what your talking about, leaving in a huff will get you branded as a snotty moron.

This public service announcement brought to you by your local cheerful bookseller. Me.