Funny Encounters

I'm entering my fourth week as an employee of a certain Japanese bookstore and already the funny events are piling up. So far I've had one person reccomending me a book, which was totally fun because she dragged me across the store and pulled out the book from the shelf and told me to read it. As I was scrutinizing the book, deeply amused, she disappeared into the deep end of the business section looking for a Japanese audiobook. I quickly put back the book and led her to the language section and pointed out the Japanese audiobooks. She said she was interested in learning the language and sighed at the high price tag of the audiobook. I told her a phrase book was cheaper, but she wanted to hear pronounciations.

So I suggested a teacher instead.

We started talking about language schools and I told her about the one in KL Plaza. Apparently she's heard about it, but she was leaning more towards the audiobook (if you ask me, she just wanted to buy something which was totally understandable XD). Afterwards I left her to occupy herself with the audiobooks and those four books already in her hands. She had approached the counter in the first place asking for a calculator to calculate how much her purchase would be, and of course, sighed at the high totals too. xD xD I told her they were totally worth the purchase (she did ask me about it!) or she could buy half today and half tomorrow hehehehe. Needlesstosay, I was quite unhelpful in that respect. xD Even going as far as saying she'll be having sleepless night if she doesnt buy them.

Just the other night another woman was looking at two books by the same author. One was from the 90s while the other is recent. She acted like I was doing her a favor (which was nice!) by unsealing the books for her (which was really part of my job) and was justifying each books to me in detail. She gave me a lecture on soy. Yes, soy! As in soya bean. I told her it's fine if she decides not to get either one of them. It wasn't as if I was pitching the books to her in the first place. She was so repentant when she had to return the books to the counter it was so funny!

Just today, this caucasian old man was looking through the Tin Tin comic books and was asking if I could unwrap one of them. I told him of course, but it has to be viewed at the counter. Apparently he's a regular of the Tin Tin series and understood the protocol well. He browsed through and immediately put it down. He wanted it in color. The book was still black and white. After that he started explaining why he wanted to see inside, because he heard about the publishers planning to reprint the book in color. Then he started telling me how he's a regular of the Tin Tin comics in the store and about several banned series in the country. He even talked about this Indian woman who married a caucasian who apparently wrote something of note and he invited her to have a talk at UM. He's a lecturer there. Man. I wish I had a lecturer like that!

Also, another interesting pattern: 3 caucasian women so far have asked me where to find so-and-so books whose shelves are right behind them. I had to grin while they howled at their own silliness. Ah yes, this is exactly why I love my job. xD

Ta'ra!