Customers 33

A young woman, maybe in her early 20's, blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a large sweatshirt and jeans came to the information desk.

"Can I help you find something?", I asked.

"Yes. I want anything on housewives. What they do," she said.

"Housewives?" I paused, not quite sure what it was about housewives she wanted. "So not a novel about housewives..."

She shook her head. "No." She was very serious. "What they do. What a housewife does in a day. I want to know everything about being a housewife."

"Okay. I don't think we have one book that will cover everything a housewife does in a day. We have books for different things that a housewife does like cooking, and there are some cleaning books..."

"I don't want cookbooks," she said.

During the time we were talking I was searching our database to find anything about housewives, knowing that there might have been more books like this several decades ago. Not as much now. I was pulling up lots of fiction. I pulled up a few novels with "housewife" in the title that were about "naughty" housewives. I did find one having to do with staying organized as a housewife.

"I found one that we should have here in the store about a housewife staying organized," I said.

"I'd like to see that one," she said.

At that time I got pulled away to deal with a minor emergency, so enlisted the help of another capable bookseller...

"She's looking for this book," I told her, pointing to the computer screen, "which we should have. She's looking for anything to do with being a housewife, but not fiction and not cookbooks."

I checked in later with my co-worker and asked her if the customer found what she wanted about being a housewife and she said that yes, she did. "After that, she wanted to find books about psychics."

*******************

Customers can order books from us. We call (or email) the customer when the book(s) come in. I was calling orders and in the stack was an order for two copies of the same large book. I didn't look at the title of the books, as they are usually covered with the order slip. I just called the customer and left voicemail letting her know the books had arrived. As I was putting the books back on the hold shelves, I saw looked at the title of those particular books. She'd ordered two copies of the POP-UP KAMA SUTRA

                    

Later that day I answered the phone and the woman told me her name. It was the woman who had ordered the kama sutra books.

"I got a call that my order came in?" She sounded excited. I told her that her order had indeed arrived. "So my books are there?" Her voice got higher.

"They are. We'll hold them for two weeks for you," I said.

"Oh! That's great! I'll be in today to get them! I'm so glad they came in! Thank you so much for calling!"

"You're welcome," I said.

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