A tale of two bookstores

So I was reading a good book - Good Luck by Whitney Gaskell - when I noticed that page 154 was blank. I flipped through the rest of the book. Roughly half of the pages were blank. I no longer had the receipt, but the book still bore a Borders sticker. So I went to Borders to return it. But every other copy had the same problem.

So I trekked to Barnes & Noble (a better store, but further away) and couldn't find it. I was dejected until a saleslady came up to me and offered to help, explaining that not all of their fiction was on display. I explained the situation and she was enraged. "Oh my God!" she said, looking at the empty pages. "This is defective! It was probably a whole print run." She found a mass-market edition in another section, and actually gave me a store credit for the difference in price between that and my trade paperback - about $6. She kept trying to scan my old copy in and it wouldn't work, so I mentioned again that it was from Borders. That didn't seem to bother her, and she typed the PLU number (or whatever) in manually. I can't believe I actually made money on this! Kudos to B&N for their kindness.

Comments

BabelBabe said…
and the moral of this story? You will trek further away to patronize the store that actually helped you? pretty please?
10:15 PM
Bearette said…
I really should. Unfortunately, the B&N is almost a mile away...There used to a be a B&N close to us, and it closed, and the real estate is sitting empty, unused. D and I are both still in mourning.
10:42 PM
Poppy said…
That is hilarious and awesome, gave both me and Dawg a chuckle.

What is up with so few B&N in the city? The one near where I work is just for the local high school so it only has teenage books and trade books and then a cooler of sodas, no barista section.
10:58 AM
BabelBabe said…
our B&N downtown closed a few years ago but the surburbanish ones continue to flourish. wonder why...
11:23 AM
Rachel Federman said…
I still feel so disconsolate over that chelsea B&n closing. Thank God it's a Trader Joe's now and not Bank of America but man, I can hardly even pass it still without my stomach dropping. Now Borders is gone too!

Blank pages = pretty unforgivable altho during my B&N stint we once published Little Women where Beth didn't die.

I'm procrastinating my work and going back at random to ancient pages of your blog.
11:44 AM
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