{"id":19874,"date":"2016-12-19T08:30:38","date_gmt":"2016-12-19T13:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=19874"},"modified":"2016-12-19T08:30:38","modified_gmt":"2016-12-19T13:30:38","slug":"holiday-shopping-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=19874","title":{"rendered":"Holiday Shopping Comments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s that time of year again. That time when people are frazzled, harried, and dare I say, perhaps not enjoying holiday shopping as much as they could. It feels as if the season has somehow snuck up on people and they are stressed about the coming holiday. I&#8217;m not sure why every year this surprises me, but it does. Everyone waits till the very last minute to shop (I&#8217;m a little guilty of that as well), and this last-minute rush can have people saying things that are provocative, maddening, and downright hilarious.<!--more--><br \/>\n\u2022 A frazzled woman in a pink Santa hat came up to me yesterday and said, &#8220;Can we just do that thing <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-19876\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/McLkqMyki-2.jpeg\" alt=\"mclkqmyki\" width=\"425\" height=\"399\" \/>we do where I tell you ages and you just hand me hardcovers?&#8221; Yes, yes we can.<br \/>\n\u2022 A customer, upon hearing that we did not have\u00a0<em>Yertle the Turtle <\/em>in stock, but could have it Tuesday, blurted out, &#8220;Well, that&#8217;s one more thing to add to the Amazon Prime list.&#8221; The good news on this one was, after we all expressed our dismay in varying degrees of astonishment, the customer let us drop-ship the book to her.<br \/>\n\u2022 There was a charming couple on Saturday who were new to the store and kept commenting on everything in a positive way. The wife really wanted the new Anthony Bourdain cookbook and the husband wasn&#8217;t getting it. Finally, she said, &#8220;Let me get this for you so I can use it.&#8221;<br \/>\n\u2022 An elderly woman called to have me pick out two books and deliver them to her at her assisted living facility. When I asked her if she&#8217;d like to me wrap her books she said, &#8220;I think it&#8217;s best if you do, I&#8217;m blind after all.&#8221;<br \/>\n\u2022 There was a customer who didn&#8217;t speak much, but instead, followed me around the store as I was helping someone else with a very specific book need, something for his 16-year-old niece who wanted a novel set in Paris, waving\u00a0<em>The Alchemist\u00a0<\/em>at me and pointing to the book. I gently said that wasn&#8217;t really what we were looking for and he just kept following us looking disappointed.<br \/>\n\u2022 And then there was something I blurted out. A customer was clearly agonizing about getting a particular book just for herself. I could tell she was torn but really, really wanted the book. After long minutes of talking with her about the book, I just said through a grin, &#8220;Just get the f*cking book.&#8221; She looked at me, eyes bright, and bought it.<br \/>\nSo, in this last week of holiday craziness, I want to leave readers with a few thoughts. Be kind to yourself, be thoughtful of others, and continue to shop local because we love hearing your stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What happens when people who have no filter left shop at the store. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}