The Bookseller Diaries

So this fatass walks through the doors of Barnes and Noble. I use the term walk but what I really mean is waddle. Picture a penguin with asthma. This guy walks in and immediately catches eyes with me. As he makes his way over to the customer service desk I can't help but feel this growing sickness in the pit of my stomach. It's almost as if my organs knew how atrociously ugly this man was. He reaches the counter and slaps his meaty apendages down. Breathing heavily he says, "HEY! How ya doin' there boss". I really hate it when people call me boss. It always comes out horribly demeaning.
"Alright, how can I help you?"
"I'm looking for this book. I think it's...err...ya know...new." He pauses for a good five seconds as if he actually thought I would pull some mysterious voodoo act and deduce which book he was looking for. I continue to talk to him, but at this point it is officially work.
"Do you know an author or the title or anything?"
"It was on The New York Times Bestseller List. I read it this morning."
He moves his arms across the counter to a more comfortable standing position, even though just standing in general seems like a ongoing battle for this beefcake. As his arm travels across the countertop I can hear his chunky skin fat sticking to it. The guy walked from the parking lot to the front desk and is sweating like he just completed the Tour De France.
"I don't know anything about The New York Times, all I know is the Barnes and Noble bestsellers."
"It's not the same thing?". He questions me.
"Not exactly, no." I dignify it with a response and investigate further. "Are you sure you don't know the author?"
"No, I can't think of it. But I know Dan Brown wrote it."
This fuckin' fat piece of shit.
I give him his overpriced, overhyped, overkill book and he leaves me alone. My conversation with him has me questioning each potentially dysfunctional customer I have to deal with for the rest of the day. Any one of them could be carrying their own special mutation. Fit for replication and payable by charge, these mutants could be selling sperm to lesbian couples whos children go on to pass the defect onto others; until we are all so fat and sweaty that the world is just one poisoness body odor cloud and only those who could muster up what little strength they have left to roll into the ocean would be spared. Picture the corpulent Cheldridae or the pungent Plethodontidae. I still feel sick.
A couple minutes later and I'm still at the customer service desk. Still bothered I tell my coworkers about the highlight of my day. I'm quickly interrupted by a tall woman with large sunglasses. She's carrying a dog the size of Pamela Anderson's left tit and chewing on a piece of gum. I've never been good with animals, mostly because I am allergic to most of them. She asks me, "Do you know where I can find books by Sophie Kinsella?"
"Yeah, it's upstairs in fiction." Thank god I don't need to expend any more of my precious time and energy trying to decipher some cryptic dumbass code. But just as I tell her where the books are located she is leaning in closer.
"I just finished one of those shopaholic books and I really loved it. It was so good, ya know. How she writes it."
Normally I'd be thinking, was that a question? Is she serious? But in this instance only one thing is racing through my mind, and it's that damn dog. She leaned in too far and this little mut is uncomfortably close. So close, in fact, that I can feel my allergies erupting through my pores and sinuses. I gasp desperately for air and breathe in real deep. She stops her thoroughly informative and riveting analytical breakdown of the shopaholic series to let me sneeze. I sneeze and spew saliva and mucous all over the tabletop, some of it even hits that dog. She seems horrified but not half as horrified as me and my coworkers. What we know is that this was not just a reaction of the nasal cavaty. Amidst my panicked sneeze I let out an uncontrollable burst of flatulence.
Silence hit the room.
All eyes were on me as I clutched my driping nose.
Picture a room full of nurses awkwardly staring at the patient who thought super glue would make a good lubricant.
I shuffle slowly towards the back of the desk in search of a tissue when I feel it. I look up and realize, they know. With that one faithfull step my pants slide ever so slightly across my bottom and reveal to me a world of anguish I didn't know possible until that very moment. It seemed probable although not likely. But here I am, at work in front of various well respected coworkers, my boss, the tall lady, and the semi-retarded fat fuck, and I shit myself. Every second lasted hours, days even. People panicked and desperately scanned the room for something to take the attention off of my shitty khakis. My face boiled red as I was still driping snot all over myself. Employees scattered, the woman backed off and her dog just stared at me. I slowly manuevered myself over towards the front door only to catch a glimpse of the group of teens passing me by through the other set of doors. I can hear the mallrats for an instant.
"...smells like shit....fuckin embarrasing as hell."
I went home early that day. No one questions you when you experience something like that. That's the kind of trauma you're left to stew in, to ponder and live with. No one calls you out on it because it's just too damn awful for everyone to acknowledge, especially your boss.