Bookstore Etiquette

[beatgoddess]

Circumstances from today's events have brought up the question: what is an effective brick-and-mortar bookstore etiquette policy for the 21st century? How does this etiquette change when visiting a locally-owned bookshop, versus when visiting a big-box chain bookstore? How and why (or not)?

Apparently, other people care about good bookstore

Comments

[pocketwitch]

... I don't think I can really contribute to this list in a way that would be meaningful to the kind of bookstore you're thinking of. I work in a bookstore and my list would, realistically, be more like this:

• DO NOT throw things at the employees or our cranky thug will make you feel quite unwelcome.
  
  
• DO NOT try to touch employees in inappropriate places. Or, really, at all. See above.
  
  
• DO NOT leave underwear, anal lube, crack vials or weapons in your orders. (and yes, we've found all of those things.)
  
  
• DO NOT cover the graffiti on the bathroom wall with your own feces.

Um ... I'mma quit now. Yeah, my bookstore is a bit abnormal.

[frankiejlh]

* If you're feeling chatty, please do not try to have long conversations with the checkout clerk when there are people waiting behind you in line (this is true of any store, of course, but bookstores are the #1 place this has happened IME).

* If you're feeling contentious about store policy, see above and ask for a manager or someone not trying to ring up customers. Failing that, wait 'til everyone's rung up.

* Don't leave your kids unsupervised and then wander off to another part of the store unless you know for a fact that they will just stand/sit unobtrusively and read (preferably while following all the other etiquette rules).

* In the vein (sp?) of Pocketwich's additions, please do not jerk off into the hair of a fellow customer (this happened to a friend of mine once, possibly-needless to say), or in general treat the aisles of the store as unpoliced alleys in which to engage in debauchery. This is doubly true in stores with an extra basement part from which the clerk is absent.