My wife says that the problem I have in bookstores is caused because I am irritated by people who don't think like I do.  I'll let you be the judge.  She may be right, but the fact remains that bookstores and often the people staffing them, piss me off...

Waldenbooks

A couple weeks back I was in a nearby mall waiting to get my hair cut at a stylist.  Seeing that the wait was going to be about an hour, I decided it would be nice to get something light to read for a while.  I was in a literary mood so I thought a nice book of Robert Frost's poems would be a good choice.  Many of Frost's poems delight me and make good reading when you're waiting to do something else.

My primary mistake was walking into Waldenbooks.  Waldenbooks sucks.  I've never liked the place... generally the selection is crappy and you can't take two steps without somebody hitting you up for a preferred reader card.  PEEVE #1: I hate the whole idea preferred reader cards, but I'll get into that later.

Once I was in Waldenbooks I quickly realized that there was no "Literature" section.  So after 15 minutes of unsuccessfully trying to locate any books of poetry, I gave up and asked the clerk.

"Excuse me I'm trying to find a book of poems to read while I'm waiting for my haircut at the salon across the hall... preferrably the works of Robert Frost, or failing that, Robert Burns.  Where do you keep that sort of thing?"

"Robert Frost?"

"Yes, one of the greatest American poets."

"We can probably order that for you."

PEEVE #2: Don't frigging offer to order me something when I said I wanted to read it right now.

"No, I don't want to order it, I wanted it now.  Where is the section with the books of poety?" I said, dreading the answer I suspected was coming.

"Honestly?  We don't have one."

"So you have none of the works of the great poets here."

"No."

"Thanks for your time."

"Can I interest you in a preferred reader card?"

Barnes & Noble

I vastly prefer Barnes & Noble to Waldenbooks but they still manage to annoy me.  For starters they now have discount cards a la Waldenbooks.  Secondly, a few years back some genius in charge of organizing books at the Barnes & Noble in Leominster thought it would be a good idea to lump the horror section into the fiction and literature section.  So, while it used to be easy to browse for a new scary book, now it is a lot harder.  Romance, Mystery, Scfi and Fantasy are still all split out but Horror has been lumped.

Barnes & Noble if you are listening, will you PLEASE separate horror back out?  Your current organization scheme is a pain in the ass!

So after pointlessly perusing the fiction section or awhile I gave up and went to find a clerk.

"Excuse me, I'm looking for some fun weekend reading.  I really love ghost stories.  Can you recommend a good one you've read recently?"

"No I haven't read any ghost stories."

"Ah, not into horror?"

"Actually I'm just not into reading."

Oooooooooooookay.  Off to find a clerk who reads books.

"Can you recommend a good ghost story?" I ask the elderly woman at the information desk.

"Follow me." she says confidently.

We walk right past the fiction and literature section and into, of all places, the "New Age" section.  Once we get there she begins picking through the books on the shelf looking for one about ghost stories.  Finally she selects an anthology of famous ghost stories and proffers it.

"Here's one."

"Have you read it?"

"No."

I asked for a recommendation, I can as easily pick a book of the shelf with an appropriate title as anyone else.  In fact the book she was offering me was one I had already read.

"I've already read that one.  I'm not looking for so-called true accounts of famous haunted buildings.  I'm looking for something in the fiction section."

"Well these are all true."

I'm not altogether sure I kept my eyes from rolling.  "I'm looking for a horror novel, a thriller, a fictional story about a haunting." ...written by someone who realizes he's writing fiction, I thought to myself.

"Well this is what we have for ghost stories." she said, clearly not getting it.  "And, " she added helpfully, "the psychic stuff is all right here next to it."

"Thanks."

I looked over the titles "How to Hunt for Ghosts" and "Ghosts of New England" and so forth, and ended up leaving the section in disgust.  So much claptrap offered up as serious factual information.  I half expected to see "Exorcism for Dummies" among the lot of them.

Next I visited the mathematics section.  I was looking for a book on linear equations, specifically Diophantine Equations and the application of the Euclidean Algorithm to solve them.  No dice.  The Math section was pretty much Algebra, Geometry, Trig, and Calculus.  No useful books on Number Theory.  Great.

Preferred Reader Discount Cards

On the surface these sound like a great deal, you pay a small fee and then you get to save like 10% on your books.  But think about it for a moment.  Why would a major bookseller offer you a 10% discount?  Well obviously to get your business, and yet, if they wanted your business they could just offer you the 10% discount without requiring that you "get an account".

Sure they do collect a small fee (usually like $25 or so), but they always point out (rather truthfully) how quickly that $25 pays for itself in savings.  I bought $240 of books at Barnes & Noble today.  It ain't hard to quickly rack up over $250 in purchases such that you will be at the point where your card begins to actually save you money.

That's one gotcha right there as far as I'm concerned.  By making you shell out $25, they're basically guaranteeing that you will keep coming back and buying books so that you'll make back what you expended.  Put it this way: they charge you $25 for your continued business.  Such a deal!

But it gets worse than that.  Their aims in getting you "an account" have more to do with your personal information.  With a preferred reader ID being attached to every purchase you make, the bookseller has a means to build a database of information about every book you buy... whatever it is.  Can you imagine how much that's worth?  Imagine how badly Black & Decker would love to find out who is buying books on carpentry and woodworking?  Imagine how badly the insurance companies would love to find out who is buying books on cannabis, or skydiving?

You can bet your "preferred reader" savings that this information is being used to profile you, and will be eventually sold to other companies who will pay big bucks.  And here's the kicker: you're paying for it.  That 25$ fee is what your bookseller charges you to collect your personal information.

Personally, I could live with them collecting my personal data, if they didn't have the gall to ask me to pay for it. I guess that is my major problem with the whole idea.  If a seller appreciates my business and wants to reward me for my continued patronage, that's fine.

The local Chinese restaurant that I've been going to for years will often throw an extra side dish into my order for free, simply to reward me for my patronage and keep me coming back.  That's the way it should be.

I'd be happy to sign up for the account if it didn't cost anything.  They could collect and sell my market data and make a fortune, and I could get a discount on my books.

Perhaps I'm being a curmudgeon about the whole thing but that is honestly the way I feel.  It's safe to say my wife doesn't agree with me.  For years she resisted signing up for a card because she knew I hate the things, but recently she finally broke down and got one from B&N.