Musings from the City of New Orleans: Seen Any Mythological Creatures Lately...Grab a Camera!

Painting by Phil Sandusky

Working in the book shop often provides the funniest and most bizarre situations. I've often said we could film a sitcom here...people would be constantly entertained.

Telephone Customer: (After she asked about books in which the titles escaped her.) How come there are so many festivals in this city?

Me: People that live here like to eat good food and listen to music. They give the tourists a taste of New Orleans, and they help support local businesses.

Telephone Customer: Don't they know they're creating a taxi shortage! I don't know if you know there's a taxi shortage in in this city.

My Thoughts: I prefer that people drinking alcohol at the festivals ride home in a taxi and not be on the road when I am.

Pre-Hurricane Katrina he book shop phone number was very similar to the Winn Dixie Grocery Store. Several times a day we'd get phone calls similar to this:

Me: Garden District Book Shop

Telephone Customer: (Shouts) Give me the meat department!

Me: Sir, this is a book shop.

Telephone Customer: This is Winn Dixie's number, give me the meat department!

Me: Sorry sir, this is still a book shop.

My Thoughts: It's was always a male...sorry guys.

There is a Garden District Tour that leaves from the book shop twice a day, every day. (For those of you unfamiliar with New Orleans, the Garden District is a very well-to-do neighborhood with incredible architecture. Anne Rice, Sandra Bullock, John Goodman, Archie Manning, Nicholas Cage have all owned or currently own houses in this neighborhood.)

Customer: I'd like to buy tickets to the Garden District Tour?

Me: There are no tickets, you just pay the Tour Guide. You meet them in the back corner of the book shop (I pointed directly where they need to go.) five minutes before the tour begins.

Here are a few alternate endings to this conversation:

Customer: Where's the book shop? (This is after they walked under our sign and are standing among hundreds of books.)

Alternate Ending:

Customer: Do I have to go outside to get there?

Alternate Ending:

Customer: So I wait outside?

My Thoughts: I generally give tour instructions slowly to try to get them to listen...they never do.

Every Tuesday afternoon for about a month, a guy called and asked us to look up various sex books. He never ordered anything.

My Thoughts: I don't want to know what was going on at the other end of the phone...

Telephone Customer: I placed a special order and I'd like to check whether it has come in. She indicated that she placed an order for a Pocket Guide to Thailand and under the name D-W-E-E-B. (She spelled the name and never pronounced it.) The employee searched for the order and could find nothing listed with that name. I began to help her search and searched the special order database for anything with Thailand in the title. A special order was displayed that had been placed two days before, on a Saturday. The special order was under a totally different name, Blaster.

Book Shop Employee: Excuse me, but this order is under a different name, B-L-A-S-T-E-R.

Telephone Customer: …oh yes, that’s one of my names.

My Thoughts: And we would know you have multiple bizarre names, how? Let alone that the order was placed on a Saturday and it was the following Monday. There does need to be a business day in the mix to actually have UPS delivery.

The New Orleans Saints are played in the Superbowl, 2010:

Co-Worker: I have absolutely loved explaining to customers today that the reason the streetcar isn't running is because there is a parade of men wearing dresses to honor a deceased sportscaster.

I told him I’d be willing to work, so I could tell them.

The sportscaster, Buddy D passed the previous year. Buddy always said if the Saints went to the Superbowl, he’d wear a dress. He even had one hanging in his office for that sole purpose.

We had a customer who could not read James Patterson hard covers, as the paper and ink made her hands itch Seriously...

Telephone Customer: I would like you to get me a signed copy of Kate Chopin's Awakening and I'd like her to sign it to my father.

Me: Kate Chopin is dead... Died in 1904.

Telephone Customer: Handle it and then send it to my father.

This is far too funny not to share... My boss' name is Britton Trice. Everyday when we receive the mail or take telephone calls - his name is butchered in every imaginable way: Tritton Brice, Brighton Rice to name a few. But a few years ago he received a check in the mail from someone local, who's known him for years and the check was made out to "Bitten Twice."

This is hysterical on so many levels...our shop is where Anne Rice used to sign books when she lived in New Orleans and then the whole New Orleans Vampire scene. We have given serious thought to getting him a tshirt with this on it.

Meanwhile the local check writer is swearing off spell check.

And one of my favorites: