I’d like to pass on a little secret I learned recently - Italy is closed.

This is what the manager of Home Expo told me when I called to inquire about my bathroom sink, which was supposed to be in on December 20th, and is now due in on January 30th: Your sink’s on backorder, and Italy is closed for the holiday.

Me: But when you called the distrubutor 10 days ago, you were told it was in stock.

Manager: They tell us whatever they want. I could tell you something’s in stock when it’s really not.

Me: Obviously.

Hey, I have countertops now, so I guess I’m just being greedy.

In other news, I actually own a copy of The Bridges of Madison County. At first, I stared at it, like it was some kind of, moving back into the house and working too hard, mirage. It couldn’t be. I mean, I know I read it, because I was working in a Borders at the time, and we used to read a lot of the new releases so we could make intellegent recommendations. Although, with that particular book, we didn’t need to. Customers just trampled us on their way to the huge stack of the small, beige books we placed right by the front doors. It wasn’t as bad as when Cooking with Rosie (Oprah’s chef at the time) came out, but it was close. Anyway, I finally figured out why I own it - it’s a first edition and my manager at the time assured me that a first edition of this book would eventually mean something. We’ll see.

Also, I own 5 copies of Gone With The Wind. In my defense, they’ve all got different covers. And yes, I own the copy of the Rosie cooking book too, which is pretty damned funny too.

But my all time favorite book story is when the book, How To Drive Your Woman Wild in Bed and Make Her Want More (okay, I totally paraphrased that title, but it’s pretty close) came out, and the distrubutor was caught short. Tons of customers special ordered it, and instead of filing those special orders by the customer’s last name, we just put the copies in a big pile. Which, of course, meant they had to tell us the title to get their books. The men would kind of lean over the counter and whisper it, like they were making some kind of top secret transaction, and, being the professionals that we were, would act like we’d never heard of the book - I’m sorry, can you repeat that title please? And speak up…

Now, I’ve got to go unpack some more boxes. Or work on the meme Sasha tagged me for, which sounds much more fun.

How is everyone? Have you got it under control, or are you running around, chicken without a head-like, like me?

Steph T.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 22nd, 2005 at 9:34 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.