November 9, 2006

Dear Barnes & Noble Children’s section salesperson,

Hi. I’m sure you remember me. It was your first day at the brand new store. You were so proud of your children’s book section. In fact the smile that you greeted me with and the sincerity in your voice when you told me to let you know if I had any questions was quite impressive. You seemed like such a nice girl. I can tell that doing your job well is important to you and I respect that immensly. You were so nice to show me the new book section and you laughed out loud when I commented on Walter the farting dog as if it was the best joke ever. I was really beginning to like you.

Which is why I am so sorry for spilling hot chocolate all over your pretty new books.

I am not usually a clumsy person. I can’t explain how it happened. All I know is that one minute we’re laughing about Walter farting and the next minute we’re frantically looking for something to wipe up hot chocolate from all those nice, new, neatly stacked books.

I know I kept saying sorry over and over again. And even after I ran through Personal Computing to the Starbucks to get napkins and some water and helped you clean up all the splatter marks, I still felt awful. And through it all you had the best spirit! You were so sweet to tell me, “This is the children’s section! At least the books aren’t covered in boogers.” And you even laughed when I told you I’d tote my kids on over this weekend and we’d take care of that one too.

And to top it all off, I really love the book you finally recommended. I Saw an Ant on the Railroad Track is so much fun. I can’t wait to read it to Swee’Pea and TheMonk.

So, once again, I just wanted to say how sorry I am. And I also wanted to commend you on your excellent customer service. Because of you, I know I’ll be back.

I’ll just leave my hot chocolate behind.

Sincerely,

Matthew.

Note: This post was inspired by Idea #21 in No One Cares What You Had For Lunch: 100 Ideas for your Blog by Margaret Mason. Which Barnes and Noble carries, by the way. I know because I made the new staff find it for me. Have you bought your copy yet? Did I mention that I’m in it?

4 Comments

  1. I bet it was a relief that she was so nice about the mess! I know I would have felt personally obligated to buy every book that I’d splattered.

    Hey, maybe that’s the way I can get the Webmaster to increase my book budget. ;)

    Oh, and try “Edwina: The Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know That She Was Extinct” by Mo Willems. It just came out recently. The Munchkin is getting it for her birthday. It is a hoot!

    Comment by Deanna — November 9, 2006 @ 2:54 am

  2. That’s funny, because I never see a sales person in the kids section at Barnes and Noble. Maybe she was a ghost of a really nice librarian. ;)

    You’re in the book, man now you will be famous.

    Comment by Melissa — November 9, 2006 @ 11:30 am

  3. You’re lucky. Yesterday, I spilled 20 ozs of steaming hot coffee in my brand new car. But I didn’t have a nice salesperson telling me it was OK, just my wife reaffirming that I was a moron.

    Comment by Mitch McDad — November 9, 2006 @ 3:28 pm

  4. Oh and you were soooo looking forward to going, and now look what happened.

    You KNOW you’ll be talked about for a while by the staff, right? “Hey, remember that guy who christened the children’s section? Yeah, he didn’t even have his kids with him! HA HA HA HA HA!” (or something like that).

    Comment by samantha jo campen — November 10, 2006 @ 1:06 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

Follow

Get every new post on this blog delivered to your Inbox.

Join other followers: