kevinswatch wrote:danlo wrote:"Revenant? That's not even a word!."
Haha! Classic.-jay
I've worked at a Barnes & Noble, and so I can see this from both sides.
The people that come into B&N are a mixed bag. A lot are kinda dumb. I know I wouldn't have questioned a word simply because I hadn't heard it, but you do get a fair share of people who make up words, titles, authors, the planet they live on, etc. So honestly, I'm not surprised by that reaction. He shouldn't have been a rude jerk and pointed out that you are making up a word until he checked it at least, but hey.
Second in my defense is that you are not paid to read books there...just sell them. And as I think Donaldson said somewhere, "if there ain't it movie of the book, the book doesn't exist." To a lot of people anyway. As a feller who has an English Lit degree, I consider myself fairly well read. There's a heap I haven't read. I learned a lot working at Barnes and Noble, but every now and again, I'd get that look like I was insane for not knowing who someone was. And I generally had no idea who the local authors were unless there was a reason I did. When I first started working at the B&N in Tucson, I discovered Tony Hillerman and that Santa-Claus-lookin'-muthaf***er health guru were local authors (just remembered....Andrew Weil). I'm sure I caught some of the looks then for not recognizing them when I first started working there. Later I had Andrew Weil's credit card number from his assistant, and sadly, I did not use it for evil.
On the flip side, a heap of the employees working at B&N are idiots too. I can remember one employee who was proud to say that she only read magazines. Again, it's the same criteria of any retail store - if you look like you could sell books, they'll hire you. If you have knowledge...yeah, that's good, but otherwise if you are cute, you might just have the job. So yes...the stupidity runs from the top down.
Thankfully I'm smart and cute....and modest too.