Bookstores tend to attract a certain kind of person. These kooks are intelligent, but are social misfits and are just plain weird. I worked at a large Barnes and Noble in Cincinnati, in an up-scale part of town.

The cafe was a hotbed of nutjobs. This one guy was pretty much a clinical OCD. He would come in at the exact same time every day, grab the same newspaper, order the same specialty coffee drink in a tall glass mug, and sit at the same table alone. Another guy came in around 4 or 5pm and would stay until closing at 11pm. This routine would go on for weeks and weeks continously, every day. He would bring a spread of notepads, claiming he was writing a sci-fi novel.

One guy would wander around the store, picking books at random, althought often his "random" picks included large, full-color books from our Sexuality section. He would park himself in one of our large comfortable chairs and talk to himself loudly, flipping through the books. He would leave them splayed open for all to see.

People would call to place books on hold and come later to pick them up. Often these people would call one location and then show up at ours looking for their book. Some would get quite upset when we didn't have their book. When we called around and found their book at another location, they usually just slinked off, mumbling an apology. Once, this one guy was really giving it to us, I mean calling us the scum of the earth for not having his book. He was one of these "I'm better than you and you'd better start kissing me feet right now." We of course found it at another location. I took great glee in keeping a stone face and telling him that he had called a different store and that they had his book on hold, just like he asked. He acquired a dumb look on his face and just left, not saying a word. Dick.

Some people would steal from us. Yes, hard to believe I know. This one guy really went the extra mile to try and get away with it. He stole a lot of expensive books. I can proudly say that I was the one who figured out what he was doing, and finally identified him as the thief. We could order any book in print and we had a computer system to place orders. This guy would order a $50-$100 book using several different made up names. He would then come to the counter and ask to see his book. He would then wander off to some corner of the store, stuff it down his pants or some such thing, and boogie out the door, unnoticed. I started tracking the books that were missing and connecting them all to these names that I recognized as people in the media. Robert Novak was one name he used. Then I found a missing book where he actually used his real name. Gotcha, sucka. Yeah, I know, real junior G-man stuff.