overbooked

Almost every time I go up to pay at Barnes and Noble, the cashier initiates a conversation based on the book I'm buying. We're talking in the 90s percentage-wise and I go to Barnes and Noble a lot. Not a big deal for someone buying, oh, Harry Potter and the Nocturnal Kitten or Intermediate Disc Golf, or any book with a semi-generic title. I imagine that these checkout conversations sound like this:

"So you're a Harry Potter fan too, huh? Let me tell you, my son/grandmother/clergy person/parole officer loooooooooves J.K. Rowling!"

"Playing some disc golf, are we? I've always wondered, is disc golf the same thing as frisbee golf?"

But then you have the semi-underground book buying population, the people who, like me, tend to buy books with titles that while not necessarily embarrassing (oh, but some are), are less frequently seen by store employees. Yesterday I bought this book called Southern California's Best Ghost Towns. To test my theory, I flipped it face down before handing it to the saleslady.

She turned it over immediately. "OOooooohhh, this looks GREEEAA-aaat," she said, stretching each word into fourteen syllables. "Where did you fiiiiiii-iiind this!? I've gotta orrrrrr-der it!" She spoke with the wide-eyed zeal of a 13-year-old with backstage passes to Justin Bieber.

Let's assume the checkout chit chat rule isn't restricted to transactions of the garden variety. What's the conversation like when the book is Get Pregnant By Tomorrow?

(Male) Cashier: [sizes up female customer; has mental images] So, got any plans tonight?
 
Much like the poor soul in the front of the line at Target holding tampons only, there's also the risk of the price check scenario, when the cashier shouts to his manager standing two football fields away to ask whether How to Tell if You Have Multiple Personality Disorder is 20 percent off this week.

Yesterday on my way out, I noticed that the older man in line behind me was buying a copy of The Sociopath Next Door. I wondered if the sociopath in question was him or someone else.

Then I noticed his other purchase.

Amazon, people. Amazon.