Bookstore Shopper Asked For A Specific Title, But The Employee Discovered The Only Copy On The Shelf Had Clearly Already Been Used
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Some people will do almost anything to avoid buying a fresh copy of a book.
A bookstore worker twice found used, damaged books where brand-new copies had been sitting only hours earlier.
That meant someone had quietly taken the new books and replaced them with wet, worn-out copies.
Check out the story below.
Ah yes, just replace our stock.
I work in a bookshop. We, of course, sell books. This happened twice now.
The first time a woman asked me for a book.
I knew it was still on the shelf and go to give it to her.
When I’m holding it I stare at it in disbelief. It was wet, there was a bookmark inside, the spine was broken in multiple places, the pages curled up… And the sticker on the back had clearly been peeled off something before.
It worked out well for the customer though.
I know I had a completely new copy of that book in my shelf maybe 2h ago. Someone came in and replaced the new book with their read and damaged one.
The woman was shocked as well and while she wanted the book, she of course wouldn’t have bought that. I also wouldn’t have sold it to her.
I talked to my boss and she said I can just give it to the woman if she takes the damaged copy, since we’d have to throw it away.
She was super happy and even bought the next book in the installment even though she hadn’t planned that because she said she’d feel bad otherwise. She was super sweet too.
It happened again.
The second time I’m cleaning up, fixing my shelf and spot one of the books having the spine broken in multiple places.
Now, mind you, we sell new books. We don’t break spines obviously.
I take it out and there’s a bookmark inside. Some pages are damaged, the spine as I said broken, the sticker with the price stuck on badly. And the material it was made from is prone to having some of the colour on the cover rub off when you are reading. I’ve been there myself, it’s a clear indicator of a read book with that material.
But yeah, someone put their read book on my shelf. Again.
I am seriously questioning how someone could even come up with such a thing.
Well, hopefully nobody who reads this story tries swapping an old read book for a new book at a bookstore.
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
It was probably the same person both times.
This is shaping up to be a mystery novel.
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This is a good question.
This is a good point.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who isn’t happy with the company’s new time tracking rules, so decides to find a way around them.
A hotel employee weighs in.
Someone stole brand-new books and replaced them with damaged copies full of bent pages, broken spines, and forgotten bookmarks.
The first discovery at least helped one kind customer, who received the damaged book for free and bought its sequel.
Whoever did this treated the bookstore like a very illegal little free library.
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