My brother works at a private medical library at a major university - it’s private and only used by doctors and people in the medical field.
Despite how much schooling needed to become a doctor, no amount of education can make up for the fact that even professionals have no clue how books, libraries, computers searches and other library related activities work.
I read the source page and had some laughs. However, I’m a bit perplexed as to how someone can sell books for over 30 years and not understand the difference between yea and yeah.
I have always found the notion of them being two distinct words to be somewhat dubious. They are both affirmations, spelled nearly the same way. Yea is much older, so it seems likely to me that somebody eventually just stuck an “h” on the end. I consider it an alternate spelling of the same word.
On a somewhat related note: I’m really hoping that “Stainback” and “The Wayword Bus” from another anecdote are just attempts to render dialect/pronunciation. (Though I’m more than a little doubtful.) Because otherwise the old adage about stones and glass houses comes to mind.
I desperately want to know what this customer meant by “real books”.
I think new books, the kind a real corporation would sell in a real shop, not weird recycled books.
Hah I was looking at the image and thinking “Wow, there’s a bookstore in NorCal that looks just like Bart’s!” and then I saw your note at the bottom. Oh, that’s why it looks like Bart’s.
hmm, i bet that was what they meant. people are so weird.
i used to manage a record store. our customers were great but my stories are way more fucked up because we were in a bad area. like, some cops came in once and when they saw our blackboard they asked to borrow the chalk so they could outline the bullet casings at the crime scene they were investigating. and then when they returned it one wanted to buy our NWA poster, lol.
I remember watching some customer argue with a book seller because the cover price of a collectable vintage pulp said 10 cents but actual price the seller wanted was $15.
“But the cover says it’s 10 cents!”
“It was, when it was published in the 1940s, now it’s rare, out of print and hard to find and it costs more!”
“Stop trying to rip me off!”
I’ve seen a variation of this conversation as well…how can you charge $X when it was only $X new?
I’ve also seen this in a new book store up here in British Columbia, someone trying to pay the US price because they were FROM the US…in Canadian dollars of course…can’t refute that logic. I swear when the cashier made eye contact they were silently pleading for help.
Still a different pronunciation, though. No one really says yea in ordinary conversation.
yea they do! 
yeahhhhhhhhhhhh…
I’d wager that they saw the selection as decorations/props and were expecting to see things like Fifty Shades of Grey.
Glass houses, exactly. The whole page is making fun of people.
