Jane Austen’s in the Bath

“Do you have any books by Jane Austen?”, asked the customer at the till beside mine.

The sales assistant who, although only 12 inches away from her physically, suddenly found himself a lighty-year away from his customer in every other possible dimension. You see, this was a bookshop. In Bath. One-time home to a Ms Jane Austen. Who set two of her books here.

“Yes. Madame. Which one do you have in mind?”

“Uh. I’m not sure what it’s called…”, replies the lady. Expectantly.

[awkward pause]

“Okay Madame. What is the book about?”

“Um. I’m not sure exactly. I had it when I was in Germany”. Clearly this lady was expecting all Waterstone’s shop assistants to be omnipotent as well as psychic. Clearly what she needed was some kind of existentialist bookshop. I’m sure Bath has one of those. It has everything else.

“Okay. But you don’t know the name or what it was about?”, he asked innocently. To a woman who had made the effort to queue in a bookshop for some considerable time, to ask about a book. I say ‘a’ book here in the sense of ‘any’.

“No. It was a Jane Austen book. Do you have any?”

“I’ll show you the Jane Austen section and then maybe something will jog your memory”, he said leading her off either genuinely to the Jane Austen section of the shop, or else to a specially screened-off section manned by people in white coats.

I’m not sure who I admired more in this situation: The assistant for his patience and steadfast observance of the mantra ‘the customer is always right’ (even if there is, in fact, no actually statement of fact in any of her utterances), or the customer for her ability to set about a task armed with no details or facts with which to complete it.