Now I'm just totally confused. After posting that last apology, I kept looking, with the full resource of the internet at my disposal. There are customer reviews for Alton Brown's new book on Amazon, posted at the end of August. Amazon says I can order the book and have it in a day.
Yet our registers at work won't even recognize the thing when we scan the bar code.
Nobody knows one way or the other whether or not it's been released, but Food Network is some pretty serious business.
I may have to rescind my apology to Alton Brown and Food Network altogether, and opt instead to choose to apologize to whoever may be coming in for the book and we are once again not able to sell it to you, even if we should be, even though we should not be.
I'm still going to err on the side of caution and withhold the book in the back of our store until the release date that I have seen out here in the land of the free, but it's mind-bending to think that we may be restraining it from sale for a month and a half longer than Amazon.
I'm just trying to do the right thing, and it's severely confusing.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Good Eats: The Early Years (Early edition)
A very special apology to one Alton Brown and his fans. I don't know if any of you have noticed it, but Mr.Brown has a new book slated for release on October 6th. If you've been through our stores at just the right moments, you may have seen that book on our sales floor. I myself even placed it out there at first, lacking any information telling us not to display it, but then later returned it to the back out of a gut feeling that something seemed a little off.
The next day I worked I found it back out on the sales floor. This is AFTER I left the stack of them in the back with a post-it note saying "OCTOBER ???", having found the singularly vaguest reference to it's release in our stores computer catalog system.
As a book store, we have certain books which we cannot sell before certain dates, and those dates are made known to us in a listing of strict on-sale dates. Yet when all of this was going on, just a few days ago, by the way, our latest current listings only show what is coming out through the rest of September. This month. Anything October 1st or later is (or at least at that point was) completely unknown to us by the resources made available by our company.
The book itsself wouldn't even ring up in our system to display a handy "do not sell" notification. The only thing which made any note of the books release was our catalog system, which only states the month of a books release, not the specific date, and certainly not whether it was a strict on-sale.
Lacking access to the outside internet, we once more had to rely on the limited information contained within our gigantic store full of books and publications, which of course came up short in this particular instance.
So, to Alton Brown, and Food Network, yes we have the books, and I am trying to keep them safe. (You could have sent them in a fancy box with a date printed on them, though!) To the fans, no we do not have the book, it will be available on the 6th.
The next day I worked I found it back out on the sales floor. This is AFTER I left the stack of them in the back with a post-it note saying "OCTOBER ???", having found the singularly vaguest reference to it's release in our stores computer catalog system.
As a book store, we have certain books which we cannot sell before certain dates, and those dates are made known to us in a listing of strict on-sale dates. Yet when all of this was going on, just a few days ago, by the way, our latest current listings only show what is coming out through the rest of September. This month. Anything October 1st or later is (or at least at that point was) completely unknown to us by the resources made available by our company.
The book itsself wouldn't even ring up in our system to display a handy "do not sell" notification. The only thing which made any note of the books release was our catalog system, which only states the month of a books release, not the specific date, and certainly not whether it was a strict on-sale.
Lacking access to the outside internet, we once more had to rely on the limited information contained within our gigantic store full of books and publications, which of course came up short in this particular instance.
So, to Alton Brown, and Food Network, yes we have the books, and I am trying to keep them safe. (You could have sent them in a fancy box with a date printed on them, though!) To the fans, no we do not have the book, it will be available on the 6th.
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