MAbruce,My post was in reference to cheapskate skinflint Borders customers, not my own customers. Specifically, I am talking about those "customers" (and I use that term loosely) who read entire books without paying for them. What would you call them? I don't have any of these types of customers because when I have someone in the store that's trying to read a whole book (a very, very rare happenstance, BTW), I go over after 30 minutes or so and ask them as politely as you please, "Hi! Can I help you find anything?" And I smile nice, too...but my gaze might drift down to the open book in their hand and I might cringe if they've broken the spine. Around 99% of the time, they get the hint and either buy the book or put it back on the shelf. We are a bookstore, not a library.
For clarity, I'm not talking about the browsing shopper, or people who can't find anything to read after hours of looking, or even the people who come into a store and loudly proclaim to their children in tow that, "We aren't buying anything here so don't even ask me!" (my smart-aleck internal voice usually asks why did they bother to come in at all?)
Seriously, would any other business encourage this sort of freeloading behavior? Even those that have extremely liberal return policies like Radio Shack does not actively encourage people to rip them off. For example, many metal detectors are sold on Fridays and returned on Mondays with sand in the cracks yet reported as non-functional...yet work fine in the store. How many times will they allow that to happen, week after week? And at the very least Radio Shack can play with the money for the weekend while the metal detector is out on the beach. But at Borders, these "customers" don't even do that. They literally pay nothing while probably damaging the merchandise. If I'm a "bad guy" for calling them out for that, then so be it.
Andre,If you use a public library and you pay taxes then you're not a cheakskate. You are paying indirectly, but you're still paying your share to have the library in your town and possibly interconnected to other libraries through book exchange programs. As I tell people who don't understand why we need money to survive as a retail business ("What do you mean I have to pay?"), our bookstore does not get tax money. Instead, we pay taxes just like you.
The other comparisons in your post are way off. If doing your own gardening, plumbing, painting, woodworking, etc. yourself is your comparison to a Borders "customer" reading books for free, then you should also be writing your own books and then reading them. To put the woodworking example into what happens at Borders, imagine you have a dresser you'd like to build. Bring your own wood, fasteners, and stain to Home Depot or Sears, then use their tools to make your dresser right there in the store. Does that seem fair? Hey, it's not like you damaged the tools, you just borrowed them, right?
Paul A. Cutler III
Barnes and Noble encourages the very behavior about which you are complaining. In fact, if you have a Nook and bring it into the store you can read any book in their e-book library for 30 minutes for free. If you don't buy it you can return another day and read it for another 30 minutes, etc.
If you buy an e-book and have a friend who also has a Nook, you can even lend many of their books to that person for 14 days.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
Because of the 40% off sale on magazines, a lot of that merchandise went fast. Saturday was very busy. The transportation section for railway books of any kind were hard to find. Their collection of CD's or DVD's were a mixed up mess. Sales may last about a month?
Some sites may be reborn managed by Barnes & Noble or Books a Million. It may not matter if most books come via Amazon or Ebay.