James's Weblog

The creator of The Oatmeal was at the Stanford Bookstore yesterday signing copies of his brand new book. A couple of coworkers and I went over to buy copies of it and to get them signed and, well, the Stanford Bookstore is the suckiest piece of sucktacular suckage that ever did suck.

Before I went to work, I called the bookstore and asked if they would have enough copies for everyone attending. The lady assured me that they had plenty of copies, in a tone that made me think I was crazy for even doubting them. A nagging voice in the back of my mind wanted me to ask exactly how many they had and to mention that the Facebook event listed over 300 expected attendees, but apparently the conviction in her assurance shut it up.

My instinct was right: the Stanford Bookstore was completely clueless and had grossly underestimated the number of people interested in punching dolphins in their mouths. They had only 100 copies of the book, and since the book was only two days old, a lot of people didn’t have it already. To add insult to injury, the inept Stanford Bookstore employees seemed completely uninterested in taking any control of the situation. Rather than organizing everyone into a single line (or better yet: one line for people who already had the book and one line for people who had yet to buy it), they let everyone pile together into multiple makeshift lines that merged together. The employees didn’t do anything to keep the line moving, didn’t seem to care that the line had moved only about 6 feet in 20 minutes, and didn’t seem to care that the people waiting in line didn’t know whether they’d even be able to get a book or not. (And at the rate the line was moving, it wasn’t clear if they’d be able to get anything signed at all.) Instead, the employees mostly stood around and spectated at the chaos.

Kudos, Stanford. You have managed to make this Berkeley graduate find new reasons for cursing you.

My current meet-a-web-comic-creator-and-get-something-signed scorecard:
Perry Bible Fellowship: Success!
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: FAIL
The Oatmeal: FAIL