Really though?

FACT: The area was accessible to customers
---yet you claimed that the article LIED.

FACT: The manager quickly took the book off the shelf, and blocked the area
--yet you claimed that he had an "obvious attitude" about it

It's such a big issue that (THANK GOD) it hasn't received much attention. :)

Some things truly are a matter of sweating the small stuff.

Welp, this was a fun and informative thread.

I like your signature! lol. It reminds me of the episodes I see of Judge Hatchett lol.

This Obama thing has gone way overboard. I knew this would be a problem once he got elected. As soon as someone says one thing about the guy, the race card is used. Give it a fking break. He's black, and he's president so there are going to be race issues involved. This is clearly a race issue, but it has nothing to do with barnes and noble. Think people, think!

There are racists who make your Coca-Cola. Stop drinking it.

There are open racists who run some of the largest banks in the world. Stop using organized banking - after all, your mattress never dropped an N-bomb.

Higher education is generally slanted toward whites - drop out.

There are racists who purify the air you breathe . . .

I think wearing shirts and using slogans such as "Do you smell what Barrack is cooking" and "Barrack the Vote" are blatant disrespect of the Presidency. Do you agree with that?

It was some stupid customer. Do you really think an employee would risk their job pulling a prank like this? Especially when jobs are hard to come by these days. And if it had been an employee, I'm sure someone would have found out and they would have gotten fired. That still does not make B&N as a national the bad guy.

Think of it this way. I'm assuming you're a member of a Greek organization. How would you feel if there was some random person, who hung out with members of your organization, did something horribly wrong... and other unknowing people thought this person was a member of your org, started boycotting it and spreading around how bad this org was?

One bad apple doesn't make a whole entity guilty... and this bad apple wasn't even a member of their team.

deepimpact, we get that you're upset. Someone obviously did this intentionally, and it was wrong. I'm upset (probably in a minor way compared to you), but yes, it's still sad and it shouldn't be done.

However... no one knows who did this. If an employee was caught, whether it was a stupid 16-year-old high school kid or the owner of all of B&N, I would hope they would be reprimanded for it in some way. But the fact remains... it could have been a customer, it could have been one employee who was just stupid and ignorant, it could have been your mom, but you can't punish one of the largest national book stores for something that can't be directly linked to B&N, or anyone working for them.

Therefore, a discussion about whether B&N should do something about this is moot. It is still your right to be upset (in general), but you can't direct your anger toward anyone when you don't know who did it.

I used to work in a bookstore (another national chain, not B&N). EVERY DAY, we moved porn from the kids section (and the bathroom, but let's not even go there ...). We were constantly moving the books on evolution out of the fiction section and back into science. Copies of conservative religious books would always "mysteriously" wind up in the gay and lesbian interest section.

The brick-and-mortar bookstore is a dying business, and they are all understaffed. Trust me, the employees try their hardest to keep the books where they belong and looking neat, at the same time as trying to help the customers (who are often completely insane). But it's essentially a losing game - you are talking about thousands of books in these stores, which all have a very precise correct placement. They can't all be right all the time.

Are you living in the United States? You can't be serious with a statement like that. Do you know how many employees do stupid things of this nature?

It doesn't matter if they FEEL that way. What matters is when they start doing things to SHOW it. Blatantly associating the President with a monkey isn't something that should be tolerated. I don't know, but your attempt to make a point fails because you are talking about someone's THOUGHTS, not their actions.

At any rate, I shouldn't be surprised at some of the reactions. Even though you would never admit it, most of you probably share the same sentiment as the people who continuously compare the President of the United States to a monkey. I'm not saying definitively that this is the case, but based on previous comments around here, it's not unlikely.

ETA: I'm not angry. don't want anyone to think I'm sitting here with steam coming out of my ears. I'm just saddened and perplexed that people are so desensitized that things like this are tolerated and brushed off.

I'm puzzled as to why people think that if an employee had been caught doing this, that they would have punished. There have been numerous incidents that have been traced back to employees and nothing was ever really done. For example, I have done some research to find out what happened with that employee involved in that incident where the word "n*^&%#" was written on a customer's return receipt. From what I know, they found out who it was, but never fired that individual. They just waited for everything to die down, and business resumed as usual. That's typically what happens in there types of situations.

Also, I think based on the rep's attitude alone on the Joyner show, there is more to the story. I still don't understand why he wasn't more apologetic. He was VERY nasty when he was on there. He certainly was quick to pass the buck however. A little too quick. Like I said, he was counting on the notion that people don't know the layout of the store.

That's been my experience as well - even at the national chains in Boston, it never seemed like there was enough staff to effectively police the store activity. Now, the stores had detectors and cameras to dissuade theft, but I'm surprised more garbage like this didn't happen (not necessarily just racially-motivated stuff, but vandalism in general).

You raised a good point about stores and cameras. I'm sure that store has cameras. Why didn't they at least LOOK at the cameras to see what occurred?

Again, you are missing the whole point of this particular story.

You have a smoking gun and no witnesses to the crime nor a real 'credible' victim.


Hell I could just as easily go in there and do the same thing and cry wolf.

It's not that this is being tolerated, bit it's an isolated incident that no one can really do too much about adn again as I sated before, if there was malice behind this event and something that was on a far grander scale, I could see where there would be outrage, but this particular incident for what happened, it's not worth it.