Chris Rainier, Bookseller at Readings Hawthorn:

Apart from having very large Che Guevara hardcover biographies thrown at my head and resuscitating narcoleptics in the gift book section, my all-time best anecdote has to be when an elderly gentleman brought a copy of the classic Western High Noon to the counter. Upon remarking that it was a classic of the genre, he proceeded to inform me: ‘It’s not for me, it’s for the dogs.’ (His two Great Danes had their own TV room). ‘They don’t like watching SBS with me, so I have to get them something they like.’ I was speechless.

Steve Bidwell-Brown, Online Fulfilment Manager:

I once helped a budding Charlie Chaplin impersonator find books about his hero. He was a young method actor looking to audition for a mime school in France. Our exchange generally consisted of me communicating with words and him responding through mime. He’d pirouette on his cane to agree with something, and strum his fake moustache when perturbed. It was a strange, beautiful language he was trying to forge.

Imogen Dewey, Bookseller at Readings Carlton:

The oddly constant stream of people who come in looking for ‘something for someone who doesn’t really like books, or reading’. Multiples of strange.

Angela Crocombe, Children’s Book Buyer at Readings St Kilda:

There is a local man who walks into the bookshop every day around 3pm and goes to a certain spot. He stands there for about 30 seconds and then walks out again. It took me a while to figure out that he must have some sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder and that this is part of his daily routine. Now I can’t help wondering how he manages Christmas Day, the only day of the year we are closed.

Kara Nicholson, Bookseller at Readings Carlton:

I was once sent a packet of silk tea bags by a grateful customer in Japan.

Alexa Dretzke, Children’s Book Buyer at Readings Hawthorn:

Finding a poo in the kids’ section and I didn’t need The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business to work out which creature it came from!

Emily Gale, Children’s Book Buyer at Readings Carlton:

I’m rubbish at playing it cool when famous folk drop in to buy books. I swooned over Morris Gleitzman, felt like a shy hobbit next to Clare Bowditch and squealed, ‘You’re awesome!’ at Deborah Mailman while she was browsing picture books.

Lou Fulco, DVD and Music Specialist at Readings Hawthorn:

Many years ago, working in a music store, I was confronted by a very angry man who wanted to return a DVD that had bite marks and saliva on the case. When I told him that his dog had bitten it and I wouldn’t take it back he got angry, to say the least, telling me that it was only the case that was damaged. When I opened the case to find the disc had also been bitten I laughed and told him in no uncertain terms that I was not taking the disc back.

Jason Austin, Buyer and Bookseller at Readings Carlton:

I was working at the Borders’ South Yarra store about eleven years ago and we had a slightly unhinged guy come in. On his first visit to the store he asked me, ‘Where are ya books on murder and death?’ I gingerly directed him to the true crime section. A couple of weeks later, management had to kick him out of the store as he was reading through the true crime section with such relish that he was literally chewing his nails down to the quick and bleeding all over the books.

Annie Condon, Book Club Convenor at Readings Hawthorn:

One Saturday morning, bleary-eyed and caffeine-deprived, a customer pointed his finger at me. ‘You look like someone,’ he said. ‘I’ve got it! I know who it is!’ He told me I was a dead ringer for … Margie Abbott. After telling my husband this, he now takes great pleasure, when seeing Margie on TV, at shouting ‘Quick, look … It’s your doppelganger …’

Chris Dite, Bookseller at Readings Carlton:

It’s a toss up between a woman asking me who wrote The Diary of Anne Frank the other day and my old boss making me introduce Andrew Wilkie at his book launch in 2004 because she thought there might be government assassins in the audience. Probably the latter.

George Munn, Bookseller at Readings Hawthorn:

I’d say either finding a woman asleep on the couch at the back of the Hawthorn store when we were closing one night or, at the first bookshop I worked in, a lady stuffing a very large architecture book up her very tight dress in an attempt to smuggle it out.