She seemed like what you might call ‘a nice person.’ He seemed decent enough, too. His voice a tad too loud, but not meaning to be obnoxious. They were just enjoying the days between Christmas and New Years, chatting, flirting, browsing the new non-fiction cases at City Lights. Multitasking ran deep in their veins. They were joking, scanning book jackets and discussing several topics at once.

I would have turned back to my browsing, when suddenly it caught my eye. She wasn’t even looking at her phone, but in a well-practiced gesture that you might not have seen if you weren’t paying close attention, she hovered her phone over the book and snapped a picture of the cover. It took less than a second but there was no mistaking the intent. City Lights had lost another sale. That $35 book would soon be coming her way from Amazon at $24.95.

The store was bustling with customers. We try to visit regularly because the browsing is always so superb — it’s impossible to glance at a shelf without discovering a terrific book that you haven’t heard of before. A year ago I had been scanning a category of books near the cashier called “Books With CDs” and Arnold Steinhardt’s exquisitely crafted Violin Dreams fell into my hands. (And I bought it there.) I’d never heard of it before and never seen a mention of it in print since. If not for City Lights I would never have discovered one of my favorite books of all time.

Browsing is like middle children — something you take for granted but when it’s gone society loses something important. Middle children are the buffers in a family, the ones who learn to negotiate between the typically aggressive eldest child and the clingy youngest siblings. Middle children are like saints, actually. (Full disclosure, yes, the author of this piece is a middle child, but you probably already knew that.) It was predicted a generation ago, and clearly now come to fruition, that with the shrinking American family and the decline of the numbers of middle children, we would become a more contentious people. Clearly this explains what’s going on in the Senate.

Browsing has a big role to play in society, too. Browsing is the enabler of serendipity. Without browsing, the chances for the out-of-frame discovery are terribly diminished. I am still waiting for someone to say, “I discovered this really great book on Amazon.” What would our world be like without serendipity? That would be gray, dear reader.

Busy as the store way, the City Lights cashiers had nothing to do but chat with each other and answer the occasional reference question. They just weren’t ringing up sales. City Lights had become a free browsing service for Amazon.

We took a break from browsing and headed out for some non-touristy North Beach food. We stopped in front of a restaurant and were immediately assaulted by a hawker who swept down, apparently attempting to entice us with a breath that sang of fresh garlic. She announced the specials in an accent so obscure that even as we read the menu along with her, not a word could be understood. The dim sum parlors provided a different sort of browsing: plates of wax food that was meant to speak directly to one’s salivary glands.

And then I got it. Both the restaurants and City Lights were providing a browsing experience. The difference was that the customers browsing the restaurants came in and actually bought stuff. But people browsing the books at City Lights were buying their books from Amazon, even while they were still right there in the store!

What to do?

If I ran City Lights and wanted to stay in business, I’d put big signs in the windows and behind the cash register: “We’ll meet Amazon’s Price!” Apparently City Lights management believes that they can’t make enough money trying to match Amazon, but I have news — making $7 on a book is better than making nothing on it. The day I was there thousands of dollars in sales were being lost. And as long as you have the traffic, do what the carwashes do. Sell other stuff to your customers at full price: accessories like reading lamps and bookmarks, gift cards, even Smithfield hams, dammit! But don’t turn your bookstore into a browsing facility for Amazon. You can’t go on like this.

I left the store a little depressed, fearing for a great institution. As we walked by The Stinking Rose, another North Beach fixture, I noted a woman in her thirties deep into her book as she sat by herself in the window. There was no question where she had bought her copy: she was reading a nice fresh volume of Kerouac.

So City Lights had managed to make at least one sale. I hope it wasn’t the last.

Isn’t it great that our kids are stuck with us for a fairly lengthy period of time? If we screw up and say something that perhaps wasn’t the best possible parenting expression, they’re going to be around tomorrow, too. We’re going to get another chance to do better.

This is extremely important in the realm of parenting. Most of us have absorbed the wisdom that our kids will perceive negative comments about themselves so powerfully that it will take from 10 to 20 times the number of positive remarks to create a perception of balance. That’s why we need to hesitate when we tell our kid that maybe they could have tried a little harder on that quiz. Have we already told them on 10 different occasions how great they’ve done something?

I’m feeling the same way about customer service at the moment. Take great care of me (basically just do a good job) and I’ll keep using you. But screw up, especially if it makes me look bad, and it will take a long, long time before I trust you again.

In the on-line book business, two giants duke it out for our business: Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If you happen to be a One-Click Prime Amazon user, you have experienced the ultimate in on-line ease of shopping. Say you have a sudden inexplicable urge to unravel the secrets of innovation, and Presto! — your copy of The Genius Machine is on its way to your doorstep after only a few seconds of effort on your part. Jeff Bezos has created perfection, no question about it.

So what brought me to Barnes & Noble’s website two weeks ago to order a book for my son’s birthday? The book, the well-reviewed Science: A Four Thousand Year History by Patricia Fara was out of stock on Amazon, an unusual occurrence. Fortunately, B & N showed the book as “in stock” so I ordered it and selected a shipping speed that insured the book would arrive on time. Added gift wrapping and a birthday wish.

Within a few minutes a confirmation arrived in my email. Wonderful feeling, all’s right with the world. A few days later my wife and I decided on short notice to join a family event in Los Angeles that coming weekend. We would also have the happy chance to celebrate in person with our birthday boy.

At the birthday lunch I had expected my son to say something about the book, since it suits his interests so perfectly. But he said nothing, and I knew right away: something had gone wrong.

Can anyone tell my why a late birthday greeting or present is completely different from an on-time birthday thought? “Hope you had a lovely birthday last week. Wednesday was it?” Thanks a lot. But the party’s over.

I returned to my office to find an email from Barnes & Noble. Whoops! The book was actually out of stock. Would you like to sign in and authorize a 30 day extension of your order? We hope it will be back in stock during that time.

Hell no! I wanted more than that. I wanted an explanation to know how an inventory system that can tell me if a title is in any Barnes & Noble store in the country and that tells me if it is in the warehouse, can be wrong. I called Phylis in customer service, who was not looking forward to my call. She made a few attempts to explain that just because the system says a book is in stock and I order it and the order is confirmed, sometimes someone else will order a 100 copies of that same book and you’re just out of luck. This didn’t make any sense to me so I asked to speak to a supervisor. I held on the line for way to long listening to some crappy music when another person finally came on the line. She was as nice as peach cobbler, but all she could do was repeat what Phylis had said. So, I carefully stated what I was hearing: when you order something from Barnes & Noble that’s “In Stock” and believe you’re sending a gift that needs to arrive on time, and when you receive a confirmation that you order has been accepted and the shipping date had been confirmed, it actually means nothing at all.

Well, maybe that’s not fair to what Barnes & Noble are saying. Maybe what their confirmation really mean is, “We’ll try.”

So now I’m feeling a little wary about Barnes & Noble. They certainly have some very nice people answering the phones over there, but there’s a little something missing in our relationship. I’m feeling like they’re coming home late from the office a little too often. You get my drift? I’m not feeling trust anymore. And I’m wondering how an organization ever gets the opportunity to create 10 or 20 positive customer relation experiences after they’ve created 1 big negative one.

That’s the hard thing about regaining trust when you’re not under the same roof. I may not be here tomorrow to see how really great you can be. Unlike kids, us customers aren’t captive.