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| - Half Price Books serves a certain purpose, and in a township like Monroeville, where there are no other bookstores, it is essential that this place stay in business. Most of the books are remaindered or bestsellers, but there are books of quality to be found here in and among the junk. Most of the staff is helpful and friendly, and they are paid poorly too, so they deserve a little slack. The records, CDs, DVDs and such are ordinary as well, mainly whitebread kind of stuff. Today my son and I went in looking for Fahrenheit 451 and a helpful guy found copies for us. On the other hand, one of them (a paperback) wasn't priced. The friendly woman at the counter called to her two co-workers, a slightly older gray haired ponytailed guy, who was talking to another worker, saying she needed a price on it. They ignored her (it was clear they saw her) and she kept holding the book in their direction, but they refused to price the book. We looked through the bin of so-called "collectible" LPs meantime ($100 for a worn copy of The White Album, seriously? $75 for a shitty Beck 10-inch?) and at some of the rare books ($1000 for a signed GW Bush book, really? $1500 for Well's First Men on the Moon, which usually auctions for half that, seriously?) but STILL the ponytailed guy ignored the nice young woman who was getting slightly awkward and embarrassed about it. Finally she priced it on her own at $1.99 as the ponytailed guy walked behind her without talking to her. I thought he was rude and setting a bad example, and if he's the manager, or at least the guy who prices stuff, he was being a bad manager. And that will set the tone for the whole place if they're not careful.
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