Having finished the last of the books I had stock piled to read, I realized it was time to pick up some new reading material. Since I had a Barnes & Noble gift card sitting around from Christmas, I thought this was a great time to use it. I didn’t want to wait for shipping, so I ventured into the Barnes & Noble at the Prudential Center with the goal of picking up Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think and Jason Freid’s new ReWork. I thought it would be easy enough…go in, find ReWork in the business section and Krug in some type of web development/design section. Not so much…
So after wandering all the way to the wrong side of the store, I finally found the business shelf…but couldn’t find ReWork. I stumbled across a kiosk, but despite it’s insistence the book was in the middle of the area I was in (note: the kiosk didn’t have the most up to date shelving set up…#fail), I couldn’t find ReWork. I then figured I’d look for Don’t Make Me Think, but their web development and design sections are a mess of photography how to books and random coding languages jumbled.
I finally grabbed a B&N staff person after about 15 min of feeling like a blind man in a library and they took me to their main station. Turns out they only give the best treatment to Jason Fried’s new book: ankle level on a special shelf halfway under a table about 2 feet from the help desk…obviously easy to find! With ReWork in hand we then went searching for Don’t Make Me Think…unfortunately, much thinking was required as we searched the jumbled mess of web and design sections. But alas…finally we found it.
Then I went to the check out:
Don’t Make Me Think: $40
ReWork: $22
Tax: $3.88
Total: $65.88***
Note: The cashier was kind enough to offer me the opportunity! to pay an additional $25 to become a B&N club member and save 15% on all purchases!!! What a deal! She reminded me, that I’d save $9 on my books today if I got the club membership…ignore that’s still a net extra of $14.
Now: Why Barnes & Noble is going to go out of business and I don’t mind…
If I go to Amazon.com…I can get both of those books with free shipping for: $38.50. I can also immediately find the books by simply typing in the title or author. I can also see reviews to make sure I really want the books (luckily, both have already come strongly endorsed by my Tweeples).
So let’s see…save over 40% (much more than that awesome B&N membership!), find stuff instantly and deliver it to my doorstep? SOLD.
Sorry B&N…I’m going to use up my gift card $ and not only not come back, but ask my mom for Amazon.com gift cards next year.