Friday, December 16, 2005

Gumshoe?

I have served a patron at the reference desk three times in the last month, and each time he starts the conversation with "Hi Sweetheart!" It's a bit disconcerting, so I always stare at him with narrowed eyes for a fleeting moment. After that, though, there are no hints of flirting, so it seems that it's just a greeting.

Today, he was on the hunt for a stack of books on arson investigation and casualty checklist investigation.

"Aha!", I said to myself, "a private eye!!"

(And one that has spent too much time watching gumshoe detective movies.)

3 Comments:

Blogger carmilevy said...

What an outdated term. Likely from the same era where women were referred to as "girls" and when you flew you were served by "stews" who winked at you when you least expected it.

Sigh...

9:20 pm  
Blogger liz said...

You could make up noirish-sounding nicknames for him, like "Hey there, Dollarbill," or "Morning, Ripples, what can I help you find today?"

In this way you'll throw him off-balance, because he won't be sure whether they're insults or endearments.

7:53 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"hey, there, Dollarbill" is great. Except we'd have to say "hey, there, ya loon" here and that would just end up being appropriate rather than noirish. we could say "hey five buck man" maybe.

4:48 pm  

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