God Bless You, Mrs. Pinkowski

Every morning at Barnes & Noble we have a meeting. The manager comes on overhead to say some variant of "Good morning booksellers, let's gather at the customer service desk," and then once the booksellers are assembled gives us a recap of the prior day's events.
The other day the manager was Leslie, a middle-aged woman and single mother who has volume control problems and terrible taste in everything.

What I imagine to be on Leslie's Nightstand
Northern Lights by Nora Roberts.
A photograph of her husband.
Two alarm clocks, one electric and one old-timey wind-up one in case the electricity fails.
Disinfectant.
Reading glasses.
A small bottle of beano.
An issue of More magazine.

"We made plan yesterday, but barely," Leslie told us. "We're still not meeting our goal with membership sales, so everyone work on that. Try selling them all over the store, not just at the registers. Oh and don't forget we have Trent Lott coming Saturday to sign his new book, Herding Cats. That should be exciting, huh?"
Nods and murmurs. Jacob said something about being glad he isn't working.
"We have a lot of new strict-on-sales coming out today, let's take a look at them."
Strict-on-sale refers to a book with a "strict-on-sale date," which means that the publisher won't allow us to sell the book before that date. Sometimes these dates are broken: Wal-Mart sold the last two Harry Potter books early and paid substantial fines for it.
"Okay, here we have Team of Rivals, by, uh, Dorrie Kearns Gooden. Hmmm. And here's Truth, by ehem, Al Franken."
Leslie made a face as she said "Al Franken" that led me to think she probably watches Fox News, something I had always suspected of her. She is exceptionally well-informed.
"And, well, HERE's a title. Memories of My Melancholy Whores. SKREEEEEEEEETCH. Well I never."
"SKREEEEEEEEETCH" is actually a pretty accurate representation of how Leslie laughs, a laugh one of my coworkers has compared to the cry of a starving eagle.
"Well," said Leslie, the strict-on-sales disposed of, "Is anyone reading anything interesting?"
Leslie always ends her meetings with this question, usually to the same silent response but today a new girl named Elizabeth piped up.
"I'm reading A Million Little Pieces," she said.
A Million Little Pieces is a biography by James Frey that came out several years ago. It sold some copies then, but wasn't a big deal until very recently when Oprah decided she liked it, sending droves of her fans to stores to make it Barnes & Noble's top selling paperback title.
"Oh," said Leslie, "What's that like?"
"Pretty good I guess. It hasn't really grabbed me."
At which point Jacob weighed in.
"Man, I looked at that book. It's all about drug addiction, and suicide and stuff. It's totally fucked."
He looked Leslie dead in the eye as he said fucked, and she smiled wide, her eyes full of fear.
My heart soared.