Barnes and Noble is the ideal place for bibliophiles to find hidden gems, but if what this TikToker is saying is true, this is one surprise that customers can probably live without.
Jules (@spookyjul), a former Barnes and Noble worker, went viral on TikTok for answering the questions everyone was asking: What happened to Barnes and Noble’s big comfy chairs?
“Seen a lot of people recently asking why they took the chairs out of Barnes and Noble,” she said.
Jules went on to explain that while it was true that the retail outlet wanted to stop people from loitering without buying anything, there was another, more unpleasant reason.
“As someone who worked at Barnes and Noble, I’m going to break this to you guys,” she said. “People were pissing in them. They were pissing in those chairs. OK, they took them out because they were full of piss. People were sh**ting and pissing.”
This revelation ended up being watched 1.4 million times, and it’s safe to say that viewers were horrified by this news. Some commenters were confused, with one saying “But… there’s a bathroom?” While another asked, “Why were they doing that?”
“Suddenly very grateful I never sat down in Barnes and Noble,” a third added. Jules didn’t immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment via TikTok comment.
@spookyjul working at a Barnes and Noble will show u horrors hitherto undreamt of #fyp #booktok #bookstore ♬ original sound – Juls
What happened to the Barnes and Noble chairs?
While human waste is possibly part of the equation, there are also a few different theories online about what happened to Barnes and Noble’s big comfy chairs. In 2015, student journalist Nick Norton investigated where Barnes and Noble’s comfy chairs went as part of a project for USA Today.
From discussion with store employees, it became apparent that they got rid of the chairs to discourage “homeless loitering” in stores—although, as Nick Norton added, they were careful to not use the word “homeless” and focus on terms like “undesirables” instead.
Meanwhile, on a Quora thread asking the same question, former Barnes and Noble staff offered an array of explanations for the absence of chairs. One former employee said it was to discourage people from sitting down and not buying anything, while another remarked how the chairs often needed replacing because they were “filthy and worn down.” Meanwhile, a third employee posited that the chairs simply took up space—but they too also admitted that the chairs had a slight urine problem.
Barnes and Noble didn’t immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment via email.
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