HALIFAX, NS—Second-year student Natasha Obermayer is excited for the coming school year, having learned many valuable lessons during her first year at Dalhousie.
“First and foremost, there is no chance I will be buying a textbook this year until I see a professor actually assign work based on its contents—last year I made the mistake of buying what was essentially a $500 set of coasters,” she explained.
“I would feel bad pawning them off on some naive first year on Facebook Marketplace, so I decided to take the high road and see if the bookstore would buy them back,” she continued.
While the Dalhousie bookstore is notorious for low-balling students on returns of their textbooks, Obermayer was shocked when she heard their offer.
“I was pretty pessimistic hearing what students in front of me were getting paid. When I got to the front of the line they first checked all the pages for writing, rips—normal stuff like that. For the first four books, I was offered $20 each. When it came to my mint condition ‘Introduction to Psychology’ textbook, the cashier put three stale cigarettes and a clearly used Burt’s Bees lip chap on the counter saying, ‘take it or leave it, sweetheart, I ain’t got all day’— I was insulted, to say the least”.
The Bookstore has released a statement on the issue claiming, “We can’t be expected to gauge students for money solely when they’re buying textbooks. With a monopoly like this, you’d be stupid not to work both ends. It’s an infinite loop really— some individual books have been bought and resold every year since we opened. We have gotten more generous over the years though, you used to only get two stale cigarettes for that psych book— the lip balm we throw in as a bonus if the book looks untouched.”
Despite her seeming disappointment, Obermayer was seen soon after the interaction with reportedly ‘glistening lips’ wrapped around a slightly bent, yellowed cigarette.