When you work in a record store, your greatest assets, the things that make you more educated, more enlightened, more entitled to work in a snobby record shop, than anyone else, are your opinions. They are monumentally important, better than anyone else's, and must be broadcast at any opportunity to magnanimously enlighten the masses. The masses generally don't listen, but that's all right, because if they actually took your advice, it would deprive you of the delight of looking down on all of them, in which case you would consider yourself unfit to be a record bitch.

And so when the rare and marvelous thing happens, and you are asked for a recommendation, it is too splendid an opportunity to waste. One feels almost pressured to be at their coolest and most knowledeagable, but -- like the Martha Stewart of the snobby record store world -- one never lets the strain show.

My ego swelled to Warhol-sized proportions when I realized that many of my coworkers at the time considered me as one of the few members of the staff who really knew a lot about different types of music, and they would often ask me questions when a customer had stumped them. I relished the looks of wonder on their faces when I said the right thing.

A record bitch does not know everything. But she won't mind if others believe it.