What kind of store charges you for their discount card?

One of my new found freedoms of being less than fully employed is that I now have time to do "research" wandering around bookstores, browsing magazines and books that I would normally rush past. Today, I had a few hours to kill in Barnes and Noble (normally I would link to them, but as you will see, I'm not about to promote a store with ridiculous customer service policies) and I found a couple of books that I thought would be good to read. One of the books had a sticker that members save an additional 10%. Now I'm not usually a big fan of store clubs - they are usually just marketing ploys to gather your info and send you junk mail and sell your info to other companies that will send you junk. But today, I thought - hey, why not save a couple bucks on the book. So I go to check out and ask to join the club. The cashier then tells me that it will cost me $25 bucks - WHAT??????????????????????????????

That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Charge me money to shop in your store so I can "save" money. Screw that - unless you buy at least $250 on books a year, you lose money. This has to be the dumbest thing a customer could do. I get why the store does it. Most people won't spend that much in a year and the margins go up. But I'm not falling for it.