Tell me about working at a book store

Okay, so I’ve been thinking that I need a second job. Nothing big, just a little part-time gig to help me save up some money. Well, today while looking around at Barnes and Nobles with a co-worker today, I decided to grab an application. I’m still very wishy-washy on the whole “Getting a second job thing,” especially a job working in customer service. If there is a way to avoid it, I’m really going to start focusing on that now.

But, in the meantime, is there anyone out there that’s working/worked at a book store that would care to share some insightful thoughts (either for or against). I know the dealing with customers part will suck, but what about the rest of the job? Fulfulling, unfulfilling, fun, dull, tedious…stuff like that.

Probably depends on whether you like to read or not. I worked at a bookstore for about a year and loved it. Granted, when you get started you end up doing a lot of crap that you hate, like shelving books and dealing with customers, but I wouldn’t have traded the deep discount we got (25% off of hardcovers, 15% off soft cover) for anything. If you added the discount to the standing dicount at the store (15% and 10% off cover) you wound up paying almost 1/2 prce for hardcover books. Indeed, the only reason I left is that we were bought and the store moved too far away for the commute to be workable.

I added tons of books to my bookshelf, and of course you get to look at the overstock Playboys too.

I loved working at a bookstore, even when it was a second job. Mind you, I always worked at small, independent bookstores, so my experiences might not be in line with what you can expect at Barnes and noble.

There are two or three main duties at a books store–stocking, helping customers find books, and cashier. At the stores I worked at, we all did all the duties. I never minded stocking, because it gave me first look at all the books, and helped (a lot) when I was helping customers. Customer service was key in these stores, so we were expected to know the stock and be able to talk to customers about the books. For example, I don’t generally read mysteries, but I was told to read the dust jackets and talk to my co-workers so I could get an idea on the different sub-genres–so if a reader liked a particular author, I could reccomend another author with a similar style. I also got to take home some bestsellers to read, again so I could better discuss it with customers and sell more copies (this is how I got hooked on the books of Tom Clancy). I was also able to give input into what books to order in the science fiction/fantasy section, because that was my area of expertise. As far as cutomer service, I’m not a born salesman by any means, but helping people find books (or even talking them in to buying one) was never difficult.

Finally, if you get the job, and if this is a duty you get to do–learn how to use whatever search system they have for finding books, especially newly or soon-to-be published books. There is nothing so frustrating as knowing that my favorite author has a new book out and having the bookstore not be able to find it for me (or tell me when it will be published). This (and the fact that they don’t keep full series in stock) is my biggest gripe at Barnes and Noble or Borders–their information people are forever telling me that they can’t find this or that (not that it isn’t in stock, they can’t find the book at all). My local, independent bookseller rarely has this problem, and when they do, it is often because the publication date has been moved back, so it really isn’t in the system.

Good luck–and the discounts are really nice, just make sure that you dont’ spend your whole paycheck on books (unless that’s why you’re getting a second job).

I’m not sure why you’d think that customer service would suck. That was the one aspect of retail that I actually enjoyed. (There are not really a lot of mean or rude customers at a bookstore–it is not like some places where the customers are always criticizing the merchandise or where the prices are negotiable, inviting haggling.)

If you really do think you’ll not enjoy customer interaction, ask them if they have a spot in receiving. That job can be tedious, (opening boxes, matching bills of lading or invoices to the expectation lists sent out by the front office (or the purchase orders if it is a small independent), then ensuring the numbers (tracking and price) all match), but you only have to talk to the manager and the UPS guy.

As for floor work, the only truly dreadful part of the job is pulling returns (especially in January when there are billions). The contracts with the publishers treat the hard cover and trade paperback books as if they were on consignment. When a certain period has passed and the book has not sold, the unsold books are pulled off the shelves, boxed up, and sent back to the publisher. (Mass market paperbacks have a similar agreement, except that no one wants to pay the cost of shipping them, so you strip off the front cover to send back as proof that you had not sold the book and destroy the rest of the book.)

Now pulling returns does not sound like a terible deal, but this is how it works. The computer at the front office has tracked how many copies of each book that was shipped to you has gone out through the check-out. Books that have not sold in x days are then reported to the publisher who authorizes a return. The computer then spits out a list of books that need to be picked up and shippped back. This works fine when the title is The Two Towers. You should already be familiar with that book, know the section it is in, and be able to count off the number of eligible returns. However, if the title of the book is actually The Thirteen Best Ways To Meet Your Deadlines in the Office, you can be dead certain that the computer will truncate the title to The Thirteen Best Ways To M, leaving you to guess what the actual title might have been: The Thirteen Best Ways To Meet Your Date, (found in Sex Ed or Personal Health), The Thirteen Best Ways To Meet Your Debt, (found in finance), The Thirteen Best Ways To Make Your Quota, (Business? Sales?), The Thirteen Best Ways To Master Language, (Reference? Education? Self-Improvement?), The Thirteen Best Ways To Murder Your Boss, (Mystery? we would hope, Business?), etc.
And, of course, the book might just have been sold, yesterday while the computer list was printed last week, so an hour of searching turns up nothing. (And after you get yelled at for wasting time because the assistant manager saw it sold, yesterday, the manager will yell at you in three days 'cause he saw it crossed off the returns list while he knows that it is in the store (since the buyer is going to return it, tomorrow).)

But aside from the poverty, I actually almost enjoyed working there. (I am not a retail person.)

I’ve always wanted to work at a B + N. I’ve applied to three different stores a total of six times in the last few years. But they seem to think they’re too good for me.

“Hi, I’m looking for a book. No, I don’t know the title. No, I don’t know who wrote it. But my friend really liked it, and I think the cover is blue, or maybe red.”

Worked in/Managed bookstores for about 7 years all together. As far as retail goes, its one of the better jobs. Of course you will get your dickhead people coming in, but it’s a much lower ratio than you get in record stores (did a year there, too).

I haven’t done any retail work since 1996, so I’m hoping that inventory control and ordering/receiving/returns/etc has advanced with technology, as Tom’s story of the pullsheet with 20 spaces for the title was miserable. Things can’t still be done like that today, can they?

And Cervasie’s quote is surpassingly commonplace. Sometimes if they’re extremely helpful, they add "It’s about this big” and make a book shape with their hands.
All in all, it’s not a bad job but I don’t think I would ever want to go back to retail. But, that’s probably more of a sign of me prematurely becoming a grumpy old pissser than it is an indictment of the retail book industry.

Cervaise said what I was going to say, which is really a minor complaint, when you think about it.
I worked for a small independent bookseller, and I loved it. I got a 35% discount, first crack at all the free preview copies the publisher would send out, and I could sit around at work and read without being accused of slacking off, if there wasn’t any stocking or ordering to do. Discovered MANY of my current favorite books this way.

If we didn’t have a book, 99 times of out 100 I could find it on the publisher’s microfiche, Books in Print, etc., and could order it if it were remotely possible. This made many people happy, which was great. I love research and hunting down information, which was why I was put in charge of special ordering.

I enjoyed almost all aspects of this job, including my co-workers and boss. The only drawback was the pay, which was low. The store went backrupt and I had to find another job. Sad.

As retail sales go, it was a beaut. Go for it.

When I retire from this job in 06 I plan to open a bookstore…

My second home in my teens was in the local used bookstore…I love the smell of old paper on a rainy afternoon…

Go for it!

I did it for a while–morelin should be here soon, I pointed her to it–and you’ll encounter a number of idiots in your job. It depends on the tolerance you have for stupid questions and stupid people, frankly. The good thing is, if you’re part-time, you won’t be there long enough to get really annoyed and you’ll probably be out of the office politics that always seem to swirl around some of the managers in a major chain bookstore.

This is excellent advice. If you have a good memory for book titles, plot lines, character names, and authors as I do, you’ll have a much easier time. I was soon famous in the store I worked at because I could often times identify the book from a character’s name, a major incident in the plot, or even what the cover looked like. (I once located a biography of Mao Zedong from the customer’s description that the book jacket was red and black, and that it was about some “important Chinese guy.”)

Even if I had never read the book, I read many reviews, and that can often give you all the information you need. Have a good, general overview of the classics, and of the main authors in any given genre. Keep current on the “hot” books for all age groups. When I worked at the bookstore, the biggest selling titles in children’s was * Everybody Poops * and * Miss Spider’s Tea Party. * Extra points if you actually read them, because some parents will ask you your opinions on age-appropriateness. Try to know major “college” writers in subjects such as sociology, history and science. You’d be amazed how many college kids know their professor wanted them to read a certain book, but can’t really remember the name of the author.

Hmm, it has it’s good points and bad points.

I know in Borders, at least, even the ‘receiving guys’ work out on the floor and are expected to help customers. Everyone, from the GM down is supposed to help customers, especially on the cash register, which is very often in need of help.

We do get a discount, and can borrow hardcover books and get our hands on free promos, but not before their streetdate.

I can’t read on the clock, period. And believe me when you get a long stretch at the information desk when there are no customers and you have to just stand there without leaning on the desk or reading, you will start to look up random books on the computer just to kill time.

You also get to deal with customers. See Cervaise’s post for a good idea of the average customer. My personal favorites are the people who come in and want to know the new book that was featured in this week’s/last week’s/last month’s newspaper/magazine/morning tv show and what do you mean youo don’t know what I’m talking about?!?

But you know, I still enjoy working there, especially when by chance you DO know what book they want.

YAAGGHHH!!! I worked at Barnes & Noble for two and a half years. It was the most entertaining and bizarre job of my life due to the customers we had. My experiences there caused me to write a whole play about it.

Yeah, the customers’ questions are mind boggling often in terms of what they expect you to know. It’s got a white cover, it’s by a woman from boston and it was published in 1997, do you know it? Or, they get the title wrong all together and you know what book they really mean, but when you correct them, they get pissed off. I had a lot of that, like “Girl Uninterrupted” instead of “Girl Interrupted”. Or they swear that the 7th Harry Potter book is out because their friend saw it on tv, even though no such book exists yet.
Even better is what happens when your store doesn’t have the book the customer wants. A lot of customers get angry, even if you offer to order it for them.
My store also seemed to be unique in the fact that the customers would completely trash the place day after day, so when we closed at 11 we’d be stuck in the store till 12 or later trying to straighten it up. Strangely, the same customers that would take a stack of books and not put them back were the same ones complaining that they couldn’t find anything.
The coworkers at large bookstores, like B&N, seem to be notorious for high school cliquiness (no offense to anyone in high school). Mine was no exception, but I was friends with a lot of them and we’d go out after work a lot to bars or diners and discuss the day’s crazy customer stories. There still is a lot of “she likes him he likes someone else don’t tell her what he said about such and such manager” gossip though, but I guess you get that at any job with a large staff. I’ve known a lot of people who worked at different B&N stores and the stories are all the same. Oh and managers…every B&N has several and there’s always at least one really anal one. If your store is dead and you’re stuck at an information desk, straightening or shelving and pulling returns is usually a good idea.
I could go on and on, (that’s why I have an entire play based on my bookstore experiences), but working at barnes & noble was overall a great experience for me and I plan to hopefully open up a bookstore myself someday. Good luck!

I worked at a B&N for about two plus years. It was a really horrible experience, mismanagement being the main culprut. If you are very anal and love being pushed around and treated poorly, what a great place to work! Bonuses of my awful experience: nagging, suspicious distrust of employees; endless busywork; low pay; continual backstabbing just to get ahead and get that tiny promotion and .15 cent raise; chronic disorganization problems (on and off the computer system); losing books within the store (either via employees or careless customers); mysterious book pulls and returns (aside from regular mass-market book returns); buyers completely out of touch with district they are buying titles for; “hiding” adult magazines behind the counter out of bizarre corporate moral fears; no reading allowed on the job (so you have to be sly and clever unless you want your mind to rot while you do boring busywork); the “scary” romance novel aisle (don’t ever let anyone catch you in that aisle if you have any sense of personal pride – ha ha!); and everything else of negative value posted here by others about having worked at one.

The good thing: access to books, and you’d be around smart book people! And you’ll learn a lot. Your own library will grow. I would totally recommend you buy up a selection of classics with the employee discount, even if you just hold on to them until later on in life – that’s my biggest regret. You know, like if I’d spent a little bit more time and money on piles of Penguin Classics instead of some dumb Anne Rice books, because which ones are you going to end up treasuring and which ones are you going to end up just giving away to some wino on the street? Yeah you know what I’m talking about. Good luck with whatever happens.

You guys that worked at chain stores probably hate me. I am the one digging throught the discount tables and sidling up to other customers recommending the they patronize our local independant, used bookstore. I was almost thrown out of a Hastings once for that! Pfui…the used store has a MUCH better selection and more knowledgeable people working there.

I worked at a small independent new/used bookstore as a 2nd job for a couple of years (1994-1996) and loved it.

  1. First shot at all the used books brought in. In addition to the usual bookselling stuff, I also got to evaluate used books brought in, give credit, and then price and shelve them.

  2. Never in my life did I get to read so much–and get paid for it! The initially hired me to work weekends, esp. Sunday (they hadn’t been open on Sunday before I was hired). It took people a while to realize the store was open on Sunday, so I spent a lot of time reading.

  3. Employee discount. At first, it was 35% off new titles (since the standard mark-up is 40%) and I was ordering books every week.

Of course, I was one of the first hires of the new owners of this bookstore and so started when they were adopting the old policies while gradually developing their own. After a while, the discount droped from 35% to 10%, and they became much more selective on what used titles they’d accept (I was extremely generous; I’d accept anything that was’t damaged)–selective to the point that they wanted to do all the evaluations themselves, so all I could do was take the books and a phone number. About that time, my then-third job as a Zeolite prospector was becoming more dominant than my second job as a bookseller (my first job? Graduate student), so I went ahead and quit.

I’d do it again–I found it to be a pretty peaceful working environment. Plus, I got to meet several authors: Elmer Kelton, Robert James Waller (he lived near the town) a few times, Larry McMurtry (only briefly, and I only found out later), and a handful of others (mostly writers/photographers of Texana).

I guess I saw the customer experience differently. After you’ve stocked shelves for a month or so, you’re liable to recognize the “blue book with the lady on the cover” or whatever. There are bulletins from the office indicating which authors will appear on local or national TV or on radio, so usually there are ways to identify those books, even when they are mangled in the minds of the customer.

For the rest, it is a bit like answering General Questions, using slight clues and one’s own knowledge to piece together what they are seeking.

Bad bosses are neither more nor less preavalent than in any industy, so that is simply the crapshoot of life.

Employee cliques are what you make of them. If you don’t get involved, they have no influence on you (aside from their entertainment value).

Frankly, you’re assuming we cared that much. Heck, we’d even refer people to the “other chain” if we didn’t have what they wanted in stock. The “other chain” would do the same.

So why go to the big store then?

I really liked working at a bookstore, even a chain bookstore…but it’s still work. If you’re at all elitist about authors, the job is not for you. Most of the time you’re going to have people asking for the latest Danielle Steele, or teenage girls looking for books on Justin Timberlake or whomever. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with these books, (I’ve read D.S.), but my point is, if you don’t like mainstream authors, you may find the work to be a chore. OTOH, some customers and coworkers will lead you to authors that you’ve never known about, so you do expand your repertoire.

And here’s something I remember from my interview, whick is in the same vein – if they ask you what you like to read, then don’t tell them something you think will impress them, tell them the truth. (This is merely from my experience, YMMV.) They were looking for someone with tastes that weren’t too obscure – the more familiar you are with popular books, the easier your job will be.

I think that the advice you’ve gotten has been good so far. You’d have to learn about all of the genres. If someone has a legal thriller, or a police procedural, you should be able to direct them to a similar author. But I think you just pick that up as you go.

Oh, and if you’re not much of a salesman (like yours truly), beware the discount card. If the quotas for discount card sales are high it can mean the difference between keeping and losing your job. It will annoy you to make the pitch, it will annoy the customer to hear it. I don’t know about how diligent B & N are with their numbers, though, so it may not be bad.