# Tell me about working at a book store **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 16, 2003, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-working-at-a-book-store/182232 "2003-06-16T15:49:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![j.c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/73ab20/32.png) [@j.c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j.c)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2003, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-working-at-a-book-store/182232/21 "2003-06-18T07:15:31Z")
Come work at the bookstore in my neighborhood. Everyone there is a bad-tempered idiot. Me: I am looking for another copy of “The Riverside Shakespeare.” I looked in plays and literature and didn’t see one, but you seem to have reorganized the store since I last bought a copy and the shelves in those sections may be too small for the book. B-t I: I’ve never heard of that play and I’m in creative writing. Me: “The Riverside Shakespeare” is not a play. It’s all of Ol’ Will’s work and some scholarly notes useful for recent high school grads getting through their first years of college. Some editions are in one big honking phone book sized volume, sometimes editions are a boxed set of two not quite so honking volumes. B-t I: Shakespeare plays are sold either separately or in threes. Me: Okay, then. How about “Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris? S-E-D-A-R-I-S. I didn’t see it in humor or non-fiction, but perhaps it’s shelved on one of the display tables? The bad-tempered idiot than spend about 15 minutes not finding either book in the computer. She has not heard of either, seems to doubt that I know what I am talking about, and fails to make any recommendations. Every time the computer fails to deliver “The Riverside Shakespeare” when she does a search for “Reeves Shaker” or to spool out the isbn number for “Me Talk Pretty One Day” when she does s search for “Talking Days,” she gives me a poisons look. I give up and head to the magazine section … where I find both books on a … whatever you call those stupid display tables where new books, old favorites, and leftovers from book signings are all grouped neatly without any meaningful order. Anyway, I get the books and don’t have to go to graduations empty-handed. Again, my neighborhood needs you. **Misha77** Thanks for that info about discount cards and clerk job security. Every time I go into my local independent bookstore and deal with the bad-tempered idiots, I silently resolve to give up and just go to B&N. This pressure on innocent bookstore clerks is one more reason to shop indy. ---
**Author:** ![Alcibiades](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/cab0a1/32.png) [@Alcibiades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alcibiades)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2003, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-working-at-a-book-store/182232/22 "2003-06-18T12:42:43Z")
I’m seriously thinking about opening my own bookshop in a few years. Thanks to all who’ve contributed to this, for the insight. ---
**Author:** ![Fionn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Fionn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fionn)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2003, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-working-at-a-book-store/182232/23 "2003-06-18T13:51:25Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by welby \* > \*\*… 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. \*\* My skepticism about a second job dealing with the public has strangely melted. Go, **Elvis** , go! ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2003, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-working-at-a-book-store/182232/24 "2003-06-18T14:07:01Z")
> [@](#): > > Oh, and if you’re not much of a salesman (like yours truly), beware the discount card. Which chain has their employees on a sales quota system? (I’d definitely avoid that outfit.) ---
**Author:** ![acrossthesea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@acrossthesea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/acrossthesea)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2003, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-working-at-a-book-store/182232/25 "2003-06-18T14:25:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Misha77 \* > \*\*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. \*\* Yeah, most of the time that I was working at B&N they hadn’t come up with the reader’s advantage thing yet. Towards the end when they did and were getting obsessive about it, I was never working as a cashier anymore so I didn’t have to push it at people. That was good because I don’t like sales pitch stuff. Back then (this was last year) they weren’t firing people at my store for not selling it, but they were actually writing people up if they didn’t mention it. Since this was only cashiers though, I didn’t have to worry. I hope the economy or whatever determines these things never gets so bad that they actually fire bookstore employees for being unable to sell a discount card. ---
**Author:** ![Morelin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Morelin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morelin)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2003, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-working-at-a-book-store/182232/26 "2003-06-18T15:34:25Z")
Borders did a test-run for discount cards and ultimately decided people didn’t want to pay $25 or so for a card that only gives a 10% discount, so we don’t have one to push. ---
**Author:** ![mouthbreather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a698b9/32.png) [@mouthbreather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mouthbreather)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2003, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-working-at-a-book-store/182232/27 "2003-06-18T16:04:15Z")
In the early 90s I worked at B-Dalton…the cards cost $10 and they were easy to sell. Anyone who bought $70-80 worth of books was an easy sale, and that happened many times a day. I usually didnt bother asking the kid who was buying a $5.99 paperback. ---
**Author:** ![Misha77](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Misha77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Misha77)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2003, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-working-at-a-book-store/182232/28 "2003-06-18T16:54:10Z")
I worked at Waldenbooks. They didn’t fire me for not selling the card enough, but I’d been written up a few times and I was getting close. I eventually quit, because I felt that I was quite good at my job, and no one noticed because my card sales weren’t high enough. I can’t remember what the exact percentage was, but yes, at the store I worked at, people did lose their jobs if their percentages weren’t up to snuff. In Waldenbooks’ defense, though, there were some who had no trouble keeping their numbers where they should be. And I knew the deal when I got hired. So I just saw it as my not being able to do part of the job that I was hired to do. Them’s the berries. Sorry for the quasi-hijack. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-working-at-a-book-store/182232.md?page=1)