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.
Misha77Thanks 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.