Bookseller Stories: the backstory
Mar. 10th, 2006 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valis2I'm going to start doing an occasional entry with stories from my bookselling days. Thought I'd give you a bit of background...okay, more like a couple pages of background. If you ever really wanted to know about me, here's some stuff.
So I was working in a video game store, and I needed to quit. It just wasn't the best place to be. I was glad I quit, too, because a few weeks after, the guy who started working there was robbed at gunpoint, and the robber pistol whipped him because he wasn't emptying the till fast enough.
I drifted for a few months, working as a babysitter, and then I tried applying at the local Waldenbooks. I used to shop there a lot, for years, actually, and thought it would be a nice job to have.
It was a pretty great job for me, actually. I was nineteen, going to college, with few marketable skills at the time. I was delighted with the 33% discount and the opportunity to borrow books. I hired in at the end of November, so I got through the gigantic Christmas season by the skin of my teeth. The crew at the time was a relatively normal Waldenbooks phenomenon; they all had worked there for awhile. In fact, the manager had worked there for fourteen years, the assistant for nine, and the least number of years that a keyholder had worked there was three years. These were people who knew each other very, very well. They worked brilliantly together for the most part, with a few personality problems. For the first two years it was pretty idyllic, until our district manager switched to a new one, who was a complete alien.
Seriously. This guy was one of the strangest people I have ever met in the business world.
Waldenbooks was owned by Kmart at the time, and was really working at putting together a unified set of stores. To this end they had us "planogram" the cashwrap and backroom. For those of you not retailified, a planogram is basically a chart or illustration that one follows to stock or set up an area. When I worked at Meijer's, for example, we would planogram the jigsaw puzzles on the shelves. All of the puzzles for 2-3 year olds were in one area, 3-5 on the next shelf, etc. We had a little diagram that showed exactly where each puzzle should be placed. Some companies pay for better shelf exposure, so it has to be followed. A cashwrap is where the register is located, plus the area around it. At our Waldenbooks there was a counter with two registers, plus two additional half-height walls and a cubicle behind the counter for the manager to sit at.
Anyway, the alien DM shows up and, I kid you not, speaks with about as much inflection as a robot. There were no excuses with this guy. I mean it. He did not care that our cashwrap was slightly different than other Waldenbooks' cashwraps because of local ADA regulations. He did not care that the staff had made modifications based on their many years of experience. It all had to be done to the planogram or else.
We had stickers, and we had to label and place items on our cashwrap exactly as they were on the planogram. We had to put scissors and the label peeler in the drawer because they were not "pens" and therefore could not go in the labeled "pen jar". Seriously. I am not exaggerating. And he was entirely inflexible. It was such a pain to have to go into a drawer for scissors and the label peeler.
So the manager was written up several times because of his sneak visits, where he would observe the scissors in the pen jar or the phone had been moved four inches away from its label, and he would write her up. There were so many write-ups that she was fired.
The assistant manager quit. So did the senior bookseller/keyholder, the other keyholder, and the other two employees. I stayed on only because the new manager (who was pretty great, though I could not see it at the time) asked me to. Thus ended the smooth running of that store.
Alien DM, by this time, had been fired because he had fired an African-American woman who was eight months pregnant on her last day before maternity leave. He had fired most of the managers in the district. I think they were doing this on purpose, to get rid of the higher paid people, because that was a Kmart strategy. Anyway, she sued them, huzzah.
The worst part about working at Waldenbooks was the Preferred Reader program. When I began, they were just getting into their hyper promotion of this service. At this time the card cost $10 per year, and you received a 10% discount on everything except magazines, and a $5 coupon for every $100 you spent. If customers spent $100 or more in one year, it would pay for itself and net them a $5 coupon. It was supposedly a service for their regular customers. It turned into a nightmare.
You see, we would offer it to people, but usually only to people who were spending a lot, or to our regular customers. The guy who stops in once every three months to buy a Popular Science mag? Not so much interested.
The company slowly began to push it. You had to offer it to everyone. You had to say a script, but make it sound fresh. You had to sell/renew a certain percentage of cards to sales per week or you would be written up.
Okay, I see that this is an important customer loyalty program to them. But the problem with percentage-based write-ups is that you have to base it on sound mathematics. Unfortunately, they did not.
Example:
If I ring up 100 sales per week, and sell one card/renewal, then my percentage is 1%.
But what if 50 of those sales are regular customers who already have the card and are not ready to renew yet? My percentage should be based on the remaining 50%, and my percentage should be 2%. This vital correction was never made, and many employees were fired or harrassed for not having the proper percentage.
When I started it was "strongly suggested" that your percentage had to be 2%. It then rose to 2.5%. And then 3%. And at 3.5%, they made the big move to writing people up. That's where I began to get disgusted, and that's about when the first manager got fired.
It then moved to 3.75%. And 4%. And 4.25%. At the end, it was 4.5%, but it was moving to 4.75%.
Eventually they began their "hand-sell" program, which was crazy. Let me explain. Let's say I read the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, and I think it's incredible. If a customer asks for something along those lines, I say, "Hey, have you ever tried tHT by Atwood? It's amazing. [Insert plot synopsis here] I think her writing is spare and elegant, and chilling." I put the book in their hand. That's hand-selling. The customer was not asking for an Atwood book; I just jumped forward and suggested it. It's a pretty amazing phenomenon when many booksellers, independently of each other, start to hand-sell a book. It can make a huge difference in sales, especially for people who aren't well known. Well, they wanted to cash in on this, so Waldenbooks started their program, and they would tell you which books to hand-sell that week. You understand the problem, right? I have never read the Bridges of Madison County. I never will. So I randomly go up to people and hand them the book, and then, as human nature dictates, they will immediately say, oh, you've read this? Then what do I do? Lie? Of course I'm going to say no. It's ludicrous to try to dictate this one on one phenomenon, this connection between bookseller and reader. The readers learn not to trust the booksellers!
I will synopsize the next three years:
After that new manager came another new manager.
I was made assistant manager just in time to avoid being fired for my low percentage. You see, I rang up mostly regular customers, so I had fewer opportunities to sell cards.
A Media Play store opened across the street and our sales dropped. Part of the problem, too, was that our mall was beginning to die. It had been a very popular place when I started, but two more malls opened, and we lost 25% of our customer base to just one of them.
I worked every Friday night, Sat night, and Sunday. The new manager was a nice woman, but she had difficulties remembering all of the small details that permeated the store, and I ended up taking on too much work.
I became manager and avoided being fired again. Within a month or two, I lost nearly every employee to school, different jobs, etc.
I finally got an assistant manager.
Christmas season was hell.
I had three weeks of vacation time left, which I was supposed to be able to take before Feb 28th. However, I was told in Jan that I had to take them before Jan 31st. I was also told that I would be audited in Feb, which meant that I had to finish all of the Christmas paperwork. Needless to say, I took the vacation time but worked anyway.
In Feb I was told that I was one of the few stores who was required to run a sunglasses kiosk in the mall. (Waldenbooks has long had an obsession about sunglasses. I have no idea why. I think it's because the typical markup is 400%.) I did not have extra employees, in fact, I was down several employees. I hired warm bodies to work the kiosk. The kiosk did horribly (by horribly I mean four pairs per week, and I had to send people from the store over to give the kiosk people breaks, which meant that I was shorthanded at crucial times during the day.
In March I finally received manager training.
In April I was working, regularly, 70 hours a week at a minimum, while taking two college classes. At this time I was taking a Feminist Lit class, taught by a woman fresh out of grad school. The class involved writing: fourteen 2 page discussion papers (one per week), two 10 page papers, two 5 page papers; it also involved: being discussion leader one week, which meant preparing questions and basically heading up the discussion, reading four novels, about twenty short stories, and several poems, and giving two 10 minute presentations. I was also taking a Medieval Lit class, which involved a lot of reading, writing, and a ten minute presentation as well.
In May I had the most intense week of my life, which went like this: Sunday 8am-7pm, wrote stuff for class at night; Monday worked 6am to 10pm; Tuesday worked 6am to 3:30pm, wrote five page paper, went to class and took final exam at 6, went back to the store and worked 7-10pm; Wednesday worked 6am to 8pm, had dinner with my sister, went back and worked 9-10:30pm; Thursday worked 6am to 5pm, went to school and wrote up inventory cards while waiting to take the final, took final at 6, went back to the store and worked 7-10pm; Friday, got to work at 5:30am, readied the store for inventory, worked until 2am the next morning; Saturday worked from 8am-8pm. Yes, a 101 hour week, with two finals.
A customer sent a note praising my work, saying that I provided terrific customer service, and concluded by saying that it was a shame if I were let go. I was written up (!) because the customer had "inside knowledge" of Waldenbooks.
I had a moment the next day where I was sitting at my desk and thinking about cashing in my stock options, but then I thought I still had a write-up or two to go, and I got distracted by something else.
I came in on a Friday, dressed very nicely, thinking it was so nice that things were settling down a little. I had gone through an inventory, an audit, two ENTIRE staff changes, opening/staffing a sunglass kiosk, PG stock counts, and more, all in 9 months, which is more than most managers at Waldenbooks go through in two years. I walk into the store two hours early, and it was a madhouse! Five people were in line, both phone lines were ringing, and the one employee was completely overwhelmed. The assistant manager, you see, was at the kiosk, because he had to cover it because one of our employees insisted on taking her break at 11:00 because she of her low blood sugar. This is the start of the lunch hour rush, and it is terrible timing.
Well, I immediately answered the phones, put one on hold, answered the other quickly, and waited on two of the most sour-faced women I have ever seen. I answered their questions as best as I was able, but there were more people in line and I was also answering the employee's questions as well. I didn't even have my name tag on because I'd just walked in the door and wasn't even scheduled for two more hours.
Turns out they were mystery shoppers and I flunked bigtime. Thanks, sunglass kiosk. I wouldn't have even had to wait on them if the assistant had been there.
That afternoon the DM comes out and asks to go sit with me in one of the seating arrangements in the mall. I was worried because there was no tell-tale goldenrod paperwork. He shows me the mystery shop report and says, "The home office thinks it's time for a change." I was bewildered, thinking, what, should I put up curtains in the windows? But the change turned out to be me.
So humiliating, really, and it was devastating. I'd always tried to do a really good job. But then again, I wasn't really management material, I think. I ended up doing all of the operational stuff myself. Well, hell, everytime I trained someone they left two months after.
So I worked someplace else part time and I started doing craft shows and art fairs. I ended up working 54 hours a week at the new place regularly and then crafting at night. Pretty exhausting. After two years of working for one of the most casually evil people I have ever met I realized that I needed to get away. When she accused me of taking off too much time I realized it was time. I had only taken the job to supplement my art fair stuff, and I was having a hellish time trying to keep everything going. I was doing the scheduling, and I had a short list of people I could call in, and at one art fair I ended up begging my sister to run my booth while I went to the store and worked most of the weekend, which, of course, made a significant difference in my art fair sales. So when she said that I nearly went ballistic. I went through the schedule and for the past year it turns out that, even with taking days off for art fairs, I was working more than any of the other full time employees, so I said to myself "That's it!".
And I went into the little independent bookstore that I've shopped at with my family forever, and got a job working at night, and it was 5-9pm, and I could sit and read, and the cat who lived at the store would sleep in my lap, and it was heavenly for a few years, until one of the crazy owners fired me for taking off a month to go to AZ, even though I had arranged it ahead of time and it was all covered. It was a dream job and I still miss it a little.
That's my bookstore background. Whew.
So I was working in a video game store, and I needed to quit. It just wasn't the best place to be. I was glad I quit, too, because a few weeks after, the guy who started working there was robbed at gunpoint, and the robber pistol whipped him because he wasn't emptying the till fast enough.
I drifted for a few months, working as a babysitter, and then I tried applying at the local Waldenbooks. I used to shop there a lot, for years, actually, and thought it would be a nice job to have.
It was a pretty great job for me, actually. I was nineteen, going to college, with few marketable skills at the time. I was delighted with the 33% discount and the opportunity to borrow books. I hired in at the end of November, so I got through the gigantic Christmas season by the skin of my teeth. The crew at the time was a relatively normal Waldenbooks phenomenon; they all had worked there for awhile. In fact, the manager had worked there for fourteen years, the assistant for nine, and the least number of years that a keyholder had worked there was three years. These were people who knew each other very, very well. They worked brilliantly together for the most part, with a few personality problems. For the first two years it was pretty idyllic, until our district manager switched to a new one, who was a complete alien.
Seriously. This guy was one of the strangest people I have ever met in the business world.
Waldenbooks was owned by Kmart at the time, and was really working at putting together a unified set of stores. To this end they had us "planogram" the cashwrap and backroom. For those of you not retailified, a planogram is basically a chart or illustration that one follows to stock or set up an area. When I worked at Meijer's, for example, we would planogram the jigsaw puzzles on the shelves. All of the puzzles for 2-3 year olds were in one area, 3-5 on the next shelf, etc. We had a little diagram that showed exactly where each puzzle should be placed. Some companies pay for better shelf exposure, so it has to be followed. A cashwrap is where the register is located, plus the area around it. At our Waldenbooks there was a counter with two registers, plus two additional half-height walls and a cubicle behind the counter for the manager to sit at.
Anyway, the alien DM shows up and, I kid you not, speaks with about as much inflection as a robot. There were no excuses with this guy. I mean it. He did not care that our cashwrap was slightly different than other Waldenbooks' cashwraps because of local ADA regulations. He did not care that the staff had made modifications based on their many years of experience. It all had to be done to the planogram or else.
We had stickers, and we had to label and place items on our cashwrap exactly as they were on the planogram. We had to put scissors and the label peeler in the drawer because they were not "pens" and therefore could not go in the labeled "pen jar". Seriously. I am not exaggerating. And he was entirely inflexible. It was such a pain to have to go into a drawer for scissors and the label peeler.
So the manager was written up several times because of his sneak visits, where he would observe the scissors in the pen jar or the phone had been moved four inches away from its label, and he would write her up. There were so many write-ups that she was fired.
The assistant manager quit. So did the senior bookseller/keyholder, the other keyholder, and the other two employees. I stayed on only because the new manager (who was pretty great, though I could not see it at the time) asked me to. Thus ended the smooth running of that store.
Alien DM, by this time, had been fired because he had fired an African-American woman who was eight months pregnant on her last day before maternity leave. He had fired most of the managers in the district. I think they were doing this on purpose, to get rid of the higher paid people, because that was a Kmart strategy. Anyway, she sued them, huzzah.
The worst part about working at Waldenbooks was the Preferred Reader program. When I began, they were just getting into their hyper promotion of this service. At this time the card cost $10 per year, and you received a 10% discount on everything except magazines, and a $5 coupon for every $100 you spent. If customers spent $100 or more in one year, it would pay for itself and net them a $5 coupon. It was supposedly a service for their regular customers. It turned into a nightmare.
You see, we would offer it to people, but usually only to people who were spending a lot, or to our regular customers. The guy who stops in once every three months to buy a Popular Science mag? Not so much interested.
The company slowly began to push it. You had to offer it to everyone. You had to say a script, but make it sound fresh. You had to sell/renew a certain percentage of cards to sales per week or you would be written up.
Okay, I see that this is an important customer loyalty program to them. But the problem with percentage-based write-ups is that you have to base it on sound mathematics. Unfortunately, they did not.
Example:
If I ring up 100 sales per week, and sell one card/renewal, then my percentage is 1%.
But what if 50 of those sales are regular customers who already have the card and are not ready to renew yet? My percentage should be based on the remaining 50%, and my percentage should be 2%. This vital correction was never made, and many employees were fired or harrassed for not having the proper percentage.
When I started it was "strongly suggested" that your percentage had to be 2%. It then rose to 2.5%. And then 3%. And at 3.5%, they made the big move to writing people up. That's where I began to get disgusted, and that's about when the first manager got fired.
It then moved to 3.75%. And 4%. And 4.25%. At the end, it was 4.5%, but it was moving to 4.75%.
Eventually they began their "hand-sell" program, which was crazy. Let me explain. Let's say I read the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, and I think it's incredible. If a customer asks for something along those lines, I say, "Hey, have you ever tried tHT by Atwood? It's amazing. [Insert plot synopsis here] I think her writing is spare and elegant, and chilling." I put the book in their hand. That's hand-selling. The customer was not asking for an Atwood book; I just jumped forward and suggested it. It's a pretty amazing phenomenon when many booksellers, independently of each other, start to hand-sell a book. It can make a huge difference in sales, especially for people who aren't well known. Well, they wanted to cash in on this, so Waldenbooks started their program, and they would tell you which books to hand-sell that week. You understand the problem, right? I have never read the Bridges of Madison County. I never will. So I randomly go up to people and hand them the book, and then, as human nature dictates, they will immediately say, oh, you've read this? Then what do I do? Lie? Of course I'm going to say no. It's ludicrous to try to dictate this one on one phenomenon, this connection between bookseller and reader. The readers learn not to trust the booksellers!
I will synopsize the next three years:
After that new manager came another new manager.
I was made assistant manager just in time to avoid being fired for my low percentage. You see, I rang up mostly regular customers, so I had fewer opportunities to sell cards.
A Media Play store opened across the street and our sales dropped. Part of the problem, too, was that our mall was beginning to die. It had been a very popular place when I started, but two more malls opened, and we lost 25% of our customer base to just one of them.
I worked every Friday night, Sat night, and Sunday. The new manager was a nice woman, but she had difficulties remembering all of the small details that permeated the store, and I ended up taking on too much work.
I became manager and avoided being fired again. Within a month or two, I lost nearly every employee to school, different jobs, etc.
I finally got an assistant manager.
Christmas season was hell.
I had three weeks of vacation time left, which I was supposed to be able to take before Feb 28th. However, I was told in Jan that I had to take them before Jan 31st. I was also told that I would be audited in Feb, which meant that I had to finish all of the Christmas paperwork. Needless to say, I took the vacation time but worked anyway.
In Feb I was told that I was one of the few stores who was required to run a sunglasses kiosk in the mall. (Waldenbooks has long had an obsession about sunglasses. I have no idea why. I think it's because the typical markup is 400%.) I did not have extra employees, in fact, I was down several employees. I hired warm bodies to work the kiosk. The kiosk did horribly (by horribly I mean four pairs per week, and I had to send people from the store over to give the kiosk people breaks, which meant that I was shorthanded at crucial times during the day.
In March I finally received manager training.
In April I was working, regularly, 70 hours a week at a minimum, while taking two college classes. At this time I was taking a Feminist Lit class, taught by a woman fresh out of grad school. The class involved writing: fourteen 2 page discussion papers (one per week), two 10 page papers, two 5 page papers; it also involved: being discussion leader one week, which meant preparing questions and basically heading up the discussion, reading four novels, about twenty short stories, and several poems, and giving two 10 minute presentations. I was also taking a Medieval Lit class, which involved a lot of reading, writing, and a ten minute presentation as well.
In May I had the most intense week of my life, which went like this: Sunday 8am-7pm, wrote stuff for class at night; Monday worked 6am to 10pm; Tuesday worked 6am to 3:30pm, wrote five page paper, went to class and took final exam at 6, went back to the store and worked 7-10pm; Wednesday worked 6am to 8pm, had dinner with my sister, went back and worked 9-10:30pm; Thursday worked 6am to 5pm, went to school and wrote up inventory cards while waiting to take the final, took final at 6, went back to the store and worked 7-10pm; Friday, got to work at 5:30am, readied the store for inventory, worked until 2am the next morning; Saturday worked from 8am-8pm. Yes, a 101 hour week, with two finals.
A customer sent a note praising my work, saying that I provided terrific customer service, and concluded by saying that it was a shame if I were let go. I was written up (!) because the customer had "inside knowledge" of Waldenbooks.
I had a moment the next day where I was sitting at my desk and thinking about cashing in my stock options, but then I thought I still had a write-up or two to go, and I got distracted by something else.
I came in on a Friday, dressed very nicely, thinking it was so nice that things were settling down a little. I had gone through an inventory, an audit, two ENTIRE staff changes, opening/staffing a sunglass kiosk, PG stock counts, and more, all in 9 months, which is more than most managers at Waldenbooks go through in two years. I walk into the store two hours early, and it was a madhouse! Five people were in line, both phone lines were ringing, and the one employee was completely overwhelmed. The assistant manager, you see, was at the kiosk, because he had to cover it because one of our employees insisted on taking her break at 11:00 because she of her low blood sugar. This is the start of the lunch hour rush, and it is terrible timing.
Well, I immediately answered the phones, put one on hold, answered the other quickly, and waited on two of the most sour-faced women I have ever seen. I answered their questions as best as I was able, but there were more people in line and I was also answering the employee's questions as well. I didn't even have my name tag on because I'd just walked in the door and wasn't even scheduled for two more hours.
Turns out they were mystery shoppers and I flunked bigtime. Thanks, sunglass kiosk. I wouldn't have even had to wait on them if the assistant had been there.
That afternoon the DM comes out and asks to go sit with me in one of the seating arrangements in the mall. I was worried because there was no tell-tale goldenrod paperwork. He shows me the mystery shop report and says, "The home office thinks it's time for a change." I was bewildered, thinking, what, should I put up curtains in the windows? But the change turned out to be me.
So humiliating, really, and it was devastating. I'd always tried to do a really good job. But then again, I wasn't really management material, I think. I ended up doing all of the operational stuff myself. Well, hell, everytime I trained someone they left two months after.
So I worked someplace else part time and I started doing craft shows and art fairs. I ended up working 54 hours a week at the new place regularly and then crafting at night. Pretty exhausting. After two years of working for one of the most casually evil people I have ever met I realized that I needed to get away. When she accused me of taking off too much time I realized it was time. I had only taken the job to supplement my art fair stuff, and I was having a hellish time trying to keep everything going. I was doing the scheduling, and I had a short list of people I could call in, and at one art fair I ended up begging my sister to run my booth while I went to the store and worked most of the weekend, which, of course, made a significant difference in my art fair sales. So when she said that I nearly went ballistic. I went through the schedule and for the past year it turns out that, even with taking days off for art fairs, I was working more than any of the other full time employees, so I said to myself "That's it!".
And I went into the little independent bookstore that I've shopped at with my family forever, and got a job working at night, and it was 5-9pm, and I could sit and read, and the cat who lived at the store would sleep in my lap, and it was heavenly for a few years, until one of the crazy owners fired me for taking off a month to go to AZ, even though I had arranged it ahead of time and it was all covered. It was a dream job and I still miss it a little.
That's my bookstore background. Whew.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-10 09:14 pm (UTC)I've always been terribly jealous of those who've worked in bookstores, with such ready access.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-10 09:29 pm (UTC)But I gave up after 15 months. Never would I have lasted as long as you did.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-10 09:56 pm (UTC)And I got so sick of people saying, "You must love working at a bookstore! You get to stand around and read all day."
Oh yeah, the books teleport themselves onto the shelves. *rolls eyes*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-10 09:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-10 10:15 pm (UTC)I've never worked one of the big, regimented retail places, but I did have the Boss From Hell when I was young, wide-eyed accountant. He used to boast that two former employees had nervous breakdowns working for him. I left before I got to that stage, but I don't think it would have been long. I needed the job to live (plus I was young and stupid and too darn nice) but looking back, I'm astounded I didn't just tell him where to stick it - and even more astounded you didn't!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-10 10:17 pm (UTC)isn't it wonderful that you got to do it though?? :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-10 10:53 pm (UTC)The big corps, they suck the soul out of you.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-10 11:29 pm (UTC)*rolls eyes*
Oh yes, that's a stellar thing to boast about. What a great thing to have contributed to the universe. Disgusting.
I'm astounded I didn't just tell him where to stick it - and even more astounded you didn't!
Yeah, I agree! Looking back on it, I wish I had. What a nightmare. What a crazy company. It really was a terrific, terrific job, but the damned PR program made us all mental. Towards the end I was completely stressed out.
And I was "too darn nice" as well. You hit the nail on the head.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-10 11:33 pm (UTC)Towards the end I knew nearly all the 14,000 titles. If someone asked, I knew immediately whether we had it or not. I really knew the store inside out. I hated leaving.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-10 11:34 pm (UTC)I really did love that store. I put everything I had into it and I was so sad to leave. I bawled my eyes out on the way home after I was fired. It was such a big moment for me.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-10 11:52 pm (UTC)I had two excellent managers there and one bitchy assistant manager. When I first started working at Waldens, it was doing a hopping business. By the time I left, it was starting to die on the vine along with the mall it was in. I think the decreasing popularity of malls in favor of strip centers, plus the piss-poor management and programs Waldens/Kmart instituted contributed to the company shriveling up. That and the power house that is Barnes and Noble.
When I first got hired on, I was thrilled. Working in a bookstore had its perks. The 33% discount, the ability to check out books just like a library, take home whatever you like that was meant for trash, all good stuff. I rescued three copies of the complete works of Michaelangelo and Leonardo DaVinci. These were huge coffee table books, cover price of $150.00 each, and they were tossing them out. So I grabbed and piled them into my car.
I remember the planogram, but our DM wasn't the nutcase yours was when it came to focusing on the monstrously trivial.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-11 12:21 am (UTC)And you are so right about the chain stores beginning to die. I went into Waldenbooks recently and it was dead. The B&N and Borders are doing much better. Borders, of course, capitalized on the cash made by Waldenbooks in their last few viable years to expand relentlessly.
I had a friend who basically took all of the old bookcases when their store changed over to a different set of shelving. Her basement is entirely walled by bookshelves from Waldenbooks. Funny, huh?
That DM was really one of the strangest people I ever met. He would not talk to any of us. No small talk at all. Everything was business. I bet he would bleed ink.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-11 12:31 am (UTC)Young accountants exist to have the life sucked out of them until 1. they become blood-sucking vampires themselves (partners or upper management), 2. they die of exhaustion and overwork, 3. they make an abrupt career change, or 4. they cease to allow their oppressors to abuse them. It took me a while to make it to 4., but I eventually did and am much happier now.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-11 12:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-11 01:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-11 05:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-11 07:06 am (UTC)And best of all, I don't have to account for my time in five minute increments!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-11 08:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-11 04:14 pm (UTC)When I worked at the independent store...now that was great, except for the crazy customers and the one crazy owner.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-11 04:14 pm (UTC);)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-11 06:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-11 06:28 pm (UTC)A reorg? Oooh...I hope everything goes well.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-11 06:34 pm (UTC)What if you worked in a library? Still have books but no planograms.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-11 06:38 pm (UTC)At a library, it's much more skewed to "Do you have anything about Chinese politics during the 1900s?" and then you have to run around and hope that you have a book that contains something relevant. I'd go mad. We had a few of those queries at the bookstore, for parents wanting books for their children's book reports, and it made me mental.