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Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Carping about pikers

Published: April 11, 2011 1 minute 10 comments

Retail
I have a feeling this arc in Retail is going to be worth following.

I sort of applied to work at Borders a little over a year ago, during the period I was out of work. I say "sort of" because I saw a poster at our local Borders saying they needed help and giving an on-line address. I went there, entered my ZIP Code and found myself taking a very long, somewhat invasive personality test similar to an MMPI. Part way through, it became obvious that the test was intended to weed out anyone who felt that working a bookstore was about standing around talking about literature, which I understand, but part way farther through, it became obvious that the test was intended to positively select people who would view Borders as WalMart with books. And music. And toys. And coffee. And candy. And pens and paper and calendars. And your nose to the grindstone.

And then it became obvious that, well, the local Borders didn't actually have an opening anyway. They just had those posters, which HQ told them to post. Probably so the staff wouldn't have their shelf-stocking interrupted by having to tell people how to apply for jobs there.

It might have gotten me through a rough spot, but it wouldn't have been any fun at all and I got through that rough spot anyway. So, no, I am not inclined to fret over whether their employees stay through the final closing or not. But I am certainly inclined to see where Norm Feuti goes with this.

The Borders here is not closing, by the way, but I have to admit I don't have much affection for the brand, even beyond that brief non-encounter. When I was a young man, I lived near the Chinook Bookshop, one of the better independent bookstores, where staff was certainly expected to work hard but also to be knowledgeable about books and friendly and helpful to customers, not simply "efficient." You would see employees come and go, but more than half — maybe two-thirds — were long time, with a decade or more under their belts, chosen not by a test but by an instinct. And, if you asked someone about a specific genre, they might well pass you off to the staffer who knew that corner of the publishing world, at which point you would find yourself being most ably assisted and perhaps educated as well. Every visit was valuable, even if you didn't end up with a book, and that increased your loyalty to the place.

It was, of course, a simpler time. It's easy enough to say that Borders and Barnes & Noble, combined with Amazon, killed the independents, and that is true but it's not the entire story. Chinook was willing to special order a book and they had good relations with suppliers, so it didn't take long. But, more than that, they probably had the book on hand in the first place. While I can "special order" from Amazon, I could usually find the actual book and hold it in my hand at Chinook, which is not even the case at Borders except in major metro areas.

Every bookstore has to stock best sellers and coffeetable kitsch, but that shouldn't preclude stocking, for example, minor titles of major authors and it shouldn't preclude having a specialty — whether it's mysteries or local history or environment or whatever — and, of course, that last bit means having people who can chat up a customer with real knowledge of that niche.

If Borders were truly the villain in this murder, Borders wouldn't be bankrupt. It was definitely a group effort, and I'm looking forward to this arc.

Edge_City
Meanwhile, Edge City is beginning its annual Passover arc, and this one looks like it's going to be a smelly, messy pain in the neck.

(Please insert your own Borders punchline.)

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Comments 10

  1. Thanks for the post, Mike. Luckily, the Borders near me is not one of the closing stores … at least not yet, assuming they survive the bankruptcy restructuring.
    I agree there’s no substitute for a “brick and mortar” bookstore when you just want to look around for something that might interest you. A scrolling list of things that other people who bought the last thing you bought also bought is hardly a replacement.

  2. I notice that you go on and on about the Chinook’s book business, but nothing at all about their coffee. What, were their baristas subpar?

  3. Aw, man, don’t get me started on those employment personality tests. When I was younger, I naively thought they actually wanted the most truthful, honest answers I could give. I figured, since most people were probably lying to make themselves look better, my forthrightness would be refreshing and help me stand out.
    At some point I realized that what they really want is (a) strong evidence of corporate groupthink mentality, and/or (b) willingness and ability to at least fake the corporate groupthink mentality. That’s about when I realized that any job that relies on these tests really isn’t a job I’d want anyway.

  4. I do miss the socializing that came with book-buying, Norm. We’d drop by sometimes just to see what was up, and they knew, if we didn’t get something then, we’d come back and buy something another day. And it was that atmosphere where, if they said, “Hey, here’s something you’d like …” it really WAS something you’d like, something that fit in with the other things you got, not by a algorithm but by means of people who paid attention and cared.
    And I hadn’t thought of it in years, Sherwood, but there WAS a coffeepot in the backroom, in the room that happened to house the Penguin classics, which was a place I spent a lot of time.
    Yes, Josh — sometimes the test tests the test-giver. I remember getting out of college in 1972 and needing a job and interviewing for a job stocking shelves at a 7-11. They wanted me to pee in a cup and I started laughing and ended the interview. Back then it was an outrageous notion that you have to be tested for anything to work at a 7-11. I didn’t say, “Look, I don’t think I could do this job straight,” but I did leave, gratefully unemployed. Today, not only could I easily pass the test (unless it tracks Metamucil), but it wouldn’t seem at all out of the ordinary for them to ask.

  5. .. and just to be clear, the Turgenev was terrific. The coffee was mediocre on a good day.

  6. No fair. The Turgenev would be terrific at Walmart, too.

  7. No, because WalMart would use those old public-domain translations from “Great Books of the Western World.”
    You know, the same cheesy anachronistic-but-cheap ones they use in the affordable books they stock at Borders.

  8. Now you’ve gone and made me nostalgic for Kroch’s and Brentano’s, and Marshall Field’s book department.
    “Look, I don’t think I could do this job straight”
    I may have found next month’s email signature!

  9. The other day i overheard at my local Books-a-Million a conversation between two employees about how many rewards-card memberships they’d managed to push. Gaaaah! I could do a job where i had to act enthusiastic about the toys and cheese danishes, but the annoying speeches they are required to give about joining the program or trial subscriptions to magazines would…wow, you’re right. I could do that if i could come to work on a mind-altering substance.

  10. I took one of those Borders tests, too. I never heard from them. There are a couple of stores near me–the one within walking distance isn’t closing, but the one where I could actually find stuff I wanted is. It’s in a mall with Bloomingdale’s and similarly snooty stores (cue the proletentiousness here) in a space formerly occupied by I Magnin. I think they may have paid a wee bit more rent there than the store in my end of the county does. I’ll miss them, though now I get most of my books from amazon (.com, .ca, and .co.uk).

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