I. Crime Book Wave
I had a most unexpected good day at work yesterday.
Unexpected because I have a fatiguing cold and I'd intended to work quietly for only a couple hours at my desk, which is piled high with books to look up online.
When I got to work, however, Big Boss took me to the side door, saying, "Have you seen these yet?"
Twenty grocery bags of books had been dropped off inside the door, near my BOOK's area.
I did not (not) feel like hefting all these books, but it was in my best interest to get them on the shelves right away, or else the warehouse guys would move them to the back room and I'd have to haul them farther later.
The books were all mystery/crime novels, mostly hardbacks, all in like-new shape. We get a ton of these, and they do sell . . . for 49¢ each. (Ditto, romance novels.)
I stock the mystery section regularly, and there was not room to add twenty bags' worth.
I decided to clear a bookshelf in the History, Politics, & Society section. Books in that section sell faster than donations come in–– I'd guess because people read them slower and keep them [longer] than mysteries, which are on a rapid read-and-recycle loop.
(Not infrequently mystery books get donated back with our .49-cent price sticker still on them.)
Thinking I should cull the entire BOOK's section but not having the energy, I was feeling overwhelmed... when a young woman wearing a hijab came in and told me she needed to buy one-hundred books for a friend who is starting a senior day care.
Would I help her choose them?
Would I ever!
Clearing out hardbacks of interest to seniors?
Those are among the books that sell the most slowly.
I loaded her cart with all the LARGE PRINT hardbacks I had; a bag of the new mysteries and another of romances; books about events older people would remember:
The Greatest Generation Speaks, Eruption: The Story of Mount Saint Helens (can that already be almost forty years ago!?);
and biographies Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Katherine Hepburn...
(I suppose a lot of people will have already read these, but it might be comforting to have books about recognizable topics around).
A few books each on the topics of gardening, cooking, sports, and crafts (quilting); a smattering of Oprah-ish pop-psychology books and general reading novels; a few pretty Anne-Geddes's-babies kinds of picture books; some not-too-specific religious books (an illustrated one about angels, Bruce Feiler's Where God Was Born: A Journey by Land to the Roots of Religion);
. . . and I threw in a box of maybe fifty issues of National Geographic from this century for free.
I sold her the books for 99-cents each, half of our usual flat-price for hardbacks of $1.99.
I wanted to give her a deal, because making a nice place for old people is important, but also she was doing me a favor clearing out some of the old stock. It made it much easier to find space for the mystery crime novels.
II. We Make the Path By Walking
We chatted as I was gathering the books, and she told me she had bought a cartload of children's books from me last spring, for her own preschool about ten blocks away, and that I'd sold those to her for half-price too.
Then I remembered her, and felt a little bad I hadn't before, but you know how it is: there are a lot more customers than there are you's, so they remember you more than the other way round.
Her returning to the store where she'd gotten a friendly reception and a good deal reminded me of what I'd written about Lord of the Rings yesterday:
the way you start out matters--it sets your course.
We might deviate from our original direction, of course, but those first steps, first impressions are key.
I've been BOOK's lady for almost one and a half years, and I'm just starting to be able too look behind me and see the direction I've come--and project the direction I'm going.
I feel incredibly lucky that I've stumbled a bit but haven't taken any terrible missteps.
I've lost my temper with coworkers a couple times, but I've never lost it with a customer.
NOT because I hold to the marketing idea that the customer is always right, but because a lot of our customers (and a lot of people, period) are vulnerable.
They tend to be stressed out, and I try not to make it worse.
It takes so much bloody work to survive when you're not thriving, right? When you're not well supported, not well loved.
Maybe you're alone, frightened, new in town...
You're funny looking or a sexual magnet.
Your brain or your body is broken, and the ten wrinkled dollars you have in your pocket are literally all the money you have in the world.
You're very old, or very young, a single parent, addicted, or in recovery. . .
Or, in any of a hundred ways, you're just not in synch with the culture around you.
Difficult people are difficult, and I'm not always great with the people who push my buttons [e.g., snotty rich ladies at the cash register who don't look at me as they hand over their money while talking on their cell phones].
But I can't see who is dealing with what, so I tend to cut customers a lot of slack. It's easier to think well of them, since I don't know them.
(I get crabbiest with people I know, as people I know will tell you.)
III. Chemical Zen
Empathy is not always emotionally sustainable, when you work with the public.
A couple of my coworkers have broken down and got in screaming matches with difficult customers--one of them just a couple days ago.
The customer was in the wrong, but the coworker made the situation worse.
I don't blame them, but it's a problem.
As usual, I look to poor management---we workers don't have training and support for being on the front lines, as we sometimes are.
Some people are better than others at maintaining their cool.
One of my coworkers, a tough customer himself, never loses it. Because of the recent altercation, I decided to ask him about that.
"How do you handle difficult customers so well?" I asked.
"Look at my eyes," he said. "When I'm at work, I'm high. So I don't care!"
I burst out laughing!
I told him I'd been taking CBD oil--the hemp without the high--to deal with cashiering.
Chemical zen.
Not the ultimate of tactics, maybe, but in the trenches, anything that reduces stress is welcome.
This morning I read Steve's post at Shadows & Light about the book Diary of a Bookseller (2017). The author, Shaun Bythell, bought a second-hand bookshop in Scotland.
Bythell writes well, Steve says, about the frustrations of working with the public.
Once "amenable and friendly", Bythell says the job has made him an “impatient, intolerant, antisocial proprietor” [Guardian review of the follow-up to Diary: Confessions of a Bookseller]--I picture Dylan Moran's misanthropic bookseller Bernard Black in the wonderful British TV show Black Books (2000-2004).
Bythell writes, for instance, of customers who want to tell your their life story:
I must watch this show again!
OK--now I have watched the first five minutes of the first episode, and the frantic Bill Bailey (Manny) comes in, desperately demanding The Little Book of Calm.
He reads,
"Let go once in a while. You are a loose lily floating down an amber river."
I had a most unexpected good day at work yesterday.
Unexpected because I have a fatiguing cold and I'd intended to work quietly for only a couple hours at my desk, which is piled high with books to look up online.
When I got to work, however, Big Boss took me to the side door, saying, "Have you seen these yet?"
Twenty grocery bags of books had been dropped off inside the door, near my BOOK's area.
I did not (not) feel like hefting all these books, but it was in my best interest to get them on the shelves right away, or else the warehouse guys would move them to the back room and I'd have to haul them farther later.
The books were all mystery/crime novels, mostly hardbacks, all in like-new shape. We get a ton of these, and they do sell . . . for 49¢ each. (Ditto, romance novels.)
I stock the mystery section regularly, and there was not room to add twenty bags' worth.
I decided to clear a bookshelf in the History, Politics, & Society section. Books in that section sell faster than donations come in–– I'd guess because people read them slower and keep them [longer] than mysteries, which are on a rapid read-and-recycle loop.
(Not infrequently mystery books get donated back with our .49-cent price sticker still on them.)
Thinking I should cull the entire BOOK's section but not having the energy, I was feeling overwhelmed... when a young woman wearing a hijab came in and told me she needed to buy one-hundred books for a friend who is starting a senior day care.
Would I help her choose them?
Would I ever!
Clearing out hardbacks of interest to seniors?
Those are among the books that sell the most slowly.
I loaded her cart with all the LARGE PRINT hardbacks I had; a bag of the new mysteries and another of romances; books about events older people would remember:
The Greatest Generation Speaks, Eruption: The Story of Mount Saint Helens (can that already be almost forty years ago!?);
and biographies Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Katherine Hepburn...
(I suppose a lot of people will have already read these, but it might be comforting to have books about recognizable topics around).
A few books each on the topics of gardening, cooking, sports, and crafts (quilting); a smattering of Oprah-ish pop-psychology books and general reading novels; a few pretty Anne-Geddes's-babies kinds of picture books; some not-too-specific religious books (an illustrated one about angels, Bruce Feiler's Where God Was Born: A Journey by Land to the Roots of Religion);
. . . and I threw in a box of maybe fifty issues of National Geographic from this century for free.
I sold her the books for 99-cents each, half of our usual flat-price for hardbacks of $1.99.
I wanted to give her a deal, because making a nice place for old people is important, but also she was doing me a favor clearing out some of the old stock. It made it much easier to find space for the mystery crime novels.
II. We Make the Path By Walking
We chatted as I was gathering the books, and she told me she had bought a cartload of children's books from me last spring, for her own preschool about ten blocks away, and that I'd sold those to her for half-price too.
Then I remembered her, and felt a little bad I hadn't before, but you know how it is: there are a lot more customers than there are you's, so they remember you more than the other way round.
Her returning to the store where she'd gotten a friendly reception and a good deal reminded me of what I'd written about Lord of the Rings yesterday:
the way you start out matters--it sets your course.
We might deviate from our original direction, of course, but those first steps, first impressions are key.
I've been BOOK's lady for almost one and a half years, and I'm just starting to be able too look behind me and see the direction I've come--and project the direction I'm going.
I feel incredibly lucky that I've stumbled a bit but haven't taken any terrible missteps.
I've lost my temper with coworkers a couple times, but I've never lost it with a customer.
NOT because I hold to the marketing idea that the customer is always right, but because a lot of our customers (and a lot of people, period) are vulnerable.
They tend to be stressed out, and I try not to make it worse.
It takes so much bloody work to survive when you're not thriving, right? When you're not well supported, not well loved.
Maybe you're alone, frightened, new in town...
You're funny looking or a sexual magnet.
Your brain or your body is broken, and the ten wrinkled dollars you have in your pocket are literally all the money you have in the world.
You're very old, or very young, a single parent, addicted, or in recovery. . .
Or, in any of a hundred ways, you're just not in synch with the culture around you.
Difficult people are difficult, and I'm not always great with the people who push my buttons [e.g., snotty rich ladies at the cash register who don't look at me as they hand over their money while talking on their cell phones].
But I can't see who is dealing with what, so I tend to cut customers a lot of slack. It's easier to think well of them, since I don't know them.
(I get crabbiest with people I know, as people I know will tell you.)
III. Chemical Zen
Empathy is not always emotionally sustainable, when you work with the public.
A couple of my coworkers have broken down and got in screaming matches with difficult customers--one of them just a couple days ago.
The customer was in the wrong, but the coworker made the situation worse.
I don't blame them, but it's a problem.
As usual, I look to poor management---we workers don't have training and support for being on the front lines, as we sometimes are.
Some people are better than others at maintaining their cool.
One of my coworkers, a tough customer himself, never loses it. Because of the recent altercation, I decided to ask him about that.
"How do you handle difficult customers so well?" I asked.
"Look at my eyes," he said. "When I'm at work, I'm high. So I don't care!"
I burst out laughing!
I told him I'd been taking CBD oil--the hemp without the high--to deal with cashiering.
Chemical zen.
Not the ultimate of tactics, maybe, but in the trenches, anything that reduces stress is welcome.
This morning I read Steve's post at Shadows & Light about the book Diary of a Bookseller (2017). The author, Shaun Bythell, bought a second-hand bookshop in Scotland.
Bythell writes well, Steve says, about the frustrations of working with the public.
Once "amenable and friendly", Bythell says the job has made him an “impatient, intolerant, antisocial proprietor” [Guardian review of the follow-up to Diary: Confessions of a Bookseller]--I picture Dylan Moran's misanthropic bookseller Bernard Black in the wonderful British TV show Black Books (2000-2004).
Bythell writes, for instance, of customers who want to tell your their life story:
"I am going to get a mask and paint 'I DON'T CARE' on the forehead and put it on when such occasions arise..."Dylan Moran was there first:
OK--now I have watched the first five minutes of the first episode, and the frantic Bill Bailey (Manny) comes in, desperately demanding The Little Book of Calm.
He reads,
"Let go once in a while. You are a loose lily floating down an amber river."
OMG, I need the T-shirt.
The Little Book of Calm...I need it!!!!!
ReplyDeleteGZ: I want to swallow & absorb it into my being, like Manny!
ReplyDelete