I don't have enough books specifically on Halloween, so I went with colors and moods: today I turned books at the thrift store with autumn-colored covers face-out for an Overall Mood Board effect.
Here's some of the fiction + the main display:
More to come, but first, an update: The staff meeting this morning was good!
Whew. You just never know.
Big
Boss invited everyone to talk about how they felt about the situation
with people living/dealing by the store for four months until the cops
chased them away a couple weeks ago (the people are literally two blocks
away now).
It was good to air feelings about it. Our meetings
are so short, there's not time for discussion, and I think that's
weirdly helpful.
People have to speak briefly, and there's no time for responses--sort of (accidentally) like 12 Step meetings.
People's
responses were varied--everyone's relieved that we don't have to wade
through blasted people and traffic, but most people are concerned that
nothing changed, there was no real HELP.
Before the meeting, in
the breakroom I'd said I wanted to talk about pronouns at the meeting.
"Let's put it on the agenda," I said.
I WAS JOKING, (there is no agenda), but the response in the breakroom was interesting.
Big Boss obviously resents having to do the pronoun introduction.
He said that he just says, "My name is ___" and doesn't give his pronouns.
I
am with him-- not because I'm opposed to pronoun switcheroos--I think
mix-and-match is GREAT---but because I want the Naming of Pronouns to be
a choice, not an obligation, not a Test of Political With-it-ness.
If it was a test of with-it-ness, I would say half my coworkers failed. LOL.
But they were honest, not pretending to toe the line.
I
wish gender were no big deal. I saw a bathroom signs... now, where...?
Oh--yeah, in Burrito Union in Duluth--their bathroom signs say:
WE DON'T CARE.
I don't care either. I will call you whatever you want.
But I sense it wasn't that Big Boss "doesn't care" so much as that he doesn't like something about the gender stuff---not sure what. (I can guess.)
I
probably shouldn't probe further--I might well not like what I
discover. It felt like a tense subject with him. I was laughing, but he
wasn't.
But
some other folks had fun with it, though, including Ass't Man, who'd
had a great trans coworker at a previous job who was happy to talk to
Asst Man all about the whats and whys and wherefores.
COMMUNICATION.
That's the thing.
The other thing Big Boss said was that people should think about setting aside time to do a special project during their shift.
This is SUCH a good idea.
Otherwise there is always too much to do--you have to block out your time and ignore the flood of donations to do anything.
My old friend: Set Your Intentions.
I
had already intended to do an October/ Halloween rearrange &
display. I have been neglecting displays, feeling overwhelmed with
incoming books, and I think it's a mistake.
(It's adorable, but it had pencil scribbles on it.)
BELOW: Side-by-side: Look at those compatible profiles!
BELOW: I can't believe that ceramic aardvarky thing (next to the papier-mache giraffe) hasn't sold.
I marked it down from $1.99 to .99.
Some fiction:
BELOW, top shelf, left: The Invention of Hugo Cabret is one of my favorite modern book covers. I don't even know what it's about.
[googles]
Oh! It's about French filmmaker Georges Mélies.
WHAT? AND TOYS??? Per Wikipedia:
"At the end of his life, Méliès was destitute... He sold toys from a booth in a Paris railway station, which provides the setting of the story." Well, now I must read it!
Mysteries often have orange & red covers anyway, so this section was a breeze:
Not visible below--a pile of ten Playboy magazines from 1991, hidden on the bottom shelf of Cool Old Books, priced 99 cents each.
Customers complain if there's anything racy on display, but I didn't want to throw these out. The nudity, such as it is, is stupid and objectifies women, yeah, but it's so mild, it's like what's on billboards now. And the articles truly are interesting--an interview with Spike Lee, for instance.
I'm hoping someone will buy all ten at once---and quickly, and no one will even see them to complain.
What a wonderful shop, and how I wish I could go spend an afternoon there, browsing.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite all-gender bathroom signs are the ones that say, "Whatever. Just wash your hands!" :)
Girlettes need pets- Maple as you know, has many, she just adopted another this evening- it is a tuft of moss she named Billy.
ReplyDeleteI would want to buy all of the books just because they look so important organized in that way.
Well done,
They are so lucky to have you there and they know it!