Book Store Notes

I've always meant to keep notes of day-to-day life at the thrift store--there's always something--but I never have.

I'm inspired by how much I enjoyed Shaun Bythell's Confessions of a Bookseller (so much more than his first Diaries of...) to keep better track of my daily life as a bookseller.
It's the first day of the first month of my favorite season--fall--so now's a good time to start.

[I don't people's use real names.]

Preparing to go see the therapist (for the first and only time) a couple weeks ago, I was thinking objectively about my life.
You know how you get used to your life, whatever it is, but thinking about how I would present it to this stranger, I felt a wave of gratitude that I actually am so lucky as to be a bookseller--running my little indie bookstore in a Very Interesting Thrift Store.

It's as if, driving blindfolded, I backed sideways into this perfect spot for me.
(NOT THAT IT'S NOT FULL OF ANNOYANCES!)

BELOW: Donations in the kitchen. The statue is Saint Roche, who got plague sores and was attended by a friendly dog who healed him by licking his sores and bringing him food. St. Roche is a patron saint of dogs.

A new cashier started yesterday. She's young and enthusiastic and experienced; worked in a vintage store in high school and as a bar manager in a late night pizza joint lately.
She told me this in response to me asking if she'd noticed that some of our customers are out of their minds.

I didn't put it that way! I said something about how difficult it can be working with the public.
When she told me where she'd managed bar--I know the place, it gets rowdy--I said, "Oh, you'll be fine."

I mean "out of their minds" literally.
Customers on meth, especially, are not rational--sometimes dangerously so, though often just pathetically. But there's any number of reasons why they might be out of it.

Marz dropped in yesterday. As she was browsing in BOOK's, a disheveled man came up to her and handed her a plastic bag of toiletries, asking her if it included any deodorant.
She told him it didn't, just shampoo and toothpaste and soap.
I went and found him some.
He looked rough, but he wasn't smelly--perhaps because he always uses deodorant?

Ray was in the other day--the regular I'd helped move out of the alley where he'd passed out drunk the other day. As always, he was looking at religious books. He asked how much a Bible was. Also as always, I told him it was free.

He regularly picks up new Bibles; just as regularly he loses them on the streets. I'm happy to give them to him, but I couldn't stand to get close to him the other day, his odor was so strong. It's as if the air around him was wet with smell.

Ray used to be a tidy guy, but he's lost himself...
He was sitting on a chair I leave in BOOK's. I cover the seat with a pad, and when he stood up, the pad was smeared and damp. I threw it out.

I have offered him new clothes and told him he could clean up in the staff bathroom.
He refuses, forcefully--"No!"--even when I've asked Big Boss to help him, thinking it might come better from another man.

I've tried other things too, short of licking his wounds--and he lives in a shelter with social work services... Nothing has worked.
It's hard to watch, but some people can't be helped, at least not by me.

Anyway, it was so, so nice to have a fresh and friendly new coworker,  one who WANTS to be here.
I bagged at the cash register for her briefly, and she said the work suited her. I hope she continues to feel that way...

Recently, a cashier quit because she felt the place was troubled by demons...
Honestly, my main challenge is NOT the customers and the neighborhood, though that all ranges from annoying to amusing; lovely to tragic. It's the poor management. (Not actually demonic though!) Without talking it down, I gave the new cashier a little heads-up:
Communication is kind of spotty around here, I said––please feel free to ask me anything...