You have determined to click on on this little article of mine, so I’m guessing you already know that mentioning Amazon in a (non-Amazon) bookstore is in fairly poor style. We know their books are cheaper. We can’t match their costs. We nonetheless clearly consider within the worth of the service we offer, so it’s actually not the venue for you to air your frustrations a couple of truth (their costs are cheaper) or an impossibility (us matching their costs). But I digress since you already know all of that! Right? Right??
We’ve talked about a number of the issues not to say to bookstore workers earlier than, however I’d like to take it a little bit bit additional and unpack the psyche behind the shelf. I believe individuals who say these items to indie booksellers are doing so primarily based on a selected schema they’ve of themselves and the bookseller. I’ve had numerous jobs and by no means have the identical issues been repeated to me time and time once more in the best way they had been once I labored in an unbiased bookstore. There had been the everyday not-very-nice buyer habits issues, however these don’t stand out. Rather, it was individuals appearing on their thought of who a bookseller is and what a bookseller does and, in flip, coming off as dismissive to the particular person or the scenario.
Anyway, I can let you know’re on the sting of your seat. Here are the issues not to say to a bookstore worker (as well as to the Amazon stuff, however you already know that!!):
“So what else do you do?” Hm, um, this? Is that okay? I do know that well-meaning individuals say this as a result of they assume I’m a reader, and subsequently, they assume that I went to school and, subsequently, they assume I’ve ambitions past bookshop woman, which is, I assume, positive. But simply since you see me sitting on the register proper now doesn’t imply that that is the one facet of my employment at this right here bookstore. And additionally, if that is the one facet of my employment, what’s mistaken with that? It’s not unreasonable to assume that somebody working at what is commonly a part-time gig has different issues occurring, but it surely’s additionally not unreasonable for somebody to be working full-time in a bookstore, and if they’re, properly, the query doesn’t really feel nice.
“Wow, you must love your job; you get to sit around and read all day. I am so jealous.” It’s a private pet peeve of mine when individuals TELL you that “you must love your job.” Like, it’s a job. I’m making a gift of my free time for cash to be right here. And individuals have a tendency to say it to these of us who work within the arts — which, certain, possibly individuals who work within the arts DO extra typically love their jobs. But the work is chronically undervalued and underpaid, and so individuals always telling you that “you must love your job” if you work within the arts feels just like the collective tradition telling you that since you get a lot pleasure out of your job, you don’t even really want to be paid for it. You simply do it for the eagerness!!! The extra particular response to this sentence is that working in a bookstore will not be the “I wish I could just be paid to read all day” utopia that all of us think about it to be. Yes, there are nice elements of the job. But most individuals who work in bookstores don’t sit round and browse all day. It’s nonetheless customer support, and it’s nonetheless stock, and it’s nonetheless packing up returns and orders and creating spreadsheets and knowledge entry and and and. You get it.
“How are you guys, you know, doing? I always mean to come in more.” Listen. I get it. Books aren’t low cost, and bookshelves are solely so massive. Libraries are nice. Some individuals depend on the financial savings they get on Amazon. I’m not right here to choose if I don’t see you within the bookstore each weekend. But it drove me up the wall when individuals would use that conspiratorial and anxious tone to ask “how we were doing” when it was the primary and solely time I had ever seen them, they usually didn’t have a document of any prior purchases. I forgave them in the event that they had been visiting from out of city. But in any other case, it simply felt like advantage signaling. “Hi, hello, I am a person who is concerned about independent bookstores, and I want you, bookstore employee, to know it (because I basically pay your salary!!), but I am not concerned enough to spend my dollar bills here more than once a year on the day I forgot to buy a gift for my mother-in-law in advance.”
Bonus: “My [fill in the blank child] reads way above her grade level!” Listen, this doesn’t hassle me, however it’s humorous that just about each single particular person looking for a guide for his or her nibling, grandchild, good friend’s child, and so on., made some extent to say the child was studying approach above grade degree. That’s good! They may nonetheless wanna learn the books their friends are studying, although!! What do I do know??
I would like to end this little diatribe by saying: I’m not bitter. Any bitterness you detected was an phantasm. I’m a constructive vibes-only (former) bookstore worker, and what I would like you to know is that this: unbiased bookstores are protected locations. You can say numerous issues in them however do bear in mind this: you aren’t in a Meg Ryan film. You are in an actual place and talking to an actual particular person, not a bookstore worker™ — simply do not forget that.
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