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Sunday, 5 June 2011

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Seven Stories about working in a bookstore:

Liquidation

It was nothing to do, particularly, with our location, the entire chain of stores (two other book store brands and a brand of discount art supply stores, as well) was to shut down. The news seemed to have come suddenly to Pamela, who was the one informing me when I asked if it was true that Shalvo had taken another job (I learned this from one of the part-timers when I popped in to get my check) and did that mean more hours would be available. According to Pamela, Peter the manager had known this was coming for quite some time and had only made the announcement a week prior—this didn’t surprise me.

“I’m leaving, too,” she said, “I think everyone is. Peter says that corporate told him not to tell anyone so that we wouldn’t all bail and that now they say they’ll pay bonuses out to anyone who stays.”

“That isn’t true?”

“My last day is Thursday.”

I didn’t really care, but feigned that I would miss her and she started talking over my false kindness about how she was getting a job with her mother framing pictures. For some reason, I couldn’t imagine Pamela being any good at that, but I encouraged her. She started on the magazine shipment, complaining about it the entire time.

“Why did they keep sending magazines if we’re closing down?” I asked her, not thinking she was really even listening, but she breathed a long wet sigh out her nose and said she wished they hadn’t, that Peter didn’t ever think about anybody but himself.

***

Peter had trimmed his beard growth of the last few weeks into a kind-of mustache, it made him seem about to be arrested.

“It’s just you and me, man. We have to do a final inventory, get everything boxed up. It’s gonna be an overnight thing, in two weeks.”

He hadn’t personally told me, yet, that the store was closing so I (feigning dull ignorance for absolutely no reason) said “What do you mean final inventory?” and this got him off like a pistol shot that Pamela was supposed to be letting everyone know.

“Maybe if people around here could do anything this wouldn’t be happening. Not you, you know? Not you. But she can’t even let you know the store’s closing? I mean come on, why is she a shift manager, then? Did she ever even train you on things like she was supposed to? It doesn’t matter now, and it’s not your fault or anything, but this store was never supposed to look like this,” he started indicating fixtures and shelves vaguely, “there was a way this place was supposed to be put together and no one ever keeps up on it—I mean, like how you balance the Fiction section, I told you before not to set the books up like that, that it’s supposed to be facing facing facing then spined then facing facing facing then spined but how are you supposed to remember that if your so-called shift manager, the person who sees you every day, doesn’t correct it? No. I have to be put in the position to be a jerk, when I don’t really care how you do the books—

I mean they look great, it’s fine, that’s just not how we’re technically supposed to do it, you know? Pamela was supposed to tell you.”

After this he excused himself into the office. I heard him clearing his throat, then after ten seconds he slammed down the phone receiver, walked out of the store, storming off across the parking lot.

***

It got approved that my friend Nicolai Clover would work the overnight inventory, liquidation box-up shift—he’d be paid in cash and I’d be glad to have the company. Peter seemed really happy about it, too, like we were all so close-knit and it was shame we’d not been able to spend more time, together.

During the week leading up to the closing, Peter had me spend my shifts boxing as much up as I could—the first day he had lists detailing what merchandise was supposed to be in the store, these lists broken down by sections, but adhering to or even consulting these went right out the window almost immediately, even Peter could see how asinine it was.

***

There must have been a notice sent out or something, because every evening we had customers poking around—we weren’t suddenly swamped, just the people who did come in wanted to know did we have this or did we have that. One man, seeing me boxing things up, asked me to check our inventory for a bargain book he said he’d remembered seeing—and yes the computer showed we should have three. Trouble being, the bargain tables had been the first thing boxed. This guy made me spend over and hour unpacking and digging through boxes—certainly I might have told him to take a walk, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it, something in his stance, his vacancy. If it hadn’t been a bargain book, I would have told him to leave, I really think so, but as it was a coffee-table book of famous Bar-b-Q restaurants, it was actually more satisfying to undo a day-and-a-half’s worth of work to get the four dollar sale.

***

Nicolai came into the store often and I’d have him go around and set books he wanted on a particular shelf so we’d have easy access to them—we intended to ferry as much merchandise out of the store as possible during the overnight.

When I had my breaks, he and I would sit outside eating hamburgers. Apparently Peter used my break to be his break, too, would just stand outside the propped open entrance, smoking, arms crossed, gazing at the heat cutting sharp from off the cars filling the lot.

***

Peter mentioned the alleged bonuses that were going to be paid out, but did so mainly so that he could have another go at Pamela and a little bit at Shalvo for being chumps, thumbing their noses at easy money. He’d gotten a lot less amusing—his persona would waffle between completely, reckless apathy and serious, business-minded insistence that we take care of things right. He’d tell me he was leaving after being on shift for only thirty minutes, get all geared up, rollerblade away, and then he’d come back after fifteen minutes, get out of all his protective gear, go into the office for a few minutes, come out to the front area, start doing things on the computer, squinting, focused, as though it was imperative he not be distracted, that he had to be diligent, even in the face of the absurdity, the debased nature of his situation.

Then, he’d either start typing louder, crescendo into just palm slaps at the keys, running his hand side to side until the computer started beeping or he’d just sigh, hold the clipboard he was writing on out at arms length, drop it on the floor and say “Finished”, a screwy smile on his face while he slapped a rumpled cigarette pack in his palm..

***

The night of the final boxing up came. Nicolai showed up, as per our plan, with two large pizzas—we were going to all eat and then he and I would secret the books we wanted in the “empty” pizza boxes and he’d (when the time was right) step out with them, put them in his truck or worst-case-scenario dump them in the trash just outside the store, we’d rummage for them when the coast was clear.

This was not so much an elegant strategy—we’d under-planned on the strength that we could hardly see Peter being on the ball, suspecting us of anything. But Peter was stuck in do-gooder mode, at least for the first leg of the overnight—the front door was to remain locked, he wanted to be the one to tape up all the boxes, was right in the thick of it with us filling them. A real drag.

Further complicating matters was a personal situation that had developed between me and my girlfriend—I’d been sort of in a bad headspace due to some arguments with my family and my girlfriend and I had parted the previous day on bad terms. Fatigue always makes me emotional, so it suddenly got in my head that I wanted to call her (before it got far too late, it was only midnight) just to tell her I was an idiot and that we should spend the next day together, forget the entire thing.

I somehow convinced Peter to let me out of the locked store—he felt it would be better to just use the store phone—and I broke ten dollars for quarters at the grocery store to use the payphone. The conversation got heavy and I wound up spending through the entire weight of quarters, my head foggy and spirit wrecked by the time I went back into Bravado.

***

Poor Nicolai had been stuck with Peter, who had devolved rather rapidly into not even wanting to be there, making speeches of martyrdom—and now on top of it all I was hardly in a mood to execute the pizza box plan.

“It’s too bad you two guys couldn’t have worked here—just the three of us. I mean, it’s sad that this place is closing—you think about it, the location, the layout, the merchandise, if we’d worked together, the three of us, this could’ve been a successful place. If they’d let me actually manage things, you know?”

“It would’ve been good, man, I agree.”

Nicolai just boxed books, boxed books, probably ready to beat it anytime, there was nothing keeping him—honestly, in the same position I would have just forgotten about the hundred bucks he was getting paid, left the whole sorry affair to rot.

***

It became pretty apparent that the entire store was not going to get boxed up—there was still the backroom and the fixtures and it was getting up on three o’clock.

Nicolai and I got back into step, but blearily, now trying to make eye-codes about getting the merchandise we’d selected out to his truck—a pared down amount, albeit, but a second wind brought us back to principle, paranoia gave way to not giving a damn.

“You all done with this pizza?” Nicolai playacted to me.

“I am. Had too much, actually.”

“I think I’ll just take off, leftovers for breakfast.”

“Sounds good. Maybe you should see if Peter wants a bit more.”

“Good idea.”

Peter was in the office, so this little performance was likely going unheard—in the off chance though, it was always good to do things on the periphery, it was always good to misdirect, even to misdirect nobody. So we continued our high school theatre troupe antics, Nicolai taking out two of the remaining slices, setting them on napkins and knocking on the door of the office. Peter took the food and when the office door shut Nicolai just kind of shrugged and we packed the boxes as full with stuff as we could.

Just as Nicolai was to the entrance, balancing the boxes on his knees while he got at the latch, Peter zipped his head out of the office door.

“You leaving right now?”

It was kind of excruciating to watch—Lord knows what was going through Nicolai’s head, standing there with pizza boxes full of stolen books, Peter being all effusive with Thanks and Sorry that he couldn’t get corporate to agree to any more money and “Man, it was nice getting to know you, even just for a bit”.

Anyway, Nicolai got out to his truck, came back, said he just wanted to make sure I was good, didn’t need him to hang around for a ride or anything.

***

Bravado Bookmark was a mess and we’d done nothing about taking down the computers, getting the office packed up, dealing with the fixtures—realized the greeting cards hadn’t been dealt with and the boxes that had been packed were mostly just where we’d left them on the floor, most of them not taped shut yet. I was at the end of my steam, though (being left alone with Peter just a kind of obscenity) my breath tasting stale and like the inside of my nose. I wanted to get to my apartment, walk in, pass out—remembered I’d need to give my girlfriend a call because we hadn’t even really finished talking, I’d just run out of quarters.

“When’s the truck coming for everything?”

Peter seemed glazed and lost as well—I walked a circle of the store before reapproaching and he answered as though he hadn’t missed a beat “It’s coming on Sunday. I guess I can come in and finish this all out tomorrow, the next few days.”

Pablo D’Stair welcomes reader contact/comments. He can be reached at [email protected]

 

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