Rethinking the Box: Application and Practice
“YAWN Hipster dud bookseller hates his customers. What’s new?”— Comment by Max Heilan on the last post, The Seven Types of Customer
Max didn’t get the memo. Part of that is my oversight; this post, and the one just before it, are part of a series on retail. Part One covered the history of bookselling (in brief) with an emphasis on where the Big Box Bookstore came from, Part Two looked (also, all too briefly) into the different approaches taken by sellers of comic books and general book retailers — from format, to purchasing, to returns — and then in a Follow-up to that second post I ran some numbers and we looked at book retail gross margins, net profits and inventory turnover.
After the last numbers-heavy post, I thought I might try for something a bit lighter in tone and rely more on the personal side of the business. Not the balance sheets, but the customers. I’m sorry I didn’t put it in the proper context for you, Max.
Oh, and the snide way you casually dismiss my job? Thanks. ‘preciate it.
Sure, it’s a low paid job in the service sector. It’s a ‘customer service’ job, and hence doesn’t get the same respect as someone who works with numbers and reports all day, or who manages a ‘team’ or a division or a whole company. It produces nothing ‘real’ and at the end of the day when I go home I can’t point to something I made, or something I did to change the world.
You walk into my store. You ask Questions. You are looking for someone who is not only knowledgeable about the Product but who is conversant with at least two computer systems, who can game a search with minimal information (because you never have but the barest scraps of information), who is studied in history, philosophy, literature, classics, and current events; who can spell mis-pronounced titles in English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Latin, or even Japanese; who watches TV and listens to radio compulsively and knows off the top of his or her head exactly the book you saw/heard on whatever programme five weeks ago even though now the only cogent detail you can come up with is the colour of the cover (which you have misremembered so even that detail is wrong)…and you want it all at 10:55, five minutes before we close.
Or, alternately: You want it all, but you also expect this same person (intelligent, well-spoken and well-read, with multiple degrees and an outgoing personality) to also bus your table, clean up your messes and spilled coffee, to throw out your used tissues, and to thank you for the opportunity. After thirty minutes with a knowledgeable bookseller you ask for a print-out so you can go order it online.
And after all this, you ask me if we have a photocopier
That tirade is from a post two months ago when I had to apologise to my readers for not posting the Graphic Novel Bestseller Charts on time.
I can do numbers, and reports, and analysis. I can point to this damn blog when I need something ‘real’ to justify my work. —Except, of course, that I do this in my free time.
I’m a manager: I have a team, we run a bookstore. At the end of the year, my small cog in the huge corporate machine will have generated millions of dollars in sales and contributed a cool million or so to the company’s bottom line.
None of that counts, because I’m just a ‘hipster dud bookseller’.
I work 40 hours a week, on my feet — I don’t get a desk and a Herman Miller Aeron Chair. I don’t have an office — I don’t even get the relative privacy of a cubicle; I’m out on the sales floor dealing with the public (with all their merits and faults) for a full eight hours and on top of that, I’m the manager — so when one of my booksellers ends up being a mere human and irritates some customer for whatever reason (or no reason at all) I have to step in and resolve the issue.
I have to be calm, polite, understanding, accomodating, creative with solutions and quick to resolve conflict. I have to smile, and occasionally apologise, because that’s my job. I have to be ‘on’ all the time, not just once a month for a sales presentation or once a quarter when a senior VP visits: 100% 40 hours a week, every week. This is book retail — at least, it’s the way I do it and it’s the way my company trained me to do it.
If, when I get home and I chose to vent just a little bit on a blog, I think I’m justified, Max.
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To further nail the point home, let me take the Seven Types outlined in the last post, and use these customer profiles to discuss floor organization, sales opportunities, alternate profit centers, potential product mix, cross-merchandising across disparate product lines, staffing & hiring decisions, and coffee.
(that last one is important)
To recap from the last column, the 7 types:
Seekers: want a book — a specific book: only this book will do.
Idiots: can only remember 1 detail, and often not a salient detail — not enough to find the book, but they still have a specific book in mind.
Grazers: love bookstores-as-a-concept, and love lingering leisurely over all the tables, racks, endcaps, promotional displays, and front-of-store placements.
Browsers: have a favourite category, and once you direct them to the appropriate section, they’ll help themselves.
Campers: They come, they sit, they stay for hours.
Independents: don’t want help, but they do want a book.
& Time-sucks: who want help, and personal recommendations, and plot synopses and books just like their favorite author’s but not their favorite author’s because they’ve read all those — and they’d like gift ideas and want to know what you’re reading, and who you’re favorite author is, etc. etc. etc.
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Floor Organization
The most basic decision of any bookstore, is where to put the damn books — Simple, basic, the first thing you’re going to consider even before you open.
Grazers love wide aisles with lots of tables, fancy racks, and themed displays. Seekers probably just want the new releases, and they’d prefer them on a shelf or table up front, next to the information counter. Browsers see all this just a something to walk past on the way to the Star Wars and Star Trek novels.
Even past the primary displays, there are questions to ask about the stacks: take the business category as an example. Do you just shelve all business titles together, alphabetically, or do you pull out resume books (for the Seekers who need a resume book) and economics-related titles (very hot right now, even Grazers would be interested) and books on starting your own business? — not all ‘business’ titles are the same.
Most stores have separate Mystery, Sci-fi, and Romance sections, but what about westerns, horror, spy novels, police procedurals, techno-thrillers, religious fiction, chick lit, vampires, paranormal romance, time-traveller romance, cozy mysteries, hard sci-fi, epic fantasy, urban fiction, and mysteries starring the author’s cat — We can parse ‘fiction’ into many different chunks, and for every person who will say, ‘why bother,’ there is a customer who would love to see a bookcase full of their favourites and would become a Customer For Life™.
The question for a retailer is, how many payroll hours can we afford to spend on this?
And the more detailed your category heirarchy, the less opportunity you have for cross-over sales, and the harder it can be for a casual browser to find a particular book: which of the 1001 categories did we decide to stick it in?
My thought is, with good computer systems to back you, “micro-genre” categories only limit your sales opportunities, and several broad divisions are going to be better than dozens of small ones. This way you serve the Seekers (so long as you can still find their book), encourage Browsers to look just outside their comfort zone (and maybe they discover something new, and wonderful) and with wide swaths of books containing major fractions of the total publishing output, maybe you convince a Grazer to move off the main aisle, and become a Browser
Sales Opportunities
Some customers want a specific book so badly, that if you tell them you don’t have it, they leave. “I’ll just order it on Amazon.” Heard it a thousand times. The thing is, they could have ordered it on Amazon without bugging you about it first: they came into the store with the expectation that you would have it.
Pulling a number out of my ass: 75% of the time, we’d never be able to anticipate their request. It’s just too odd, or old, or out-of-print, or print-on-demand, or (in some cases) non-existant. That still leaves us with one customer in four, who maybe we could have helped.
There’s no way to be all things to all customers (unless you’re Powell’s) so at a store level, you have to pick your niche. If past trends tell you that your customers really like cookbooks, you need to order more cookbooks, and research new cookbooks, and try to stock as many different titles as you can.
It’s not just cookbooks, though; or speaking more broadly, it’s not any one category. If you run a general-purpose bookstore you have to make 30 different decisions like this all at once.
Listen to your customers: they came to you looking for the title, and hopefully they’ll do so again. Seekers are the leading edge of the market, and they’re also willing to forego online discounts if you happen to have the book today. It’s hard to make every customer happy, or even a single customer happy, but over time you can improve your average.
Potential Product Mix
If you get annoyed because a half-dozen people every week ask you, “do you carry gift wrap?” then you need to shelve that feeling for at least a minute and ask yourself, “say, why don’t I carry gift wrap?”
Of course, some questions are just stupid and it doesn’t matter how often someone asks, “Where’s your copy machine?” — even at 25 cents a page from a coin-op copier, there’s no way we’d put one in the store.
Seekers, Idiots, and even Time-sucks can give you an excellent idea of what your customer base is looking for, needs not met by other retailers, things they want that they thought you might have.
If you can fulfill that wish, then that’s a new sale. Maybe a whole line of new sales.
Cross-merchandising across Disparate Product Lines.
OK, so this is the only good thing I’ll say about Time-sucks: As a customer, they are going to give you an in depth look into all sorts of buying habits (they can’t help it; they just found a salesperson who finally listens to them and they’re going to milk this for all it’s worth. Don’t be surprised if they ask you to recommend a siding contractor.)
Mom wants Anita Blake and her daughter wants Twilight. (Mom wants Twilight too, more often than not.) The kid coming in for required reading will also buy Naruto, or Spider-Man. Politics bleeds into Economics, Star Wars comics can help sell Star Wars novels, some teen novels are an easy lead-in to shoujo manga, and if they like the book maybe we can sell them the DVD. For a major chain bookstore — with CDs, Audio Books, DVDs, comics, novels, non-fiction; books for kids, tweens, teens, chick lit for college girls and fantasy sports magazines for the college guys, beach reads and biographies for Mom, military history and business profiles for Dad, (and vice versa — most categories aren’t gender specific) — once we get you into the bookstore we’re going to sell you at least $20 more than you expected. It’s how we’re set up.
All we need are experienced, patient booksellers who will listen to and work with customers, no matter how demanding, because there is a certain amount of ‘take-away’ from every customer interaction, that will help our staff with the next customer. This is the sort of product knowledge that you don’t get from Amazon.
Staffing & Hiring
…what a handy segue.
I need a bookseller who can quickly answer questions. She should be able to work with the barest details, filling in gaps from her own knowledge base (and also, remembering what previous customers have asked for and so able to intuit some trends). She should be outgoing, engaging customers on the sales floor — even if only to smile and say hi. She should know our product lines, and where we hide them (not that we hide them; it only seems that way to customers). She should feel comfortable approaching customers sitting at tables, asking if she can clear away trash or re-shelve unused books. And she should be able to handle even the most demanding customers, providing suggestions and gift ideas either off the top of her head or while using our computer search systems, to provide even the most demanding customers with a helpful, enjoyable, productive time while they are visitors in our store.
Ideally, she should do it for $7.25 an hour (plus the employee discount)
If a bookseller can exhibit most (I don’t even need all, I’ll take 80%) of the traits spelled out above, I have a keeper.
And this sort of customer service commitment fulfills the needs of Seekers, Idiots, Grazers, Browsers, and Time-sucks. Alas, there is still nothing we can do for Independents, but they’re tools anyway who should be shopping online, they just like coming into the store so they can rebuff all our efforts to help, while snidely commenting that if we were really committed to customer service we’d have a self-serve kiosk where they could do everything themselves without ‘interference’.
(yeah. It’s called the Internet, look into it.)
(and I still don’t get the attitude)
Alternate Profit Centers, and Coffee.
Sadly, most bookstores are going to just scrape by, given the margins on books and the need for substantially more inventory than other retailers — and other modern realities, like e-books and Amazon and competition from Big Box Books, or Costco, or Sam’s Club.
60 years ago, books were a prestige product. Now, they’re a commodity, a staple. This is good in some ways (people buy books like they buy groceries) but bad in other ways (people can buy the books at the grocery store).
I don’t know who decided that bookstores should sell coffee, but like popcorn and movies its a perfect-if-on-the-face-illogical-match. One could go back 300 years, when coffee shops were the fuel behind the Enlightenment and no intellectual discussion could be had without caffeine, or even just 70 years back, to the sidewalk cafes of Paris, and Venice, and a dozen other cities — where the intelligensia sat and drank strong coffee while debating politics, love, art, beauty and truth.
There’s a connection between coffee and ideas. As a bookseller, we can capitalize on that. And the margins on coffee are excellent. I say that a lot, without citation: so, here you go
The other trick is that I can sell a cup of coffee to a customer every day. Twice a day, sometimes.
Sandwiches and cakes are an easy add-on, once you’ve established the coffee.
You could stock every book ever written. Alas, it isn’t quite enough. Thank several gods not just for coffee, but for the byzantine selection of espresso drinks, milkshakes masquerading as coffee, and a public inured to $3 cups of coffee to begin with. (Thank You, Starbucks)
A solid cafe counter can make or break your bookstore. There’s no good reason for it, it’s just what is.
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Thanks, Max. Yesterday (it’s 2am now so my last work shift was yesterday) I had to work 8 1/2 hours before closing the store and was dragging my ass home as recently as 10:30 last night. Without your comment, I would have likely gone to sleep (deservedly so) and missed this opportunity. This follow-up post might have waited weeks before posting; as it is, I’ve spent 3 hours to explain and expand on my last post in a way that hopefully you and many others will appreciate.
Thank you for your snide, dismissive comment. Sometimes a spur is all we need.
I wonder if Max recognized himself in one of the less complimentary categories and couldn’t take it. Heh.
I usually enter a store as a Seeker and then end up Browsing despite myself (generally to my own peril). “NANA 16 came out today! I must get it now! I will purchase NANA 16 and nothing else! Ooooo, shiny…”
Comment by Melinda Beasi — 3 June 2009, 08:33 #
nah, I think Max was just doing a drive-by, and couldn’t even be bothered to spell ‘dude’ correctly, unless I’m misreading that as a typo — it works either way I guess.
The last post garnered a lot more attention than this poor blog usually gets — about 400 hits. With those odds, a guy like Max is bound to comment.
;) But it could be that he just had a bad experience in a bookstore because all he could remember was “The cover is blue and I just saw it on cable news, you know, Fox, CNN one of those a couple hours ago… Whatya mean you can’t find it? Doesn’t that computer of yours do Google?”
Comment by Matt Blind — 3 June 2009, 11:46 #
Matt, I’m really familiar with Max’s type from the comics business. In comics, he’s referred to as “Cat Piss Man”, and no matter how good you are or your store is, it’s never good enough. Naturally, he couldn’t do better, mostly because his idea of customer service is sitting at the front counter, glaring at everyone who comes in so they’ll leave and let him go back to whack off to his She-Hulk graphic novel. Hence, why he’s probably working as a server administrator, because it’s not like his scintillant personality can carry the day.
If it helps, I can sympathize more than you know. I used to work as the wine manager for a liquor store, and you get almost the same exact traffic. The bright side is that we were allowed to sic the cops on the people who’d decide to camp out and enjoy their new purchases on the store floor. The bad news was that beer, wine, and spirits distribution was and still is a nightmare patchwork of federal, state, and local laws, and none of this mattered to the yuppies who just read about some Pretentious Vineyards chardonnay 2002 in Wine Spectator that they had to have right then. “Yes, sir, it sucks that we can’t get you a bottle of a vintage that probably consists of a whole of ten cases available planetwide. Yes, it sucks that the vineyard won’t mail you a bottle, because it doesn’t want to run afoul of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. No, we can’t get you a bottle ‘just for you’, because then we’d have the TABC clouding up and raining all over us. Oh, and please follow through on your threat to let your good close personal friend George W. Bush know about this outrage, because we think the current law sucks, too.”
(As an aside to the anecdotes about the people demanding particulars at five minutes to closing, we got that, too. The difference was that by Texas law, any liquor store that couldn’t separate and lock off the spirits section from the rest of the store _had _to shut down at 9 sharp, and we couldn’t open on Sundays. If we weren’t closed and locked by 9, both employees and store could and would be fined, and we had to be out of the building by 9:15 before the burglar alarm was set. Not only did this mean that we had boozehounds driving right up to the door right as we were rolling down the gate, all tapping their watches as if we should be closing based on _their _time, but we also had the frantic phone calls from alleged longtime customers who were going to be “right there”. Hmmm…risking a $3000 fine by the TABC coming out of my own pocket versus $15 in potential sales from a customer who will probably see a shiny object on the trip out and forget all about picking up that 12-pack? Naturally, we all should have been thinking of the customer instead of ourselves.)
Thankfully, I’m away from the liquor store, but I still deal with the impertinence. I run a _very _small carnivorous plant nursery, and one of the first decisions I made was to sell plants only at shows and events. The nursery is closed to the public, and the only address I offer is a mailing address, that’s very prominently presented as such, for a mail drop. This is because far too many people who thought of themselves as customers wanted to stop by to “see the nursery” (i.e., demonstrate how important they were by having me come home from my day job in order to waste four hours telling them how to keep their Wal-Mart Venus flytrap alive) at any given time. This meant trying to come by at three in the morning, in one case.
Now, I have enough business to keep my hands full, and I can always tell the difference between real customers and the Time Sucks. The Time Sucks always tell me “Well, you know, you should have a storefront.” Yeah, _you _try to make enough off selling carnivorous plants to pay for monthly rent and utilities, much less act as free entertainment for the soccer moms with a kid who has to produce a 3000-word report on carnivores the very next day. That’s in addition to being told “Why should I pay you $7 for that Venus flytrap when I can get it for $5 at Wal-Mart?” and getting blown off when I effectively answer “Because I want to see the look on your face when you bring your son’s dead flytrap back to Wal-Mart and you expect the staff there to have any idea as to why it died.” There’s a damn good reason why most commercial nurseries, especially those dealing with exotic plants, are closed to the public other than for special open house events: otherwise, they’d never get anything done with the number of wankers coming in and telling them “You should just…” “You should just…” always means “You need to do what I say, because even though I’m not going to give you my business, I want to brag to my friends that I convinced you to do things my way.” Nurseries that do that very often find themselves going out of business trying to make that one non-customer happy.
Now, I want to state that I love my customers with a purple passion, but that’s why I raise carnivores that you can’t pick up at the local Home Depot. I don’t carry more than one flytrap per show because I can’t compete with Wal-Mart on price, flytraps are probably the most temperamental of all the carnivores, and all I get are morons who want to set off the traps even when I tell them that this can stress the plants to death. I can’t compete with those bulk-grown flytraps in the little plastic cups, so I don’t try, and you should see the looks on my customers’ faces when I introduce them to butterworts, bladderworts, sundews, and Asian pitcherplants. I’m kvelling as much as they are, especially when they discover that they don’t have to die the way the Wal-Mart flytraps will. (A little secret: flytraps need at least eight hours of direct sun per day and rainwater or distilled water. That‘s what Wal-Mart won’t tell you.)
Comment by Paul Riddell — 5 June 2009, 14:48 #
Being mostly a “browser”, and occasionally an “independent”, let’s see if I can explain why I’ll usually prefer to look for myself.
What brings me in your door? I’d rather spend my money in my community than send it off to Seattle.Or my sweetie and I have just gone out to dinner and want to prolong the date by finding something lovely at the bookstore.
When do I become an “independent”? I may have a question that going to take some exploration and it could easily stick me in your idiots or time sucks category if you’re having an off day (or it’s going to take a while to get your attention at the customer service counter.) Perhaps I want to see what’s available from Sean Stewart’s back catalog, or look at Iain M. Banks (and I’ve already explained the Iain Banks vs. Iain M. Banks distinction to multiple booksellers.) The odds are, most of what I want are OP, but if I see something and you can get it, I’ll order it on the spot. Perhaps I have a title and I’m “seed building”: finding the known book, then looking to see what others I could get from that author or publisher.
If a few initial encounters show you’re amenable to such searches, I’ll be happy to work with you. There’s one technical bookseller who gets around $2K in business from me yearly and many recommendations to new customers.
The odds are, you’re not going to be amenable to such searches. Most folks are more like my local Barnes & Noble, where it takes longer to get them on the phone than to drive over. Once I get there, I have to find someone who will answer a question, and if it’s not in the B&T catalog (or whoever the distributor is this week), forget it.
I’d say, if the difficult customers can teach you what else you could have in stock, some of the independents could help identify shortcomings in customer service (or become your customer for life, if your service is up to their needs.)
Comment by Richard Clark — 9 June 2009, 16:31 #
Great f/u, I read the article that spawned this one. I like your insight into the book selling world. I always thought working in a bookstore would be fun, but now I can see it’s like any other retail job.
I’m a browser with a touch of grazer. Your categories are great and I think they fit pretty much any retail environment.
Comment by Conner — 9 June 2009, 17:49 #
Great read! I enjoyed getting to take a look into your world. I’d probably be considered a Browser, but have recently bought a Kindle (gasp!) so I don’t make it to the bookstore very often anymore. I think the industry is a-changing.
Comment by Jill — 9 June 2009, 18:19 #
I completely agree with Richard C. there. I’m pretty deep in some genres and in a nutshell I would like to be a patron to the local business if you have the book. If you do most likely I’ll stay around the store, buy something at the cafe and maybe buy some similar books too.
But Most of the time you don’t have the book, so..I go somewhere else or online.
Comment by John — 9 June 2009, 19:45 #
I think the thing people are reacting negatively to is that you don’t seem to like ANY of your customers. There’s no category you approve of. Maybe the homeless people who only stay for a short time, you seem okay with them. But what really seems odd, is that you do have a label for the kind of customer who doesn’t ask you dumb questions or waste your time or abuse the store’s services…but then you get all huffy that they don’t want to chat with you.
Speaking for myself as an “independent”, the main reason I don’t want help is that I don’t usually need help. I know what I like and where to find it; if I don’t, I’ll look around—I know the alphabet, I know about genres. If I really can’t find it then I’ll ask you, and we’ll have that meaningful 1 minute interaction that seems to validate my presence in your store.
I go to bookstores to a) support local businesses, b) get a book NOW rather than wait a few days while it ships, c) have the experience of being surrounded by books that I can explore, in a place that smells pleasantly of coffee. I don’t go there to brighten the day of sales staff or socialize—I’m one of those horrible introverts you might have heard of. A lot of people are like that, we find small talk really tiring. Doesn’t mean we hate the world. Doesn’t mean you should get bitchy at us for being self-reliant and taciturn as we shop.
Comment by Kristi — 9 June 2009, 21:25 #
Allow me to clarify a bit, Kristi:
* I love books, always have.
* I like my job. I do. I’ve been at it for 8 years now.
* I like browsers. They know what they like and require minimal guidance.
* I like most seekers, as well: I might come off as snooty and condescending, particularly in the post before this one, but if you know what book you want and I can help you find it in store, that’s great. It’s what I’m paid to do.
[there are some qualifiers that I could lard onto that, but I’ll save it for another post]
* Grazers are usually fine, so long as there is enough room to walk around them. And they buy coffee, so that’s good.
* Campers are usually fine. And they buy coffee. What bugs me is the sense of ownership some take towards the store and our furniture, but that’s OK, too. At least I know they like the place.
* Even someone with a list of books — seven or eight reading list titles, for example, that might take 10 or 15 minutes out of my day, doesn’t qualify as a time-suck. If I can help them, or order it for them, that’s fine. Call them an UberSeeker, maybe, and a handful of books is a great sale.
re: conversation.
I know exactly what it is to be an introvert. And I know how tiring interaction can be, and how long it takes to mentally recharge afterward.
If I told you that I am violently introverted, and that when I complained of Grazers’ attempts at casual chit-chat, or mentioned the brusque efficiency of a Browser I was approaching the topic from your side of the introvert/extrovert dichotomy, does that change your perception of my comments?
Might it also help explain in part how snarky I was, given that my customers are forcing me into modes that, as an introvert, I struggle with? I come home drained, physically, mentally, after 8 hours on the book floor.
Comment by Matt Blind — 9 June 2009, 23:08 #
Great columns. What would be your ideal customer? I take it that none of these are.
I think I am the Frustrated Seeker. I only go to brick-and-mortar stores when I have a specific book I want. I know the title, I usually can correctly spell the author, and it never does me any good.
The book is not present in the store. But the customer service rep is happy to place an order for me and I can have it in less than a week!
This doesn’t work for me (or probably any other tech-savvy book shopper) for two reasons:
1. If I wanted to order it, I would have already ordered it;
2. If you order it, I have to wait almost a week and then drive BACK to the same bookstore to pick it up. I can just drive home, order it from Amazon, and have it at my front door two days later (oh, and $5 cheaper).
I keep trying to patronize my local bookstores, but it never works out. The reason we still need bookstores is so we can walk in a get a book, buy if the stock is so limited, I don’t see how they can stay in business.
Comment by Paul Wren — 10 June 2009, 00:08 #
Matt, these are excellent posts, and perfectly capture what it’s like to work in a bookstore. I was a bookseller at Barnes & Noble 10 years ago, and I had to quit because I started to see human beings as big walking problems. Kudos for sticking with it — good, experienced booksellers provide a highly valuable service.
What is most soul-draining about the job is the lack of respect. The job is physically taxing, mentally taxing, and, when done right, demands substantial knowledge on a wide range of subjects. (I know I leaned on my college education more as a bookseller than as a business jerk many years later.) But for some reason, when you’re in a service job, a lot of people think it’s okay to treat you like dirt — even when you bend over backwards to help them, because YOU KNOW THINGS THEY DON’T. The crazy, unspoken servant culture in this country boggles the mind.
Comment by Tom — 10 June 2009, 00:53 #
@Paul:
oh that’s easy: I’m my ideal customer. I know what I want, where we stock it in the store, and if we don’t have it I order it because I’ll be in, like, 5 days a week or so, so pickup in-store is no problem. ;)
There are no perfect or ideal customers. There are only customers. I suppose an ‘ideal’ customer Grazes or Browses until they find a couple of likely books, and then they buy them. — but that’s only wishful thinking on my part.
@Tom et al.
Yes, exactly. And thank you for your kind, understanding comments.
Comment by Matt Blind — 10 June 2009, 01:05 #
Very interesting indeed, and I can relate. Similar to health supplement/body building supplement industry. ‘Little bit more of a hard sell sometimes in health, what with all the quotas and products they WANT you to push (imagine if the store got a higher margin on mystery or romance novels, and you had to convince someone to buy the afore-mentioned items when the customer came in looking for non-fiction or sci-fi). So hey, keep your head up and fists pumping buddy!! Keep in mind, when you sell a book that somebody enjoys reading, you’re in a way selling human fulfillment and satisfaction, even if short term. But hey, isn’t everything in life just short term?
Comment by Rock-Star Abs — 10 June 2009, 01:56 #
I too am a manager at a bookstore, to which I devote 40 hours a week of my time and a considerable amount more of my thought, and I just wanted to say that I’ve never felt so understood as I have by these posts. You’ve nailed it, and I think that there are two things that the annoyed readers are missing:
1. No one goes into bookselling for the money. If you’ve been at a bookstore for longer than a few months, you’re there because you love what you do at a very fundamental level. That’s not to say that you don’t have bad days, or that you don’t get at least a few customers a day who frustrate you immensely, but when it comes right down to it you love your work.
2. 90% of the customers that we deal with on a daily basis don’t make good reading. They want to know where the new Patterson book is, or where the biographies are kept; it takes you 30 seconds to answer their question and walk them over, you do it, and everyone’s happy. These customers don’t make good blog reading, though; of course you’re more likely to talk about the people who nearly drove you up the wall. I personally am just as inclined to talk about the customer who turned out to have my exact literary tastes and with whom I spent ten minutes exchanging recommendations – the sad thing is that those customers are much less common than the ones who drop down into a soft chair and wave me off to go get their book from across the store because they’ve had just such a long day.
If you’re looking for something else to write about, how about the strange but true fact that bookseller ≠ reference librarian? I cannot tell you how many customers I get on a daily basis who don’t understand that fact.
Comment by Steph — 10 June 2009, 11:41 #
I think people forget how key inventory decisions are. Stock too little and there’s nothing to buy. Try to anticipate everyone’s needs and you choke on inventory costs. Can’t find the inventory and you can’t sell it, but you are still paying inventory costs on it.
Comment by zbicyclist — 10 June 2009, 12:49 #
See, I was pretty sure from the last post that you liked Browsers. I was a bit surprised at the people who got the impression you didn’t like any of your customers, given how implicitly positive your bit on Browsers seemed to me.
Comment by Steven — 10 June 2009, 19:55 #
Please tell us what you actually enjoy and get out of the business, you’re not just a misanthrope are you? Surely there are good stories. Also, your typology of customers seems applicable to any retail setting, less the Campers perhaps. Isn’t it all vicarious, “just looking”?
Comment by A.Alaalas — 10 June 2009, 22:58 #
@A.Alaalas:
As Steph commented above, the ‘good’ stories don’t make good blog posts. If you want feel-good, happy success stories might I recommend Reader’s Digest, or the Chicken Soup for the Soul books?
I Love Books. My employer provides me with a very nice discount. Given that, I really like my job.
Since I Love Books, I also like talking about books, and talking about what I’m reading, or what you’re reading (or what Oprah’s reading, for that matter)
And since I Love Books — and I love a wide range of books, across many subjects — I don’t necessarily get the ‘no, only this book will do’ mentality. Surely, out of the hundred thousand different titles we have in stock, there is some acceptable substitute? Or if you must have that book, and since you already know where our store is located, can I order that for you? That’s what you want me to do, right? Get you a book? That’s why you’re asking me, at the desk, for a book?
— If I come off as hostile, or hateful to my customers, it’s not so much that I don’t want you to have your book. I very much do want to sell you a book.
Go back and re-read both posts. My bile and vinegar are not a reaction to the customers who buy books, my worst comments are directed at those who do not buy, who never buy, who rebuff my efforts to help…
OK, there are also those who want a book but can’t tell me which book; that’s just annoying and I can only play ‘guess that book’ for so many hours a day.
Anyway… it’s not that I hate people who buy books. I hate people who keep me from selling books. Either because they waste my time, refuse my help, drain me of any and all resources to discover a book so they can then order it online — or who, through their behavior, make the shopping experience intolerable for paying customers.
That’s where I’m coming from. There’s the source of my umbrage. So there.
[and I hope the fine folks who’ve commented on Metafilter also read this comment, as it diffuses many of their spiked comments as well. Alas, I will not pay the $5 to go over there and respond directly]
Comment by Matt Blind — 10 June 2009, 23:46 #
I’ve never worked in bookselling, but I have done a large number of other jobs dealing with the public, and your post spoke to me too. People complaining on here are just demonstrating that “unspoken servant culture” (thanks Tom, excellent description!) and are simply shocked to find “the staff” griping about them below stairs.
Who are you to have a blog, when you could be brushing up on books with red covers released in 1998, to better serve your lords and masters?
You should instead be thanking God every day for your meagre rations, and being ever so ‘umble about the gracious few pennies they may deign to spend with you.
And the “now I’ve read your blog, I think I’ll not bother buying from bookstores any more” crew are exercising the EXACT same “if you don’t grovel to me, I’ll bankrupt you” line they probably try every time there’s no new installment from the “Purrfect Crimes” series in store.
I do sometimes wonder if there are whole tranches of people out there, with nothing better to do with their time than be walking clichés: I for one wouldn’t be surprised to find it’s some underground cult, or something…
Anyway, enough bitterness and bile from me: enjoyed the posts, I’ll hang around and check out more!
Comment by Charlie — 11 June 2009, 04:43 #
Heh, Awesome pigeonholing; I’ve been most of those categories at various times, from camper/grazer/seeker at Barnes & Noble to browser at used book stores. Frankly, I wish I could afford to buy new books other than as gifts. I wonder is there a validation seeker category, that wants you to agree with them that the Left Behind (for example) series is one of the best ever, and don’t you love it as much as they do?
Comment by brocaine — 11 June 2009, 05:43 #
Matt, EVERY service industry job is draining if you are an intelligent introvert. I have read hundreds of blogs from waiter/esses, music store clerks, flight attendants, teachers, college professors, baristas, post office clerks, nannies, peace officers, etc. etc. ALL listing types of customers they hate, pet peeves, unreasonable demands made on them, etc.
But what your post reveals (unconsciously) is a strong sense of entitlement and arrogance that makes you even more miserable in your job than the average schmo. OMG — you have to pick up used tissues??!! You have to reshelve books??!! Sometimes customers are less educated than you??!! HORRORS!!
Guess what — it’s called work, and everyone has to do it at some point in their lives — it’s also called paying your dues. NO PERSON IN THE WORLD IS ABOVE PICKING UP TISSUES, my friend. Or scrubbing toilets, or any other “degrading work.” You seem to think you are “better than that,” honestly, and that is a real shame.
Are you really better than the Latina janitor who does all these tasks and more and does them with a pleasant smile? I guarantee you she’s had a lot harder life than you and she still goes out of her way to hold the door for me and give me a smile.
Resentment and lack of humility WILL leave you feeling drained at the end of that day. An attitude of compassion, loving, and service to all won’t. And before you ask, yes, I have done years in the service industries and learned the above lessons for myself.
Comment by Jenny — 11 June 2009, 08:32 #
Came here from Metafilter. Thoroughly enjoyed both of your pieces on bookstore customers and intend to read the rest of the series. Even though I probably fit into a couple of your stereotypes!
Thanks for the hard work — both on the store floor and here.
Comment by bcamarda — 11 June 2009, 10:28 #
You forgot the Knitters. I am one. We meet in a BBB one weekday evening every week, we take up three to five tables in the cafe, we knit and talk and laugh, and we all buy drinks. We’re there for about three hours, some of us leave earlier. We often buy books and/or magazines. We are grateful that our BBB lets us meet there and has not yet thrown us out for being ribald and disorderly. And we think we add a certain je ne sais quoi to the ambience. Wherever you are, if knitters want to meet in your store, please let them. They’re good people.
Comment by Mardi — 11 June 2009, 15:34 #
To Mr. Blind,
I too am a manager at a bookstore, and I love your posts! A co-worker sent me the link to this and I am relieved to know that this experience is not just me! Thank you for being articulate. And for reminding me to be glad that I don’t live in a bigger city where I have to deal with “the funk.” ;-)
To the negative commentators,
This blog (in my interpretation) is not about hating or loathing customers. It is cathartic to take the day’s frustrations and tell them to a friend or write in a journal (perhaps an electronic journal?). If you’re reading it then a) you have worked in retail and love empathizing, b) you have not worked in retail think that “people like this” are why you have had poor experiences in stores.
I love my job. I love talking about books. I love finding a new genre or author to read. I love helping someone (particularly children/teens) find what they are looking for or to turn them onto a new book. I have parents that continue to ask for my recommendations long after I stopped working in our children’s department. 90% of my 9 hour day is fantastic. I bet Matt would agree.
What leads to disgruntled booksellers or to character typing customers? Disrespect and entitlement. Some people walk into a store and a) expect the book they want to be sitting by the door so they don’t have to talk to anyone or b) treat you as though you are stupid and less important than they are. These people are a small percentage of the customers that walk in the door, but they are vocal and abusive group. I graduated cum laude from an elite private school. I am intelligent, well read (I think at least), very friendly, and enthusiastic about books. I love helping people. I don’t love being insulted, sworn at, or looked down on. I have had customers THROW BOOKS AT EMPLOYEES because they weren’t happy with our service/selection/return policy/etc. I have listened to people go on and on about how Harry Potter/Golden Compass/Twilight is about devil worship and I am a horrible person for carrying such titles. I am, yes me personally, also a horrible person because some of the MC Beaton books are out of print.
Spend enough time being battered by customers like this and you will need a blog too. Doesn’t mean we don’t go to work with a smile and keep that smile plastered all day.
So if you find this blog offensive, please start or continue to do the following:
-Be, at the very least, polite to employees.
-Don’t expect miracles. If all you know is the color of the book, we will look and relish the challenge, but be prepared to that we may not find it. You wouldn’t expect the police to find your lost/stolen car if all you could tell them was that it was red with 4 wheels.
-Treat the store, and it’s contents, like a visit to your grandmas – half home, half museum. You wouldn’t leave a dirty diaper on the bookshelf there would you?
-If you have an issue with what we carry (or don’t carry), our return policy, why we say hello when you walk by, or ask you questions at the register. Please write or e-mail corporate. Booksellers (or any retail employee) get paid little more than minimum wage. You can bet that these policies are not made by us. Heck we may even agree with you, but please don’t take your frustration out on us.
-Have fun browsing and use us for suggestions or reference when and as often as you need to. Booksellers are not librarians (and no I cannot photocopy pages 35-40 in that book even if your child does have paper due tomorrow) but most of us have a lot of reading under our belt.
Thanks,
Dido
P.S. Knitters, crocheters, even weavers are welcome! You do add color and excitement to the store. The groups I have met have a wonderful relationship with the store because they are respectful of the environment. No spilled drinks or stacks of magazines when they leave!
Comment by Dido — 11 June 2009, 18:56 #
I think you reallly need to split the Independent category out though.
Some independents who make a beeline to the electronic catalogue do so because they have either worked in a book store or library or related field. They know what they want and they don’t want to bother you with silly questions. In an ideal situation they’ll make the perfect triangle. Straight to the catalogue, straight to the shelf, straight to the cash register.
At that point they might be more social, but trust me, not all independents are people hating, cat/orchid keeping shut-ins.
Comment by tssk — 12 June 2009, 02:44 #
I’m one of those independent book buyers, but not because I’m a tool. I go to a book store because I can get the book I want NOW. Amazon charges extra for shipping, and then you still have to wait for delivery (24 hours or more). I can also pay in cash and suffer the least possible hassle just going in and finding what I want.
Also, I tend to want to support the local bookstores financially, so that they’ll stick around.
Comment by brookswift — 24 June 2009, 13:58 #