Rocket Bomber - article - commentary - retail - Reconsidering: The One Hundred Thousand.

“Since when am I a spokesman for a $25 billion dollar industry? Take your head out of your ass, exchange insults with me, and then figure out what your relationship is with your local bookseller.”

A number of the comments on a recent Rethinking the Box column have taken exception to the characterizations I made of bookstore customers.

This is, perhaps, my fault. Though I was merely describing general types in the piece, not specific customers and of course no one by name, I addressed the reader directly throughout with the pronoun ‘you’.

I apologise if you felt one of my less-than-laudatory profiles was specifically aimed at you.

I don’t even know you. There’s no way my account could apply to you, as I’ve never met you and odds are exceptionally good that you’ve never shopped at my store. Also, you don’t know me. I can be certain that even if you have shopped in my bookstore, I’ve never said anything or provided less than my best effort in helping you find your books.

You can, of course, take exception to ‘my best effort’ if that fails to meet your expectations. I invite you to write something on your own blog or other public fora describing my failings as an idiot bookseller who doesn’t even know what the Red Book is, even though it was prominently featured in a surprise, previously unpublicized segment on the extremely popular Oprah programme not more than 20 minutes prior to your bookstore visit.

You can even comment on my own site and call me an idiot, or call into question my continued employment, or the health of my store in particular or the industry in general, or the questionable value of ‘customer service’ in retail at large or in bookstores especially.

[…even though I have the ability to delete your comments and ban your IP. I can even go back and edit your comment to completely reverse the meaning of it, and you won’t even know because you’ve been banned and can’t come back to read it. It’s not something I’d do, but isn’t it amazing that I could.]

Here’s the thing: I don’t know you. Unless you’re a customer at my store you haven’t even contributed to my perception of the shopping public, and there is nothing you have done or could have done that I could possibly depict in any of my posts. There is the distinct possibility that I just happen to be employed at the worst neighborhood bookstore in the history of the world, located between the mission soup kitchen and the sanitarium, across the street from the bus station, and down the road from Bedlam.

No, instead of considering that I might just be unlucky, your first reaction and one so strong that it compels you to comment even though dozens have said the exact same thing on the same post before you, is to immediately feel insulted and to take my general comments as a personal attack,

You (and by ‘you’ I mean ‘those of you who have commented negatively’ and in the last post ‘you’ meant ‘those of you who exhibit these less-than-helpful behaviours’ — but perhaps you now understand that’s cumbersome to type all the time and I use the shorthand of the unadorned pronoun both in the pursuit of brevity and in the service of my extended argument) encourage others to boycott all bookstores because of what one bookseller said about some customers; you call into question my dedication to my job, or my suitability for such, or stand agape at my lack of gratitude that my store does any business at all.

Here’s the thing:

My Job is to Sell Books. If you want to boil my working day down to its essence, then at most, I should be at a register for a full eight hours to gladly and happily take your money or other tender in exchange for books. Perhaps we go so far as to put them in a bag for you.

When you shop at the grocery store, or a sporting goods store, or a hardware store, or a liquor store, or a clothing store, or a convenience store, or a furniture store, or even a car dealership for cryin’ out loud — that’s all you want. In fact, the Salesman in many of those locations is an impediment to your shopping experience & your enjoyment of the same.

Books are a different business. We stock (at my local outpost of Big Box Books) at a minimum, One Hundred Thousand different items. We can order millions more.

Stop and consider that for a bit. How many people went to your High School? Did you know each and every one of them well enough to describe them to a complete stranger? Do you remember who was on the football team, who was in the chess club, who dropped out, who transferred in; the rumours about the couples making out under the bleachers, the buzz about who did what with whom when; who had a car and who rode the bus; where they all went to university, or if they didn’t go on to further educational opportunities: where they enlisted, or are employed, or what?

There were around 1700 students at my school, a shade over 400 people in my graduating class. I couldn’t tell you about more than 50 of them.

One Hundred Thousand. Why, or even How am I supposed to know — off the top of my head — something about each and every one? Even If I had read a book a day every day that I’ve been alive, I’m not going to have personal knowledge of more than 10% of the total. Of course we rely on the computer.

But every customer that comes in expects the Bookseller to, of course, have an intimate knowledge of each and every last one of the Hundred Thousand Books on the shelves. Else, why are they working there?

We have an information desk. Pray tell, what other retailer has an information desk? I know we’re good at our job, but occasionally we’re going to fail. Why does our failure at a service we provide over, above, beyond, besides, in addition to and on top of any other retailer’s reasonable customer service expectation bother you people so much?

Instead of being grateful that we do invest so much in computer systems, and in finding and hiring enthusiastic book-lovers, and in organizing the Hundred Thousand Books on hand in numerous categories, and in attempting to maintain the stock in some semblance of order despite the concurrent need of customers to remove and relocate stock in their perfectly-understandable-efforts to shop the same,

You get all persnickety because I occasionally get frustrated at my own inability to satisfy customers due to a lack of information, or a lack of consideration, or because there is just no way that I can meet their expectations given the realities of retail (or the laws of physics) — and then I had the temerity to blog about it.

Sure, any one of you is well within your rights to cease shopping at any and all bookstores, or to limit your purchases to online retailers. You could do the same for your local supermarket.

I mean, it’s scandalous that your supermarket doesn’t employ clerks who can satisfactorily explain the difference between apples grown in Washington and New Zealand. That no one can recommend one brand of canned corn over another. That none of the associates can help us shop all the Mexican, Asian, & Kosher selections on offer; I mean, if they can’t properly direct us, why do they bother to put them on the shelf? And why do they seem so put out when I take the filet mignon over to the pharmacy, unwrap it, and start grilling? I have to know what it’s like before I buy it, right? That’s only common sense.

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I’d like to take a moment to thank all the readers who felt compelled to make a comment on the post in question. Rest assured, I will consider all of your suggestions in the spirit in which they were offered. In exchange, I’d ask that some of you stop and consider what makes bookselling different from other retail.