Day Four

Yesterday I ended by saying I was scared to go to work. I was. I tried to funnel all that anxiety into something creative. I used index cards and markers to make us new name tags. Gone are BR+ and now we have “Hi, My name is Unemployed”, “Not for Sale” and “Damn the Man Save the Empire!”

There’s no point, because we aren’t an indie store that can save ourselves with a killer soundtrack and a big show. That would be awesome, but it’s not how the real world works. But Empire Records is more apt than I realized when I first made the name tags.

Our store did $39k Saturday. $22k Sunday and we were at about $20k when I left at 4pm. To put it in a bit of perspective there was a day in the holiday spending period where I rang for three hours straight. I was impressed, but it wasn’t that there was a line for three hours straight, I just couldn’t escape the reg for that time. Today it was line to the door for about five solid hours.

Today was also my GM making sure we had water and breaks, my sales manager talking job tips on lunch break and constant supervisor back up to curb problem situations right away. And they wore my name tags, even the ones I didn’t expect to.

Today was entirely not bad. There was no pushing membership cards down people’s throats. There were no dead beats hanging out in the cafe eating canned ravioli.

There was bad, of course. The store drips with signage, reminding everyone we’re going out of business. 4th Street Live! people came by; they’ve been showing the space. People are liberally spending money despite the fact that most things are at 20% off, which is half the discount a coupon and BR+ card could get you on a normal day. So yeah, we’re a culture triggered by the idea of a closeout sale, whether its really the best deal–even immediately–or not.

Also Borders decided, despite a third of its stores being in liquidation, that it would be a good idea to not just release another coupon, but also release one good for free Silly Bandz with a kid’s book purchase. Also our store inventory has been stripped to “0 copies on hand” for everything, which means we have to physically check shelves that have been ravaged for books when people. And the computers period are down (and even us employees have been cut off from the inter-corporation news flash and bookseller resource site), so the people who came in and wanted to order a book we didn’t have in stock online, despite it not being at liquidation prices, couldn’t because Borders’ website was dead. (By the way, this happens a lot and combined with the decrease of on hand inventory is a huge factor in Borders troubles.)

The good outweighed the bad today (and really can you ask for more?) There were no mean customers, but there were ones who broke into tears when we rang them up, a very prim, rich looking woman who assured us that she’d already complained to home office for their short sighted decision to shut us down, one clueless guy who didn’t believe the signs, or us, because they can’t really shut a bookstore down, can they? And one lady, who came in and spent almost four hundred dollars, and then told me she was buying for a school. Things like that floor you and keep you going.

This job still isn’t about Borders being on the checks, or signs or plastic bags. The big deal is the people I work with and for, who are my Empire Records crew. They reach out to each other. They bake each other cookies and share job tips. It’s about Shiloh Walker, a local romance author, one of our first customers who came in today to say goodbye. And the lady who turned our closing into the opportunity her school needed to get books in the hands of more kids.

In a way today was almost triumphant.