I’m going with a visual post today.

Every Borders has a Paperchase (journals, address books, pens, photo albums, etc) section. Much bemoaned by some people in our store it’s pretty popular, though the products are more upscale than the equivalent products as places like Walmart. (Of course we also have unique stuff, like wooden journals and pens.) Monday I was on the floor for the first and last hour of my shift. I spent the last hour cleaning up Paperchase, primarily condensing out products onto one display shelf, making them stick up straight and organizing them, a little bit at least, by type. We’ve gone from three double sided shelves of blank books, agendas, etc to three shelves on one side of one display.

This is what I found when I got to work this morning.

(I apologize for the low quality pictures, I was using my cell’s camera.)

Now imagine this over the whole store. Add in products left in the wrong place, all the books from upstairs being shifted, one section at a time, downstairs, 2200 books grabbed at random and shipped to another store and a mess of trash, wrappers and empty packages from people blatantly stealing and you’ll understand why we’re overwhelmed and not able to keep up with it all. (Also add in Borders messing around with our inventory system and locking us out from adjusting it at all, and, as I’ve recently learned, adding items they had scheduled to be shipped to us, but never actually shipped as being “on hand” weeks after they decided to close us down.)

And we sent off more today, and the back room has been cleaned out because we’re packing pallets tomorrow to be sent to a Michigan store. Anyone in Michigan who might be reading this, I swear we’re going to try to pack it decently, not just throw crap in boxes and seal them, which by the way is the standard way boxes arrived to us from Borders warehouses. I know personally if I am going to pack a box to send to someone I’m going to do it as efficiently as possible, not throw it all will-nilly into boxes until they look full. Shipping is not cheap.

After that I cleaned and condensed our sports section. I was trying to at least organize it by subject, but I burned through 2/3rds of my time and got through about half of it, so I had to just put everything closer together as is. It looks like this now.

(I put this picture together from two pictures to give you the full effect.)

This section used to be full. Now seven bays of six shelves each are condensed down to  four bays of four shelves each, plus one and a half shelves of another (you’ll notice the top and bottom shelves only have 2-5 oversized books on them, if anything). And this is selling slowly. Most other sections look a lot worse. Cooking, for example has gone from ten bays of seven shelves to less than 6 full bays (with the top and bottom shelves of each left empty.)

Again, and we are selling slowly.

And occasionally after moving 500 pounds of books in a day and working reg where customers bring up armloads of product then walk out with two items, or haggle, or demand that you give them bags to carry their books in (or coffee) for free, you find this little treasure trove:

Where people just dump things they decide they don’t want (or didn’t intend to buy in the first place.) By the way those are all SF/F books and manga (and one cool Hello Kitty Bat) which are all on the first floor (and have been as long as I’ve worked this store) and are actually on the way out the door from the back of the store (where I found these).

Is it any wonder why we can’t find things?

For the first time today I wondered if I was going to make it through the whole ordeal. I mean, duh, of course I am, because it’s not like a customer is going to pull a knife and go psycho on me. And if they tried there’s quite the sizeable counter between myself and the customers.

To put it mildly we’re all a little wacky right now. Like puppet shows at the counter, laughing hysterically over nothing and betting for pounds of coffee with customers (okay, that last one only kind of happened.) We’re all so damned lost, being tossed around willy nilly as priorities, plans and people change that we have to stop caring because it’s the only way not to say f-it and just not show up.

Which, yet another person did today. I get why someone wouldn’t want to stay in this kind of environment, but have the decency to work out the rest of the posted schedule (which is one week for us). nothing any of us can do about it now, though. Best wishes to those who are moving on.

Also this weekend I visited one of the “going-forward” stores. Ironically it didn’t have any of the books I wanted to pick up at my store. It’s a tiny, cramped building. It’s pretty, but it has no cafe (where will I get my Javaluka now? All the stores with cafes are closing here in Louisville.) and no non-Christian religious section. Maybe this is a pain unique to being in the Bible Belt, but as a non-Christian myself it’s really really hard to find a bookstore that doesn’t seem to equate “Religion” section with Christian Inspiration, Amish love stories and Bibles. Our store has the Koran, dammit. And a whole bay of Buddhist and Hindu and Zen books.

And like that I’ve become one of the customers Borders is NOT meeting the needs of.

I want to wrap up tonight by thanking my co-worker for bringing in King Cake today, which was a sorely needed moment of levity and relaxation in our day. Oh, and to my other co-worker who is quitting smoking despite all this crazy, I’m mad proud of you.

I forgot to add that today in the middle of our to the door 1pm rush someone had the balls to call me at work and solicit me for their 401k roll over assistance program. To whoever it was, on the off chance that you read this blog: I will NEVER, EVER do business with you. I will advise my friends to never do business with you, and furthermore someone (that might have also been you) already called and gave the same line to my GM who already told you not to call us.

You were way out of line. Your actions were horribly inappropriate and you wasted not just my time (and patience) but also that of every person in line and every co-worker who had to pick up the slack for me while you were trying to convince me to hand over money that I don’t have to you.

Seriously, jerk, screw you.

Prices dropped to 25%-50% today. I got to the store and we’d be under-manned last night so the signs were all pulled down and we were still struggling to put them back up. Customer patience for the slow price drops seems to still be holding. Again we were real busy, despite it being a gray miserable day.

As I said Wednesday we shipped 2200 books, at random, to another location. Our store inventory is completely f-ed right now. We have no clue what is on the shelf. Not only is it a mess, with customers not putting things back right, and us employees too overwhelmed to make sense of it, but Borders has messed with our inventory program, and now whole shelves have just vanished.

The children’s section is gone. We have games, toys and movies, but all out chapter, picture and early reader books are gone.

When I left they were moving everything from level two to level one. I expect by Monday they’ll have finished (especially after weekend sales) and the second floor with be shut down for good. On one hand it’ll be great to have space, where I can walk and not be interrupted by half a dozen people (even when I don’t have my name tag or radio on. Really, at what point do I get to yell, “Leave me alone, I’m on break”?)

Last night a customer got really upset at my manager for not letting him return a plush animal that was in the “up to 75% off” bin. It was only 20% off (which is up to 75%). He cussed her out in front of kids and other customers and in the end had to be stopped by another customer when he tried to throw the animal at her.

Also the other evening an irritated customer called back 3 times and hung up on 2 managers before asking “to talk to a male manager” like that would get him anywhere (and there are no longer male managers at my store.)

These are the kinds of customers my co-workers here and at other stores are dealing with. Again also the people who actually hired us, Borders, have cut us off from most contact. Other than telling us what to say to the customers all communications appears to be coming now from the liquidators.

Borders has said that if we quit without two weeks notice or get fired (which can still happen) or otherwise don’t last until the stores are actually closed and we are for really laid off we’ll be listed as no rehire when they do reopen for hiring. They’ve set us up to force us to be unable to lave this hot mess without taking a blow to our job history. As far as losing the possibility of being a Borders employee in the future…no one I know would apply for a Borders job again. Who would want to, after this?

P.S. 25% is still LESS than the 40% off coupon Borders just sent out to BR members. Which, by the way, you can’t use at closing stores. No, I promise, the last line of the “fine print” says that and arguing with me is not going to get me to let you use it.

P.P.S. Has anyone figured out how to get black permanent marker off your hands yet?

Wow, I’m so glad to hear so many of you all are experiencing physical effects of the close too. Well, I mean, I’m not glad that we’re all hurting, but I am relieved to know I’m not alone. Two of my co-workers also voiced a bit of amazement as how much of a physical strain “just standing in one place ringing people up can cause.” It’s not just that though, it’s also the stress.

Case and point, today I dealt with a number of not nasty, but definitely rude customers. From the guy who asked me if I ‘was working yet” while I was doing a large shift of the medical texts (more heavy books *groan*) to a lady who dumped out our recovery basket to use the basket (when there is a tower of about 30 of them only a few feet away) then came to the check out and tried to get us to not just hold the books she wanted, but let her partially pay for them too (and of course complained under her breath about us “not cooperating” with her as she checked out with about 2/3rds of the books she’d picked up). I have to wonder why anyone thinks a store would defer payment while also allowing you to take products home. I know rental places and credit card companies specialize in that, but when’s the last time Kroger or McDonald’s let you pay half now and half next month?

That’s right up there with all the people who used to ask if we lend books.

Also today the liquidator decided we weren’t selling fast enough. But rather than lower to 30% off they’re moving about 2200 of our books to the other closing store in the city which is selling too fast. Because our inventory system isn’t already messed up enough (and I should note it wasn’t perfectly accurate before Borders cut us off from their system and had us drop all “on hand” amounts to zero) they’re taking the top and bottom shelves through out the store to the other location, leaving us with the middle.

Before I was pretty sure we would actually last out through the estimated time frame (closing by the end of April). Now I don’t see what, other than man power, is keeping them from just moving all our stock to the faster selling store and closing us down, oh, at any point. I’ve said before that I didn’t know if I’d walk into work and find out that day that it was the last day. I knew that was a possibility, but I had a little faith in my GM and SM to give us as much warning as they could. But now, I’m really not sure if I’ll being going in Friday just to find out there’s no book selling, just book transporting going on.

The liquidator is purposefully keeping us in the dark, I think. Not that I completely blame him. Everyone wants to know when the discount is going to get better and when the last day is. If it was known at this point we’d end up with one cosmic mess on our hands the last day as everyone would wait until then to come buy. But not knowing creates such a uncertain work environment, and as I said before I’ve already had interviews and been unable to tell them what my availability is because I don’t know any more.

Plus my co-workers are dropping off. We’ve lost two, that I know of so far with another on her two weeks. I don’t blame any of them either, but today my SM came to me and asked if I’d be okay with an hours increase. On one hand, well yeah, who doesn’t want more pay? And I’m flattered at the implication that I’m a steadier worker (provided it’s actually there and I’m not imagining it). But I’m intimidated too, because I already feel like Borders is a parasitic Siamese twin draining the energy out of my life. My co-workers are chugging energy drinks every time I see them, and it’s no wonder.

So we’re still working on getting those books out to the other location because apparently we can’t even fail correctly. We suck at sucking, the IPT manager said. So it seems.

I hope that something good comes out of this shift. We’re a two story store and the GM is pushing to use the shipping to empty out the second floor so we can close it off. It would make the scheduling easier, close the children’s section and put all the multimedia downstairs where it would be less likely to just walk away. Plus the bathrooms are upstairs so we could save time on bathroom checks and cleaning and possibly not run out of toilet paper again like we did last weekend.

But, of course, the liquidator doesn’t seem to like that idea. It’s good that my GM is still there trying to call the shots to make the situation better for us. And I know that compared to others our store has been really lucky on the trash and mean customers front. But there comes a point where it’s hard to console yourself with “well it could be worse”.

ETA: I mean to add this link about RedGroup in Australia/New Zealand which owns the Borders down there. Turns out that when the parent company formed RedGroup it then shifted all the debt from buying the bookstores that make up RedGroup to RedGroup. So now the Borders down under owes money for its own purchase. So, yeah, it could be worse.