Day Twenty One

I blogged about Borders over at the Apex Book Company blog today. It’s nothing you haven’t heard already if you’ve been reading along here, but it’s a new set of audience members, so it’s a new conversation too.

Today was…more of the same really. Another price drop that I found out about only by Borders Rewards email the evening before. I arrived at the store (I brought doughnuts, but then so did two other people so we ended up with 5 dozen doughnuts and no coffee because they’ve already gotten rid of the coffee maker) and the signs hadn’t been changed because they were still working on packing up the, as it turned out, 8 pallets we shipped today. This morning we only had 6 packed, so I worked the reg for two hours on my own so everyone else could get those others done.

It looks like we just started moving in. Paperchase is pretty much gone. So are our cds, dvds, blurays and two floors of what it left now fits into two thirds of the lower level. The liquidator swears that we’ll still be open til the end of April, but if so we’ll be selling something besides books and even the fixtures.

Speaking of that the fixture sale has started too. People are real excited about that, but seem to think it’s a yard sale. That’s okay, for some reason I thought the prices might be reasonable as well, but not only are some of them near new ($25 for a 2-5 yr old microwave from the break room when I bought one last fall brand new for the same) but there’s a “10% fee just because we can ask it”. They’re calling it a buyer’s premium, but that’s about the only explanation we’ve gotten.

A guy who managed Circuit City through their closing came in Wednesday and said the same thing happened to them. The liquidators stripped all normal business discounts, if not adding more, THEN gave a “closeout” price.

The liquidators said we’ll be open the full length of time. My manager said she expects the “Only 10 days left” signs to go up on the 21st.

Also, my brother-in-law just told me there’s a marathon in town tomorrow morning and the official parking lot is the one meant for 4th Street Live! (which houses my store). So um, yeah. Marathon. Tomorrow I take the bus, to work on a Saturday (when I haven’t typically been working, but employees are thinning).

So how are your Saturdays shaping up?