Michele Lee

If you follow me on Twitter you already know what’s happening. If not, here’s a run down. My store, Border #556 at 4th Street Live! in Louisville, Ky officially closed Monday April 4th. Sunday April 3rd was the start of the new pay period, which yeah, awkward, but consider that the managers also were in the store cleaning up for at least another day.

I should have received my second to last check (which should have been a full check) Friday April 8th. (And I should receive my final check, with no hours on it, April 22nd.) That’s a lot of should though because in my mail Friday…and Saturday? Nada.

At this point I suspect the paper pay checks were sent to the store, as per usual, despite there being no one there. But being a weekend my calls to payroll are going unanswered. I called customer service and they gave me the number to the message line about the bankruptcy, which was the best they could do. I ended up getting contact info for payroll off that famous Borders employee vent site (which is exactly what that kind of thing is for seeing as Borders is doing their damnedest to keep all that contact information unavailable.)

Again, I think it’s a flub up, not a purposeful thing. But I HIGHLY advise Borders employees to keep track of your hours so you know right away if anything is wrong, and have a list of contact numbers written down somewhere at your home in case you need it later.

Understandably I’m pissed because I have bills that need to be paid and I need gas money to, you know, look for a new job. The rub is that I went for the day job path because I was tired of having to badger publishers to get my pay, a fact of publishing that isn’t absolute but is common. I didn’t want to have to constantly worry about when I was going to get money due to me to make bills and mistakenly thought a “day job” would make sure I had at least some regular income.

And instead I have to spend tomorrow tracking down monies due for a story and for two full weeks of Borders employment. Thanks corporate America!

P.S. By the way the number I have for Borders’ Payroll Department is 800-331-9036 just in case you, too, find yourself in need of it.

Update 4/11/11 3:14 pm– Despite calling several times today I’ve gotten no response from HR. Left multiple messages now and an email to payroll bounced. I got the number to the corporate offices (734-477-1100) and was forwarded to payroll through them, so I know I’ve been calling the right number. Also I spoke with coworkers and I know others who get paper checks haven’t gotten theirs either, which just makes me believe stronger that the checks were sent to the store.

The only contact I have gotten from Borders at this time is from whoever is running the Borders Twitter feed, who is trying to get this issue in front of the right people. I really appreciate that, and sympathize because once again it’s a person who has no control of these things who is being squished in between the upset consumer (me) and the practically mythical corporate critters who are actually responsible for the f-up.

And just in case it comes to this for anyone else here’s a link to the contact info for the U.S. Department of Labor.

Update 6:53 pm – I have confirmation that others at the store have gotten their checks today. Here’s hoping mine gets here tomorrow.

I stopped by the store today and they were carting off the cafe. Upstairs was gone, just scarred red paint, wood fragments and walls of windows. On the first floor the managers were all covering the registers, half the bookcase, if not more were gone, the left over books were on rolling cars and behind the only real signs of life were pockmarks in the shape of B-O-R-D-E-R-S. By now it’s dark and silent and it’ll probably stay like for a while. Like I said at the beginning across the street in the same building (because the street goes through the structure) is another dark, silent retail space, less than a fifth the size that’s been nothing but a place for 4th Street Live! to prop up their advertisements for two years now.

Today I’m officially laid off, though my last day was Friday. Truthfully it was anti-climatic. No big exciting blow outs. No moving speeches of friendship and passion. Just a trickle of sad patrons and a crew too tired to care anymore.

I’m alternating between excited at the thought of a new job and scared of the process of finding it. I really did love my job at Borders until we started liquidating. Even with the BR+ pushing and knowing that I was there on the tail end of something great. If it was Empire Records then I came in after Joe’d ran in for a while and some of the crew had moved on to college or more long term careers and as iTunes exploded in popularity. I knew it should have been a thing of wonder, and could see how it had been, but by the time I got there she was a swollen kneed, sway backed old mare.

I have  Borders bucks for this month, after snatching up some deals of my own, and I’m no one to waste that (or the 50% off coupon I got from the the store) but I really don’t feel excited about walking into more red either. I’ve always been conflicted when it came to where I bought my books from, because amazon is evil, but B&N was way too far away, BAM didn’t seem to know what they were talking about and always pushed that card on me. Borders seemed like the perfect alternative when it opened in 4th Street Live! But now, well if I’m going to be neglected as a customer and find shelves lacking what I really want I might as well go for low prices right? And the irony is that Amazon is the only new bookstore these days not pushing a card.

Damn I hate that they win.

But maybe it’s time to retail to realize it’s not about pushing, triggering, sweet talking or conning us to buy, it’s about offering what we want to buy anyway.

I’m very sorry to those of you who have gone through this, are still stuck in this, or are just starting the process.  I hope you all have a good GM, good family and friend, or at least good beer to get your though. And of course, that fortune shines fairer on you in the future.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Didn’t work today (at Borders anyway. I got a lot of stuff at home done and some writing stuff too.) but I wanted to share a few things I’ve founf around today.

Business Week has a really insightful article that sheds a lot of light on Hilco (the company liquidating Borders) and the terms of the liquidation. It points out that even at a 30% discount some books are still more expensive than they are at Amazon.com. The books used in the article are Steig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy box set which was $100 originally at Borders. But now Amazon is selling it for $32.85. One has to wonder if this is on purpose, like are they trying to compete with Borders even as it liquidates? Clearly there is no way bookstores can compete with online stores especially when things like, publishers shipping books to online stores but refusing to ship to physical stores keeps happening.

The Business Week article also says Borders plans to use the money from the liquidations to “refurbish its 442 remaining stores and capitalize on the shifting habits of shoppers”. Excuse me, but didn’t they already do this? Refurbishing stores? How about competing with Amazon’s ebook offerings by establishing their own self/indie publishing program? I’m a published writer. You can find my books and anthologies on almost every major ebook site–except Borders because Borders doesn’t open itself up to indie (and by that I mean small press, not self publishing) or self publishing.

How about paying what they owe to publishers? Maybe trying to develop their own ereader that can kick the Kindles ass (in my experience a true fast, strong wifi tablet would be able to do that). Maybe doing away with their super special inventory system and working on something simpler (that recoding and stickering all their inventory when ISBNs and ISSN and UPCs already work fine elsewhere)? Or just making sure if in store customers have to order something the website doesn’t crash on them!

Ugh. I am so fed up with all of this. I mean, damn Borders, make the layoffs you just made of hundreds, if not thousands of people who loved books and worked hard for you mean something, you know?

Which brings me to this. It’s one of those canned Yahoo articles 10 Signs it’s Time to Quit Your Job. I used to love my job. Really, I thought it was awesome, even when I knew there were sucky parts, like the lack of communication with corporate, having to push the plus cards and the constant “No we don’t have that book, but I can order it for you.” but these last few weeks have been like someone was trying to infuse all the things on that list into each and every day.

Yeah, the next few months is going to suck, but I’m pretty sure being stuck at a going forward store under these conditions would be worse.

I haven’t blogged the last few days because there’s been some cliquish, childish behavior at work the last few shifts and I haven’t wanted to either say something to make it worse or just rant. I know I could, of course, but I’m aiming for constructive ranting in all this and that wouldn’t have helped anything.

In short (and because I know the people in question have been reading this) I’m not hurt (because let’s face it the insult you’ve been flinging at me and this ‘acting out’ you’ve targeted me for got real old when I was in high school). I’m just disappointed at one coworker in particular who I still think is smarter and more mature than this.

But if I’ve learned anything in retail its that people are not, by nature, smart, compassionate or even civil. They say a society is judged by how it treats the most disadvantaged among them. We can’t spend a year living as another race or gender identity or temporarily struggling with a disability or disease. But work retail for a few months and you’ll get a hint at people’s true natures, which luckily can be a beautiful thing as well.

Despite “Only 6 Days Left!” signs the store got a “Are you hiring” in yesterday. It amazes me how few people read signs, even big, brightly-colored, dripping from everything signs in a bookstore you’re seeking a job at. I’ve found the best way to cut off questions is to put the answers in my name badge and make sure it’s hanging at about boob level. Amazingly I see a huge decrease in the asking of a question when I do that.

Today was a hot mess. the RM was in to wrap some things up, like taking out fixtures that we won’t be selling. (And what we are and aren’t keeps changing. I feel stupid asking if the counters, for example, are for sale, except they weren’t at first, then they were, now they’re not again.) A number of people showed up to get their fixtures and between people complaining because we either wouldn’t or no longer have the equipment to help or they decided they didn’t want their fixture after all it’s a mess. Add in the people pretty much tossing the product off the shelf into whatever nearby fixture that they didn’t buy, the noise of them taking things apart, them carelessly leaving the elevator and escalator unblocked and leaving the cafe doors unlocked so people could come and go without anyone there to keep an eye on things and the fixture people weren’t even taking anything out of the doors they just wanted it open for when they did, even if it meant the alarm was constantly going off…whew. You get the point. I think almost all of us got stuck on the reg alone at some point during the rush because there was so much other crap going on that we got caught up in.

Also there’s a convention in town and…well I’ll not say the people are mean or rude, but they’re demanding and not very polite, so in the end it feels like you, as a non-customer are being “put in your place” by the people who are only willing to buy from your store when it’s 70-80% off. Did I mention that part? We dropped to 70-80% today.

And to those stoll saying “We don;t know when our last day is” I hate to tell you this, but when you do know your last day, even when it’s taped up on the wall behind you as you’re checking people out, they’ll still ask. A lot. And want to know what your hours will be. Oh, and once that date is set you’ll start getting a lot of “But what are you going to do with all the left over stuff?”

I have images in my head of a line waiting to dumpster dive at close on the last day. We did get a person who asked if, as a booklover on a fixed income, they could just “pick a few out”. It was pretty sad actually, because it was clear the question was not borne of greed or laziness (but I do have a lazy story too) but of plain old not understanding.

On the lazy side a gentleman came in today, looked around just a bit, then came over and asked if there was any way to know where a book was. As often happens all three of us at the register tried to answer. But three different descriptions of where the section he was looking for was wasn’t enough because he insisted there was no sign there (so of course that section must not be there) and us not telling him where the section/book he wanted was was “just ridiculous”. And he walked out.

Really what do you expect when you walk in and a store that was once two levels with millions of dollars of product on the shelves is now crammed into half of the first level with maybe $300k on the shelf. Less if you take into account the discount.

You don’t really realize how deep it is until you ring pretty much the same rate as you did the day before and the day before you cashed out with triple the sales numbers. Yesterday I rang up at least 4 $150-300 orders. Today there were just as many books going across my scanner but I think an transaction only went over $100 once.

I’ve also had a few trailing thoughts about Borders as a company. Will the RMs and other upper management get sales bonuses when those sales are spurred by closeouts? (I don’t think so, because I’m pretty sure the closing stores don’t count as stores anymore.) How does Borders expect to see increased revenue if there are now huge swaths of people who don’t have a Borders nearby? I know it makes sense to cut down stores when you’re doing bad, but how will fewer sales affect the over all outlook of the company?

Overall today I was caught between thinking “Damn I’m really going to miss this place” and “Damn I can’t wait until I never have to see this place again”. And which side I was on was directly related to whether or not there was a power tool being used at the moment or a huffy customer in front of me at the time.

So how are you all holding up?