Michele Lee

I talk a lot about the emotional flow of watching your business close, but there are physical effects too. Even today, where business was a brisk $10k or so (I honestly didn’t check before I left, so who knows. We were busier than yesterday but not slammed all day.) I come home and could pretty much (and sometimes do) just drop.

Last Wednesday I plopped down on my bed to take off my shoes and fell asleep. Between the stress of not knowing if I’ll walk in and hear “Friday is our last day”, the undercurrent of tension and loyalty issues and the demanding physicality of recovering the store I plain old hurt. Of course what should I expect, seeing as I condensed the cooking section today, which means I moved probably 400-500 pounds of books today.

More than being on your feet and ringing constantly, or running around the store dodging customers and reshelving books, and even more than the fact that it’s still cold and flu season, the stress wears on you, makes aches you can ignore otherwise sharper and brings on a constant headache, even when you’re at home, sitting around (um, like we have time for that with families and second careers to fit into the off hours). And its been proven that stress can actually cause pain as well (not that I’m saying that’s happening to me, just that other jobs and loyalty issues aren’t the only reasons one might not be able to take the turmoil of closing out a store).

It makes me feel old, useless, coming home with aching feet and a headache and a back ache every day. Spending my days off just recovering. It’s not like I’m not “adjusted” to an increased activity level. Two weeks ago I could work a shift, come home and work on cleaning the house, make dinner, sit down for family time and then get some writing done. So why can’t I now?

As we push toward the two week mark  we’ve adjusted to the idea of our jobs being gone, our store dwindling down to a pile of dusty books and battered Paperchase products and even to being completely cut off from the corporation whose name is still on the doors we come in through every day. The big thing affecting us now is an issue of loyalty.

We still haven’t been given a solid close date. Six to Eight weeks, by the end of April at the latest is all we have. We repeat it automatically to the customers who ask (who increasingly are starting to get that no, there is no relocation, there is just us trying to keep checks coming for as long as possible.) But this makes things really really tricky when it comes to job hunting.

I had my first interview Friday afternoon. It went well but when it came to “What’s your availability?” I didn’t know what to say. Of course I want to close out the store. There are problems with people flaking out or otherwise not being reliable and I feel a lot of loyalty to my GM and SM (sales manager). They’re good people and they deserve solid workers to the end so they aren’t in this alone. But I have to be able to prepare for the inevitable too.

In the end I said I’d like to close out the store, hoping that it at least showed the prospective new boss that I have loyalty. Both my GM and the interviewer responded very favorably, saying they’re more than willing to work with me on availability. But I’m sure not everyone is as lucky.

At least two of my coworkers already have new jobs and are either working both to the point where it’s all they’re doing, or have cut down significantly at Borders for the other job. Some of my coworkers already had other jobs. At least one coworker went back to school, overjoyed to be able to transfer to a Borders closer to her, only to have that store end up on the closure list.

We know that we don’t have an end date because it depends on how fast we liquidate the products on the shelves. We also know that the liquidator is going to let prices linger as high as possible for as long as possible (and the customers have picked up on this too, based on their buying behavior). So we’re in limbo which doesn’t help assuage the fear that we’ll show up one day only to be told we won’t be opening that day and we need to go home. (Granted we have a bit to go before then, but the anticipation of a thing is almost always worse than the thing itself.)

And then there are other things. Like employee bitterness. I’m trying not to dwell on the bad. I’m trying not to let my own feelings of anger, loss and betrayal overwhelm me. But there are others out there who weren’t trying back before bankruptcy. It’s easy to find other sites where anger and bitterness is king. It’s easy to let yourself embrace that because it’s easy to find yourself lost in a load of bad business decisions, watching GMs and RMs and corporate jerks wander off to other jobs and wonder “What about me?”

And then it’s easy to say “Well if they won’t treat me like I deserve I’ll profit off them anyway.”

I’m told it’s normal when you work retail, but I can’t help being not happy about Borders’ policies that treat employees like thieves, but then also restrict what we can do on the floor to actually impact our shoplifters. The nervousness about employee theft has risen, and more than once comments have been made that make me feel like I’m being treated as if I’m already guilty. Sadly, because of the actions of a few management has every reason to be paranoid about the rest of us who are playing by the rules.

And it sucks. I’m saying that a lot, but its true. It sucks that people have been hurt. It sucks that grunts have to pay for the slowness and stubbornness and greed of the higher ups. Its sucks that because some people lash out with greed, “justified” by their hurt and a sense of entitlement, our managers have to crack down on all of us and treat even the people who are obviously in the clear as if they aren’t.

It hurts more than my feelings, it tries to tear away at the loyalty that’s kept me both at the job, and from saying “fuck it, at least I’ll get those DVDs I’ve been eying”. It chips at the already strained moral and makes it harder to set foot into the store for each and every one of us.

Most of my co-workers and I used to be lucky enough to have a reason other than “It pays the bills” to come into work. The store closing has been like someone made a list of all the things we liked about our jobs and is systematically eliminating them.

(Edit: Sorry, this didn’t post yesterday for some reason.)

A reoccurring question I’m encountering is ‘Should we really be obligated to feel bad for Borders after they put so many indies out of business?’

Well you aren’t obligated to feel anything, really. If you’ve lost a favorite store, a job, or your own business because of Borders you have every right to feel upset, that’s where most of us are too. We’re losing all of the above because of a series of corporate decisions. Our bookstore just happens to have “Borders” on the outside. My store was “my store” before I got a job there. It is the closest store to my home. It’s right by several restaurants and on the bus line and those low income people I’ve worried about that make up a good part of our customer base? I started out as one of them. It took, maybe, 15-20 minutes to hop a bus and ride downtown to 4th Street Live! back before I had a working car. It was the best place to go for me to get out of the house, treat the kids to a lunch and myself to a book off my wishlist. Getting to any other book store in the city would take at least 45 min to two hours on the bus, making it a very discouraging thing to do. (This is why the internet wins. Stores really can’t be expected to be “close” to every would be consumer.)

In the last few years the book business fight (on the seller side, the writing side looks completely different, though there are quite a few familiar players) has become less about indie versus big box and buying local versus buying from a warehouse a couple states away.

Buying from Borders still supported the local economy. Big box stores pay local employees, who pay local taxes and spend money locally. The stores pay rent, utilities and call local companies for service repairs. They pay state taxes, and our store, at least, carried local magazines and papers and books by local authors, artists and photographers.

Recently Texas decided to require Amazon to charge state tax and hit Amazon with a huge bill for back taxes owed. Amazon responded by announcing the closure of their Texas distribution center leaving 119 people without a job. (This is how Amazon treats people on the publishing/writer side of things too.) How is it a benefit to a local economy to support a business like that?

Also, as I said before, Borders wasn’t a presence in Louisville until a local indie store, which Borders supplied, wanted out of the business. The owners approached Borders and asked them to buy their business. Borders relationship to the other stores in Louisville is a little different than elsewhere.

Also, while I’m working toward the sad acceptance that I’m out of a job because our store just couldn’t compete profitably there’s a level of accepting that the same is true with the indie stores which closed–because they just couldn’t compete and the market loves that competition.

It sucks all around, period.

But Borders stopped being just an evil empire a while ago. By the way my name tag about saving the empire wasn’t just quoting Empire Records. It’s also a nod toward Borders’ history and reputation of being a contender in a Star Wars style Empire as well. Borders’ role in the book/publishing community is as complicated and multi-faceted as its bankruptcy.

(At this point I keep catching myself and having to change “failure” to “bankruptcy”, thought either way it’s a failure to me personally.)

Bitter feelings about Borders are certainly normal and probably warranted. But the store is largely its employees, with the corporate heads cloud dwelling gods handing down commandments from on high, for all the contact and control we have with/over them. No matter what silly, good or really horrible decisions are being made when you come into a bookstore you’re dealing with people like me and my co-workers. We’re ex-indie employees still in the business because we love it, thanks to Borders. Or we’re librarians struggling to make it in an environment of government cuts.

I strongly suggest that book lovers respond to Borders closures by being determined to remain book lovers. Here in Louisville there are 2 Barnes & Nobles, 2 Books-A-Millions, 2 Carmichaels locations, 2 Waldenbooks and several used book/media stores. And that’s just on this side of the river.

If you love books and reading don’t et this stop it. Don’t let reading be just a convenience activity for you or in the end we all lose.

Louisville Bookstores:

Barnes & Noble

801 South Hurstbourne Pkwy
Louisville, KY 40222
502-426-0255

4100 Summit Plaza Drive
Louisville, KY 40241
502-327-0410

Books-A-Million

502-894-8606
992 Breckenridge Lane
Louisville, KY 40207

502-426-2252
4300 Towne Center Drive
Louisville, KY 40241

812-284-4798
757 E Lewis and Clark Pkwy
Clarksville, IN 47129

Borders

3050 Bardstown Rd.
Louisville, KY 40205
502.456.6660

4600 Shelbyville Rd, Ste. 133
Louisville, KY 40207
502.893.0133

Waldenbooks

757 Hwy 131 East, Space #410
Clarksville, IN 47129
812.282.4658

7900 Shelbyville Rd, Space J-5
Louisville, KY 40222
502.423.1596

4801 Outer Loop Rd
Louisville, KY 40219
502.966.5783

Carmichael’s

1295 Bardstown Road
Louisville, Kentucky 40204
502-456-6950

2720 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
502-896-6950

Half Price Books

2025 S. Hurstbourne Pkwy.
Louisville KY 40220
502-491-4310

10220 Westport Rd. on Frey’s Hill
Louisville KY 40241
502-326-8585

Book and Music Exchange
1616 Bardstown Rd. 502-454-3328
5400 Preston Hwy. 502-969-4403
5534 Newcut Rd 502-364-8944
New Albany: 201 Market St. 812-944-2270

A Reader’s Corner
138 Breckenridge Lane
502-897-5578

The Book Attic
8659 Preston Hwy
Louisville, KY 40219
(502) 962-6808

Any locals have any others to add?

On the seventh day..well it was my day off so I spent the day playing Star Wars with my RPG group. But I haven’t forgotten the massive number of you coming here for updates, so how about something on the lighter side?