Michele Lee

First I want to point out that everything I say here is just opinion and conjecture. I am just a bookseller. I do not have access to the books at my store (in fact right now we’ve been cut off from the Borders employee information site as well.) I’m not a business major and don’t have a long history of business experience. I read a lot, and try to pay attention and that’s where most of my opinion comes from.

Also, in case it’s not clear, I know that it makes full business sense for Borders to have closed our store if it didn’t perform how it needed to to be a valuable asset to the company. I WISH the city could have stepped in. I WISH Borders had been able to stay perfectly in step with the changing market. I WISH people had just bought more. I WISH people could afford to buy more.

But at this point thing are already set and all that’s left is to see it play out.

So if you’re thinking of going to a Borders sale, let me outline a few things you need to know.

1. We’ve pretty much adjusted now. Of course we’re also mostly exhausted, overwhelmed with the sheer amount of people in the store and things to clean up. We’re a little slap happy, actually, enough so that I found myself organizing a “Casual Friday-pajama edition” today.

2. We still appreciate your expressions of disappointment at our store closing. We will continue to do so, but pouting faces and whining isn’t the best way to communicate that. Now, if you’d like to talk to Borders directly about your disappointment the number is 800-770-7811. We appreciate that too.

3. Closing stores are on a first come first serve basis. We can’t hold anything for you. We can’t special order anything for you. If you call and ask if we have something:

4. Our inventory system has put all books down to 0 copies on hand, so we have to physically check the shelves for the book you’re looking for. Honestly we don’t always have time. Plus:

5. We’ve pretty much given up alphabetizing by this point. Our shelves are not pretty to look at (neither are the stores, with gaudy signs all over the place, dripping from the shelves, ceiling and at this point I’m surprised we’re not wearing some sort of signage hats. It’s taking all we have to get the books on the shelves from being left on the floor, chairs, other shelves and even under fixtures.

6. This is why we took away the cafe chairs. We can’t keep up with the sheer number of people coming into the store. It was eliminate loitering space and hiding spaces for products or go crazy.

7. Yes, we are really, really closing. This is not a trick to get people to spend more. We get this question 20-50 times a day and combined with the whole being tired thing we’re starting to come up with some slap-happy answers. Like “No we’re just all going on vacation at once and taking the books with us.”

8. And no, we’re not being relocated. Personnel cuts are a big part of Borders cut backs as well. A lot of people are assuming we’re being relocated, but most other stores are already at capacity, and the bankruptcy came with a hiring freeze. Honestly most of us are beginning to see other prospects, and beginning to really realize that Borders isn’t the end of the line.

9. Yes we really, really do have to mark through the UPC code, even on your graphic novels and gifts. Perhaps it’s not best to buy collectibles or presents that you want to use to impress people at a close out sale. (However, we are required to put a line through the UPC on the back NOT cross out the cover or anything else.)

10. Those deeper discounts you keep asking for? They come when people stop buying at the 20% off that the books are current at. Which doesn’t look likely the way people are buying. We don’t control the pricing and can’t give you buddy pricing or employee pricing (hah! We don’t get that either anymore) or tip you off to the next phase. Our particular liquidator is a real nice guy, but he knows better than to tell us the plan. Because it is still about making money.

By this point we’ve all adjusted from an “OMG how can the store close” to a “Let’s get this shit done as best as we can” mentality. Again, I love my coworkers because while work was light-hearted none of us are putting up with nonsense.

A woman got very upset that we’re required to mark out the UPC with a permanent market to avoid returns and started snapping at a bookseller and the three others ringing along side him all chimed in to defend him. Managers rotated out with us during the rush and made sure we all got breaks on time. There are reports from other stores that GMs and other management are taking vacation days rather than setting foot in the store. But not at my store, where my GM rang for an hour and half, did store recovery/helped people on the floor for two hours and single handedly stripped the first floor of chairs and extra tables to “encourage” people not to keep coming in and leaving piles of books everywhere.

Our African American fiction section is more than half gone. I’d say YA SF/F/H is about a third gone. And we got new hardbacks in stock today for the normal Tuesday release (these were, of course, sent last week before all our deliveries had been cancelled).

Here’s the a thing; our discount right now is 20% on paperbacks, 30% on Paperchase products and 40% on magazines and gift cards. People are flocking to the store in droves, salivating at thought of a liquidation sale but, and it’s a big but…If you take the coupon that Borders sends out about twice a week (and plasters on their website, Facebook and Twitter) and your free Borders club card to a store that’s staying in business you can get everything except magazines and newspapers for 33% percent off.  And if you paid your $20 (which it really isn’t, since Borders has been running a bonus where you get $10 back in Bucks and a coupon book with a $10 off coupon, so if you take advantage of this the Plus membership is free) then you get 43% off with your handy dandy coupon.

So people are rushing in to snap up books they didn’t seem to want before, foaming at the mouth over a discount that’s less than half of what they can get at other stores. Why? Because Borders is going out of business so of course they have to get there for the deal.

Twenty percent is not a deep discount, as people are discovering at the register when their armful of books that they’re sure will be a deal because we’re going out of business still hit over $100. They seemed confused by this.

This, more than ebooks, more than customer loyalties and more than downward trends in reading defines the current sales culture. We are trained to flip out over a series of trigger words to the point where without those words, without that perception of a deal (but not an actual deal) people don’t spend. I can’t believe that all the people there buying today would be doing so if they literally could not afford to. They have the money now, why didn’t they have it a few months ago? Because we weren’t having a liquidation sale then.

There’s no real time to be angry at the jackal behavior anymore. Instead I’m starting to feel sorry for people who need to buy things because it’s on sale, or because they’re surrounded with trigger words. There’s nothing wrong with buying because you just want something, but we can’t be honest about it, we have to justify it with “But it’s on sale”.

And it’s clear that we’re creating an environment where 1) the expectations of constantly, limitlessly growing profits is utterly ridiculous, but the pressure for such is so great that Walmart is being downgraded for not being a dollar store. 2) People (aka “consumers”) are beginning to only respond to perceived deals and are becoming less willing to pay a normal price, sometimes even a discounted price, for anything. The price of books hasn’t changed much in the last few years. Paperbacks have been $6-8, trades $13-15 and hardbacks around $25 for as long as I’ve been paying for books with my own money. This used to be okay with people as they understood that was the fair market price of a book. Now people think $9.99, the price Amazon sets for many books that is actually below what it costs Amazon to sell that book, is a fair price.

In our rabid price wars we’re undercutting ourselves and just like Borders is paying for its loss of flexibility and individual tailoring to the areas it serves we’re going to wake up one day and discover we’ve cut off our own legs.

But in other news one of my favorite customers came in. Remember when I said we deal with a lot of special needs people at our store? This man is probably in his seventies and is smart, kind and passionate, but also suffers, I’m guessing, from Parkinson’s. His wife brings him in the store a few times a week where they read, putter around the store, chat up a number of people (in a friendly, not creepy way), have a snack from the cafe and buy some books. They’re great people and they came up in my queue today during the lunch rush. The husband stopped to tell me how much he hated that we were closing because we were the only place they felt comfortable going, and our employees were the only ones who ever actually helped them find books. Not even the library, he said, was friendly and helpful. but this point his tremors have gotten pretty bad. He asks to hug me, then proceeds to cling to me for almost twenty minutes, trying not to cry, trying to calm down so he can stop shaking some and make it out of the store. Before it’s over he’s kissed me twice on the cheek, begged me to come to church just so he can see me again and had to wipe away tears a handful of times.

This is why the store closing is so hard. For many people we meet needs that keep them going, that bring happiness, civility and peace into their life. Doctors and hospitals attend to the health of the body, even the mind, but books feed the soul, and book people can’t help but get caught up in the process.

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.

I didn’t want to blog today because, honestly I have table top game I run today and was looking forward to a day off. But there’s a lot coming up in the discussions online about Borders’ fall, so while I have a moment I’m going to address them. (Feel free to ask more questions, and I will try to answer them if I can.)

Did we know this was coming?

Yes, absolutely. We knew Borders wasn’t doing well. We knew the company was making grabs at anything they could to make money. We knew that we were being pushed to sell more, especially the new plus card. In fact I was once told that the regional manager’s policy was “selling BR+ is not optional it is a requirement for employment”. I disagreed, but I did it anyway because it was what the job required. In fact I have the store record for most plus cards sold in a single shift. Here’s the rub, over the holiday shopping season we were expected to sell an average of fifty plus cards a day (and 10-20 ereaders) and there simply wasn’t the demand for that. People didn’t want to pay for a membership card when they had been getting it for free. And the free card members were upset that other members were getting percentages off and they weren’t. On our good days we managed (I’m rounding) ten thousand a day. And we were expected to sell 50 people or more a $20 card.

THAT is what under performing means to corporate, not the whole bit about ten k a day. We didn’t sell the specific items they wanted to see sold, so we were underperforming.

And yes, I know that the rent is outrageous and by all means it was a good business decision to close our store down. This is why I don’t WANT to feel screwed. But it doesn’t stop me from being sad. Here’s why:

-I’ve had some really bad jobs, as in the job environment. Jobs where I was physically assaulted by fellow employees and the management refused to do anything. Jobs where it was a sport to bad mouth each other constantly. Jobs where people snipped branches of pot into baggies behind the counter and regularly “borrowed” bus money from the register. Jobs where people “took breaks” to engage in sexual activity in the stock room. Borders was the first job I’ve had that wasn’t like that. With few exceptions the people did their job, almost always had a kind word to say about each other and often even hang out together outside of work. We had a pot luck on Black Friday, we had a gift exchange for the holidays, my GM brought in snacks for us, and she’s currently trying to find a way for us to have a goodbye party.

-Plus I regularly got to tell someone about a book I loved and have them come back a week later and thank me for pointing it out to them because they adored it. People, coworkers and customers, sought out my opinion on books regularly and I got to help both them find enjoyment in life, and authors I love/am friends with sell better. I was in a real position to influence things and I successfully did. And now I won’t be anymore.

-I’m not going to lose my house over this (I hope) but my GM just moved here to Louisville ten weeks ago to take over the store. Many of our employees don’t have the support that I do and I worry about them. I’m also not in a position to help them, though I wish I could. Meanwhile corporate execs are making $855 an hour, which is well beyond the income anyone needs to survive.

-This situation rewards the sales environments that believe badgering the customer, or even outright scamming them into buying more, is the right way to go. So in the end YOU will suffer too.

-People have been buying the last few days DESPITE THERE ONLY BEING A 20% DISCOUNT AND OUR STANDARD COUPON BEING 33% more than they bought over Christmas. If people bought like this before we’d still be in business. How exactly does one justify buying like this now, with less of a discount, and not then, when the financial situation for the purchaser was the same? How do you not become bitter about that?

-I did put a physical investment in the store. Every day that I worked there was reshelving, cleaning, displays to set up. If someone came into your house and tore it apart you’d be upset too, even if you got paid to clean it, even if it was something you enjoyed.

But other people have been laid off. You aren’t the first to go through this, so why do you think you’re special enough to blog about it?

Of course I’m not the first. My heart has always gone out to people who have been laid off, or went through a store closing. It sucks every time. That doesn’t invalidate my feelings anymore that it invalidates theirs/yours when you/they went through it. I get to blog about it for two reasons: I pay my hosting company for this space so I get to use it how I want. And, a lot of people out there haven’t been through it. They don’t understand what it actually means. Not to mention a lot of the people I know or see in the publishing world know the writing, submitting and editing aspect of it, but very few have seen or been through the BOOKSELLING aspect of it. I think showing the bookseller perspective could be very valuable to writers and publishers out there because in the end we’re all in this together. If you have a book on the shelves, or you someday want to have a book on the shelves then what is happening now is valuable information because it will affect you. Understanding it now can help you make better informed decisions about your own career.

But you can’t feel mean about the people coming for the sales, they’re important to the liquidation.

First, I can, because feelings are irrational and I’m entitled to whatever feelings I have. Second, I know these people are important to the liquidation. I know that the money they’re spending goes to pay the pay checks of people like me. That doesn’t mean they have the right to be nasty to us and abuse us. No one has the right to do that.

And again, right now the liquidation discount is LESS than the normal discount buyers could have gotten if they shopped with us. So there’s no reason for mobbing, or nastiness.

Not to mention there are certain circles out there where people are truly, outright gloating over Borders downfall. You know what, you’re gloating over me and thousands of others, losing their jobs and many of you are doing so because a publisher didn’t want your piece of crap novel. It would be more upset if these people didn’t clearly have more problems than me.

But Borders put hundreds of mom-and-pop shops out of business.

Absolutely and that sucks too. I wasn’t really around for that so I can only study it in the context of what I see/know now. Borders only came into Louisville when our wonderful, wonderful local indie store Hawley Cooke went out of business. Lots of people blame Borders because they took over HC but here’s what people ignore (or don’t know): The owners of Hawley Cooke came to Borders (who was their distributor) and asked them to buy their locations out. Borders did NOT set up shop in Louisville until then, and the choice was lose all the stores in Louisville or take them over. Borders agreed to take them over.

Ironically it’s the Hawley Cooke Locations that are staying open, which I think is fitting as far as history goes.

We do still have Carmichael’s, but due to their very small store space they commonly do not stock many, many titles, namely most of the kind of books I read. Indies are notorious for refusing to stock genre books, especially SF/F/H and romance, which is completely ridiculous because romance readers are HUGE book buyers. So what are readers supposed to do, patron the store that has the books they want, or go to the store that scoffs at them because they want to read “that trash” and have it special ordered? (I’m not saying Carmichaels has ever scoffed at me, but my interactions with Carmichaels have been less than stellar. I really should make an effort to change this though. But that’s a blog for another day.)

That might be true, but it isn’t here.

What do you expect customers to do?

Come on in and expand your libraries. There’s no shame in it. If you really want to make us happy ask us for a recommendation because we are still here because we are passionate readers. But remember that the people cleaning up after you, ringing you up and answering your questions aren’t there to be abused or yelled at. We’re in hell, riding it out for the chance at unemployment or one last paycheck. A little consideration goes a lot farther than “I’m sorry” and I’m sorry goes over much better than “What you mean I can’t use my coupon, this is still a fucking Borders isn’t it?!”

It’s called civility, human decency and sometimes compassion. That’s all we ask for.

So, when DO the sales start?

They started Saturday. Borders stores open up at 9 am Monday-Friday and 10am on Saturday. Discounts are currently 20-40% off (with the 40% being on things like cards). We CANNOT honor coupons on top of liquidation prices, but you DO still get 10% if you’re a plus customer and all purchases go toward accrual of Borders Bucks.

And how are you doing?

For the first time since my first day I’m scared to go to work tomorrow. But other than that I’m fine.