Cutting off your nose
Yes, this is me both bitching and waxing poetic on my current work situation, so feel free to pass by if you have no interest on this topic.
I like bookstores. This is an easy one -- I like books, so I tend to like the places that provide me with my literary fix. In many ways this is why I am quite willing to work for low wages -- I am in an environment that I generally like helping other people find the particular volumes they want, so it feels like I am helping to complete the circle.
Books are about an interior life. You read books on your own (usually, barring bedtime stories and times when you read marvelous passages to those around you. Therefore bookstores tend to be quiet, reserved, and very, very low pressure. I like coming into bookstores because the concept of "high pressure salesmanship" + "bookstore" is an oxymoron...
...until now...
Both Borders and Barnes & Noble are in trouble financially. It is ridiculous to say otherwise. Borders was, this last year, in danger of being de-listed from the NYSE, as it was trading under a $1 a share; B&N was laughing at this ... until they saw that they were trading at something like $1.15/share. Book sales are massively down. They were going down in any case, but with the financial meltdown people are looking for ways to save money and books, for most people, are a pure luxury. So, down go book sales nationwide. Heck, even look at Amazon -- they push a lot of items besides books nowadays simply to even the score.
Borders has been undergoing massive shakeups since the de-listing fright. Our own store has recently gotten both a new General (read: store) Manager and a new District Manager. Neither of these people are book-people; they are sales-people. As such, they (and Corporate in general) are applying broad sales approaches to help bump up our bottom line ... but these approaches are at odds with the general tenor of bookstores.
Let us take the basic case: You enter our bookstore. If all went according to Corporate Plan, I (as the Store Greeter) would welcome you in, introduce myself (and try to get your name as well), hand you a sales flier, ask you needed assistance in finding anything in particular, and then point out a couple of our current "make items" (books, cds, dvds that we are particularly pushing). Then you would enter the store. We should have at least a couple of employees wandering the store gathering up books that have been put down by customers in the wrong section and placing books back on shelves; if you pass within 20' of one of these employees, they are supposed to introduce themselves (and once again try to get your name), ask if you are finding this alright, possibly mention one of the "make items" as well, offer up suggestions about books and items related either to what you have in your hand or what you are looking for (thus proving ourselves widely knowledgeable of the products in our store) and be generally perky (...and a bit pushy...). At the cash register the cashier would ask if you found everything alright, ask if you have one of our club cards (and immediately try to sign you up if you do not currently have one), once again push one or more of our "make items", ask if you want gift receipts, gift cards, or other small items, ask if you want to make a donation to our children's book drive, and then ring you up. And on the way out, I would say goodbye to you, hopefully by name.
Now this is a lot more pressure both on the employees and the customer.
Three or four times a day our managers must send a report to corporate on the dollar amount of our sales, the number of each "make item" we have sold that day, the number of gift cards we have sold, the percentage of customers who had club cards; if we fall below certain numbers and percentages we are given stern warnings from our corporate offices. If we, as employees, are falling below our numbers, we are given first verbal then written warnings, with an eye towards firing. Every day we are told how we are not meeting sales goals (which, if we make on one day, are then increased because obviously we can do even better). So the management team is under constant pressure from Corporate and we employees are under all sorts of pressure from our managers.
Oh, and because our sales are down, we have just been told by Corporate that we must cut our payroll ours drastically ... at holiday time. Which means longer lines for customers purchasing items, fewer people on the floor to help put the books back, but still with the Sword of Damocles over our heads regarding all of our spiels, numbers, etc.
We, being paid the sumptuous sum of $8.50/hour, are in utter siege mentality with no relief in sight. Needless to say, employee morale has fallen to an all-time low.
Now I have already been told by three of my regular customers that they will not be back this season due to all the pressure being placed on them by our employees to purchase items they are not interested in and generally feeling like they are being harangued. They want to come into a bookstore to relax, be quiet, and slowly, personally look for books. We are breaking their concentration, invading their bubble of relaxation, and generally making entering a bookstore a Not Very Fun experience.
But the beancounters tell us otherwise ... so obviously the employees and the customers must be wrong.
Thus ends today's rant.
I like bookstores. This is an easy one -- I like books, so I tend to like the places that provide me with my literary fix. In many ways this is why I am quite willing to work for low wages -- I am in an environment that I generally like helping other people find the particular volumes they want, so it feels like I am helping to complete the circle.
Books are about an interior life. You read books on your own (usually, barring bedtime stories and times when you read marvelous passages to those around you. Therefore bookstores tend to be quiet, reserved, and very, very low pressure. I like coming into bookstores because the concept of "high pressure salesmanship" + "bookstore" is an oxymoron...
...until now...
Both Borders and Barnes & Noble are in trouble financially. It is ridiculous to say otherwise. Borders was, this last year, in danger of being de-listed from the NYSE, as it was trading under a $1 a share; B&N was laughing at this ... until they saw that they were trading at something like $1.15/share. Book sales are massively down. They were going down in any case, but with the financial meltdown people are looking for ways to save money and books, for most people, are a pure luxury. So, down go book sales nationwide. Heck, even look at Amazon -- they push a lot of items besides books nowadays simply to even the score.
Borders has been undergoing massive shakeups since the de-listing fright. Our own store has recently gotten both a new General (read: store) Manager and a new District Manager. Neither of these people are book-people; they are sales-people. As such, they (and Corporate in general) are applying broad sales approaches to help bump up our bottom line ... but these approaches are at odds with the general tenor of bookstores.
Let us take the basic case: You enter our bookstore. If all went according to Corporate Plan, I (as the Store Greeter) would welcome you in, introduce myself (and try to get your name as well), hand you a sales flier, ask you needed assistance in finding anything in particular, and then point out a couple of our current "make items" (books, cds, dvds that we are particularly pushing). Then you would enter the store. We should have at least a couple of employees wandering the store gathering up books that have been put down by customers in the wrong section and placing books back on shelves; if you pass within 20' of one of these employees, they are supposed to introduce themselves (and once again try to get your name), ask if you are finding this alright, possibly mention one of the "make items" as well, offer up suggestions about books and items related either to what you have in your hand or what you are looking for (thus proving ourselves widely knowledgeable of the products in our store) and be generally perky (...and a bit pushy...). At the cash register the cashier would ask if you found everything alright, ask if you have one of our club cards (and immediately try to sign you up if you do not currently have one), once again push one or more of our "make items", ask if you want gift receipts, gift cards, or other small items, ask if you want to make a donation to our children's book drive, and then ring you up. And on the way out, I would say goodbye to you, hopefully by name.
Now this is a lot more pressure both on the employees and the customer.
Three or four times a day our managers must send a report to corporate on the dollar amount of our sales, the number of each "make item" we have sold that day, the number of gift cards we have sold, the percentage of customers who had club cards; if we fall below certain numbers and percentages we are given stern warnings from our corporate offices. If we, as employees, are falling below our numbers, we are given first verbal then written warnings, with an eye towards firing. Every day we are told how we are not meeting sales goals (which, if we make on one day, are then increased because obviously we can do even better). So the management team is under constant pressure from Corporate and we employees are under all sorts of pressure from our managers.
Oh, and because our sales are down, we have just been told by Corporate that we must cut our payroll ours drastically ... at holiday time. Which means longer lines for customers purchasing items, fewer people on the floor to help put the books back, but still with the Sword of Damocles over our heads regarding all of our spiels, numbers, etc.
We, being paid the sumptuous sum of $8.50/hour, are in utter siege mentality with no relief in sight. Needless to say, employee morale has fallen to an all-time low.
Now I have already been told by three of my regular customers that they will not be back this season due to all the pressure being placed on them by our employees to purchase items they are not interested in and generally feeling like they are being harangued. They want to come into a bookstore to relax, be quiet, and slowly, personally look for books. We are breaking their concentration, invading their bubble of relaxation, and generally making entering a bookstore a Not Very Fun experience.
But the beancounters tell us otherwise ... so obviously the employees and the customers must be wrong.
Thus ends today's rant.