We said goodbye to two colleagues today who've racked up a shared 20 years of service - it's the first 'real' day of the cutbacks - and it was a very sad thing ( Read more... )

Today at work absolutely everyone and everything pissed me off. The mood might have started when I arrived at work and, upon approaching the entrance, was accosted by two screaming (and I mean SCREAMING) 10-year olds asking if I wanted to buy Girl Scout cookies. Or maybe it started on my way to the back when I passed that same guy who is camped out ( Read more... )

I'm sure every work place has one of these. However, I would like some help in dealing with the clingy, friend-needy employee ( Read more... )

Someday, I hope to understand what goes on in the (soi-disant) minds of our customers. Really. Because I just don't get some of the leaps of logic ( Read more... )

I work at a large chain bookstore and these books in the picture have been sitting on that ledge for two weeks as of Saturday. I had hoped that they would be gone by today since they are sitting at the entrance to the children’s department and they are only 10 maybe 15 feet from where they need to be. You gotta love the mind set that says ‘someone ( Read more... )

Conversation overheard in my shop about a member of staff who has worked there for five months (details changed to protect the... uh... innocent?)

Children's manager: "So if you could just tell (staff member) that the children's books are shelved alphabetically by author, not by title, that would be great."
Manager: "Yeah. That is a problem ( Read more... )

Just though I'd put this out there.  At my little store in Saskatoon, we are encouraged to borrow books so that we can give legitimate recommendations and I love this perk of my job.  But being a small staff it has it's disadvantages as well, I mean there are only 6 people on our staff and news travels pretty fast, so if for example you sign out a ( Read more... )

Dear bookseller at the store in the suburbs ( Read more... )

...The chain I work for (Buns & Noodle for all you Alison Bechdel fans out there...)has a total of 8 stores that are severely damaged if not destroyed by hurricane Katarina. As of 10:00AM yesterday we've only been able to account for 61 out of 300+ booksellers from those stores. The company is working desperatley to contact/find all of the missing ( Read more... )

Since the new/used issue is sparking a bit (!) of debate, I thought I'd toss out a favourite quote of mine for general discussion ( Read more... )