One year ago

It was one year ago today that I got job interview for the bookstore. The call came a day after I applied, and I only applied the day after reading the job listing online. A few days later I was given the position.

I probably will never get a job faster ever agiain.

The Airbrushing of Tom Wolfe

When the world of books and movies collide, the lawyers step in!

While researching Focus Features' new movie Beginners, I noticed something interesting about two of their promotional stills. In this image, you can see Christopher Plummer and Ewan McGregor browsing a bookstore. Plummer clearly has a copy of Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full in his hands. Yet in another duplicate still found on some websites, Wolfe's 742-page epic has been blurred. I guess Focus Features was worried about unauthorized product placement.

I am not outraged or surprised by this -- it probably happens all the time and we just don't notice. I just thought it was something cool to point out.

Wuthering Wyler

The other day someone came into the bookstore and asked where we would have Wuthering Heights. I told her we'd shelve it under plain old Fiction. She thanked me and then checked her smartphone.

"That was Wyler, right? The author?" she asked. "Bronte," I said. She looked at me skeptically then went away to the stacks.

It hit me later that she was probably referring to William Wyler, who directed a 1939 version of the classic novel. Her fancy smartphone must've told her Wyler was the author, though I can't imagine how she Googled herself to that mistake or which app deceived her.

No, I've never read it.

Above: a wuthering height.

One month!

I've officially been at the bookstore one month. I have nothing to say except good things, and that it's been my most intellectually-stimulating job so far. There's definitely an art to selling books, and there is also a bit of psychology involved with the process--knowing what people want, what sells best, what a customer is thinking when he or she steps into a section.

For some reason I am still on the zoo email list, and I learned today that the zoo will be coming out of "hibernation" shorty. A record amount of snow these past few months has kept crowds away, but with the March thaw more people will be trickling in. My old ice cream store is set to open again next Saturday. How time flies!

One thing I will miss about the zoo, and which I will not be able to experience at the bookstore, is working outside. Unlike many zoo employees, I enjoyed the days when I was stationed on a food cart or in a popcorn wagon. Alas, I won't be selling any merchandise on an outdoors, and I am already nostalgic for my view of the moose enclosure and the duck-covered lake.

Coincidental metal

This happened two Fridays ago:

One man came into the store asking if we had any books on metal detecting. I told him where he might find one. About 45 minutes later, I was working at the register and the customer returned to purchase books, telling me he couldn't find any books on the subject. Now, while he filled out a card to be put on our mailing list, another customer walked into the store and asked if we had any books on metal detecting.

The first customer (who was writing just a few feet away) laughed and said he'd just asked about that. The two men started talking and trading stories about metal detecting. I'm pretty sure they left together, no doubt becoming fast friends and planning to meet up to start a hunt for buried treasure.

Oh, the coincidences of a bookstore!

Have a nice nay

Random observations at the bookstore:

--I think it's a common problem among retail workers to mix up the time of day in that familiar parting expression. If I worked at the register one night, then again the very next morning, I tend to confuse the two and sometimes end up with the combination in the title of the blog post. And wow, Wikipedia has a whole freakin' article dedicated to the phrase. I guess if they have one for toilet paper orientation...

--Laser discs, records, and CDs may all be collectible items, but VHS tapes will never be. They're simply too bulky, and the tapes tend to fall out of the bottom of the box when you pull it off the shelf. HOWEVER -- I am volunteering an ingenious solution for the problem of the world's excess tapes: use them for home decoration! Many bookstores offer a bulk amount of "neutral" books to make customer's home/work libraries look prestigious: Reader's Digest Condensed Books, for example, or bland law textbooks. I see no reason why film professors of the future can't have shelves of multicolored, uniformly-shaped boxes in their office.

--For about two minutes today I wondered why Theodore Dreiser's novels were so radically different from his more well-known works, like Green Eggs and Ham.

--Sometimes a spine can be confusing. Is it Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome or Ethan Frome's Edith Wharton?

End-of-the-month distraction!

One week ago I started my bookstore job. It's been marvelous so far, and I wish I could relate to you all the cool stuff I've learned, but (a) there's far too much to tell and (b) the handbook warns us against disclosing store procedures and policy. So until my blog posts have worked their way through both Corporate and my lawyer, I'm going to be pretty mum about my job. I will try to keep my faithful readers occupied, however, starting with this picture of a cat with a Far Side mug:



If there's anything the Internet needed, it's more pictures of cats.

Requiem for the Zoo

When I restarted this blog in June, I figured I'd be writing about my experiences at the zoo through August. October, at the very most. Somewhere around Halloween, when I was still scooping ice cream at the dairy store, I resigned myself to the fact that I would be at the zoo indefinitely, possibly through the summer of 2011.

All that's changed. After being called off from work on account of weather one too many times, I decided to search for another job...and found one. At a bookstore.

I handed my application in and was called on the very same day to schedule an interview. Two days later, after the interview, I was told to expect to wait two weeks or so to hear if I'd been given the position. Just 48 hours later, I got a call offering me the job. Now that's turnaround!

Next Monday I start at the bookstore. I will be doing an assortment of tasks, including working the cash register, restocking the shelves, and sorting the used books customers want to sell. I've always considered books my passion and looked on my high school library job as an ideal workplace for someone with my tastes. Perhaps this job will be even more meaningful, because customers at a bookstore want to keep what they find for much longer than three weeks.

So: "Wandering As A Cloud" is undergoing its third thematic shift in as many years. From England, to the zoo, and now to a bookstore. I will keep you updated.

Note: the picture is a rare look inside the Beloit College Library stacks. It's the only photo of bookshelves I own, but I knew I took it for a reason.