paste-eaters anonymous

16 Things About Me

I got tagged for this on Facebook. I hate tagging other people for stuff like this, even though I am the nosiest person in the world and want to know all about you. And I love talking about me, me, me! But I think it might be kinda intrusive and I don't want to piss anyone off. But then there are those rules. I'm a little neurotic, I guess that's 17 things about me.

1. I will, I WILL finally have my B.A. in 2011. I will be 51.
2. I was the fattest kid in my elementary school. Yes, children are cruel.
3. I am unable to remember multiplication tables without constant prompting.
4. I can’t get on an airplane without breaking out in hives.
5. My husband has a great voice of Satan. I knew the first time I met him he was the one for me.
6. I don’t like beets. There are better vegetables.
7. My father taught me to knit. He learned in the Army.
8. I once spent a winter in Oslo, Norway. The coldest winter there in 34 years.
9. I’m convinced one of my cats is autistic.
10. I can tie knots in cherry stems with my tongue, just give me time.
11. I’m double-jointed. Ask me to sit weird.
12. I had a toe shortened. Not for cosmetic reasons.
13. I have an odd definition of celebrity; it’s likely you are one of mine.
14. I have been a fry-cook, stable-hand, bookseller, bursar, nurse’s aide, record-store clerk, ticket seller, office manager, store manager, sign maker, function planner, guinea pig, waitress, gas station cashier and a whole bunch of other jobs, including pulling the fat off of smoked meat.
15. I am a bleeding-heart liberal in desperate need of a transfusion. I can’t wait for January 20th.
16. I think there may only be fifteen things about me.

Your Day in Bookselling--Conclusion

The co-worker who asked you to cover hasn’t returned, but the next shift is up and another is there to relieve you. You head to the break room for lunch, giving in to the leftover pasta. It’s not the best choice, but it’s rent week so it’s the cheapest. You pull up a chair and a read a wrinkled copy of yesterday’s news while the splattered and crusty microwave heats up your meal.

A co-worker may pop in the break room to see if there is any food up for grabs. Occasionally there will be leftover cheese and crackers from a author event or someone will bring cookies to share. It’s not uncommon to see a mouse scurry from under the break room sofa to the backroom overstock shelves. So while food may be put out for open consumption, you tend to think it’s not such a great idea. Especially since no one in the store has the heart to deal effectively with a rodent problem.

You finish the crossword puzzle with a quick glance at the answers on the next page to fill in the last three clues. You don’t want anyone recognizing your handwriting and thinking you can’t do the puzzle. It has nothing to do with vanity. Really.

When lunch is over, it’s your turn again on the register. This time a small woman comes up with a stroller that is almost as big as she is. With baby in tow, there are also two toddlers tearing up the displays in front of the register. Mom is oblivious, talking on a cell-phone in one hand and handing over books with the other. She’s buying Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems, Your ADD Child, and How to Get Organized. You look up to tell her the total, but she’s stepped away--phone still at her ear—and has begun collecting more books to buy. 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, Porn for New Moms. You add those to the total and again, she’s off somewhere. Another customer comes up and looks peeved that you’re still waiting for ADD Mom to finish up.

Finally, she returns to the register with a day planner and whips out her wallet, still on the phone. She fiddles with a stack of credit cards, handing over a library card. You hand it back to her and she stares at you, looking annoyed, until she realizes that card won’t work. She goes back to her fistful of plastic and hands you a Visa. Bless her heart, it’s a decent sale, but sometimes you wonder if the kid really has ADD or if has he just picked up the annoying habits she’s developed while trying to multi-task.

It’s the needy hour. Three people have asked you to order a book that’s no longer in print—
    “Yes it is, my mother’s had a copy for years”

Or have the title completely wrong—
    “Oh, maybe it’s not The Big Bang. It could be The Sound and the Fury.”

Or have no clue what they are looking for—
    “My sister wants me to get her a book that was in The Times a couple of weeks ago, but she didn’t tell me what it is.”

Another co-worker shows up to relieve you from the register. Frank walks in from outside and you can smell him from across the room. There is a loud, drawn-out wail from the back near the children’s section.

Definitely time for another coffee.

You could probably save a lot of money if you didn’t buy overpriced coffee two or three times a day. You might actually be able to afford a protein source for lunch on a regular basis. You could dress better, instead of living in free t-shirts from publishers shilling books. You might even be able to afford to buy more books. But sometimes you just need a reason to leave the store. You can, so you do.

Hot coffee in hand, you sit at the table in the back room and look through the printouts of canceled titles. These are books in the store that haven’t lived up to the selling cycles determined by the buyers and the bookkeeper and get returned to the publisher for credit on new—or wanted—titles.

You make a list of the books in your section and wonder why the cancel sheets never appear before you’ve shelved your books and put away your overstock. Some of the other booksellers get all hot and bothered when some titles get canceled, mainly because they have sections with books they care about. But when you have the reference section, it’s hard to get all worked up about U.S. News 10 Top Medical Schools or yet another edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary.

You’ve got an hour to kill before you go home. You go to the buyer’s office with a question you can answer yourself but want the opportunity to snoop around. There are piles of books everywhere in there; reader’s copies that the publisher sends out in advance to get buzz going about a book. A lot of the reader’s copies are put out for the booksellers to go through, but you suspect the buyers tend to grab the really juicy stuff for themselves.

What’s left can be pretty awful. Diet books. Business books from people you’ve never heard of telling you what to do with your life savings. Dead dog stories. Coming-of-age memoirs. Touchy-feely tomes. Video game guides. Society sucks and the country is going to hell books. Anti-aging cures. And novels all containing mass-produced heart-felt letters from editors telling you that this is the next big title. Only if Oprah likes it.

The buyer has her nose in a catalog, scribbling orders in it while crosschecking previous sales on the computer. She’s in no mood to chat. It’s reassuring that she’s ordering for next season, a sign that the store will remain open for at least six more months.

Finally, your shift is over and it’s time for you to go home, but suddenly you are in no hurry to get there. Instead, you find yourself looking at new titles at the front of the store, making the transition from bookseller to customer.

Your Day in Bookselling--Part Two

While there have been several attempts to keep coffee available in the break room, the store’s location between two coffee shops makes it easy to just jaunt out the door—no need for a coat—and grab a cup and a few minutes of downtime. You pass Frank, smoking another cigarette, standing right outside by the door.

You avoid eye contact.

There are several places for coffee in the area and there’s always a line in every one of them. You wait for the person in front of you to make up his mind.

“Oh. Is the Sumatra very harsh? What’s milder? Do you have non-fat soy? What’s the difference between an Americano and a latte?”

You realize that your job isn’t so bad. At least you don’t come home at night hating books.

When you return, the tenant in your section has left, leaving behind a bigger pile of books and an empty coffee cup. The pile is actually an advantage; since the books are off the shelves, it gives you some room to move stuff around in the section. Once you’ve finished that chore, it’s time to put the overstock away.

Because every inch of accessible space is valuable real estate, overstock is not kept in a convenient location. Usually it’s all packed above the sections on the walls. It takes a ladder—the kind with wheels that rests on a rail so it moves down the aisle—to reach the books. You learn very quickly how many books you can load up in one arm and climb with the other. You learn to overcome any fear of heights or balance problems. You also learn that no matter how many booksellers are on the floor, behind the counter or at the information desk, a customer will seek you out to help them find a book when you are on the top rung of the ladder.

You make sure your stack of books is secure on the shelf before you rattle down the ladder. You’ve learned your lesson once or twice the hard way.

As usual, the book he’s looking for is right there in the most obvious place. You put it in his hands. He looks at it, turns it over, looks at it again and places it back on the shelf.

“Thanks,” he smiles weakly. “Just wanted to see if you had it.”

Instead of screaming, you figure you might as well take a look at a few books while you’re on the floor.

It’s always tempting to head to the health section and dive into the Merck Manual, find a symptom and adopt it as the devastating illness du jour. One common bond of the booksellers in this store is their obsession with their health. It may have something to do with the liberal sick day policy that compensates for the lousy pay.

If obsessing over how much you swallow or that brown spot on your arm won’t fit the bill, there’s always the Psychology section and the DSM-4 to determine your latest neurosis. But venturing into that section is always risky as there’s usually someone slightly off-center or disturbingly desperate lurking there. These are the people who will try anything to engage you in their twisted pathology, continuing with the never-ending meaningless conversation that you struggle awkwardly to squirm away from. But if the coast is clear, you dive in to the books with a hearty morbid curiosity.

It would be easy to attempt to diagnose those around you, customer and co-worker alike. Ultimately, it all boils down to this: unless you are truly crazy—like the schizophrenics who come and go talking to themselves or the bipolars in a high manic state who decide to purchase one of everything in an entire section, or even the pain-in-the-ass types who never got what they wanted for Christmas and have decided to take it out on you—most are simply a little unconscious of what they are doing or asking. Years of experience have taught you to just give in and get it over with. They go away faster.

You get your overstock put away and do your best to appear busy for the next half-hour until your lunch break. There is always that heartbreaking possibility that the manager will snag you for something that should “only take a minute.”

It never does.

Putting your attention towards the stray book pile or straightening magazines will painlessly kill the time, but a co-worker asks you to take her place at the register for a few minutes.  It’s possible you could get trapped there, but you give in.

Most of the customers you see in a day are a pleasant lot: people who are enthusiastic about the books you love, suggesting titles you might enjoy, or even engage you in a good debate on something you read and hated. But a story needs tension, or the plot won’t thicken.

The store offers plenty of plot.

A thirty-something guy sporting an M.I.T. sweatshirt, a Moe Howard bowl-cut and a wristwatch that’s so large it looks like it belongs on a wall more than an arm comes up to the register. He’s indignant that a particular book is not in stock. He implies that it’s a “very important” book, and maybe it is. Perhaps if he weren’t buying a Star Wars pop-up book his credibility would stand a little stronger. You look it up and see that it was once in stock, never sold, and canceled. You smile and say nothing until his purchase is complete and he leaves.

There are several shelves below the register counter that are currently displaying childrens books. A man walks up with a toddler in his arms and puts her down. As you are ringing up his sale a little voice comes from below:

“Daddy? Can I have this book?” she asks.
“Not today.”
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t have the money to pay for it right now.”
“Why can’t we just take it?” she presses on.
“Because you have to pay for things,” he explains, “you just can’t take it.”
“Why not? I’ve done it before.”

You watch his face grow red as he smiles sheepishly and leads the child out the door.

Your Day in Bookselling--Part One

    The driver drops the papers off early, leaving them in a pile in front of the door. You have to move the bundles in order to get the door open, the weight of the papers tugging at the pain in your back, the plastic strap digging into your hands as you try to unlock the door at the same time.

    Once inside, you make the mad rush to drop the papers, lock the door behind you and run to the back of the store to turn off the alarm before sixty seconds goes by and it alerts the security company. The lights go on with a boom and a hum and the harsh glare hides the LED lights of the computers and the phones and illuminates clues of the night shift’s last actions of the evening.

    Depending on who you are and what you do in the store the routines begin. Inventory search engines are booted up and start running. The answering machine turned off and the stereo turned on. The vacuum, little better than a hairbrush, is brought out and the chunky stuff is sucked up off of the rugs in the childrens section and at the front entrance. The papers get put in their proper slots on the shelf, the front sidewalk swept, the glass double doors cleaned of fingerprints and smutz and the cash drawers put into the registers. Manila envelopes are filled out for each till. Little souvenirs to the day’s events will be tucked neatly inside: voids, credit slips, the odd note. The white board—a dry erase board on the wall behind the counter—is updated with famous birthdays, assorted odd holidays and pertinent information.

    With any luck, the night crew avoided easy distraction and got the store straightened. Stray books were put back on the shelves and piles abandoned beside chairs in the aisles are gone. No half-filled coffee cups left precariously sitting on a shelf. The old wooden floor is swept and no threatening dust bunnies are stalking in the corner.

    Register schedules are made up, consulted, copied and posted both upstairs and downstairs. The daybook, a place with important current information regarding store business and bookseller parties is read and mailboxes checked.

    At precisely 8:30--maybe a minute or two earlier if you’re feeling generous--the door is unlocked and unlatched and unless it is horrendously bad weather, one stays propped open. A cart of half-price books no one ever wants gets pushed out to the alcove. The heavy, two-sided wooden events sign goes out as far from the front window as it can without blocking the sidewalk. It’s a good day if you avoid bruising your shin this time as you lug it outside. The store is open for business.

    If you’ve been given the register shift, you are kept at the front counter. The chores of working on your sections, putting away stock, facing out new releases and pulling cancels will have to wait for an hour. Your job for the moment is meeter and greeter, information specialist, lost and found hunter, psychologist, and totally at the mercy of a wanting public.

    There will be a few customers, most of them in to grab the paper or a quick gift. The regulars will parade in; Frank, having had his cigarette while waiting outside for the store to open, will finish his coffee while perusing the remainders. Frank, like a slightly unpleasant dream, keeps coming back. While others come and go, Pompous Man, Dr. Leslie, Man with the sweet dog, and Mr. Butt-Cheeks, Frank has remained faithful. He’s never taken a day off. And despite his leering looks and that unforgettable ripe Frank smell, the staff just considers him part of the store.

    The phone will ring. First thing in the morning it’s usually calls for the manager or bookkeeping. Sales reps call to schedule appointments with the buyers. It might be a customer calling to see if a book is in stock: “I don’t know the title, but it was on Oprah. I think it had ‘love’ in the title. It was blue.” Most of the time, you know what they are looking for. You’ll start to swear you knew what the title was before the phone finished ringing.

    It’s usually slow enough in the morning for you to check out the papers for book reviews and help wanted. There’s never a job looking for English majors with little experience and less ambition. It’s the one moment you are allowed to get away with reading behind the counter. Sometimes it’s like being a bartender with a powerful thirst.

    It’s easy to sit there on the stool and just stare out at the wall of new releases in front of you. Your mind wanders, maybe totaling the bills due, subtracting what you have and hoping some money is left over. Maybe it’s that story you’ve been writing, never on paper, only in your head. Maybe it’s just thinking about what you brought for lunch.

    Around ten o’clock the nannies roll in, pushing strollers and carriages straight to the childrens section at the back of the store. They let their charges run rampant, rummaging through picture and pop-up books while they catch up on the latest gossip, bandy about day-off plans and complain about employers. About an hour later, they round up the brood and parade back out the door, leaving behind a section in tatters and the ubiquitous sippy cup half filled with apple juice.

    Lunch is starting to make a presence in the back of your mind and that leftover pasta from the night before—an effort to save some money, for once—is not meeting the demands of your appetite. But there are other things to attend to for the moment, namely loading a cart with books left on your receiving shelf and putting them out for sale.

    If you’re lucky, you’ve got the new cart that moves with a gentle push and turns on a dime. But by the time you get to the back room, it’s already loaded and held hostage by a coworker. You pull out the old one. It leans to one side as you fill it with books and you are sure that some day, during the worst opportune moment, it will collapse completely on you. Once it’s fully loaded you stand on your toes and push with all of your weight to get it out of the back room, over the hump at the door, and on to your section.

    Inevitably, there will be a huge pile of books on the floor as you try to maneuver down the aisle. Inevitably, that pile will have been created by the customer who has decided to sit right in front of the section you are working on, planting several shopping bags and a cup of coffee in the way as well. If this is a customer you know, even slightly, inevitably it will be someone you can’t stand.

    The old cart comes to a stop and starts to shake back and forth with the weight of the books. Your mission is to put out and showcase six new releases in a section already tightly packed with books. Older titles facing out--often holding more than the maximum three copies allowed to be set on the shelf with only the spine visible—will have to be pulled and put into overstock. The alphabet will require you to move virtually every book in the section. This is an excellent time to get coffee.

Hung Over

Anyone will tell you that a hangover is no party, but I’m a big blubbering baby when I have one. All I want to do is curl up on the couch with a heavy immobilizing blanket, a fluffy pillow and daytime TV turned down low. I believe that this is reasonable; after all, my body has been poisoned and needs to recover.

But the party-poopers, those Iron Men and straight-laced, poker-faced, do-gooder types who always do the right thing, look upon it as nothing more than weak-willed self-absorption. So I drag my lazy ass into work even though it feels like someone is standing on my frontal lobe, my poor tiny brain pulsating under a boot, my eyes scorched by florescent light.

Bastards.

I sit there in the office as my coworker wrestles with an uncooperative printer. I have some good solutions, but that would take more effort than I’m willing to give. Silent, I start to tally my coffee consumption. 28 ounces by ten a.m. is not likely a good thing for my already unhappy digestive system but my brain is egging me on to get more: Yes, yes, coffee gooood. I consider doing that or perhaps just lying on the floor to relieve the pressure of gravity and feel the cool linoleum on my cheeks.

I make it through the day only feeling slightly queasy from the sight of my co-worker’s lunch of really rare roast beef and tabouli. I manage to keep my eyes open and looking busy at the witching hour of three, a time when we should all be napping for at least a good 45 minutes but because we are Americans, reach for another source of caffeine instead.

I finally head home and drink four quarts of water to quench my dehydration. My stomach finally settles after I take my cure of a spoonful or two of cold spaghetti sauce—hey, I’ve heard worse—and lie down for an hour. I even manage to have dinner on the table for The Husband by the time he arrives home. Winter vegetable stew with mustard dumplings, in case you were wondering.

But my nightly little glass of wine? I’ll pass, thanks, letting the dumplings soak up the rest of the poison in my system. I’ll sleep like a baby tonight.

Madmen and Strays

Having someone fiercely pound on your apartment door at 6:45 a.m. on a Saturday simply cannot be a sign of good things to come. Such as it was last week, when the husband jumped out of bed in his skivvies and answered the door. Our neighbor, an elderly gentleman who is nice enough--I guess-- needed to inform us of some pertinent information:

Dr. N (our neighbor): "They're on to us."
The Husband: "Okay."
Dr. N: "You have too many shoes. I will give you more" (he did: later he left 2 pairs of slippers at our door. We put them back by his door).
The Husband: "Okay."
Dr. N: "Tell Eileen I love you both."
The Husband: "Okay."
Dr. N: "See me later."
The Husband: "Okay" (hey, it's quarter to seven on a Saturday morning, people).

So for the rest of the day I was a bit paranoid that the old coot was going to come a knockin' again or that some other strange and unusual thing was going to happen, like the car not starting after we just bought ourselves a new starter for Christmas, or The Husband, in a strange moment of quirkiness, would actually go see Dr. N later.

Nothing of the sort.

However, while saying goodbye to the Sister-In-Law, who I am sure by this point is convinced that we are crazy-people magnets, a stray cat let us know he was cold and hungry (so skinny!). He immediately jumped into the Sister-In-Law's arms when she called him.

This cat is no fool.

The Sister-In-Law volunteers at the Berkshire Humane Society in Pittsfield. It's only by some strong restraint that every animal there has not been adopted by her. There isn't a collection can for animal shelters within a 100 mile radius that's missed her contributions. I knew there would be a happy ending for this kitty story, I just wasn't sure if it would entail a 3-hour ride to Pittsfield or introducing the cats to a new roommate (they don't take to such things).

Fortunately, we live near Buddy Dog, a no-kill shelter where we got our cats. Figgins--as in Chone, because I have always thought it was a cool cat name--is now warm and fed.

And we haven't heard a peep since Saturday from Dr. N. So good things show up--or don't--in mysterious ways.