Barnes & Noble

Retail comes with its own sense of challenges and Barnes and Noble seems to have its own brand of frustration.

Customers have an unwarranted sense of entitlement in the store where they feel comfortable treating the place like they do their bedroom.  This doesn’t shock me overly much; I worked at a grocery store and I am well aware that finding the cereal box in the cannery aisle and the gallon of milk going rotten next to the loaves of bread is not an uncommon problem.  So I’m not surprised when I find books on the floor or a mystery novel sitting on the Christian Life section.

I am going to throw a fit about the magazines.  Folks tend to grab ten at a time from different sections and when they’re done, they put all of them back on only one shelf, covering all other product on display.  But at least when they do that, the magazines stay in the magazine section.  I am fed up with the mags that make it all over the store, especially the kids’ section.  It’s hard enough to keep Kids’ clean when it’s just the children’s items.  Bringing in outside material is going to give the employee responsible for Kids’ an aneurysm.

This especially drives me nuts when the material is not age appropriate: leaving an issue of Penthouse lying next to The Berenstein Bears is grounds for a swift kick in the crotch.

(This issue was outside of its shrink-wrap, too… now this goes across the board: the products are wrapped for a reason!  We don’t want them opened until they’re bought.  The wrap ends up on the floor and leaves a mess for us to clean up, and many times, the wrap has the pricing information on it and not on the book.  Without the wrap, it is such a hassle to find out how much it really costs.)

The one good thing that comes from magazines is that I find them easy to sort through.  Most of my coworkers disagree but it’s much easier for me to find a place for each magazine; part of that may be because the covers all face out so I just have to match cover with cover, unlike books, where the spine is usually what faces out (unless they’re on a promo, (man, I do a lot of parentheticals) but that’s a whole other kettle of fish.)

As for the Kids’ section, it is my favorite place to work in the whole store.  I love seeing all the kids books, it’s nice to have my own designated corner that’s all my own for that shift, and because I am the ultimate backup, I never run out of things to do or people to help.  But you can’t turn your back for a second or the kids’ are going to leave half the shelf on the floor.

Okay, the kids are five and six, or ten and eleven.  Whatever.  They’re kids.  I know they are not that responsible or considerate and they make messes.  That’s fine.  But what are their parents doing?  I know their parents are never more than five feet away from them to make sure they don’t get lost or kidnapped.  They are watching their little brats commit their infractions and rampages with the Newberry awards and plush dolls.  When are they going to teach them that this is not their house?  I’ll bet these moms get so frustrated that their hellions won’t make their bed but what do they expect?  They’re learning that they can get away with trashing a place open to the public, why should they care about their own private residence.  Or rather, they’re not getting the message that cleanliness is a way of life rather than a custom for certain circumstances.

(As she reads this post, my mom wonders how my own room looks at my place.  Answer: good enough for me.)

Maybe I could have said this all in one sentence: I want customers to keep the store neat.  It’s considerate.  I mean, it’s not like you bought any of those books that were lying around so it’s the least you can do there.

But, lest you think that customers are the only ones that bother me, there's plenty of grief that my own store lays on me.  Or rather, there are some horrible things they're doing to our customers that has to stop.

I worked at the registers for a long stretch of weeks and this was not a huge surprise to me.  Cashiering was the one retail skill that I already came into the job with.  The registers are not at an actual cash stand, but sit on one long counter with cashiers on one side and customers on the other.  In front of every register is a cashwrap, or a bookshelf with the current magazines or mass-market paperbacks the store is trying to get rid of.  The cashwraps are so bulky, especially at the bottom that the customer is likely to trip on them as soon as they turn to leave.

This is not a joke.  Three to four times per shift that I’m at a register, somebody bangs their foot against the blasted things and the worst is that they’re typically old ladies.  I am terrified that one of these days, one of them is going to fall and bruise a hip, or worse.  The cashwraps are genuine hazards and I am not the only employee saying so.

One of the first things they train us on is that safety comes first.  What a laugh.

I understand why they have them up there.  Reading the magazines while waiting in line is a classic way to kill time, and not just in bookstores.  Hey, the customer may even decide that they want to buy this issue Time.  I just don't think they should have to pay for it with their lives.