Take out diary #1
A racy postcard set and a customer who asks for a discount
I’m starting a diary series where I share snippets of my day-to-day at the bookstore. In today’s takeout bag, we have a racy postcard set and a customer who asks for a discount.
Our landlord has just told us that he’ll be out of town for a while, so the garage will be free to use. I am THRILLED. For a few short weeks, I won’t have to metaphorically count out the $9.50 I usually have to pay for half a day of street parking.
I make my way to the back corner of the store to fuss with the staff room. I’m reorganising the staff and stock rooms to make it clearer what’s in each one. Right now, the staff room (or what will be the staff room once I’m done with it) contains several boxes of books, random stationery and packing materials, extra supplies for the front counter, the staff microwave and toaster, plus an armchair that is hidden somewhere in the back corner. I make a small mess and leave the rest of it for next week.
Someone has left a couple of silver lego mini-figs under our mailbox. Is it an art thing? There’s a label with a hashtag stuck to their backs. I mention it to my co-worker triumphantly, like ‘ooo what an interesting piece of news I’ve brought you.’ Apparently it’s been there for a week.
A first-time customer arrives to pick up a book we have on hold for them. While wandering around the store, they exclaim that it’s such a nice shop and that they can’t believe they haven’t been here before. I low-key beg them to tell their friends and share a photo on social media.
Another customer asks if I can give them a discount on an $80 book. I have to look it up online to remind myself why we priced it that high in the first place because my people pleaser personality is kicking in. The price seems appropriate but they seem to really want it so I take $20 off. They ask if it can be $30. I say no, sorry. They don’t buy it. Sometimes it’s hard to know whether it’s better to have the book sold or to wait to see if it can sell for what it’s worth. Almost three years in this job and I still don’t know. Like most things, it feels like a balancing act.
There’s an empty spot in our postcard display so I fish out our stock of donated postcard books, the kind with a perforated edge so you can tear the cards out. One is a set of kitschy collage postcards that I think are meant to be ironic and feel anti-feminist but I can’t tell why, and the other contains nude vintage pin ups. After further consideration, both end up in the recycling bin and I shuffle some of the other postcards around on the stand.
Our 13 year old volunteer arrives and begins watering the indoor plants. They look older every time I see them, about once a week, and I’m startled by the noticeable difference such a short amount of time makes. When did they stop being the kid who emailed the store last year asking for volunteer work and become the verifiable teenager in front of me? I feel old for even thinking this.
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