I work in a bookstore, a chain bookstore, and have for the last 5 years. People often ask me if working in a bookstore is fun....I can't lie....it is.....especially if you love books and love working with interesting people.Surprisingly, a fair number of folks hand me their application for employment and confess they don't read a lot but hang out at the store and think it would be a "cool" place to work. Occasionally management has hired people who either faked an interest in books or openly lied about their reading habits. They usually don't last too long. Other booksellers begin giving pseudo-bookies the evil eye and our customers, many of them with a shark-like ability to detect a lack of literary knowledge, will circle the poor hapless creature and devour him or her.
I usually work Sundays. I complain about going to work on Saturday. It's a tradition. How can you work every Sunday if you don't complain about it Saturday evening? But when the alarm goes off at 630am Sunday morning, I'm ready to go. I start at 8am.
What can you possibly do at 8am on a Sunday morning in a bookstore? Lots. I'm the morning newspaper person. I arrive to find a stack of 100 or so newspapers either outside the door of the store or waiting for me in the front lobby. I actually enjoy newspaper prep. It's a physical and rather ritualistic job that requires counting the papers, stacking them in appropriate places, and stripping and counting out-of-date newspapers. It takes about an hour to complete the job. The lugging and hauling of papers, wakes me up and I'm ready for our wonderful customers by the 9am opening. I also enjoy taking a peek at some of the stories in the newspapers. It's good to get a glimpse into the life of people in Oklahoma or Atlanta and of course, those wild and crazy folks, in New York.
This past Sunday, I hit the bookstore in an evil mood. I was running late and left the house without my cup of coffee. A power outage zapped us for a few hours on Saturday and every clock in my house was reset at different times. I thought I woke up at 630, my husband's clock said it was 645, my bathroom clock said it was 7am. Was I smart enough to flip open my cellphone and see what time it really was? No...so I rushed out of the house, sans JAVA.....and cranky. When I looked at the time in my car....I was actually running a few minutes ahead of time...great....but it was too late to get the coffee going now.
The ritual of the newspapers calmed me down. I hit the backroom to strip, toss, count, and file the papers and noticed someone had left two magazines on the work table. One was a magazine called MEN, the other was a PLAYBOY.
In our bookstore, especially on Friday and Saturdays, it's not uncommon to find copies of sexual magazines hidden and scattered in various places in the store. There's always the funny customer who hides a Playboy in Cooking or Christianity. The men's bathroom is also a favorite deposit area. Customers will come out of the bathroom and report abandoned mags. We send in one of our guys to retrieve them. Soiled, wet, crumpled mags are greeted with a yuck....and escorted ......via latex gloves...... to the backroom for proper disposal.
The magazines left on the work bench were in pristine condition. Someone probably slipped the plastic wrap off (they must be sealed because of their content) and the closing crew found them while tidying up the place after hours. I've looked through many of the major magazines in our bookstore.... from travel mags, to cooking mags, to sex mags. I expected MEN to be a gay advocate magazine. When I opened it, I discovered it was not a typical soft gay mag. The entire middle section was devoted to positions..... interesting positions... the men were gorgeous....many of them were pouting...some had Angelina Jolie-type lips .......which I found fascinating. (What you think I'm going to admit I found other things besides their lips fanscinating?) I realized I was VERY AWAKE now, even without my coffee. I finished my newspaper duties and did a quick glance at PLAYBOY....one should always keep an eye on the competition. As expected, the women were all perfect, so nothing new there.
I glanced at the clock, the store would be opening in about 5 minutes. I decided not to trust the buzz from MEN magazine. I hit the cafe for a cup of coffee.
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