What it's like working in a bookstore
I've been working at the bookstore for nearly 9 months now - or 7, if you exclude my 2-month absence for our UK trip - so it's high time to take stock.
First of all, I honestly love my job. It is a very happy and rare thing to be able to say this, I think. Certainly none of my friends can claim to love their jobs. (I have one who seems happy enough, but oh! What a lot of pressure she goes through. I do not think I would like to go through that amount of stress; I could not even say that I "enjoy the challenge" - I am too unambitious a person.)
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You're probably thinking: pfft, anyone would love their job if they only worked 2 days a week. And you're right! As much as I love what I do, I would also quite happily switch to any other 2-day-a-week job if I could find one. For 2 days out of 7 is the perfect amount of work. Just enough work to keep you healthy, but still leaves most of your week free for writing, reading, long walks, and family time.
It seems odd that societally we have not progressed to this inversion of weekdays and weekends. Are we not living in the age of AI and automation - how can devoting 70% of your life to work still be considered normal?
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But let me not get carried away; let me explain what I do. Cartons and cartons of books arrive every day, and my job is to get the books out and on the shelves. First I hoist the cartons, which are in the back, on a workman trolley. Which I push out to the shop floor. There, I open the cardboard boxes, from which spill packing air pillows and the scent of new books - it is like a never-ending Christmas - and put the books on the shelves.
I love shelving books; it is so satisfying to arrange books just so. An added perk is to "face out" the books you think are worth reading and "spine" the ones that are rubbish. "Sometimes when shopping for books I feel like I'm in a private conversation with the people working here," said my friend Mrigaa. And she is quite right. As I shelve I send none-too-subtle messages to shoppers: buy the Emily Dickinson, don't buy the Lang Leav.
The work, by the way, is physical. Lots of squatting and standing up, climbing up and down ladders, sometimes crawling under tables to retrieve stock, etc. And of course the cartons are heavy. I enjoy the physicality. Sitting at a desk racking my brains for 8 hours will only give me a backache - in addition to a headache - but I have not had any problems handling books.
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But it's not purely physical because, after all, it's a bookstore. People do come and chat with you about books and ideas - they want your recommendations, believing (somehow) that since you work in a bookstore you must have taste.
The only other people who work in a bookstore are fellow bookworms, for the pay is too low to retain any other type of person. Every new colleague's happiest moment is receiving their staff discount card - the office is filled with little bundles of books secreted away for future purchase - we all look forward to payday with a single aspiration: to blow our paychecks on books. Furthermore, there is an unspoken code in the staff pantry to never disturb anyone who's reading a book during their break!
In the bookstoreverse there is an alternate economy and hierarchy of humanity. That is to say, we are awful snobs. Outside, the richest, highest-earning people claim superiority. Not so in the bookstore. Inside, we cannot help looking down on people, no matter their social rank or income, who read shitty books. We may be lower paid than you are - but we are superior in the ways that matter. We pity you, you poor rich people with no taste.
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I have a secret workplace pleasure to admit to. I love to eavesdrop on shoppers and observe them out of the corner of my eye. (Working in a library is surely not half as fun as working in a major bookstore, if only because people don't go there to socialise.)
My absolute favourite is the Mismatched Couple. This consists of one super-smart, super-well-read person (i.e. one of us) and one normal person. They walk around, presumably on a date, and Smartypants talks his/her head off about Goethe or Beckett or Dostoyevsky while Normie blanks out, completely lost. Normie is intimidated and/or losing interest fast; but Smartypants doesn't notice, so lost is he in raptures.
"I think I would be perfectly happy alone, or perhaps with just one or two friends, as long as I have good books to read," said one Smartypants to a Normie girl, after an extended monologue about reading - nay, living in! - The Brothers Karamazov. She could not come up with an intelligent reply, alas.
After breathlessly describing each and every novel of Kazuo Ishiguro's, another Smartypants, perhaps a little embarrassed, said: "Ha ha, can you tell I'm a fan of Ishiguro? But you should read him; he's very accessible." Silence.
Young love! What pathos! So painful, yet so delightful to watch. I hope they find love somehow.
I have witnessed teenage boys and girls chatting for hours about poetry on a Friday afternoon, before finally exchanging numbers and internet-thingy handles to stay in touch. It makes me happy when people meet other people at the bookstore. Or when they go on dates or hang out with friends among the books.
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All right, fine, it's not perfect. The pay isn't high; I have mentioned that before. Working 16 hours or 2 days a week, and my take-home (after dreaded CPF deductions) is less than $600. This would be fine if I were a more frugal person; as it is, I need maybe $800 to keep the household in crumpets, coffee, fruit, and all the other necessaries of life.
Last year this wasn't a concern because I had a pretty consistent flow of freelance writing work - but this has dried up in 2023 (thanks chatGPT?). I have been making up the shortfall with bunny boarding. If that fails then I will probably go back to doing food delivery too. I'll get by, somehow.
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