John Hattaway

Second day of work. It was six hours of being trained on things that I know or intuitively understand as the trainer went over the same things again and again and again. Of course, this was for someone other than me, because she, the other person, had never worked in a bookstore, never worked in a situation where she had to look up product, and never worked a cash register. Therefore the questions that were brought up, along with the answers, were designed for someone who didn’t understand what was going on and yet wanted to work at a bookstore.

We got to go on a scavenger hunt. Apparently this hunt is very difficult and no one ever completes it, they take an inordinate amount of time to complete it, and never actually complete the list. Well, I completed the scavenger hunt today. They were amazed and to top it, the registers are just another register, the principles are pretty much all the same as any other place I have ever worked that required its employees to work with cash, and in the end I got to shelve books and re-arrange magazines because that’s what you have new people do when they start working at a bookstore.

People want to know what I think or feel about all this. To tell you, I don’t really think about it and I don’t really have any feelings about it either. (“It” defines my working at a bookstore.) This is a job. It is something I do to put money into checking accounts so that once a month I can sit down and pay a whole series of bills that need to be paid. I am not interested in long term factors for employment at these shops, I don’t believe that I care whether or not I am employed for any significant length of time – though being employed is important, and for me to feel or think about this would mean that I would ascribe more to the experience than merely the act of my being employed at something that I have, in the past, shown some semblance of aptitude for.

In truth, I am not exactly thrilled to be working at something that requires an hour to fill in the initial application, another two or three hours for orientations, and more than a dozen forms, documents, releases, and background check documents just so that the corporation can cover its collected rear-end if, or when, they are sued because of an employee. In the years I have worked for tech companies interviews are grueling, applications for employment consists of my resume as an attachment to an e-mail, and paperwork is filled in, fill out, and requires signatures – and even the number of signatures is limited to three or four and one of those is on the non-disclosure agreement so that I don’t shop materials that are shared with me off to another company.

However, the first day, other than tedious and somewhat boring, wasn’t all that bad. I did get to meet a lot of people and the employees there continually tell me that this is an exciting place to work. So, in the end, it’s all good. Employment at a bookstore is good and employment has its perks – like, say, 30% off. Woo-hoo.

Real Heroes Fly