1. Just to dispel any initial illusions I have yet to meet someone in a bookstore who has time to read on the job. Ever. Maybe flip through a book, perhaps read the back but I don’t think a full novel has ever been read in a store whilst said store was open. And if you were reading, you’d better believe your coworkers are planning mutiny because they must be doing the work.
2. You will never meet someone with the same taste as you. No one will read a book you liked and agree with you, ever. This may be a problem exclusive to me ‘Little Miss American Psycho-Battle Royale-Fight Club’. But nine times out of ten you will be asked what someone should get for their 12 year old niece. (And none of the aforementioned books ever cut it)
3. To tie into that, you have to love every book ever even if the idea of it makes your skin crawl. Why? Because you must sell every book ever. Be all things to all people, let them know (in my case as diplomatically as you can muster) that Twilight is ‘a really hot seller’. And that ’sure, you loved it, and would recommend it to anyone’ You cannot be sarcastic or mean about it. You have no idea how many veins I’ve popped telling people terrible books are wonderful. But you have to, because you’re a sales person. You can try to distract them with something less painful but this smoke screen has rarely helped my efforts.
4. Furthermore, you have to know everything about every genre. Which in turn, seems to require you know everything about everything. From Fantasy to… Sports. ‘What’s a good book on plants? Does it include detailed information on where to plant my hostas? What do you MEAN you don’t know?” Very few people will legitimately believe that you have not read every book in the store.
5. You must be open to the usual plight of one working in customer service and consent to being treated like an idiot every single day. This is sort of a general law, but I figured I should include it, just to remind you. At twenty you get treated no better in a bookstore than at McDonald’s.
6. There are more stupid labour detail intensive time draining jobs in a bookstore then any other place I’ve worked. Starting with receiving the books (which used to require typing every ISBN to cross our doorstep into the computer — and even occasionally all the the book’s information such as the title and author, we’ve advanced since then but not much), labeling each book (and not with just a generic label, a specific label is needed to be matched to each one), attaching special orders to the right books or shelving them. A hideously extensive process just to get the books on the shelves. You also have to do inventory yearly (which involves putting your hand on every book in the store), and a return several times a year (which involves also touching every book in the store as well as scanning and shipping out old inventory– ordeal doesn’t begin to describe it) We actually just finished a return which is why I am so bitter today.
7. Special Orders are always mayhem, and you will never have the right book in stock. The only person who will have the right book is sitting eating Cheerios in their little Belgian publishing house. Or it’s a self pub, or out of print, or out of stock indefinitely. Even though the customer KNOWS they saw it at Chapters yesterday. Or they really need it… tomorrow. And well, they don’t know the title or the author but they will kill the next twenty minutes of your time telling you all about the plot. Because, as I said earlier, you have of COURSE read every book in the store. And every book ever written.
8. This is not really part of the list of why you don’t want to work in a bookstore, but what the hell — Amazon wants to sell ad space in Kindle E-book Readers? Because my brain isn’t already permanently jelly-ized by the other millions of commercials I see daily. If I’m buying an e-book reader and a book then damnit, I don’t want advertisers blinking in the corner of my eye. Myself being a grumpy old man aside. What is with commercials at movies? I’m only paying 20 bucks so you can blind me with fifteen minutes of ads. Okay, grumpy old man REALLY aside now.
9. If they come in the store at five to close they are a browser. There is no exception to this rule in recorded history.
10. Sometimes you learn more than you want to about your customers when they decide to buy that copy of the Kama Sutra. And they are seventy. And they have a suspicious looking drugstore bag. And usually no teeth.

Okay, my momentum has died, but I think that’s a good start, don’t you?

• Get my hands on a guitar tuner — they’re only like $10 so procrastinating is not really worth it
• Call, or get mum to call the guy about my summer job
• Revamps on the following websites in the following order:
  • Finish off the last little bits of the Tim Fanlisting (Codes, About, fix mistakes)
  • Do the ShadowRO website
  • Do Empty Cage, new layout, put the focus on the blog aspect
• Move mum’s domain from Network Solutions to be hosted on my hosting plan, as well as make a new layout for her site
• Study for Math
• Get money order for room next year

I actually did some work on my own websites lately making a less crappy layout for the Timothy McGee (NCIS) Fanlisting. The layout is strongly based on all the stuff I did on the UPSA/AENP website, but it actually doesn’t look too terrible. I’m afraid I’m becoming a gradient addict though, which I must halt. I have a few more things I need to do before I can leave Timmy alone for awhile. Including, getting some codes for him (I’m having some problems with moving outlined text on the Gimp which is a hassle, I’m tempted to start booting my Windows Drive, spend a day making codes for all my fanlistings, zipping them, uploading them, and getting this shit DONE!) That and for some reason that beats the shit out of me the images for my affiliates are not showing up. I’m going to talk to Amber about it though, because she seems to have them working, and she is my most beloved hostee.

Speaking of hostees, I am about to start hosting my mom’s bookstore’s website, so if things get a bit traumatic over here in the next little while it’s because I’m trying to move her over. Currently she runs a wordpress install, but I feel like she should be on something else. Like, I can’t find a gallery script that is condusive to her technopeasantry, and according to her that is very important. Not sure why as she never updates. But perhaps one day this will be made clear to me. I’m not sure I really remember how to point her domain at a subdomain over here, but I’ll try. (Plus if I’m hosting her she’ll pay for my hosting package and all I need to pay for is my domain =D…)

I’m starting to actually feel like web design again. Which is completely unheard of, I’m writing notes for a Battle Royale site, I have bits and pieces of my Miroku site ready to be built up again. This cannot be a bad thing.

As some closing remarks on internet affairs, I plan on pulling ECNET apart a bit in the next little while. Basically, I’m going to make it more geared towards blogging and wigets (Twitter, Last.fm, etc.) and put less focus on the pages (that I don’t even really have to be honest). I hope to get some information hacked out soon, such as some reviews of the Linux Apps I’ve been using as well as some writing I’ve been doing. I plan on posting a few essays and stuff I’ve written (even if they’re for school if I find the subject matter interesting I’ll post it) but I think EC is going to be more of a spring board than any sort of use by itself. That’s kind of how it already is, but like, make it so you know that’s what it’s going to be and not expect something more. And it will validate strict… I promise myself. Hahahah. I love my domain so much, and it has never really… fit.

In other news, school, blargh. Well, sort of blargh, maybe like, half blargh. Because I decided to make my minor Computer Science I have to take Math. Which was one of those really terrible ideas I once had. The course is soundly kicking my ass into next month. And the final for it is on the last possible day, that would be April 30th! Which is pretty sucky. The worst part being that I have no idea what is going on in this class. I can only assume it is something appallingly difficult and leave it at that. For fear of my sanity.

I have more to say I think, but I should really be doing some school readings. Later.