What's it like working in a bookshop?

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I have some fantasy idea that it would let me read and chat for at least a large proportion of the day, sipping endless cups of coffee, but suspect it might be very different. Would anyone who has worked or does work in a bookshop advise it for an impressionable 17 year old fresh from school? Thank you (I hope this is sufficiently book-related)

― Alice Saville (Bathsheba), Friday, 6 January 2006 14:49 (nineteen years ago)

It's like working in any other shop, pretty much. Okay, the proximity of books is nice, as are the discounts, but your employers will frown on you reading and drinking coffee during working hours.

― Ray (Ray), Friday, 6 January 2006 14:52 (nineteen years ago)

We had a thread on this some time ago, I seem to remember (but am on dialup today, so I'm not looking for it). I remember my favourite post being something like 'if you want to know what it's like to work in a bookshop, try filling a box with bricks and running up and down stairs with it for eight hours'.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 6 January 2006 15:17 (nineteen years ago)

I'm in work, so I will look for it...

Wokring in a bookshop.
Working in a Bookshop

― Ray (Ray), Friday, 6 January 2006 15:38 (nineteen years ago)

Well done, Ray.

Do my taxes, would you? There's a love.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 6 January 2006 16:04 (nineteen years ago)

I would, but those threads lead me to this blog http://kempa.com/articles/bn/
and I am no longer quite bored enough. If you'd asked me half an hour ago, I so would have...

― Ray (Ray), Friday, 6 January 2006 16:13 (nineteen years ago)

Problem: your employers will frown on you reading and drinking coffee during working hours.

Solution: own the bookshop.

― Aimless (Aimless), Friday, 6 January 2006 17:00 (nineteen years ago)

New problem: you realise that you have to sell enormous steaming piles of crap to remain in the black, and is this really why you wanted to own a bookshop?

― Ray (Ray), Friday, 6 January 2006 17:07 (nineteen years ago)

Solution: Sell customers lots of coffee. Also, diversify your steaming crap so that your shop offers doily bookmarks, woven jute book bags, and crude but gaily coloured fair-trade knick-knacks from Guatemala and Bolivia. At least then you aren't sitting up to your eye teeth in crappy mass-market paperbacks and contrived "gift books".

― Aimless (Aimless), Friday, 6 January 2006 17:15 (nineteen years ago)

Or alternatively, switch books with people as they are purchasing them. They bring a copy of Dan Brown to the counter, but leave with a copy of Moby Dick. Then if they come back deny all knowledge as you don't sell Moby Dick. And that way you only need ever buy five or six copies of Dan Brown books.

― Navek Rednam (Navek Rednam), Friday, 6 January 2006 17:37 (nineteen years ago)

Solution: own the bookshop
then you can also be psychotic and bitch-slap customers in public, and get away with it because you're "local color"

― Morley Timmons (Donna Brown), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:08 (nineteen years ago)

This is what it's like when you're not selling Dan Brown books: a customer comes in and asks for Iceberg Slim a)in Seattle's whitest neighborhood b) BY HIS REAL NAME, therefore being much more down than I, apparently

― Morley Timmons (Donna Brown), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:12 (nineteen years ago)

That's not his real name?!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 6 January 2006 21:55 (nineteen years ago)

Want to know what it's like to work in a bookshop? Here you go. The world's creepiest-looking guy came into our shop this afternoon. He was muttering to himself and he wiped his hands thoroughly and extravagantly on the sleeves of his coat before touching any of the books. He blew imaginary dust off the display table before opening a book and carefully examining it, all the time rocking backwards and forwards saying "the child, the child".
Then, while he was standing at the religion shelves, he decided to be extra clean before he picked up The Bible. So he spat into his cupped hand. A huge, long strand of snail trail spit right into his hand. And he rubbed his hands together and then wiped them clean on the front of his trousers and on the sleeves of his coat. Myself and the volunteer watched, too aghast to even ask him to leave. When he had finally had his fill of Our Lord for the day and had left the shop, we threw the book in the bin, because I think if anyone else had ever had to touch it I would have been sick on them.
That's what working in a bookshop is like.
I have had a hard day and am pretty drunk now.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 6 January 2006 22:48 (nineteen years ago)

On the plus side, I picked up Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee - American Penguin edition, score! - and The Moro Affair by Leonardo Sciascia today. So it's not all creeps and spitting.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 6 January 2006 23:04 (nineteen years ago)

Scharpling & Wurster to thread! ("I was hanging out with Richard Meyers and Douglas Colvin--oh, you might know them as Richard Hell and Dee Dee Ramone . . . ")

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Friday, 6 January 2006 23:05 (nineteen years ago)

I'm gonna get drunk in sympathy. Yikes! xxpost

― Morley Timmons (Donna Brown), Friday, 6 January 2006 23:05 (nineteen years ago)

xpost Matos, please kill me

― Morley Timmons (Donna Brown), Friday, 6 January 2006 23:06 (nineteen years ago)

A friend of mine lives next door to Mr. Hell. I said to her, "Do you ever knock on his door when you need to borrow an egg for the cookies you're making?" And I guess she more or less had.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 7 January 2006 11:04 (nineteen years ago)

I would suggest pursuing a degree in Library Science. I know Valporaiso University offers that curriculum. I'm sure many other universities also.

― John F. Dziedziak (Polack), Saturday, 7 January 2006 14:19 (nineteen years ago)

two years pass...

I love book shops; this is the one I go to

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3004/2616342739_9be894340b.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3095/2617180754_3833a70e7f.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3064/2617178436_cda51c95bf.jpg

― czn, Saturday, 28 June 2008 11:06 (seventeen years ago)

Aargh go to far too many for my liking, the one I end up going to most often these days is Henry Pordes in Leicster sq. The books they stock do look really nice for a 2nd hand store, in that nothing I've picked up from them has fallen apart.

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 28 June 2008 11:38 (seventeen years ago)

That looks like parts of my house.

― James Morrison, Saturday, 28 June 2008 23:45 (seventeen years ago)

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