Books Without Borders, My Life at the World's Dumbest Bookstore Chain

[DainBramaged]

It's embarrassing now, but on the day that I was hired to work at Boston's flagship Borders store in 1996, I was so happy that I danced around my apartment. After dropping out of college, I had worked a succession of crappy jobs: mall Easter Bunny, stock boy at Sears and Kmart and Walmart, a brief and nearly fatal stint as a landscaper. A job at Borders seemed to be a step, at long last, toward my ultimate goal of writing for a living. At least I would be working with books. And the scruffy Borders employees, in their jeans and band T-shirts, felt a lot closer to my ideal urban intellectuals than the stuffy Barnes & Noble employees with their oppressive dress code and lame vests.

The fact that Borders offered me a full-time job, which allowed me to quit two part-time jobs (at a Staples and a Stop & Shop) and offered health insurance (that promised to help pay for my impending wisdom tooth extraction), was a pretty big deal, too.

For better and for worse, Borders was my college experience. I behaved badly—fucked, drank, and did drugs with everyone I could. My fellow employees snuck me into bars when I was underage, and then cheered when, during my 21st birthday party, I wound up facedown in the gutter sobbing about how my heart had been ripped in two by an ex-fiancée. I was not alone in my bad behavior: Every week, different employees were hooking up, having affairs, breaking up, recoupling, playing drinking games that involved comically large hunting knives, getting in fights, getting pregnant, and showing up drunk for work.

In the beginning, the store felt like a tight-knit family. As time went on, we became a confederation of hedonists with little regard for one another's feelings. At one Christmas party that I didn't attend, a new female employee reportedly gave blowjobs to anybody who wanted one. (Later, at least a couple of men who stood in line for the newbie's ministrations complained about picking up an STD.) Suddenly, the parties weren't as fun anymore. One employee hanged himself. Another dropped dead of a heart attack on the sales floor; the story I heard is that he slumped over in the DVD section on the overnight replenishment shift and wasn't discovered until the store opened for business the next morning. (Turns out, that story was exaggerated—his body was actually found about five minutes after he died.)

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/books-without-borders/Content?oid=9322294

[DainBramaged]

1. It is a long snd worthwile read, and the best paragraph......

In 2001, Borders would go on to partner with Amazon.com, allowing the online book retailer to handle their internet sales for them, if you can believe it. There's a photo of Jeff Bezos and then-Borders president and CEO Greg Josefowicz shaking hands to celebrate the partnership. Josefowicz has weatherman hair and a broad smile, and he's beaming past the camera with the cocksure giddiness of a guy who thinks he just got rid of all his problems because he sold his dumb old cow for a handful of really cool magic beans. But when you pull your eyes away from Josefowicz's superheroic chin, you notice that Jeff Bezos is smiling directly into the camera with keen shark eyes. His smile is more relaxed, a little more candid than Josefowicz's photo-op-ready grin. It's the face of someone who's thinking, I finally got you, you son of a bitch.

It's a photograph of the exact second that Borders died.

[Odin2005]

2. That is fucking sad.

[DainBramaged]

8. My last time in I remembered there being way too many tables of table top books

Those $10-$20 books nobody ever read...my beautiful Daughter used to sit on the floor in the children's department reading until she found a book she liked, which is how she discovered the "A Series of Unfortunate Events" books.

[NBachers]

3. I read the entire article. Thanks

[MilesColtrane]

4. Been there...

I did my time at Waldenbooks, which later merged with/became Border's, and also at a large, privately-owned regional chain bookstore.

I saw firsthand the out of touch marketing decisions that had us stocking tons of crap that would only end up being returned, because the people in corporate DIDN'T KNOW our customers like we did.

The folding of these booksellers was accelerated by a business culture that values an advanced degree in marketing over the real world experience of talking to the customers every day.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

5. I was a Waldenbooker too, 2001-2003

I had a good time, liked who I worked with and so forth, but god if you got the wrong DSM, your were fucked. We had one who thought badgering old ladies on fixed incomes to buy PR cards was acceptable behavior.

[SusanaMontana41]

6. Read the whole story. Sad indeed. n/t

[DainBramaged]

7. True book lover