Make It Happen

Disclaimer: I've never read the book "City Of Thieves" by David Benioff. The end.

"It's almost as if Borders is going back to its roots as a personal, hand-selling organization," Albert N. Greco, a professor of marketing at Fordham University and a leading industry analyst, says. "It's a very good marketing strategy and a very positive sign."
~ Some Idiot who had no idea what he was talking about back in 2009.

I started working at Borders Books in 1997. When I first started there, it was a fun, eclectic place to work. We were encouraged to make our own displays, commandeer our own sections and recommend our personal favorites using hand written placards. The music section played whatever CDs they felt like playing, everything from Type O Negative to Kenny G. The employees were allowed to schedule their own events and create their own book circles, hold their own poetry readings and even display their own artwork on the walls. We looked forward to going to work because we felt valued and appreciated. It was like going to art class everyday and being given all the fingerpaints we could possibly want, in every color of the rainbow. We were happy.

Every section had its own "specialist." We always had someone on staff who knew everything there was to know about Manga, or graphic novels. There was a guy who knew the Sci-Fi section inside out and made great recommendations to customers based on books they'd read in the past. Whenever someone came in with a question about horror books or movies, or goth music, I was called upon. And I loved it. I made new friends every damn day. I sold so many copies of House Of Leaves that Mark Danielewski may wish to consider buying me lunch someday. I pushed the Projekt label sampler CDs into the hands of every confused parent who came in at Christmas looking for something that their goth niece would like. I knew my shit, and so did everyone else who worked there.

When CEO Ron Marshall took over Borders Inc. back in '09, I knew we were doomed. Marshall had been a highly successful grocery magnate, and thought he could turn Borders - whose flailing was beginning to get visibly desperate -  around by employing the same tactics used in a big box food chain.

And cue the Archangel Gabriel on trumpet, blowing the death knell for us all.

Basically the idea was this: pick a book and hand sell it to every single customer that walks into the store, regardless of their interests. Hey, it works for stale Snickers bars up at the register in Walgreens, so why not books? "Excuse me Sir or Miss, I know you said you were looking for a recipe book focused on the cuisine of Eastern Europe, but you really want this hard boiled mystery thriller. Yes, you do! BUY IT! Goddammit BUY THE FUCKING BOOK!"

But books are not candy bars. They're not even products, for that matter. And so when our lobotomized management staff presented this brilliant idea to us all in a morning meeting, plastic smiles pasted on their expressionless faces and a glassy sheen over their eyes, we knew it wasn't going to work. And truth be told, none of us tried very hard because we knew it was a stupid, shit idea.

It didn't help matters either that, one year into my 14 year "career" at Borders, our lovely General Manager - a petite gay man who rang on the registers beside us, stocked, took his turn at the info desk and genuinely gave a shit about his employees - was replaced by a soulless, douchy tool with terminal smarm and no conscience at all. He never showed up for work on time, often leaving us sitting outside for over an hour. He never worked on the floor, preferring instead to hide in his office, having long personal phone conversations, occasionally barking orders out over the walkie-talkies and scratching his balls nonstop. He was a classic Haole - a whitebread WASP in khakis and Hawaiian shirts. We all grew to loathe the song "Hawaiian Superman" which was constantly blasted out over the PA, as per McTool's orders.

He did not view us as human beings with lives or feelings. He called us "losers" in front of staff members and customers. He made racist and homophobic remarks in front of black and/or gay employees. He made very inappropriate sexual remarks to the girls, hiring only the most beautiful blondes and giving them the plum schedules. He held Rotary Club meetings in the store before we opened, instructing us all to serve coffee and pastries to his cronies when he was running late, and then actually having the nerve to look shocked when we refused on the grounds that we were not fucking waitresess and had work to do. Upper management finally found out about his little clubhouse and shut it down on the grounds of LP interference, but he was never reprimanded or fired.

He bullied his staff mercilessly, threatening to fire us all if we failed to meet rewards card quotas. He never sold a single card himself, a fact I highlighted when he tried to shame us all by hanging a list of all employees names and sales by the time clock, with percentages next to their names, ranking in order from highest to lowest. I ran a yellow highlighter pen over his 0% and the list was torn down later that day, never to appear again.

You were not allowed to call out sick, although he did it often himself. Scheduled to work constant turnaround shifts (closing at 11pm and coming in at 7am the next morning) I suffered from chronic insomnia and would go four days at a stretch without sleep. Finally, in 2005, I collapsed from exhaustion. I spent a month in the hospital, a week of which was spent comatose and hooked up to life support. When I finally returned to work, the bastard refused to lighten my load, scheduling me to work 6 days in a row, late nights and early mornings again. I refused. He threatened to fire me. I threatened to sue his ass. He backed down when I presented him with a copy of the "Reasonable Accomodations" act. Still, a year later, he told me I'd had my own way long enough and would either have to work when he said, or go part time and lose my benefits. When I brought up my poor medical health, he sneered - actually sneered, like a goddamned cartoon villain - and told me he really doubted there was a doctor in the world who would give me a note saying that I could only work days. Guess what I came in with the next day? A nice note, from my doctor, stating I could only work days and if my boss wished to discuss who had the PhD and who didn't, he could call the office at any time. Again, dropped.

Oh believe me, I wanted to find another job. But it was California in the late 2000's. The economy had imploded. There weren't any jobs. So I stuck it out to the bitter end, much to my boss's displeasure. He'd tried so hard for so long to force me to quit, and had utterly failed. He's since moved on to another retail store, where he bullies and belittles his staff and either doesn't know or simply doesn't care that everyone who ever worked for him hated his guts.

Working for an employer who wants nothing more than to break you down and make you cry isn't like being in an abusive relationship - it is an abusive relationship. It wears you down, it makes you sick, it kills your soul, it makes you distrust everyone and everything positive that follows. I'm still waiting for my new bosses to start threatening and name calling. I know they won't, but I was conditioned for fourteen years to expect such behavior in a boss. And when it doesn't come, I am confused and wary. I got a whopping case of PTSD from a fucking bookstore! How fucking pathetic is that shit? Like someone was going to die if I didn't unpack the new shipment of Oprah's recommended title faster? Shit, the job I have now, people can die if I screw up - but it's still a less stressful environment than that goddamned soul-killing factory I spent fourteen years in.

I'm certainly not blaming the downfall of Borders on one dumb narcissist. Granted, the company had a habit of training their managers to bully their staffs, but there were other factors at work. Actually, the customers were the company's biggest problem and reason number #1 for their eventual liquidation. Because they weren't customers. They were fucking freeloaders. They used Borders as a library. They browsed, they read our magazines in the cafe, they used $75 art books as diaper changing tables, they sat in our chairs for hours, reading our books and breaking the spines and smearing the pages with grease and crumbs. They rarely bought anything. And yet, they had the gall to act surprised when we went out of business. I don't know whose bright fucking idea it was to provide our customers with chairs and sofas to park their mooching asses on, but it was a huge mistake. And when the chairs and couches and cafe tables were full of reading customers, they sat down on the stepstools instead and refused to budge. 

But that Make Book disaster? Yeah, that was the point at which we all knew that Borders was doomed.

Bookstores are not grocery stores, or big box stores or even retail outlets per se. They're more like art galleries. Writing is an art form, like painting and film. When you go to the cineplex to see Godzilla, the girl selling tickets doesn't try to convince you to go see The Grand Budapest Hotel as well. If you enter an art gallery to see the Van Gogh exhibit, the curator does not try to direct you to the Mark Rothko wing. People do not want books thrown at them like free samples of wasabi peanuts in little paper cups. Books are art, and everyone has their own tastes and preferences.

Progress was tracked, percentages were written down on charts posted in the back room. Results were pathetic. Employees were disgruntled. Management was insistent: "It works on paper! Just get out there and do it!" Never once attempting to do it themselves. Looking at us all as if we were out of our fucking minds for suggesting that one particular book could not be shoved off on every single customer who walked into the store, unless they were a fan of that particular genre. And even then it was a crapshoot. I'm a huge fan of horror books, but I didn't care for Laurel K. Hamilton's series, or the works of John Saul. Management simply did not want to hear reason. They stubbornly insisted that we could sell the Make Book choice if we really tried. And if we couldn't try harder, we could damn well be replaced by more enthusiastic robots. And people wonder why we went out of business.

The biggest mistake Borders ever made was stripping away the creative freedom we once had and instilling a stark, harsh regime of corporate sterility. They had everything it took to make their business a brilliant success for years to come, and it was called "the staff." They could have utilized our knowledge and our love for books and cashed in on it big time. But instead, they chose to be a "business." We would follow rules and not ask questions and sell the projected 60 rewards programs a day, keep our transaction time under two minutes, adhere to the strict planograms, use nothing but the pre-approved printed merchandising from corporate and help the store to run as efficiently and as joylessly as a Depression era steel mill.

PS - this is not meant to be a serious report on why Borders Inc. went out of business. This is a personal blog and - as such - is simply a venting vehicle for me.