Sunday, July 24, 2011

Say No More, Mon Amour

Borders, Inc. has announced its demise. Complete liquidation. As a former employee of the chain, with many friends still employed by the company, the news was devestating. While I understand why physical book stores are on the verge of extinction, as a writing student and book-lover, it is terrifying.

Being a Borders bookseller wasn't just a "job." It was a community, a family, a passion. People bound together over their love of the arts. And the employees and artists at Borders believed in their work.

I changed positions & stores from supervisor to bookseller to barista back to supervisor again for almost four years. The company changed its internal structure frequently and sometimes drastically, but when times got tough, the employees of Borders held hands with change and skipped through the manga section...literally.

And it might be the sickening proclivity I have towards nostalgia, but I will always look back on my time at Borders and think: Man, I miss working there.

That job was the closest I ever got to being IN the movie Empire Records (best first job movie ever). And for fulfilling that fantasy, Borders, I bid you a sweet sweet adieu set to a soundtrack of the Gin Blossoms.

You will be missed.

XOXO,
Leni "Did You Find Everything Okay?" Bookseller

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Since my livejournal is private, I thought the best resposnse to your post here would be my own little epitaph as written in said journal.

I was a mighty figure of a retail god, as is generally known. And as such, given my history as an employee of Edges Books and Other Related and Still Other Somewhat Less Related Items, and given their current evaporation, I figure it something of a duty and also something of an honour, to make some bit of brief statement.

I spent a good hour in an interview for the job of bookslinger, and I admit I was not always the gloriously capable figure I am no doubt remembered as. I cried more than once, was devastated by a customer or two, bungled my way through all manner of tasks, and let myself take things like the way a display looks home with me in my head to agonize over- in short, it was not something I was always good at. That said, I became knowledgeable very quickly both about the books that exist, and the categories of readers which nearly always were all you had to keep in mind to make good recommendations. As has been said certainly many times before I ever said it, it was not unlike Empire Records.

The work of it aside, I really do think there is no better place of employment with regard to being exposed to amazing people (and of course by way of those people amazing books, music, movies and TV shows). By the end of my two years there, I made, mostly by request of coworkers, 30 half-hour mixed CDs to be used before and after store hours, experieinced many a little in store dance party, got to know some regulars, had hours of engaging conversations with both coworkers and emplyees both about books etc and completely unrelated, was party to the invention of the most attrocious coffee drink I've ever heard of (orange-mango latte, the only drink I ever purchased anywhere I did not compeltely insist on finishing because it was just that awful- I tried to finish it... I really did), and introduced no small population of people to many of the things I love. And I obviously can't give any reasonable sense of the friends I made, nor of the shame at my own inability to stay connected with those friends.

Steph and I went to the Edges here (not the one I worked at) shortly after hearing the news with the intention of having our last Washington's Pride coffee drinks from their cafe, to find the cafe already closed up, and roped off. We walked around the store for a little while, but as best as i can describe it, I'd say it seemed deflated. The energy that I know too well to be carreid by the general presence of the employees of Edges had vanished. It's not unlike going back to Hogwarts and finding the pictures not moving, the stairs fixed in place, perhaps still pretty, but emptying of life.

Goodbye to my history as a book god. And to all of you who shared that time with me, I want you to know you will always be these gods, this pantheon of mighty folk who are conjured in me by happenings and thoughts and situations, and I put faith in the things you've helped me to believe.

Too much? Too bad.

-Barrett