Off a cliff.

Okay. We're back, I guess. Little choice in the matter, as always, but we may as well enjoy it.

Why'd it stop? Well, I always just say I'm lazy—it's always easier to not write things than to write things. But for as much giddy fun as it was to start, this blog in particular was a fragile thing, and it pretty much got derailed by events. That store, you know, it just kept going, in spite of all the disasters. Day after ridiculous freakin' day. But it was hard for me, your chronicler, to imagine that I was the Representative of any kind of Noble Resistance once most of you loyal Resisters out there had, you know, quit in disgust. (No hard feelings, of course—and one of you, I note, has now come back. Heh. God help you.) And none of y'all seemed too inclined to post comments, now did you? That was my original vision, you'll recall, although I recognize this kind of thing isn't for everybody. (Really, I was just humbled that I had "fans" at all.)

But after the Great Supervisor Massacre of the summer months, when the last of the old senior staff and the more promising new members had sprinted for the exits, it was sorta hard not to feel like it was all a bit pointless, or pathetic, even. Who was I, after all? Just some snarky malcontent guy who's too lazy and socially anxious to devote any energy to getting a better job. And I felt something like Survivor Guilt, I guess. The guilt of the collaborator. Because I'd been co-opted, after all. I'd let them give me more hours, and let them start to depend on my presence, and I'd let myself enjoy it, for whatever it was worth. Sales Manager and I had silently reached an understanding of sorts. He needed me to get things done, and I needed him to keep the situation tolerable. General Manager, of course, only showered me with more love, creepy and artificial as his approval always is. This was relaxing, though, which made me feel more guilty about pretending to be a Rebel. I was more than polite to The Man, after all. I'm a friendly guy, and not stupid; I'm the sort who's going to instinctively be decent to the boss, and then feel bad about it.

But of course that couldn't last forever. And, well, those of you who are still around know what happened. (Some of you may know more than me, and I'm quite curious to hear it.) Either our Special Friend had been reading some half-baked "management" book, or he was starting to feel some heat from above, regarding our personnel and morale situation. I did hear rumours that Former Merch Supervisor had done at least something to try to blow the whistle on him with the Higher Ups, but I never heard anything more about it. Word was maybe getting around, at least a little bit. Because this past week we were all asked, by means of a form in our mailboxes, to evaluate the man's performance. Seriously. Yeah, I laughed out loud, too. Is he mad? I thought. How could that possibly do him any good? But here he was, at least pretending to ask all us Regular Folks what he's doing right and wrong.

Naturally, my Satirist Instincts blazed back into life, and all sorts of delightfully sarcastic rants just started writing themselves. This was going to be awesome. I went so far as to copy some extra evaluation forms, in case I needed them.

Then, of course, I got cold feet, or at least got embarrassed. Maybe it was immature enough to mock the guy behind his back while still keeping him happy, and to anonymously and gratuitously insult him to his face, in writing, would just be childish. Better just to imagine it, as it almost always is in these cases.

Couldn't resist, though, finally. They made me do it. You all understand. I was walking into work today, when I passed New Ops Manager. She was telling someone, a bit uncomfortably, that she needed some people to turn in those feedback sheets. I've only got four so far, she said. And looked at me, where I'd stopped to listen, curious. I'd thought it was too late already. Did you fill out yours? she asked me, a bit hopeful. Uh, really? I said. You want me to? You sure? I knew I was being given another opportunity to have the courage of my convictions, so to speak, and my vicious streak was leaping at the chance.

Yeah! she said. Do it! So first I clocked in, because I wasn't gonna do it for free, and then I wrote what I could remember of what I'd been composing in my head. I don't know if Ops Manager understood what she was urging me to do, but I think she does now. She's a Team Player, but she's starting to understand the real situation. We'll see what she does with that.

I took the high road, as much as I possibly could stand. Nothing actually personally insulting or played just for laughs. But not really what you'd call constructive criticism, either. It ain't gonna go over well, if he really gets to see any part of it.

Here's what I can reconstruct from memory:

[If you've seen this form, you'll know it's basically blank, but divided into DO, DON'T, and CONTINUE, or something like that.]

DO
Manage the store. I.e. hire and support competent and knowledgeable staff and stay the heck out of their way. [Yes, I said "heck." This is business, people! I'm a professional! And Gov. Palin has made euphemistic swearing hip again, for gosh sakes!]

STOP
…saying things like "UPT" and "OSAT" This is absurd. Nothing we do has more than a tiny, marginal effect on sales. Trying to "drive" sales is like primitive tribespeople trying to "drive" precipitation by dancing in circles. I realize this renders much of what you do as a manager irrelevant. Deal with it. It's anybody's guess whether this industry even survives. Let's try to have some dignity.

Uh, yeah. And I put in on Ops Manager's desk before I could talk myself out of it. Then I got to the floor and thought furiously that there was so much stuff I could have said and forgot to say! So I went back into the office, got another form, and added the most important thing.

…and, it goes without saying, STOP making good supervisors quit in appalled disgust. It makes things very stressful for the rest of us. Thanks.

And I was done. Giddy, but a little shocked. Now what was gonna happen?

Oh, but they made me. They did. You all know. And usually I feel terrible after I do something like that. Satire, I can convince myself, is an actual art form—real aggression always just makes me feel sick and criminal. But this time I felt pretty peaceful, really. I hadn't just kept quiet, and I wasn't wrong about any of it. I hadn't been vulgar or over-the-top, not really. And I had nothing left to prove about my worth to the company, really—if anybody felt like confronting me about my Attitude, well, that would just be more entertainment.

Of course, there's the matter of my source of income. And the matter of the worst employment market in a good long time. We all know about this. It gave me a little chill to think that I was gambling an almost-full-time job on my self-righteousness, basically.

But, you know, Whatever, as the kids say. Because I wasn't lying about the Big Picture. The New York Times agrees: we are all So Screwed:

Retailers Report a Sales Collapse

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
Published: November 6, 2008

Sales at the nation’s largest retailers fell off a cliff in October, casting fresh doubt on the survival of some chains and signaling that this will probably be the weakest Christmas shopping season in decades.

So, you know, Blaze of Glory it is, I guess. It's Armageddon For the Book People. Ragnarok! Gotterdammerung! Any other scary Heavy Metal Apocalypse terms you can think of! Rains of fire and blood and anemic sales figures and vanishing revenue streams!

Like I told the boss, let's do it with some dignity. And hopefully the new president puts us all to work building dams, or big statues of himself, or something. I'm flexible.

Pointed.

Sorry. Took a couple of weeks off. I actually have another blog, if you can believe it, and about twenty other time-wasting hobbies. And, hey, it's sort of dispiriting when large sections of my intended audience just vanish in a cloud of Turnover. But I know some of y'all are still checking, so I'll keep it going.

I'm officially part of the problem, aren't I? They're starting to depend on me more, because they're getting desperate and I know how to read a merch chart. And I smile and cooperate--there's no use pretending I'm some kinda subversive. I'll take their money.

Still, I keep the passive aggression coming, when I can. A dialogue:

(The multimedia cage. Me, learning. Harried-and-Frantic Sales Manager trying to teach me in little bursts, in between running around the store putting out completely meaningless fires.)

SM: ...and make sure you look at this. (Points at list on the wall of absurdly specific Loss Prevention Policies regarding keepers and chiclets and whatnot.) We really got dinged on this in that LP audit.

Me: (Still cooperating. But sarcastic cruelty stirring.) Dinged?

SM: Yeah. All that keepering stuff cost us twenty points.

Me: (Politely amused.) Points?

SM: Yeah, twenty points we would've had, otherwise.

Me: What would we have done with these "points," had we hung on to them?

(Silence, for a moment. Then he gives up, ignores it, and moves on. He knows my uses, but he also knows when I'm mocking him. We're both trying to believe we're getting the better end of this deal.)

But seriously, man. Please, by all means, tell me what to do. Somebody's got to. I will absolutely follow Loss Prevention policy to the best of my ability. But please don't try to explain why we're doing anything, because the reasons are invariably idiotic and I'm just going to laugh at you. I do the job right because it's my job, not because I give a damn.

Points. Saints preserve us.

From Beyond The Grave!

People in general have such a weird, distorted view of the sorts of things they're going to find in a store like ours, don't they? Righteously indignant when there aren't any children's books about Millard Fillmore. (The report is due TOMORROW!) Overwhelmed with gratitude when it turns out we actually have a copy of The Iliad or Tuesdays With Morrie. There's no predicting it.

But here's a funny one. I approached a forty-something white woman, all help and concern. She seemed thoughtful and a little spacey. Well, I'm looking for this philosophy book, she said. You probably won't have it.

I tried to play it at my most soothing. Just tell me what the problem is, and we'll make it okay...

Well, it's by Ayn Rand, she said. Ah, I said, nodding. The situation became clear. Rand fans are a Special breed--convinced that they're on to something, that they've found the Secret. They all read Atlas Shrugged at age sixteen, or whatever, and were overwhelmed to learn the truth--that people just like them are really the Good people, the ones who should be running the world, instead of the whiners and do-gooders and commies.

But of course, these folks are an awful long way from being any kind of Underground. Those books are really popular; they've never been out of print. They tell wannabe self-made millionaires exactly what they want to hear. So I just started taking this woman to the Philosophy section, pretty much without comment.

I don't know, she said. It's kind of old. She's dead, you know.

Huh. Didn't quite know what to say to that, but I know I couldn't help smiling as we walked. Yes, I said, she certainly is, isn't she? What I didn't say was how could we fail to stock the complete works of somebody who has a plausible claim to be the Worst Writer of the Twentieth Century? I mean, Hitler was pretty lousy, but he was far less prolific! Instead, I handed her Philosophy: Who Needs It? and moved on.

But you know, actually we carry quite a surprising number of books by people who are No Longer With Us! Sidney Sheldon! St. Augustine of Hippo! Kurt Cobain! Bill Shakspeare! Death absolutely doesn't make you commercially unviable!

Can you imagine if that actually was some sort of Inventory Guideline? For God's sake, get out there with a V-Cart and get Norman Mailer's books off of the shelves! Don't you read the papers? We're clearly in Non-Compliance with the Living People First Act!

"O, heavens! Die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's a hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year!"
(Some sarcastic guy.)

Finally, Some Action!

Commenter Dave is a veteran of the Competition, as well as the independent bookstore world that I came out of. So he knows what he's talking about:

Judging by the perpetual state of understaffing and inventory problems at every major retail store...this is the way they like it. It maximizes profit and employee turnover. Yes, you're being pushed to quit, of course. An entire staff of part-time, no-benefit college kids is what they want. With maybe a couple weary, 55-hour-a-week managers at the top on the verge of suicide.

This is, of course, absolutely true. This is the model honed to ruthless perfection by Wal-Mart, but it's the basic system now in any big retail operation. It's the only way to make any money in a business like this. Full time, minimally competent staff are a luxury that they don't think they can afford. So Dave tells us, basically, not to expect any help or sympathy from anyone at any level of the company--As far as they're concerned, the System is Working!

But of course, it's not. They're getting increasingly desperate, hoping they can wait out this rough period by cutting every possible corner. (How long does it take us to re-order bags? Or hand soap?) But even if the economy and the industry turn around, there won't be anyone left who cares. Every store will be run by part-time twenty-year-olds, and no one will ever know where anything is.

I still, for my own part, hold out some hope that there are still some people somewhere Above us who have some institutional memory of the way things used to work, and that these people have done what they've had to do to get along, but they secretly feel horrible guilt. And when they see the startling trend at our store, they'll be sympathetic to us--because we'll be saying what they've been afraid to say.

Barring that, hopefully we can collect enough personally damning material on Our Particular Problem to insure that he won't be able to just run the store into the ground and walk away from it. He'll go down with it.

But if Dave's right, and no one who cares about the sorts of things we care about can possibly have lasted this long at the corporate level where they could make any difference, well, that just means that We're It. We're the Institutional Memory. All the enthusiastic kids coming in to replace the old and bitter people being driven out, well, they're gonna assume that this is just how things are. They're obviously going to be aware that their boss is a hideous grotesque, but they'll assume that anybody who runs a store is like that. Right up until we sit them down and explain it to them. Then we'll see.

And finally, an insider speaks. Anonymous assures us from experience that even our company can't keep things like this all of the time--we're in a uniquely inconvenient location and have uniquely awful bosses. And gives us eyewitness testimony suggesting that the war on our old store culture was and is completely intentional. Read the whole thing.

Rumbling

Morale continues its merry little Death Spiral. Merch Supervisor called off today--for, like, the second Sunday in a month. And, hey, good for him. I pretty much respect anybody's sovereign right to not go to work. You've gotta do what you've gotta do. But gee, that can't be a good sign, can it? Clearly, he's "not feelin' it," as the kids say. Who would be?

But of course, it started a chain reaction, since that left the Sales Manager in command for the entire day, with three (three!) clerks and one cashier, for most of it. We were all running around like crazy, of course. This no longer particularly bothers me, really, which is sad in its own way, but Work is Work, you know? Our poor Second Banana, though, seemed even more frazzled than usual. And that's pretty frazzled. Usually he can keep up the manic good cheer no matter what, but the cracks were beginning to show by closing time, when we still had numerous customers floating around. Café seller was watching the door for us, and asked over the radio if the store was clear. No, it's not, Our Boy said in a mournful voice. Oh, okay, the helpful cafe person chirped back, ready to keep waiting. No, he said, even gloomier. It's NOT okay. I went for my own radio.

We're losing him, I said. Somebody get the dart gun.

We got through it, of course; we always do. But he wasn't any happier--he was convinced, I could tell, that he was gonna be blamed for the condition of the store tomorrow. Rather than, you know, thanked for getting through a difficult day. Of course, he's almost certainly right. He should just learn not to care so much. But won't, we know.

I'll see you next week, the regular Sunday cashier said politely to the Sales Manager, as we all walked out.

Maybe, he said. We all laughed darkly.

Well, I'll see you tomorrow, anyway, I said.

Maybe, he said. Then laughed again. (Just Kidding!)

But this is getting some momentum, though, isn't it? People bailing, supervisors calling in sick, managers making ominous jokes about quitting. Metaphors about rats and sinking ships come to mind, but we should avoid clichés. Also, we should not compare our colleagues to rats. You are all nice people, even those of you who have Already Abandoned Us.

Seriously, though. The writing is on the wall, considering who left us this week. That's a cliché, too, of course, but it works because what's so telling is that this time the writing isn't on the wall. Even the outgoing Ops Manager observed the Institutional Protocol, cheerfully signing the drywall in the stockroom with a sharpie, like so many before her. The Training Supervisor Emeritus just quit. Unceremoniously. Didn't come back. Nobody was shocked.

You know who I mean--the single most beloved member of the staff, the person who'd worked for this company longer than any of us. The guy who's better at making new hires feel comfortable than anybody else, ever. The guy who made me feel comfortable when I got in this business twelve years ago. Well, he's doing something else, now, and good for him. And what's the point in a sentimental ritual like signing the wall, he must've thought, when there's no reason to think that anybody who'd remember him will be around in six months?

No reason to think that's a bad assumption, either, but it doesn't have to be true. This could go in a lot of different directions. Sure, we're watching the store disintegrate around us, but there's no reason we can't be the last ones standing. That was my idea behind forming this Community of the Like-minded, so that we can all be Grimly Amused together, and maybe just possibly salvage something out of this.

Squawk?

OMG this is precious. I was in the stockroom this afternoon, unpacking next week's new releases and organizing them on carts. This is a soothing, relatively mindless task of the sort I really actually like doing. I mean, sure, that leaves the Previous GM on the bookselling frontlines while I'm comfortably tucked away in back, but hey, I'm not in charge! If somebody thinks that's a wise idea, great.

Anyway, it's fun to see the new books as they appear, even if they're almost uniformly terrible. This is why all you poor IPT folks keep doing your horrible, dusty jobs--you really do get a kick out of taking stuff out of boxes and seeing it before anybody else. Anybody who's worked in any store, or been a little kid at Christmas, knows about this. But sometimes...boy, sometimes you get a gem:



Huh. That's...well, that's a bird on a desk. Wearing a tie. In any sane world, this would be completely baffling, or terrifyingly surreal--something out of a booze-and-codeine fueled nightmare. And that title--a primitive, pre-linguistic screech, a howl from the collective unconscious, a Barbaric Yawp! But, really, this world ain't particularly sane, and really it was perfectly obvious what sort of book I was dealing with. Small hardcover, maybe six by eight? White? About 150 pages, maybe less? About five words on a page, maybe less? Weird, strained animal symbolism? Yeah! It's one of those staggeringly cynical and putrid little Inspirational Business Fables! Who Moved My Cheese? F.I.S.H. Our Iceberg Is Melting. And so on. Books for people who don't Have Time to read books, because they're important, but who find this sort of drivel inexplicably cute. This particular book seems a couple of years behind the curve, but that doesn't mean it won't be a hit.

But check this out. I had to read the jacket copy, of course, and look at the lessons I learned:

Unfortunately, we've all seen it happen. When faced with a problem, rather than working cooperatively to come up with a solution, your manager or colleagues come swooping in, squawking loudly, dump orders riddled with formulaic advice, and then take off, leaving you and everyone else to clean up the mess. Or—let's be honest: there may have been a time (or three) when you have been guilty of doing that very thing yourself.

While this happens in every workplace worldwide more frequently than ever, it doesn't have to. Through the story of Charlie, a seagull who doesn't understand how his management actions are holding back his flock, Travis Bradberry, Ph.D., reveals the three virtues of great leadership that he has used to help thousands of people and organizations deal with seagull managers in the workplace and, just as important, to avoid being one themselves.

Charlie the seagull is a well-intentioned manager who, when faced with new challenges after previously leading his flock to success, fails to understand how his management style is holding back, rather than helping, his team. Through our bird's-eye view of Charlie, overconfident Scott, quiet Maya, practical Yufan, and skinny, shy Alfred, we see them and the rest of the flock struggle to solve their problems while absorbing the three virtues of great leadership and teamwork along the way. This entertaining and illuminating fable will help make us all more productive, less prone to depositing messes on the heads of those around us, and more able to work effectively with those who continue to squawk at us every day.

See? It's all clear now! Our problem is that we are dealing not with a human being, but with some sort of Metaphorical Sea Bird. Or something. He just Fails to Understand how his Style is holding back his Team. (That's us.)

Notice how Charlie the Seagull is "well-intentioned," though? Of course! Why wouldn't he be? Everybody thinks they're well-intentioned, and this book is clearly aimed at the Charlies of the world. They want to think they're the Real Good Guys.

But how'd you end up in that position, Charlie, squawking your stupid meaningless orders at people? Were all your intentions "good?"

Maybe. But if you press me, I'll tell you that I think telling anybody else what to do at any time is suspect, and enjoying it is, for lack of a better word, evil. What you're calling "management" is an act of violence, and it's inherently polluting, like any other form of violence. I'm not naive, and I'm not some kinda anarchist. I understand that we need people who are willing to do that, or nothing will ever get accomplished, just like we need good cops who are willing to hurt people if they have to in order to get their difficult job done. But the sorts of people who are eager to do any of those things aren't my people. That's all.

Discomfort

Objectively speaking, it may be a good thing, but it creeps me out that he likes me so much. I'm not your friend! I want to say. Stop being friendly! Don't ask me politely to do things if you're going to bark orders at people whom I like! But would I rather he made me as miserable as he makes some of you? These are uncomfortable sorts of questions to ask yourself.

But of course, all of this is what I find terribly fascinating, and why I find it so damned entertaining to write about. All the weird, unfathomable stuff that somebody like that brings out in ordinary people like us. We're not used to it; we don't know how to deal with it. My intuition, much of the time, is that the world is full of people like that and we just haven't had to deal with them this closely before, either because we're young, or like me, have worked in bookstores our whole lives. Because I'm learning that it's really really easy for us to conclude that he's something Horrifyingly Unique, a Perfect Monster, a sociopath. And that's a bit dramatic, isn't it? A bit "over the top," as the District Manager might say?

Then, a certain amount of the rest of the time, I think oh my god it's all true. Because this feeling is pretty universal, isn't it? I've seen it growing in the past month or two, as everybody's private disgust has slowly combined into a critical mass. It can't just be mass hysteria, can it? It can't just be Resentment of Change, or the Clash of Cultures between a corporate retail guy and some wacky bohemian bookstore types. This person is uniquely repellent, and everyone knows it after five minutes. Maybe there really is something seriously wrong, something we're all picking up on.

Because it's not like he really likes me, right? He's aware that I'm good and could quit if I wanted, and he knows how to approximate human emotion in my presence, right? I have to think that.