I
haven’t worked full-time in over two years, so the response to my title is very
simple: I need the money, and of thirty-six resumes and vitas I recently sent
out online or hand-delivered, this was the only one that responded. Previous to
this, I was a full-time seminary student working toward national ordination in
my faith. Prior to this, I was a part-time seminary student and full-time
college teacher. In 2011, at the point at which my contract with the state
stipulated I must, after working so long at a particular institution, be
granted tenure and permanent employment, I was informed, owing to precipitous
drops in enrollment, my contract would not be renewed for that crucial final
semester. In effect, after eleven years teaching at multiple sites for the
state, prisons, public institutions, workplaces, and private colleges, I was
being let go.
Friend
asked if I thought it was personal. As my teaching style is a little
unorthodox, but effective, there is some cause for the question. But I don’t
think so. At least twenty of us at the same institution were let go that
semester, and enrollment is down, so I don’t think it was any more personal
than any other cost-effective business decision to downsize before costs become
burdensome.
This
argument gains traction by the observation that this recession works
differently than all others. Whereas in earlier recessions community colleges
were a great place to work because everyone went back to school to improve
their education, teaching English as I did was a hedge against
unemployment—everyone has to take English. But this recession is not like
others—industries are imploding, businesses are closing shop, and what used to
be the standard is no longer that.
To
return to academia and my job in it would now require my return to
post-graduate school and getting a PhD—my MFA, while it is a legitimate
terminal degree, is snubbed by Human Resource Managers up to their eyeballs in
doctorate applicants—only to have no more promise of work than before and for
the same amount of money I previously made, was not an option. But as I was
already in a mid-career change to ministry at the point I was let go, my wife
convinced me to take classes full-time and work odd jobs in order to finish. I
graduated with a Master of Divinity this past May.
But
my faith, which is post-Christian, has been experiencing a downsizing of
congregations for years, and while I’ve been locally ordained by congregations
I’ve served in the past, and can legitimately call myself “Reverend,” that
all-important national recognition requires a year’s internship at a church
under an older (and presumably wiser) minister. Most of these, owing to the
shrinking of congregations, are unpaid. I can’t convince my wife (or myself)
into subsidizing my yearlong unpaid internship, so I need to return to
full-time employment. But part-time is all that has presented itself.
Fortunately,
what I am doing is something I enjoy and have done before. I worked for this
same chain a decade and a half ago while I was in the midst of one of my
previous identities as a professional bookseller. I worked for six previous bookstores in my
history and I have quite a background in knowing my way around a stack of
books. Nevertheless, despite my history both with the profession and with this
chain, when it came time to determine my pay the corporation determined I was
worth the same as someone walking into the job off the street. I receive
minimum wage, which admittedly as I work in a marginally more progressive state
is slightly higher than the national average, but it is minimum wage.
So,
in my mid-50s, the holder of a terminal degree, two advanced degrees,
ordination, over a decade of experience teaching, and nearly a decade of
experience working in this industry, I am being paid minimum wage. I make less
now, both in real wages and in current pay, than I did when joining this
company 16 years ago with less experience.
But
bookstores are dying and no matter how big they are they are dying at the same,
and maybe a greater rate than their smaller competitors. Of the six bookstores I previously worked at,
I helped to close three of them. This bookstore, larger than the others I
worked for, will probably ride out the future expected decision to close many
of the chain’s underperforming stores, but doubtless at a reduced staff and at
reduced services and reduced stock.
Because
bookstores are not the only part of this industry that is dying. So is book
production (although not writing: between online content, online-only ebooks,
self-published books, and traditional book publishing, we are in a glut of
writing. We may not be the most literate nation but we are certainly the one
that uses reading most often in our day-to-day operations).
As
I reminded a customer who opted against joining the chain’s membership plan by
explaining she was “not a reader,” the person who reads but chooses not to is
worse off than the person who can’t read at all. We are a highly literate society that often
chooses to be functionally illiterate or perhaps the better term is “un-literate.”
We can read we just choose not to (except online gossip items and the occasional
tweets by our friends). Readers are becoming more and more an exclusive club that
is experiencing a balkanization of its decaying corpse into The Feminine Nation
of Novels and further dividing into Post-Apocalypticatopia, Chicklitavania, and
Religioficastan. These are separated from The Country for Old Men comprised of Memoira,
Currentrightwingidolland, and Kindasciencey, and the same reader rarely visits
both destinations. There is nothing wrong with the balkanization of readers but
there is something wrong with readers being unwilling to experiment and potentially
being surprised by fulfillment from an unexpected source at the risk of being
disappointed.
Publishing,
of course, is in decline. Bestsellers aren’t what they once were, and while it’s
never clear the multiple copies that people bought of Sinclair Lewis’ Cass Timberlane were actually read, most
media behaved as if they were. It may be a good thing that we’ve scaled back
our expectations that all those copies of Happy,
Happy, Happy have been read cover to cover but we lose something by not
having a shared glossary even if it’s Phil Robertson’s mutterings on faith and
family.
One
way my chain seeks to offset the fewer-reader future is through the use of a
membership. There are good reasons for becoming a book store member, number one
of which is an intent to see to it that the bookstore you frequent continues.
Perhaps more small bookstores would still be in business had they shifted to a
members-only or subscription model. And there are other genuine advantages to
membership. But if lose my new-found minimum wage job at this chain it will be
because of the requirement that each bookseller sell at least one membership
every 50 ringouts. I can’t in good conscience push the hardsell for this. Most people in the current climate aren’t
interested in memberships in anything. They don’t want to be tied into
something for which they’ll feel responsible, if they remember they belong, or feel
guilty for if they forget. When they work, as with gyms or supper clubs, they
rely on a self-selected group that, with the best of intentions, signs up and
pays up, and then it’s in the best interests of that facility that the person
show up rarely if at all, to reduce costs. When stores have used memberships in
the past—in my own experience with a store called GEX or Government Employees Exchange—they
have been an abject failure.
We
live in an incredible time when nearly everything ever published and almost
everything ever written is available in some form at some price. The difficulty
for professional bookselling is, of course, the same as with social services,
ministry, education, and other forms of personal service: everybody wants to
make use of it and almost no one wants to pay for it. This state of affairs
doesn’t portend the Fall of Civilization but it does seem to present a serious
case of a Lessening of a Quality of Life.
I
mentioned being cautiously optimistic in my subtitle and so far I haven’t given
any reasons for feeling so. In fact, I’ve given nothing but reasons for being
unabashedly pessimistic about both bookselling and my role in it.
It
may be that publishers and bookstores will need to completely reinvent
themselves and become less purveyors of new books and more producers of
smaller, shorter runs and, for stores, sellers primarily of older copies—there are
millions of copies of books printed over the past century that no one has ever
read as well as copies someone has read once or read a portion of and will
never pick up again, and, like clothing, we may need to switch to a consignment
economy. This gives me hope in addition to appealing to my punk aesthetic, a reverence
for Do It Yourself in terms of, say, repackaging unattractive-looking books
with more artistic, hand-made covers made by the bookstore staff.
But
here is what really makes me optimistic. In the short time I’ve been at this
new job I’ve had a conversation with a retired truck driver with whom I
commiserated over the practice by some cities to drag you along a detour only
to drop you on a side street with no indication how to get back to the main
highway you started on. I’ve talked with older people who are visiting Las
Vegas after a long time away and are concerned about their ability, now that it’s
physically harder for them to get around, to circumnavigate The Strip and made
them aware of websites devoted to their questions. I’ve made an older woman,
asking in a sad voice for books about grief and getting on with life after a
death, laugh a real, full, belly laugh.
The
afternoon I was most depressed about my age and low wage, Labor Day, I was approached at the
register by a woman and her two children. The girl had gotten a fortune cookie
with her Chinese lunch that said “Treat yourself to something you’ll enjoy,”
and that was a book. They were younger kids, perhaps around four and six,
judging from the books they were buying. They were learning, their mom said, to
pay on their own and they had crumpled bills and pockets full of pennies.
A
short line of people formed while I helped them by smoothing out each bill and
counting pennies with them but no one seemed in a hurry. I took an extra three
minutes, perhaps, to check out the two kids separately so each could experience
the accomplishment of buying his and her own book. I cannot explain or
emphasize enough how good, how like ministering to them, this act felt to me. If
there are holy acts in retail, this was a holy act.
As
they left, the boy stepped back to tell me that he really, really liked the
book series he bought and that he intended to read all of them. I thanked each
person who’d waited in line individually and several of them took an extra
moment to smile and say they appreciated the time and care I took with the
kids.
Yes,
I was indoctrinating them into bourgeois, consumerist society, teaching if only
indirectly that the shiny new thing will soon turn into just so much
something-in-the-way they don’t need. While it doesn’t guarantee the two of
them will become avid readers, the opposite likely would have dissuaded them
from that. In addition, I helped them have a positive experience with books and
that itself cost them and me and no one in line nothing. That is worth
celebrating.
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