Black Books

I needed a job; I found one. A book shop or at least a sort of a bookshop. This time a week ago, I was drinking merlot and feeling jaded about being unemployed. Tonight, I drink Riesling and feel somewhat jaded about the 40 hour week ahead. The irony is delicious, the wine is more so.

The book shop in question shall remain nameless, a sprawling mass of a thing attached to a shopping arcade. It’s a corporate chain affair, with plenty of books but mostly written by Eckhart Tolle and Jodi Picoult. There is a large self help section and lots of 20% off stickers hurriedly slapped on piles of Popular Penguins. So far, a uniform is not compulsory but I have heard disturbing rumours of bright red polo shirts. The widescreen TV halfway through the store plays Avatar on loop. No one in it is hot.

As I said, I needed a job.

The week started off with as something of a challenge, with my hours starting at seven ‘o’clock in the AM. Doey eyed, I scrambled around the store stacking shelves and chewing on bits of rolled up paper so as not to collapse in a pile of golden slumbers. Everywhere I turn, Robert Pattinson’s bored eyes stare back at me from books, posters and jigsaw puzzles. It is impossible to avoid the Twilight Corporation; even the magazine stands have abtastic CHILF of the Moment Taylor Launder’s sex stories all over it. I try not to get turned on but it’s hard not to when his glistening six packs eclipse everything else. Pun, get it?

One of my fellow employees is an overweight woman who has worn the same Twilight T-shirt for the past five days. On Wednesday, she turned up with purple hair and the staff told her she looked ‘modern.’ She met her husband on an Internet dating website and seems happy. We wear lanyards with our ‘passion’ on them. Mine in Seinfeld. Hers is ‘Riot Grrrl.’ Watch this space.

The day starts with a bevy of manic managers initiate “GO-O-O-O-O-O TEAM!” warm up exercises, complete with daily budget requirements and lessons on how to use ‘open ended questions’ when selling to customers. The rest of the staff smile and nod and sip away at their Almond Honey non fat vanilla lattes. I stand at the back of the meeting and half expect Alec Baldwin to come storming in and yell “You call yourself a salesman, you son of a bitch.”

We have walkie talkies and say things followed by the word “Roger.” It’s awkward and rather a change from the independent book trade in which you talked loudly across the store and people knew who Alan Hollinghirst and were. Here, the main words used are “percent off” and “discount club.” The soundtrack consists of a cluster of CDs chose from head office. These include Norah Jones and Craig David sings Motown. Tears dribble down my interior as the latter’s version of 'I heard it through the Grapevine' pervades my ears for the fifth time in eight hours. At 4pm, I try to smuggle the Rolling Stone’s revised edition of Exile on Main Street into the stereo but was stopped by the assistant regional manager, a large man with a beard who told me in a hushed tone that it might be a little “too edgy” for the customers. It was release in 1971, before Watergate. I die a little inside and head back to the counter where I sell a small, excited woman three copies of Paulo Cohello’s The Alchemist and somehow manage to keep a straight face.

The hours and days slide by and a pay check appears and I take it with a grateful, exhausted smile. Across the road, the city’s top independent bookshop smiles kindly at me, its front window filled with Chekov biographies and Hertzog box sets. I stare longingly and then, realising that I am still wearing my corporate bookshop t-shirt of whoredom, pull my coat tightly around me and head home. I’ve got one hand in my pocket and the other one’s holding a cigarette. Life, as they say is good. And so is nicotine.