Outside on the pavement, a busker man sat cross-legged on an upside down bread crate. He played an acoustic, not very good rendition of ‘The Entertainer’ over and over again all afternoon. It was relaxing, bordering on torturous. People dropped money in his hat but not very much. I stood at the counter and de-bugged the DVD security tags, humming along when I didn’t feel like throttling him.
The corporate bookstore, with its tangled web of sales targets and conversion rates, chews through managers like rats chew through muesli bars. Someone is appointed to take charge of the chain in question, given a bumped up salary, a pokey office and a bunch of cheap flowers and told to increase sales by X per cent by the end of the fortnight. They think they can do it, and they usually do. They wipe off their damp forehead, congratulate the apathetic floor staff and head home to their loved one or cat and open a bottle of something cold and bubbly.
And then, the next week. The corporate wigs, hair full of slimy product and usually sporting cheap, well pressed suits appear in the pokey office again, another sales target in the manila folder. Sales are good but they CAN be better and, as manager, that is their responsibility. And so, our heroine of sorts (although keep in mind that she is dull, power hungry and too dumb to realise she will never earn the respect of anyone) widens her eyes and devises some elaborate scheme involving a free pen for anyone who spends over a hundred bucks or a Twilight-themed day in which every customer who knows the magic answer to some trite, semi-literate piece of trivia goes into the draw to win a free New Moon DVD. The staff groan and co-operate, mainly because they are also promised a piece of the meagre prize pie; a free cinema pass if the sales threshold is reached by the end of the day. You see, the manager also has to manage her staff in order to meet the target, otherwise she’s in hot water (and we’re not talking about those dreary instant coffees she’s beginning to knock back with her eyes closed every morning after a night of restless sleep).
And so it goes on. Week after week. Sales targets; conversion rates. Men with round faces holding manila folders invading much needed personal space. Instant coffee scooped out of the jar with shaky hands. Coupons. Staff with twisted, resentful faces. Morning meeting speeches involving phrases – ‘We all need to pull together guys’ and ‘Only five more sales each per day’ – that don’t have the desire effect. Sleepless nights. Resignations. Personal vendettas. Cold sweats. No time for reading. Fractured dreams about Reaching Target.
Eventually, the manager snaps. Her eyes are wide with something other than excitement and she meets her corporate oppressors with snappy, bitter remarks and shrugs of her tense shoulders. The time for jokes has long passed. They try to rope her into a seemingly fail safe promotion involving Lonely Planet travel guides but she shakes her head and demands a holiday. They sigh and send her off and know that she won’t return; the nerves in her brain too frayed to stay focused on line graphs. The rest of the staff are kept in the dark about this, thinking only that their leader has abandoned them in a time of need and are not so secretly relieved to hear that she will not be returning to rule with an iron (although very well manicured) fist.
The corporate heads gather, hover less than gracefully over the morning meeting and pick apart what is left of the staff. There have been a handful of resignations (or ‘quitting’ as it is known in the retail world), most likely caused by the anxiety waves radiating down the management ladder. Their manager, they are told, has ‘moved on.’ She has left the high life to open her own cafe in a town much too small to even mention, feeling the sudden need to leave the high heels and budgeting book behind in favour of a baker’s oven and a cupboard full of scone mix. Nothing is mentioned about the breakdown, the headaches. The claw marks on her office walls are sanded down and the whole place repainted a nonthreatening shade of peach.
‘And this,’ the head-est of the head honchos exclaims somewhat grandly 'is the new manager.'She stands before them beaming. She begins to spout some sweet sounding words about her love of books and the good times that will fall upon everyone involved in the coming weeks and months. There are a few scattered claps and the day begins. Our second heroine of the piece feels a sense of achievement and picks up the manila folder in front of her.
And all around this, all through this and before and after and during, people buy books that make them happy. They read dramatic plots of heroes and villains and people falling through the cracks of life and leave the shop clutching plastic bags full of stories, oblivious to the real life stress and heartache dusting their covers.
