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Sat, Aug. 7th, 2004 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterDay two as a book buyer: Coolness!!
I am quite happy that now instead of hovering over the buyers and surreptitiously checking out all the books in the order while trying to clear the table and everything, I am now the one going through all the piles of books ^_^. Imagine that. They are paying me to flip through tons of books. Wow.
It's reinforced a lot of things that I knew before from working behind the buying counter, though, and it's just so fun seeing the different books people have. Actually, the majority of people have really boring books, but that makes the nice orders that much cooler.
It perpetually amazed me that the people who always ask for cash or a combination of cash and trade credit will almost invariably be the people who have musty books from the seventies and eighties on topics that go rapidly out of date. Or they will be people who always underline and highlight their books and wreck the spines in the process. Or they will have an order of books that they've left outside for six months or something, so that the books have been rained on and all sorts of nasty molds and insects have had a chance at the books. Or they will have thrown all their books in a garbage bag so even if the books were nice beforehand, by the time they've gotten to us, they're wrinkled and bent and dented.
And it's amazing that these people all have the same kinds of books -- lots of old self-help books and old, cheap cookbooks (not even the pretty kinds with glossy pictures, or nifty ethnic cookbooks), old success psychology or business books. I get bored just flipping through them.
Or they will have stacks of CDs that look like they've been played with a record player, they're that scratched.
Then there are people who keep their books in pretty nice shape, but unfortunately read (or get sick of) the exact same books that everyone else reads and gets sick of and sells back to us. Then I get to cart around armfuls of bestseller genre books or general fiction to see if we need them. And I always feel kind of bad turning them away, because a lot of the new customers think, "But these are nice books! Why don't you want them?" and I have to tell them that we see about twenty of them a day.
And then there are the orders that make me drool -- beautiful, pristine picture books in gorgeous colors and dust jackets, young adult hardcover and paperbacks in like new condition, fat and expensive art books from Abrams and Rizzoli. And once in a blue moon, there comes a person who has absolutely beautiful fantasy books in great condition, and (the big surprise) it's stuff I read. That's when I get a little nuts and start putting my name on everything ^_^. We almost never see Emma Bull or Patricia A. McKillip's non-Riddlemaster books.
It's just so much fun trying to keep track of all this stuff in my head.
(and it doesn't hurt that the boss says I am picking it up quite well, although I still feel like I mess up very often)
I am quite happy that now instead of hovering over the buyers and surreptitiously checking out all the books in the order while trying to clear the table and everything, I am now the one going through all the piles of books ^_^. Imagine that. They are paying me to flip through tons of books. Wow.
It's reinforced a lot of things that I knew before from working behind the buying counter, though, and it's just so fun seeing the different books people have. Actually, the majority of people have really boring books, but that makes the nice orders that much cooler.
It perpetually amazed me that the people who always ask for cash or a combination of cash and trade credit will almost invariably be the people who have musty books from the seventies and eighties on topics that go rapidly out of date. Or they will be people who always underline and highlight their books and wreck the spines in the process. Or they will have an order of books that they've left outside for six months or something, so that the books have been rained on and all sorts of nasty molds and insects have had a chance at the books. Or they will have thrown all their books in a garbage bag so even if the books were nice beforehand, by the time they've gotten to us, they're wrinkled and bent and dented.
And it's amazing that these people all have the same kinds of books -- lots of old self-help books and old, cheap cookbooks (not even the pretty kinds with glossy pictures, or nifty ethnic cookbooks), old success psychology or business books. I get bored just flipping through them.
Or they will have stacks of CDs that look like they've been played with a record player, they're that scratched.
Then there are people who keep their books in pretty nice shape, but unfortunately read (or get sick of) the exact same books that everyone else reads and gets sick of and sells back to us. Then I get to cart around armfuls of bestseller genre books or general fiction to see if we need them. And I always feel kind of bad turning them away, because a lot of the new customers think, "But these are nice books! Why don't you want them?" and I have to tell them that we see about twenty of them a day.
And then there are the orders that make me drool -- beautiful, pristine picture books in gorgeous colors and dust jackets, young adult hardcover and paperbacks in like new condition, fat and expensive art books from Abrams and Rizzoli. And once in a blue moon, there comes a person who has absolutely beautiful fantasy books in great condition, and (the big surprise) it's stuff I read. That's when I get a little nuts and start putting my name on everything ^_^. We almost never see Emma Bull or Patricia A. McKillip's non-Riddlemaster books.
It's just so much fun trying to keep track of all this stuff in my head.
(and it doesn't hurt that the boss says I am picking it up quite well, although I still feel like I mess up very often)
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Mon, Aug. 9th, 2004 09:58 pm (UTC)I love used books! Every time I look up stuff, it's still sort of boggling realizing just how big of a percentage of things out there are out of print.