The Alphabet Has Never Been So Complicated
From Telkoth.net
I've been shelving books at Barnes and Noble for a little over a year and a half now. It's really not such a bad job. I get benefits, it pays for my rent, and it's relatively easy-going. Most of all, it's only part time, and one of the few retail jobs which offers a fixed schedule, leaving time for me to do the things I really care about, like PsyPets.
The weird thing about it, though, is that the books are never shelved simply by last name. Barnes and Noble has a series of additional rules which I'm sure are based on what they feel gets them the most money: some sections are sorted by publisher, Dante Alighieri's "Inferno" is filed by "Dante" rather than "Alighieri", Mc-names are sorted as if they were Mac. A single title should not be split across two shelves; there shouldn't be more than two face-forward stacks of the same title. Bla, bla, bla, I don't really care. I just want my money.
Recently we've acquired a new "district manager". The district manager travels from store to store in the area and makes sure that there's never more than two face-forward stacks of the same title, and that the cafés aren't, I dunno, washing the dishes with too cold of water.
This is also a person toward whom everybody seems to display fear and anxiety. This is because another function of the district manager is to "certify" a store for doing things correctly.
From what I've seen, the word "certify" is meant only to make you feel good, and not actually bestow some kind of license. The Barnes and Noble store I work at, for example, failed a surprise certification on how the books are shelved, and so far nobody has revolked the store's right to shelve books. It has, however, made a lot of people either confused, angry, or both, especially the people who shouldn't be caring at all: the people who actually shelve the books.
An example of confusion: One rule about shelving which nobody had either known or cared about was that if we have four or more books by a single author in a section, that the books should be shelved alphabetically by title. There's another, stranger rule having to do with how you sort the books based on their "format" – where the three common formats are "mass market" (those tiny little cheap paper-backs, like you see in the Romance section), "trade paper", and "trade cloth", which somehow means "hard cover" – and that is that within an author, you should divide the books by the format, and then within format, by the title. Or that's what I was told two days ago. Today I was told that that was all wrong, and that we should sort by author, then by title, and then by format.
And so then you get people, who care far too much, raising all kinds of questions like: "Well what about when there's a series of books? Are we gonna mess that up by sorting by title?" And then people talk about with you, and try to convince you that they're right while managers are making an important decision on the matter.
And "since we sort by author, then title, then format, can we split up the titles as long as we don't split up the same format of that title?" And again a manager makes a decision, which will probably be changed by tomorrow anyway.
Example of anger: The shelvers have a "shelving log" which, every day, assigns us carts to work on, and gives an estimate of how much time each cart should take us. In the past there was not much value placed on these estimates, however some time ago we were told that we should try to stick to these as much as possible, and just bring back the cart, done or not, if we ran out of time. This point has been emphasized to us again, because the great and terrible district manager has not been happy with the amount of time we've been taking. In addition, a percentage of the time taken vs the time allotted has been being recorded on the shelving logs.
The anger part came in today in that these percents were being silently recorded and filed in the back of the shelving log binder. The shelvers didn't know it. Until today [dramatic chord]. Some of the shelvers took offense: "We're robots! Our life's work is being reduced to mere percents! I don't like being measured!" And went to complain to the managers about it.
Today the managers – or to be specific, a particular manager – had to run around explaining to us that the percents were meant in our defense, to show the district manager that the shelvers really are doing a good job, and bla, bla, bla.
...
It's just books! Shelving books! I don't know how everyone can get so worked up about it. I don't care if they tell me to sort them by ISBN, with the spine in, and use super-computers to calculate my efficiency. I just want to shelve books and get paid.
I mean, I have to admit, an upset shelver can talk to me for a little bit and start to convince me that they're right, and that we shouldn't have a percent next to our name. But then they leave, and I forget about it, because it's not that important. Certainly not so important that I need a manager to take up my measured time explaining to me how they don't want "bad blood" between various workers over percents being noted.
Looking at the percents, they're more amusing than enraging anyway, and I hope the district manager comes to the same conclusion I did: "This person took half the time allotted on one cart of books, and 148% the time on the next – the only way that could be possible is if the estimated amount of time is completely meaningless," which it is, especially when no one can agree on something as simple as how to shelve a cart full of books.
