29
‘OKAY, LET’S START with the basics,’ Bobbi says.
It’s my first day, and I feel like a little kid. I hate first days. I just want to skip to the part where I know what I’m doing. It’s probably why I stayed in my last job so long. But at least it is providing a distraction from thinking about Mac, who is still occupying my thoughts to an alarming degree.
Bobbi shows me the point-of-sale system and how to use the EFTPOS machine and I write everything down in my ‘Learning to Be a Bookseller’ notebook (a Moleskine that I bought months ago with a plan to write notes for my novel but I never wrote a thing in it so it’s being repurposed).
Even though I have been in the shop a million times, Bobbi walks me around because she wants me to look at it all with fresh eyes, from an employee perspective. She also wants to give me her insider view on why things are the way they are.
‘I put fiction on this side of the room because it’s in my eyeline from the counter and a lot of the non-fiction covers depress me,’ she says. ‘Also, all my observations of people tell me they naturally turn left when they walk in looking for fiction.’
I write down fiction = left .
‘This first row on my front table is my guaranteed-sales area. You put a stack of any books in that exact spot there, people will buy them. Doesn’t matter what it is. It’s the magic spot.’
‘Did you put my book there?’
‘Of course. I also put it in my magic spot in the window. There’s something about a particular spot in the right-hand window—people are always drawn to it.’
‘So the key to selling books is visual merchandising?’
‘No, but that’s a lot of it. You also have to read absolutely everything, have the knack to know what will sell before you order it, be charming, have a good location, and a lot of luck. Oh, and there’s also colour theory. I read lots of books about that. The dark blue of the shopfront, it’s called Atlantic Mystique—it’s the kind of blue people associate with imagination and intelligence. People want to feel smart when they walk into a bookshop. That colour is like a signal to them: “Come in here, we’ll make you a better person”. I spent months finding the exact same shade of blue for the chair,’ she says.
I am fascinated and I immediately want to buy at least three books on colour theory.
Bobbi takes me out the back, which consists of a narrow hallway that also doubles as a kitchenette (a generous term for a sink, a tiny bar fridge and a shelf with a kettle, a few mugs and a biscuit jar), a small storage room for incoming and outgoing stock, and a toilet.
She pauses at the biscuit jar.
‘Now, this is important. I have simple tastes. I like plain whole-wheat digestives. Sasha used to like mint slices. You can tell me whatever you like, and I’ll order some,’ she says. ‘It’s important you have the biscuits you need, otherwise you’ll get to 3 pm and want to die.’
‘Um, I’m good with the digestives, I think,’ I say. My preferred biscuit is actually a Tim Tam, but that feels like a diva-ish choice. Tim Tams are probably twice the price of the digestives.
‘No, no, you deserve something fancier than that.’
‘I’m not a big biscuit eater, to be honest.’
‘Well, you need a snack on hand. Think about it. Now, to the tea. I currently have English breakfast and green tea, but we can upgrade to fancier.’
‘They’re great,’ I say. ‘No need to upgrade anything for me.’
‘This cardigan here,’ Bobbi says, indicating a long, woollen multi-coloured cardigan, ‘is what I call the shop cardigan. I just leave it here, so if you ever get cold, feel free to pop it on.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. I feel weirdly nervous. Normally I would gently make fun of the over-the-top hideousness of that cardigan, but I don’t know how to act in this new dynamic of employer/employee.
Bobbi shows me how to order in a book for a customer, and says we’ll cover receiving and returns tomorrow.
‘Well, while it’s quiet, I’ll duck out and get us some coffees,’ she says.
‘Oh, I can go out and get them,’ I say, because I want to be helpful but also because I am terrified of her leaving me in the shop by myself.
Bobbi smiles at me.
‘Nice try. You’ve got this. I’ll be back in ten minutes.’
‘Right. Okay. Thank you.’
As soon as Bobbi leaves, several people walk in. A mother and her daughter, and then a man, and then a woman. I smile and greet each person, probably too enthusiastically. The man especially looks uncomfortable at my level of eye contact. I open my notebook and review my notes on how to use the point-of-sale system.
Why am I so anxious? It’s a basic interaction. You are thirty, get a grip, you can do this. I just want to be good at this. I need to be good at this, or I will never be able to face my mother again. I should ask the customers if they need help. No, I should let them browse. Bobbi hasn’t specified our official approach. Do I have sales targets to meet? Surely not. It’s an independent bookshop. Calm down, Anna . I kind of need to pee and I realise I never asked Bobbi what you actually do when you are working alone and need to use the toilet.
The woman approaches the counter.
‘Hi!’ I say. She grimaces at my too-cheery tone.
‘I want to return a book,’ she says.
‘Oh. Okay. Great,’ I reply. Bobbi has not reached the returns-policy part of the instructions yet.
‘Do you have a receipt?’ I ask. This seems like the best question, and hopefully I can very subtly look at it for the printed returns policy. And then do what? I have no idea how to process it. Well, one problem at a time.
‘I do,’ the woman says. She’s wearing an expensive-looking oversized white linen shirt with white pants and lots of jangling gold bracelets and gold rings. She pulls the book out of the paper bag, and slides the receipt across the counter to me. It’s a green book. The Hike . My book.
Of course this would be my first ever customer interaction. I am not going to react. I am going to act completely normal. I am definitely not going to take this as a sign from the universe about anything.
I look at the receipt and pretend I am checking something, but really, I am frantically searching for the policy. There it is. Exchange within fourteen days for non-faulty goods.
‘I didn’t like it,’ the woman says. ‘I started it and I hated it.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Well. That’s fine, you can just exchange it for another book, if you’d like?’
‘It’s one of these millennial kind of books, you know, with the most annoying main character who goes on and on, and it has the most improbable series of events.’
‘I’m familiar with them.’
‘At least it had quotation marks for speech. It’s all the rage now to not have quotation marks.’
She picks up my book and starts flipping through pages. My heart is racing. Is she going to read a section out loud? Point out a horrific typo?
She puts her finger on a page. Page fifty-five. That’s when the main character and her friends accidentally kill someone in a semi-comedic way.
‘Here,’ she says. ‘I got to this part, and I thought to myself, I cannot go on. If I read another word, I will hurl this book across the room.’
‘I’ve felt that way about a book before,’ I say, nodding. My hands feel a little shaky.
‘Young people read such dross these days. And write it.’
‘They do. I’m sorry,’ I say. My professional facade is slipping. Half of me feels the urge to defend the young people of today, and the other is worried she’s right. Maybe I am a writer of worthless dross. Imagine if she knew what I was writing next. I should print her out my manuscript and get her to mark all the worst bits. What would she say about the sex on an office desk? That would be a ‘hurl it across the room’ moment for sure.
‘No need to be sorry, dear, you didn’t write it. Or sell it to me,’ the woman says.
‘No,’ I whisper. ‘I didn’t.’ I am finding it hard to swallow.
‘Well, recommend me something meaty and serious, can you? Something masculine. With heft.’ When she says the word heft , she makes motions with her hands that look like the kind of motion I make to indicate someone has big boobs, but that cannot be what she means.
I nod. My mind is spinning. What can I give her? Every single book I have ever known has disappeared from my mind. My thoughts are stuck on her finger hitting page fifty-five, the word dross . I walk over to the new-releases table and hover, then I move to fiction shelves.
‘Nothing light. And, please, nothing funny ,’ she says, doing the air quotes with her hands. ‘I’ve learned my lesson with funny.’
I hand her Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, which she looks at and wrinkles her nose.
‘Too depressing,’ she says.
I show her a Kazuo Ishiguro (‘too weird’), a Colm Toíbín (‘too Irish’), a Trent Dalton (‘too Queensland’). My eye is starting to twitch. I can see the other customers in the shop are listening in. I need this interaction to end, so I can start working on never thinking about it again.
She settles on an Ian McEwan as Bobbi walks back in, holding coffees.
‘You wouldn’t believe what the barista—’
‘Bobbi!’ the woman exclaims. ‘I’m returning that awful book you sold me last week.’
‘Which awful book…’ Bobbi’s voice trails off when she sees my book on the counter, and my face. She quickly puts the coffees down and hurries over.
‘Your new girl is helping me, it’s fine,’ the woman says, waving her hand, bracelets jangling. ‘Now, this one looks good,’ she says to me.
She brings the Ian McEwan to the counter, and Bobbi slides it into a bag for her.
‘She’s a smart one,’ the woman says, pointing to me. ‘Keep her.’
I smile weakly and the woman leaves. Bobbi gasps and rushes over to me.
‘Anna, darling, what a way to start your bookselling career,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. Don’t listen to her. She has terrible taste. She is a chronic returner of items. A bad reader. I only put up with it because she spends thousands every year.’
‘It’s okay, I know I have to divorce my writer self from my bookselling self,’ I say.
‘Oh, you absolutely don’t. Look, ninety per cent of the customers here are lovely, I promise. And so many of them love your book.’
‘No one needs to love my book.’
‘Well it’s my mission to make sure they do. Now go out the back, take five minutes, drink the coffee and look through the pile of advance proofs for your next read.’
I do as I’m told. The proof pile is thrilling.
I can do this, I tell myself. I can do this. It’s going to be great. And I would take that woman over Marco, any day.