Books I’m currently reading:

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

I don’t know if a book being on Oprah’s “reading list” or not is a good thing or a bad thing, but this is, so far, a great book. I’m really enjoying it.

Dr. No by Ian Fleming

Much like many of the James Bond films, I’m sort of “Wait, what?” at the plot, although it does seem more grounded in reality than a typical Bond film.

Moonraker by Ian Fleming

Sort of like the above, except considerably more grounded in reality. No invisible space stations in the 50s yet!

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I don’t like McCarthy’s writing … but I do like stories about post-civilization life. So far, it’s just sort of blargh.

The Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst

Great writer, great stories. If Ian Fleming is stuff for the masses, Furst’s spy stories are for the high-brow reader.

Scheduling at the Bookstore is extremely complicated. In the past, my retail experiences were with locations of no more than maybe twenty people, total. The Bookstore has seventy plus employees. And given the size of the store, the schedule doesn’t just say “SNAY 5p-Close.” It breaks down, hour by hour, where each and every employee is scheduled to be: Register, Information, Media Information, Cafe, Merchandising, Projects, Recovery, Break. It’s a massive chart of names, times, and assignments.

Scheduling at the Bookstore happens from the corporate office out west. Now, when I say that, I don’t mean that there’s actually someone in a cubicle somewhere who actually schedules individual people for individual assignments. The daily schedule is done at the beginning of each day by a manager, and the weekly schedule is done by the Operations Manager, and the Ops Supervisor for the store. But what they’re limited by is the number of hours the store is budgeted for.

So far, the corporate headquarters is being less generous than we’d hoped in terms of scheduling hours. This is not entirely unexpected: after all, it’s no secret that the Bookstore’s chain is financially in trouble. They’ve been trying to cut corners wherever possible (to the point they even forbade stores from purchasing scotch tape and other supplies), and they’ve apparently seized on controlling scheduled hours as a great way to make ends meet.

Here’s what this means for us: primarily, it means hours are being cut. While management is thankfully (and correctly, in my opinion) following a policy of cutting hours of people who regularly call out, that hasn’t been enough, and other employees — people who show up on time, who are great with customers, who aren’t whiny bitches — have been finding themselves with a lot more free time in the run up to the holidays. And in this economy? That fucking sucks. People are already talking about trying to find other jobs, but this isn’t the easiest time to do that. In addition, for some reason, our Ops Manager has been allowing former employees — many, away at school during the year — to come back for seasonal shifts.

As an additional bonus, starting next Monday, we’ll be open for extended holiday hours, closing at 11pm until the day before Christmas Eve (that day, we work actual holiday hours and close at 7). However, corporate has already informed management that the hours we’re budgeted for will not be increased. We usually close at 9pm. To remain open another two hours on a weeknight calls for, at a minimum, six employees per hour: one at Information, one at Media Information, one in the Cafe, one at Registers, and two managers (that’s six budgeted employee hours per operating hour). That’s an additional twelve hours of budgeted time per night, with a slight reprieve on Fridays (our normal Friday hours close us at ten), but totally off-whack on Sundays, when we usually close at 7. So what you’re looking at is needing to fill an extra 100 hours each week until the Christmas holiday. There’s only one way to do this: give our night crew that time off.

I’m sure they’re going to love that. Not to mention that with them off, all of the stocking and re-shelving and organizing that they do is going to become the responsibility of the regular staff, all of whom are already going to be furiously busy with what we’re furiously busy with most of the week: helping customers, answering phones, working registers.

Just as a final “screw you” from the company, while it’s nice that they give employees a four-day period where everything in the store is 40% off, I kind of wish they’d set it a little later in the month so that we could take advantage of our mid-month paychecks. I sort of paid my rent, and now my Christmas shopping is coming out of my grocery budget for the month. Well, at least the Giant brand Mac & Cheese is cheap.

As it always does, it tickles me pink to no end to find my blog mentioned in the Washington Post Express, but I do have to clarify that I have not lived in Columbia, MD since July of 1999. I lived in the Baltimore area from then until June of this year, when I moved into the District of Columbia.

Also: Congrats, Ravens!