Feed on
Posts
Comments

… a chain one, at that, and asks if they’re tak­ing appli­ca­tions.  The woman she asks looks like the woman in charge, as she’d hoped, and she hands the ex-lawyer an appli­ca­tion, ask­ing her what she’s look­ing for.  She says, straight­for­wardly, that she’d take stock or cashier, that she’s a burned-out lawyer look­ing to just work with books, and the woman-in-charge nods and asks her to fill out the appli­ca­tion “as soon as you can.”

She sits in the cafe, she fills out the appli­ca­tion, she hunts down the woman-in-charge and hands the appli­ca­tion over her­self so she can shake hands, make intro­duc­tions, explain that she does in fact have retail expe­ri­ence in the form of wait­ress­ing and other jobs that intro­duced her to the fine art of cash-registers.  They talk, the woman-in-charge looks through the job appli­ca­tion, and asks the ex-lawyer to come back on Thurs­day at 5:30 for an interview.

Who knows.  It’ll get me out of the house, and I would be work­ing with books.  (Plus two lovely words, Employee Discount.)

Called shrink?  Check.  Applied for job?  Dou­ble check.  Answered phone?  Triple check.  I’ll be open­ing mail any day now.

11 Responses to “An ex-lawyer walks into a bookstore…”

  1. CTJen says:

    I worked at B&N for a while. I loved it–it was my favorite job evah. Good luck to you. :-)

  2. meg says:

    Good luck Erika. Just take it slowly — one lit­tle thing at a time.

    love ya

  3. saviabella says:

    I would quite enjoy work­ing in a book­store. Here’s hop­ing they have a good dis­count! Or lots of free time so you can read books dur­ing your shift. Or both!

  4. Sherry says:

    This is soo cool! I feel like I should be doing one of Angela’s SQUEEEEEEEE’s right now. (except she doesn’t do that)

    Good luck! *wag­gles eye­brows* (she does do that though) You’ll have to excuse my sense of humor — I should really be in bed already. G’night.

  5. Check­ing things off the list? Check. Good for you.

  6. hibiscus says:

    Last time I worked retail, peo­ple kept ask­ing me why I wasn’t shop­ping at that store, why I wasn’t decked in the goods I was sell­ing (fine jew­elry, and I was the only woman in the dept with­out a dia­mond, mar­i­tal or oth­er­wise). Very hard not to give in with the glit­tery rocks; a book­store? I’d be in so much trou­ble…
    Good luck indeed!

  7. I didn’t get hired a few months ago at a bookstore…for book week.

  8. Robert Modean says:

    Excel­lent news indeed Erika, I hope the inter­view went well and since I am sure that it did I must wish you well on your new job. I will say that you’re a bet­ter per­son than I am (no sur­prise there), as I don’t know if work­ing in a book store would ever be a plau­si­ble option for me. Unless the pay was excep­tion­ally good or the dis­count quite deep I sim­ply couldn’t afford it — I’d spend far too much of my income on books. Per­haps if they could be per­suaded to come to some sort of com­pen­sa­tion in kind arrange­ment it would work, but how would one sur­vive on pay­ment in Proust?

    Check­ing off the list is always some­thing to be proud of, at least imo since it’s some­times the only way I can tell if I’ve made any head­way at all. Still, talk­ing to the shrink is good, work is very good, answer­ing the phone is espe­cially good. That said I must admit that I too detest mail, in fact I eschew even retriev­ing the post until it chokes the box and the mail­man has to come to the door witha flat full of the stuff. So when you cross that off your list would you do me the favor of tak­ing a look at mine? I’d start recy­cling the lot into fire starters tomor­row but I’m told there could be some­thing impor­tant in there some­where. ;-)

    All the best,

    Robert

  9. Su says:

    Hope the inter­view went well. Sounds like a great thing for you to be work­ing with books. Wish­ing you the best.

  10. phil says:

    hope every­thing works out :)

  11. jenB says:

    Love and good­ness to you my friend. It is hard, but you are mak­ing moves. Pretty impres­sive from where I read.