Boycott Borders?

there's a place in philly called book haven that i always visit when i'm there. not exactly the bargain you have near ronkonkoma, but what a selection. the closest i can think of in terms of prices are the hole in the wall book shops along route 1 and 1 a in new england.

dollar a book
paperbacks by the pound
etc

Here's my $0.02 about Borders.

I worked for Borders. My bf currently does.

I have two very different views of Borders as a place of business. One is as a customer (which I have been for far, far longer than an employee--I only worked there for about 8 months) and one is as an employee and/or someone who is close with an employee (my bf, as well as my best friend, who worked at the same Borders around the same time I did).

As a customer, I love Borders. They have more accomodations for loitering than Barnes and Noble. The employees on the floor are nicer, at least in my area, to customers than those at Barnes and Noble. My bf has also, coincidentally, worked for a B & N, and Borders is far, far less of a "corporate behemoth" environment, in our experiences, than they are. In my experience, B & N book/music sellers are more pushy, aggressive and downright rude than Borders employees.

And here's a little secret. B & N has more volumes by far than Borders (and they like to boast about this), but B & N has fewer [i]titles[/i]. Meaning they have, say, a million titles in stock, but 50,000 of them are the latest Nicholas Sparks piece of shit. Borders might have, say, half a million, but 1,000 are Chuck's latest release, 1,000 are Stephen King's latest release, 50 are some obscure science text, 50 are computer science manuals, etc., etc., ad nauseam. So if you really like to read and don't just like Starbucks coffee, Borders is the better place to be.

Borders, from my experiences working there, also has an "underdog" mentality. B & N was founded as a gigantic merger of sorts among powerful venture capitalists with a faint and passing notion that they were furthering public literacy. Borders was started as an independent used bookstore in, as someone already pointed out, Annapolis, MD. Of course, it has largely strayed from those indie ideals in terms of employee relations, regardless of whether it has left behind its committment to a diverse, multicultural and liberal selection of product.

And yes, working for Borders sucked. Our relationships with our managers were just as bad as the others described above. I won't go into all the horror stories, but I've been there, done that. Still, boycotting Borders won't help. Here's why.

The Borders management always uses a decline in sales to order an employee "restructuring." This restructuring results in layoffs or demotions 99.9999999% of the time. When these restructurings are questioned, the answer is always--ALWAYS--that sales are down and the economy needs to improve before employees' lives improve. This is probably disingenuous, but the only way I can see for the conditions at Borders to improve is if customers are vocal about the treatment of employees [i]while remaining customers[/i]. Write a letter to Corporate, as a customer. Talk to managers at stores while you're there if you see something happening. Voice your opinion and let the management structure know that customers know what's happening and are displeased with it. But voting with your feet, so to speak, is only going to make things worse. It's only when customers are coming in, sales are up, and that flimsy excuse on the part of the management is weakened that employees themselves can take a stand.

And that's my $0.02.

and an excellent 2 cents it is.

i worked for waldenbooks a long, long time ago. e nuf sed.

it's kina more of a nickel. eh, inflation, what can i say.

inflation. don't get me started. in the 1940s a first class stamp was a penny, a goddamned penny. this means 37 cents today represents the equivalent buying power of a 1940s penny. whoa! take me back.