Annals of an (ex)Bookstore Manager

The Matter of $2.15

I have worked in two different bookstores. One was a discount bookstore. There are different types of discount bookstores, but most stem from a fair selection of what is called "overstock" (books printed over a viable selling run). Some books are also called "seconds" (books with small defects that aren't pretty, per se, but still are fully readable). Overall, these are called remainders, as in, these are the books left over.

One of the great things about being an remainders market bookseller is that you get to sell books that are cheaper than average, and customers can sometimes build up damn near a hero worship for you, but you also stock books that just a little bit on the archived side. Nothing too ancient, but the books that other bookstores have shipped back because they did not sell in half a year. We would have books about two or three years old, if not twice that, and so were both a place to get half-priced books and a place to get slightly older editions.

These two facts set up the story you are about to read, just in case you were confused. I found this in an old journal entry of mine. With some minor corrections, I am leaving the wording as it was, so there is a lot of present tense that no longer makes sense, and so on. The rant, I feel, is very important because it shows an important thing, some people feel the need to feel they are cheating the system or feel as though the system is out to cheat them, even if the system is set up to be "cheated" already. There is a weird antagonistic relationship with some customers that I have never understood.

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from August 18, 2006. re-edited and reposted on March 26, 2008.

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I got a call a half-hour ago about a void that sort of unbalanced our drawer (one of those "no money was exchanged, but because of the way the void was run, it looks like it" things). And the problem was, this is one of those cases where the customer was in the wrong (except maybe in the fact that they stated the complaint) and yet they probably crawled out of there thinking they had took a stand against the evils of industry.

The complaint, by the way, was the fact that you still get taxed on coupon amounts. This is the way our drawer rings it up and I am sure this is the way it is supposed to ring it up. This is not a scam invented by my store. This is, as far as I know, the way the world works, at least our part of it. It still counts as a monetary value transaction. The store can eat the cost, and I would have probably agreed to eat the cost had I been there to authorize it, but the cost is there.

Let me break down the transaction which went wrong. 24 books. Regular price $3.99. Actually, $4.50 in other stores because we sell a slightly older edition and it has the older price. Plus tax, would be $116.64. Our price is $1.99. Going by the same basic rule: $51.58. But we have a sale going on, so buy one and get one free. The issue being that you have to pay tax on the free one: $27.94. The customer stormed out because she wanted it to be $25.79. In other words, she felt we were screwing her out of $2.15.

$2.15.

Her dumb butt saved nearly 90 us dollars, and she is mad because she had to pay slightly over $2.00 more than her flawed assumption led her to believe? What causes a person to miss a point like that?

Let's keep going for a moment, just to show you how I am not merely promoting an evil, money grubbing store. We paid probably about 65-75 cents per book. Meaning, out of that transaction, we would have made about $6, not even enough to pay an employee for an hour of work. Only about enough to get about as third as many books back. But hey, that's business, especially our business, which is a fairly unique model. She stormed out because of the law, thinking she was teaching us a lesson, and threw away $90 in savings to spite us $6, making the net loss $84 on her side (assuming she needs to get 24 copies of the book, still, and some other store doesn't have a buy one, get three free sale).

That is one thing I have tried explaining to people sometimes, but some people just want to make grand stands for no good reason. I guarantee that in my store, nearly every price you will come across will save the customer more money off the cover price (special orders excluded, being essentially the only exception) than we will make off the book. For instance, with our new storybook prices that we are working on, you will pay about $4 for a $16 storybook. That's $12. We will make less than $3 for the transaction. The customer gets 3 to 5 times the value we get, and that's saved money they can spend on whatever else they want. Most bookstores require making large purchases, waiting for special sales, or signing up for programs that benefit the store to give that kind of value; and that is our standard price, no strings attached and no invasion of privacy for them to get it. I honestly do consider myself working hard to please the customers and make our store a bargain for them, where the benefit is on their side, not so much ours (though we do well enough to stay in business). This is why people claiming we are ripping them off confuses me one step further.

It's like they are torn between wanting to feel victimized as a customer and wanting to feel like they are victimizing the store.

There are stores that work on ripping you off, trapping you in plans or whatnot, but pick your battles carefully. Hell, stage your complaints even in cases like the one above. But, when you throw away $90 in savings without even trying to nicely discuss it, you have lost the bead on life and are crashing into wheel spinning territory. Even if you think that you are stopping a scam, without asking why it is, and agreeing to look it up, you have just frustrated yourself more than anyone else.

And you have frustrated everyone else a good bit.