Fair’s Fair “For Book Lovers”

Both my son and daughter have told me they don’t know that they could operate our organization if something was to happen to me because the staffing problems seem endless to them.

My response is, “Working out all the dynamics of staffing the stores is one of the interesting things about operating this business. Almost everyday (even in this, the tightest of job markets) we get an application from someone who thinks they would like to work in the book business. Only rarely do we have someone come in who is just looking for a “job”. Our applicants are almost always pre-qualified as book lovers and imagine themselves being surrounded by books as being in some sort of heaven.

During the initial interview I try to break through their illusion that ours is a business where each and every employee has their choice of which books they want to read and, since the store is already organized and operating smoothly, there will be plenty of time to indulge their own particular reading habits.

I tell them that if they worked steadily at the processes in this store for twenty years (even if they worked twenty hours a day) – there would still be another twenty years of work ahead of them. There is no time available for reading on the job except to quickly determine what category and sub-category it goes in.

Thankfully, the basic elements of the business are simple and a new hire can become effective and helpful within a couple of days but gaining a realistic comprehension of the intricacies of the business is difficult because the business is constantly in a state of flux – what sold yesterday may never sell again.

Maybe it is because there is so much to do and the work is so absorbing it takes six months to a year for them to start wondering if anyone else in the organization is working as hard as they are.  Not surprisingly, they start to believe that there are some slackers in the organization who are not pulling their weight – then the backbiting begins.

All the suspicions and rumours eventually come back to me and then, after checking to make sure there is not a lot of substance to their complaints, I take them aside and talk to them about the suspicions that are eating at them.

First of all, I tell them each of us has our own inner clock and our own way of sorting the priorities to determine what has to be done next in the business. Their main focus has to be their own particular efforts. I tell them that worrying about what another person does or doesn’t do is only distracting and hurting them – and not helping anyone else. It is sometimes also helpful to point out that one or two of the people in the organization are extremely high achievers and maybe if they are going to compare themselves to anyone – they might try comparing themselves to the high achievers and see what a waste of intelligence comparing yourself to others really is.

One or our staff who was focussing on keeping the stores neat and tidy was constantly bothered about other staff not participating in helping take care of little details – scraps of paper left lying on the floor where people passed them time after time without picking them up, desks not being neat and orderly – especially at the end of the day, people having appointments they had to attend to during the working day, bathrooms not being kept really really clean, all the toilet paper dispensers not being watched diligently to keep them full, etc, etc. When we hired a janitorial service and that person became involved in the hands on operations of just a certain section of the business – it took them almost no time to realize that the new duties were absorbing all the time the workday allotted and the complaints that were previously so preoccupying – stopped.

Ours is a very busy business and we have great staff but we will never have enough people to attend to all the details we would love to have taken care of everyday.

I’ve told my son and daughter, “One of the best things about owning your own business is you get to hire people you like to be around and share with them the joy of working in a great business. Yes, people all have their own particular problems – all of us – but when you have the opportunity to associate with great people – be sure to treat them well!” 

 Sounds easy – just like the used books business looks! (from the outside)