Would you quit your job in this economy? Could it get so frustrating, so soul-killing, so different than what it was before that you would just pack up and leave rather than put up with it another day?
Would you be very grateful for your spouse's permission to do so? Would it all come down in the end to the coffee?
Working at the local bookstore was the job of my dreams. It was also a great mom job. You know the kind, just a few days a week, off at 2 to be home by 3 when the kids walk in the door from school, a chance to use your skills, but also a job you can leave at work. Great thing about working at the bookstore is that friends and neighbors walk in every day. You can help them shop, choose the perfect gift, recommend a great book, and point out great sales. And for a few years there I had my own little children's book department, and I even read twice a week at storytime to the pre-schools that would walk their classes down to the store just for me.
And, there was the coffee. Every employee was issued a branded carry cup (with lid) and we could get a fresh cup of coffee any time we wanted. It was good coffee, and it was nice to take a little visit to the cafe for a refill and visit with co-workers while doing so.
Those were the days, when retail was relaxed and the world would come to hang out at the bookstore, read to the kids, buy a CD, and then a coffee and a cookie, pick up a magazine and a travel book, and so have a nice interlude. Friends, people love coming into and hanging out at bookstores. We even had music on Friday nights. I planned special programs for school holidays. My kids grew up at the bookstore, what a great place for your mom to work!
We knew things were getting a little tough when the word came down, break room coffee only. OK, so I have to use the hotpot in the break room, no big deal. Especially if I'm one of those people happy to take the empty to the cafe and a full one back to the office. I might even wash a few dishes in the sink and wipe down the table as well. But, hey I'm a mom, I'm always standing in front of the sink.
Then one day, about 18 months ago, the break room coffee disappears. The word has come down from corporate, no more free coffee. No more free employee store branded cups. Coffee is now 35 cents a cup, the employee price at the cafe. This is just before entire levels of management at the corporate level are fired. And a few months later the management at the store level was slashed. How do four managers run a store seven days a week, 16 hours a day? By working themselves to death, that's how.
I can't tell you how awful it feels to look at a day's schedule and see that your store manager will be working the sales floor from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., with no scheduled meal. And because the whole staff of the store has been cut to the absolute bare minimum, the manager is the one expected to sell the books, answer the phones, explain (again and again) why the music CDs are down to a selection of a dozen or so, and push frantically the "make" books chosen by corporate. When no sales person is scheduled for upstairs, it's the manager who goes up and down dozens of times a day fetching books for customers.
And the word came down last week from corporate: no food or drink on the sales floor, ever. No coffee, no bottle of water, no stash of apples or carrots behind the cash register to keep hunger pains away. As if there were any other staff in the store to cover for a 10 minute break and the drinking fountain wasn't on the second floor.
I had to quit anyway. My son has started college, but won't be able to stay more than a year if I don't have a full-time job equal to tuition. Finding the full-time job in this economy is going to be tough, the competition will be fierce, but I have some time do it. It just became clear, in our household, that the new job wasn't going to be found while my soul was being crushed at the bookstore.
I used to love working at the bookstore. I used to love helping a kid find a new book by a favorite author, or help an older person learn how to use the computers. I'm still surprised at myself that in the end, the coffee was the last straw.