First off, thanks to Dumbo for so ably covering for self the last 2 SNLC's. And since 3CM is nominally back in action, what better loserly subject for his return than a business going bankrupt? You've all heard about the pending demise of Borders Bookstores, due later this year. Some articles on this include:
(a) Local coverage from this St. Louis Post-Dispatch article by Kavita Kumar
(b) National coverage in this NYT article by Michael de la Merced and Julie Bosman
More below the flip....
One slightly snarky take on the Borders bankruptcy from a local P-D columnist is this piece by Kevin Horrigan, where he notes, among other things:
"Here's my worst crime: Sometimes, when I have a couple of hours to kill, I'll go to Borders and buy a cup of coffee and read one of its books without paying for it. Sometimes it takes me two or three trips, but I'll read the whole book. Hey, they've got coffee. They've got chairs. They're asking for it.
I'm always careful not to spill coffee on it, and sometimes I assuage my guilt (see above) by buying books off the remainder table, but it never costs nearly as much as the book I read for free.
Who knew this was murder?"
Horrigan isn't the only one. In Kumar's article, there's this bit:
"On a recent night at the Borders store in Brentwood, most of the tables in the cafe were full of people typing on laptops, grading papers and doing math homework. While many customers said the store's demise would be a loss, most also sheepishly admitted to buying many of their books online from Amazon.
Seated at a table in a corner of the store was Kilah Bryan, 21, of Godfrey. She was reading a book while her boyfriend napped with his head on the table. Whenever she goes to the St. Louis Galleria, she often stops in and reads for a couple of hours at Borders.
Does she actually ever buy the books?
'No, not really,' she admitted."
I never did this at Borders (really), because to be honest, I rarely shopped there. When I did go to Borders, I wouldn't actually buy any books, since I have too many unread books already. I would buy a classical CD when Borders had a 40% coupon that week, or even a 50% coupon one lucky week. Usually it was a Naxos CD, full price $8.99, and thus $5.69 with the 40% coupon. In that sense, I was part of the problem too, besides my low purchase volume in of itself, in that I wouldn't buy anything at "full price", but wait for a sale. However, the "good" part of my purchases was that I'd get something that was obscure enough, IMHO, that I figured just about no one else in the area would even think of purchasing it.
What makes those purchases particularly loserly with respect to the diarist (natch) is that I'd listen to the CDs usually only once, maybe twice. Then I'd trade them in at the local indie CD store (and get very little for it), or even try to sell them on Amazon, again being somewhat part of the problem (but this may be worth its own SNLC). On the loser side, buying a CD to listen to only once, or twice at most, seems a silly waste of $, since I could borrow that CD from the library, one could rationalize. However, none of those CDs have ever been at any local library that I've seen. Plus, one could argue that I did better for Borders at buying those CDs even for a one-off listening than the folks who read books there for nothing, except the time spent there.
I haven't yet stopped by the nearest Borders to see what might still be left there, at liquidation discount prices. However, a more worldly-wise friend told me that what happens with these liquidation sales is that the firm managing the bankruptcy and the sales tends to jack up the list prices, and then offer "deep discounts" from those inflated prices. Of course, speaking of business practices, one lingering memory amongst small and independent bookstore owners is the effect that Borders (and Barnes & Noble, and Amazon) had on their establishments, as alluded to in the NYT blg post:
"But the effect that superstores have had on independents in the last two decades was not entirely forgotten. Linda Bubon, an owner of Women and Children First, a 31-year-old bookstore in Chicago, said she had watched incredulously as Borders opened store after store in the last 10 years.
'Now we have this behemoth off our backs.....It's not the politic answer to say that inside, there's a little happy bookseller who's jumping up and down.'"
In any event, this is obviously really bad for the local Borders employees, who'll be scrambling to find work in a job market that probably doesn't have room for them. Best of luck to them.
With that, time for the usual SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories of the week, which may or may not involve Borders stores as appropriate