Things You Get Asked Every Day At a Bookstore

So I've been working at a bookstore for like 9 months now, and there are some things people say every day:

Do you have a bathroom?

Yep. Back of the kids section.

Where's the Starbucks?

Right over there, with the big Cafe sign.

There's no one at customer service/the register/downstairs.

Yes there is. We're not allowed to stand behind the register/desk unless we're working on something back there, so chances are they're shelving a book or helping a customer. Give it 30 seconds. (But is there something I can help you with?)

Do you price match?

No.

But on your website it's only $__!

We literally can't even price match with our website. Yes, it's dumb. Sure, I'll definitely tell my manager that we should get that fixed. As if they don't get that complaint every day. We have no power to change anything.

Do I use the chip?

I literally just told you to use the chip if you have it. Please listen.

Can I check out here?

No. This is customer service. I can walk you to a register though. It's about 10 feet away.

I guess it's free then!

 Hahaha you're so funny! No cashier has ever gotten tired of that joke ever!


A million dollars. (or alternatively) The winning lottery numbers.

I asked you if there was anything else I could get you. From our store was implied.

Do you carry (insert nonsensical item here)?

...No, we don't carry diapers. Or t-shirts from your favorite sports team. Or whatever it is this time. This is a bookstore.

Young Widows Club

Once again, I should note that I read a proof copy of this book, not the final version.

I'm going to be honest, I had no idea what to expect when I picked up this book. A younger Red Hat Ladies book, perhaps? A group of young (which I would have probably defined as 20s to early 30s) widows finding solace in one another, friendship, etc., and being able to move on with their lives with the bonds of friendship. Something like that, probably.

The protagonist is 17. She is a widow at 17.

She dropped out of school to follow her musician boyfriend who already graduated, got married, and moved into a house in his parents' backyard when one day, his heart just... stopped.

6 months later, she gets caught trespassing. The court mandates that she return to school and attend a Young Widows Club, which Tamsen, our protagonist, quickly realizes is a bit of a misnomer. The members aren't "young," at least by her standards. They're young to be widowed. She quickly dubs it the Mostly Middle-Aged Widows Club.

There is only one man in the group, and he's the next youngest member. Colin, who's in his 20s, quickly judges Tamsen as putting on a show and not properly grieving, and he is not shy about letting her know. An altercation during their anger-themed grief group leaves Colin with a bloodied nose, and afterwords they being communicating better. While they both work on coming to terms with their partner's deaths, they also begin to see each other romantically.

The relationship is tentative and believable. They are both going through so much, and keep pushing each other away. They both still love their dead spouse, and feel guilt about the budding relationship. They push each other to build new lives, to find a direction. Ultimately, they are good for each other.

Of course, my favorite part of the book is Tamsen's growth. The Young Widows Club and Colin are a big part of that, but so is her childhood best friend, Lula. Lula is still hurt about being ditched as soon as Tamsen and Noah, her now-deceased husband, started dating. Lula shows Tamsen what real friendship looks like, how to embrace yourself, and how to keep a life balance when you're in a relationship.

One of Tamsen's teachers also has a huge hand in helping her figure out what is next for her. She finds Tam's talent, and gives her an opportunity. Tamsen must choose to pursue it or not herself.

While Tamsen's situation is vastly different from my own, there is a lot to relate to, no matter who you are. The loss of a loved one. Feeling directionless. Being afraid of one's own emotions. Friendship. Family- the one you're born with and the one you find along the way.

I'm interested to read more of Alexandra Coutts's work. Her previous title, Tumble & Fall, is also set in Martha's Vineyard, referred to as "the island" in Young Widows Club. The setting really becomes a part of the story in Young Widows Club. The setting influences the characters and the plot in ways that another setting couldn't. I would love to see how the same setting could influence a whole new set of characters.

Job Searching in a Digital Age

Look. We all know that looking for a job sucks. So-called experts say that looking for a job is a full-time job. Except no one is paying you, you don't have anyone else's deadlines to meet, and you're working wherever there's wifi. It's easy to lose motivation.

And I know I have it pretty easy. I'm living at home right now, and my mom isn't charging me rent (yet). I don't have to foot the grocery bill, and she still loves to go shopping by herself and come back with clothes for me. So I don't have many expenses. Gas for the car. Any shopping I do myself. Food if I go out- but I like to cook, so that's pretty rare. I'm not in desperate need of money. And I am working part-time. So that at least gives me a reason to get out of my pjs most days. And gives me a little spending money.

But that isn't the point. Adults in my life who have been in the same job for the last 10+ years keep telling me to "pound the pavement" and just call up companies I want to work for to ask if they're hiring. They don't seem to understand that's not how it works.

You can find out if they're hiring with a google search. Calling them doesn't show interest anymore, it shows that either A. you're technologically inept or B. you don't follow instructions, because most job posts these days say "No phone calls please."

And there's also the fact that a simple google search can pull up all sorts of information about you. That "funny" picture you took in college that you didn't change the privacy settings on when Facebook changed its policies? They can see that. The embarrassing video of you in a middle school production your friend's mom put up years ago? They can see that. Every tweet that you didn't bother to spell check or read back after you typed it? They can see that.

I don't think I have any horrible pictures on Facebook or Instagram, and I don't embarrass easily. But the twitter thing? Oh. That scares me.

Two of my minors in college were professional writing and social media marketing. For professional writing, I learned the ins and outs of grammar. In social media marketing, I learned about the damaging effects of a misspelled tweet or ungrammatical post. I've tried to be better about this recently; I do still every once in a while hit the send tweet button before I catch the mistake, then delete it and re-post it correctly.

It also doesn't help that over the last few years, I've tweeted from 10 twitter accounts. Six of them I shared with my best friend Claire as a part of the transmedia experience for the show we co-created, All Or Nothing. Two of them were for clubs at school, and when I passed them down to the next publicist, they were all but abandoned. The remaining accounts are the one for the magazine I work for, and my personal twitter.

On one hand, I would hope that they would only look at my personal twitter, as it's the only one I'm the sole author of. It's been maintained consistently, and it's the longest running of the accounts. But I'm also much more careful with the other accounts- they're for a brand, not just me talking about my life. I read them over multiple times, often reading them aloud to someone near me to make sure it sounds good and isn't crossing any lines. For my twitter, I'll write it, read it over once for mistakes, and send. Who cares? No one reads my twitter anyways.

Even though I more carefully craft my posts on the other twitter accounts, my co-owners are not always so careful. I remember when I went off to DPI last summer, I told Claire I probably wouldn't have time to do social media stuff for All Or Nothing, so she was solely in charge. It was probably the worst time for me to leave too, as I left a week after the trailer dropped, a week and a half before the show started airing, and I was gone for a month. So I left all of the last-minute pre-show hype AND the first few weeks of promoting to her. I remember getting so frustrated when I went on twitter and saw misspelled tweets, tweets not tagging people who we quote, etc.

I don't want the causal nature of my own twitter, or the mistakes of others on our shared twitters, to reflect poorly on me. Even writing a blog seems like a risk. I should probably proof it more carefully than I do. There is probably an error or two in quite a few blog posts, especially the old ones that I wrote in college. I usually didn't even proofread those because we weren't being graded on technical stuff. It was about the consistency of doing it, the quality of writing, and the comments we left on each other's blogs.

Having an online presence is a risk. But you can't not have one either. Especially if you want to do something under the marketing umbrella, which I do. They want to see what you do. But also, I'm not a popular person. My photos don't get hundreds of likes. Not because they're bad photos- but because I am both not popular on my own and not employing marketing strategies to get more likes. Social media is fun. Unless used as a measurement for marketing, I don't see the value of likes- they do not validate my existence. But I worry employers may not see it that way. How can she market a brand when she can't even market herself?

Go Set A Watchman

I really wasn't sure if I was going to read Go Set A Watchman. I certainly procrastinated on it long enough. I kept up-to-date on everything surrounding its publication. Was Harper Lee of sound mind when she signed for it to be released? Is publishing the book morally acceptable? Would it make a good companion to To Kill A Mockingbird?

Now that all the dust has long been settled on the controversy (and I was given a free copy of the book, so I didn't have to feel like I was rewarding the publishers for possibly exploiting an elderly woman not long before she died), I decided it was time to pick it up.

I was... surprised.

In it, Scout is all grown up and realizing that Atticus wasn't the god-like figure she always made him out to be. He had faults. In fact, he wasn't the anti-racism warrior that Scout saw him as during the trial in TKAM. He was just a really good lawyer who believed his client.

I am amazed that some editor somewhere read GSAW and was able to pinpoint that Scout's childhood would be a better story. To be fair, the memories of childhood were some of the best bits in GSAW. I especially liked the one when they pretended they were visiting preachers. Those memories were so vividly described.

But TKAM ended up being about the trial, which I believe to be the pinnacle of Scout's Atticus-worship. It was almost as if the two books were meant to come out as a set. One to build up this childlike idealism and then one to destroy its foundation.

I don't know how I feel about it. I've spoken to many who felt that GSAW ruined Atticus, who was a childhood hero for them. That was part of my fear in reading it. I never worshiped Atticus like others did, but I did find him to be a good example of doing what is right, no matter who opposes you, something I always strive to do.

But I think that ruining Atticus was kind of the point of GSAW. Not when she first wrote it, as it was the original novel; the larger themes are about questioning your gods, those you look to for moral guidance. Atticus had to be ruined for Scout in the book for her to grow. But as we all grew up reading TKAM, seeing Atticus through Scout's eyes, he was shattered for us as well.

And I think that's the genius of Harper Lee. And whoever that editor was.