Goodbye Retail, Hello Real Life



Coolest thing ever!


That's right ladies and gentlemen, I am no longer a slave to retail! It's been almost two weeks since I worked my last shift at the bookstore and I've been meaning to write a sort of goodbye post since then but I've been super busy. I took advantage of my first official weekend off and went on a road trip to visit Waterloo. Amazing time, but that's not the point of this post. Instead, I will write a bit about what I'll actually miss about working with books.

But first, check out the site that this wicked awesome picture came from! Gotta love other Harry Potter obsessed people.
Righto, to the point!

As much as I may have complained about my job at the bookstore (and trust me, it was a lot...ask any of my friends), it was actually a decent job to have during school. I got to work with books all the time, see what was popular and selling, and get great recommendations from customers. The discount didn't hurt either. :)
I gave it quite a bit of thought and I think my favourite thing about the job was being able to recommend books to people and get them excited and interested in something new. It was always great to spend some time with a customer and finally find just the right book for them to read. The customers that valued my time and opinion were the best. They knew I knew what I was talking about and took my recommendations seriously. The people who drove me nuts were the ones who wanted something to read but rejected every single book I pulled off the shelf. Or, the ones who thought I was a brainless idiot because I worked retail. But, I'm not going to think of them.

I really liked being able to get people reading something that I absolutely loved too. I think I've mentioned before that Sarah Dessen is my favourite author so I would always try to tell teen girls about her books when they came in looking for something. I found it more difficult in the last few years though with the popularity of all the vampire/supernatural books that girls have become obsessed with. On the other hand, a lot of the people who I used to work with knew how much I love Dessen so they would recommend her books to customers too. Next, I will work on taking over the world. :) (speaking of Sarah Dessen, sooo pumped for her new book coming out May 10th!!!)

One of the other cool things was when someone would come in looking for something but they couldn't remember the title, or author, or sometimes even what it was about. They would have one little bit of information and were hoping that by some slim chance we would know what they were talking about. I found that the longer I worked at the store, the better I was at figuring out what they wanted. My favourite incident was when a woman came in and was looking for a novel that was about a woman who time traveled. Yes, I knew exactly what she was talking about - gold star for me! (the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, in case you were wondering)

The long and short of it is that I will kind of miss the job at the bookstore, but I'm also super stoked to be working a real "grown up" job. I'll miss knowing what books are coming out all the time, and hearing what my coworkers and customers think about particular books. I guess now I'll have to settle for reading many, many book blogs and wandering through the store all the time to keep up. I'll survive :)

One last thing...I apologize if this post is disconnected. I started watching The Kids Are All Right but really wanted to get this posted. Thanks for reading, and let me know whenever you have good recommendations or tidbits to pass along. Have a good night everyone!