Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Thu, 28 Jan 1993 10:26:22 EST
From:         Scott Hammer <SCOTH@WMVM1.CC.WM.EDU>
Subject:      Re: The Cubby Papers
              27 Jan 1993 11:50:10 GMT from <bt979@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>

On Wed, 27 Jan 1993 11:50:10 GMT Jeff Preston said:
>In a previous article, MHB@MITVMA.BITNET ("Michael H. Bloom") says:
>
>>Thinking about it more, I feel the same way about record store personnel.
>>Unless they're convinced their workplace is a supermarket for the Hot 100,
>>they should feel a sense of commitment to diversity. It should be a mark of
>>pride to get somebody to buy something he's never heard of, and to have him
>>come back the next week and say, Wow, you were right, that was amazing!
>
>  Yeah, that's in an ideal universe, though. In reality, for $4.25/hr.,
>these folks are probably just barely grateful for not having to clean
>grease off a grill. This is the McDonaldization of America.
>
Let me tell y'all a story from a different, though similar field, viz.,
bookselling.

There's a shopping center not too far from where I live, which has among its
stores a real old fashioned, Mom & Pop, owner operated, knows its business
bookstore.  You know, the kind of place where you can go in and say: "You
know that anthology of uncollected Faulkner short stories that came out about
15 years ago?  Can you get me a copy?" And they say "Sure. I've got one right
here," even though the thing's been out of print for five years.  Well, that's
the kind of bookstore I'm talking about.  As you can imagine, I have passed
many a happy hour browsing the friendly confines of this store.

As it turns out, this shopping center just lost one of its "anchor" tenants,
a grocery store that succumbed to all the merger/takeover/LBO craziness in
the grocery industry over the last ten years.  To replace this supermarket,
the management of the shopping center got Brentano's to open a supermarket
sized bookstore in its place (this is apparently a concept that Brentano's
is trying out in selected markets across the country).  The place is _full_
of books.  Imagine my surprise, however, when I found out that the employees
of this joint are a) teenaged refugee fry-cooks, or b) senior citizens whose
Social Security check doesn't quite go far enough.  In other words, these
people don't know spit about books.  As far as they're concerned, they could
be selling ballpoint pens, ballpeen hammers, No. 2 Red Winter Wheat, or any-
thing else.  Sure, they can point you at the latest Ann Rice novel, or any
thing else on the NYT Bestseller List, but ask them for anything out of the
ordinary, and they just glaze over.

Well, of course, most people only want what's on the NYT Bestseller list,
so guess which store had the big Christmas season. Ding! Brentano's.  It also
turns out that as part of its contract negotiations, Brentano's extracted a
concession from the shopping center's management that the lease of the Mom &
Pop bookstore would not be renewed when it expires in June '94.  As it turns
out, this concession is a moot point.  The Mom & Pop store had such a lousy
Christmas season that they're going out of business now.  Unfettered free
market capitalism strikes again.

Applying this cautionary tale to record stores is left as an exercise for
the reader.

OMC:  When traveling through this life
      You'll meet some funny men
      Some will rob you with a six-gun
      And some with a fountain pen.

                             - Woody Guthrie, "Pretty Boy Floyd"

-Scott "There Ought to be a Law" Hammer
 College of William and Mary
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU