May Day holiday - except I’m working on a late shift (after already doing a full weekend, thank you very much). Just to boost my moral and incetivise me one of the assistant managers, instead of a ‘hello’ or ‘how was the weekend shift’ or ‘hey, you got this, this and that done, great’, started within 30 seconds of my arrival to bitch and moan and generally be a bad-tempered wee bugger. Apparently Alex got the same on arriving for the early shift, as did another colleague. Way to motivate and inspire your team to work, especially on a holiday…



Between grumpy managers and bullshit memos arriving endlessly from head office and our area manager we don’t actually get much time to sell books anymore. Directives arrive constantly - move these books here, move them back again, no, we don’t like that, space them out differently on the shelf - we even get told how many we can put on what shelves and where and get told off if we affix a special offer sticker that isn’t in the correct corner of the book cover and straight on - yes they are that bloody anal. No wonder the quality and range of the books in the store suffer - we don’t have time for real bookselling duties! I recall when we used to be a real group of professional booksellers (sighs). I hate my job and my firm is a mindless, uncaring amalgamation of Dilbert’s Pointy Haired Boss and the smegging Borg.