A Wasteful America, Part One
(note: this post is from a journal entry from last year... i am no longer working at the boosktore, as i have moved on to bigger and better things... i thought it would be fun to share this with "y'all" anyway...)
As many of you know, I work part time at a bookstore, in order to supplement my musician’s income. Whereas I have often had many gripes about the disorganization of this particular establishment, I have never really had any ethical problems with the way the company is run (that is, apart from our hourly wage, considering how much profit the store makes in a given day.) At least, not until one day this week.
Recently, I have been temporarily assigned the task of doing returns, which as you can probably guess, is sending overstocked books back to publishers for a refund. The process is quite simple: you scan the book’s barcode with a "PDT" (a fancy name for a REALLY expensive machine that constantly malfunctions), and the machine tells you which publisher the book comes from. You divide and conquer the books, separating them by publisher, then package and send them back. As a result, we not only bring money back into the store, but we also free up space for the relentless barrage of new books sent to us by the company’s home office. (No, really, if wars were fought with books, just think "shock and awe" and you’ll have an idea of how many books they bombard us with. The place really is a disaster area.)
Anyway, on Thursday, I was given the laborious task of returning the "mass market" books, which are generally paperback books printed in large quantities. The process for these returns is slightly different: you scan the book, strip the front cover off, and send all of the covers in a package to the company’s distribution center for the refund.
Passerby: "But, if you only send the covers back, then what happens to all the books?"
Well, passerby, I’m glad that you asked. WE THROW THEM ALL AWAY. Of any and all practices I have been privy to in my entire working life, this is by far the most detestable, primarily for two reasons – environmental and educational.
An Environment Going To Waste
So, let’s talk numbers. Now, I alone stripped and threw away 350 books on Thursday. (No, I did not take my clothes off! If you’re thinking that, then stop skimming and read a little slower, you naughty vixen!) When I returned to work on Friday, I asked the full-time "returns" guy how many books, on average, he throws away. He answered that every year he throws away at least 2000 books.
Are you kidding?
Think about this for just a second – we are talking about only ONE YEAR. This is probably more books than most academic scholars will own over the course of their entire life! One book for each year since the birth of Jesus!
Now think about this. I work for one of the "college division" stores of this company. Since it is a college bookstore, it is one of the smaller stores owned by the parent company. Therefore, it is very likely that the larger, non-collegiate stores are throwing away at least twice as many books per year, if not more than that. But, for simplicity’s sake, and since I haven’t been able to adequately research how many of these stores are part of the college division, we’ll give the parent company the benefit of the doubt and assume that each store is throwing away only 2000 books per year. Minimal research online will confirm that this particular company currently operates right around 800 stores throughout the US. Simple calculations therefore reveal that this company is throwing away a minimum of 1.6 million books per year. Multiply this number by each year the company is in operation and, well, you get the picture. This is not a good use of natural resources.
An Education Going To Waste
Now, let’s talk quality. Sure, many of these "striplist" books simply have not garnered any popular appeal during their short life span (for example, steamy romance novels, diet books, and works of obscure science fiction writers.) If I were only throwing away titles that nobody in their right mind would pay full price for, then I may not be as hesitant to toss them where I feel they belong. (But, then again, isn’t such a feeling entirely subjective in nature? If someone else were doing these returns, might they not keep certain books that I would quickly get rid of?)
However, I was quite astonished to see some of the titles that passed through my hands today. Some of the authors included Carl Jung, Sinclair Lewis, Victor Frankl, George Eliot, Walt Whitman and Umberto Eco. There were books by well-known Hispanic writers (such as Julia Alvarez and Isabella Allende) which might encourage non-English speakers to learn how to read in English. (Wasn’t there some recent debate about this very topic?) There were also books by accomplished African-American writers such as Maya Angelou and Alice Childress (which might somehow be used to encourage minority youths to turn to something other than drugs or gang violence, which seem so prevalent among inner-city populations.)
Some other books that I stripped and threw away:
Aesop’s Fables
SAT and LSAT Practice Tests
Foreign Language Dictionaries
Books on how to get into graduate school
Books on how to get scholarships & grants
Children’s books, including books by Maurice Sendak and Lemony Snicket
Merriam-Webster Vocabulary Building books
Books on World War II History
Health and Fitness books
And of course LOTS of fiction.
I hopefully don’t need to argue why these books belong somewhere OTHER than in a trash can. Wouldn’t these books be better off being donated to low-income school districts? Or to Goodwill Industries, or the public library? Hell, we could even just give them to the street vendors who sell books right down the street from our store!
In America, however, it’s not part of our corporate ethos to think this way. Somebody getting something for free without paying for it was never part of the plan, and will only encourage mass panhandling.
Better to throw away leftover food than give it to someone who is homeless and hungry. That’ll show ‘em.
As many of you know, I work part time at a bookstore, in order to supplement my musician’s income. Whereas I have often had many gripes about the disorganization of this particular establishment, I have never really had any ethical problems with the way the company is run (that is, apart from our hourly wage, considering how much profit the store makes in a given day.) At least, not until one day this week.
Recently, I have been temporarily assigned the task of doing returns, which as you can probably guess, is sending overstocked books back to publishers for a refund. The process is quite simple: you scan the book’s barcode with a "PDT" (a fancy name for a REALLY expensive machine that constantly malfunctions), and the machine tells you which publisher the book comes from. You divide and conquer the books, separating them by publisher, then package and send them back. As a result, we not only bring money back into the store, but we also free up space for the relentless barrage of new books sent to us by the company’s home office. (No, really, if wars were fought with books, just think "shock and awe" and you’ll have an idea of how many books they bombard us with. The place really is a disaster area.)
Anyway, on Thursday, I was given the laborious task of returning the "mass market" books, which are generally paperback books printed in large quantities. The process for these returns is slightly different: you scan the book, strip the front cover off, and send all of the covers in a package to the company’s distribution center for the refund.
Passerby: "But, if you only send the covers back, then what happens to all the books?"
Well, passerby, I’m glad that you asked. WE THROW THEM ALL AWAY. Of any and all practices I have been privy to in my entire working life, this is by far the most detestable, primarily for two reasons – environmental and educational.
An Environment Going To Waste
So, let’s talk numbers. Now, I alone stripped and threw away 350 books on Thursday. (No, I did not take my clothes off! If you’re thinking that, then stop skimming and read a little slower, you naughty vixen!) When I returned to work on Friday, I asked the full-time "returns" guy how many books, on average, he throws away. He answered that every year he throws away at least 2000 books.
Are you kidding?
Think about this for just a second – we are talking about only ONE YEAR. This is probably more books than most academic scholars will own over the course of their entire life! One book for each year since the birth of Jesus!
Now think about this. I work for one of the "college division" stores of this company. Since it is a college bookstore, it is one of the smaller stores owned by the parent company. Therefore, it is very likely that the larger, non-collegiate stores are throwing away at least twice as many books per year, if not more than that. But, for simplicity’s sake, and since I haven’t been able to adequately research how many of these stores are part of the college division, we’ll give the parent company the benefit of the doubt and assume that each store is throwing away only 2000 books per year. Minimal research online will confirm that this particular company currently operates right around 800 stores throughout the US. Simple calculations therefore reveal that this company is throwing away a minimum of 1.6 million books per year. Multiply this number by each year the company is in operation and, well, you get the picture. This is not a good use of natural resources.
An Education Going To Waste
Now, let’s talk quality. Sure, many of these "striplist" books simply have not garnered any popular appeal during their short life span (for example, steamy romance novels, diet books, and works of obscure science fiction writers.) If I were only throwing away titles that nobody in their right mind would pay full price for, then I may not be as hesitant to toss them where I feel they belong. (But, then again, isn’t such a feeling entirely subjective in nature? If someone else were doing these returns, might they not keep certain books that I would quickly get rid of?)
However, I was quite astonished to see some of the titles that passed through my hands today. Some of the authors included Carl Jung, Sinclair Lewis, Victor Frankl, George Eliot, Walt Whitman and Umberto Eco. There were books by well-known Hispanic writers (such as Julia Alvarez and Isabella Allende) which might encourage non-English speakers to learn how to read in English. (Wasn’t there some recent debate about this very topic?) There were also books by accomplished African-American writers such as Maya Angelou and Alice Childress (which might somehow be used to encourage minority youths to turn to something other than drugs or gang violence, which seem so prevalent among inner-city populations.)
Some other books that I stripped and threw away:
Aesop’s Fables
SAT and LSAT Practice Tests
Foreign Language Dictionaries
Books on how to get into graduate school
Books on how to get scholarships & grants
Children’s books, including books by Maurice Sendak and Lemony Snicket
Merriam-Webster Vocabulary Building books
Books on World War II History
Health and Fitness books
And of course LOTS of fiction.
I hopefully don’t need to argue why these books belong somewhere OTHER than in a trash can. Wouldn’t these books be better off being donated to low-income school districts? Or to Goodwill Industries, or the public library? Hell, we could even just give them to the street vendors who sell books right down the street from our store!
In America, however, it’s not part of our corporate ethos to think this way. Somebody getting something for free without paying for it was never part of the plan, and will only encourage mass panhandling.
Better to throw away leftover food than give it to someone who is homeless and hungry. That’ll show ‘em.
Comments
I agree with Cheryl. Can the books be donated to a homeless shelter, or Salvation Army?
Anyway, I hate to be a person who says 'something needs to be done' and then does nothing, but I don't see a real solution to the problem. I'm sure City Harvest could redistribute the bread to a soup kitchen, but it was only 8 loaves. The point I'm trying to make is that book publishers must have a reason that they require bookstores to rip off the cover. Otherwise, wouldn't bookstores sell a book and then claim that they didn't and get a refund from the publisher. Maybe the bookstore could just send back the UPC symbols, keeping the covers intact.
Dave, it's one thing to know the righteous path, and it's another to walk it. Be the change you would like to see in the world. There are people out there waiting for you to make a difference in their life. Put down the pen, you have work to do.
well , now i have my own blog so i'm official too ;)