Inventory 2009

In bookselling, as in all retail ventures, it becomes periodically necessary to do an inventory of goods. We here at Books, Etc. always do ours in January because inventory involves closing for an entire day and ripping the store basically to pieces, and this is the slowest time of year. We begin prepping as soon as the holiday rush is over, doing all sorts of organizing and running all sorts of fun reports. Inventory is always on a Monday at the Portland store and the following Tuesday in Falmouth so that we can sequentially share the laser machines(!) that we rent to scan the books.

The day before inventory we go around and work down every display, endcap, window, tabletop bookstand, etc., and then in the morning we shove everything around on the shelves to make it as easy as possible to scan everything quickly. The end result is something like this:



Understandably, and especially in this economic climate, we spend a good proportion of both Sunday and Tuesday explaining what's going on and that no, we're not closing, remodeling, or moving. We did have one woman this year who walked in on Sunday evening, took one look around, smiled, and cheerily commented "Wow, you must be doing inventory!"

I kind of wanted to hug her.

Of course, the best part about inventory (other than the computers being updated so that they're actually accurate!) is that Allan (the Big Cheese) always buys us coffee in the morning and lunch at lunch. The past few years it's been Asian fusion from Fuji, across the street, but this year we tried out a new pizza place, Joe's New York, that opened up around the corner in the old Granny's Burritos space. It was pretty darn tasty, and they even brought it to us in the middle of the snowstorm that inevitably seems to accompany inventory.



There's definitely something to be said for sitting around with your coworkers and your boss, eating and shooting the breeze. Downright relaxing it is, and very unlike our usual customer-service buzz!