I have a bookstore in North Philly I need part time help, that can turn into full time if things pick up. When I've tried to hire people in the past I was swamped with responses, most by people who shouldn't have answered the ad, and I have had a series of short term employees who don't stay. So let me explain a few things:
1. The store is in North Philly, on a busy street in an ungentrified area. There is no security guard. You have to be comfortable around that kind of neighborhoodyou have to even prefer it. Someone recently quit because some kids ran in and threw books around and she got scared to come back to work. In my Center City store, worse things have happened. When you're open to the public those things happen. The alternative is to spend your life in an air conditioned coffin.
2. I'm operating the store part time partly because I'm having trouble finding the right person to help out. The job will start part time but it can turn full time if you stick with it. The new employee will have to help with all aspects of running the place. One person who worked for me years ago didn't want to take out the trash because she had a college degree. A big part of the job is putting up books, but there is a lot of other stuff that has to be done. I just had an employee say she wanted to get paid extra to scrape paint off a window. Your job is to do what has to be done and I'll tell you what that is.
3. Books are heavy and whoever I hire is going to be the muscle. The store is three stories bigit's going to be epic when it's running full tilt. Lifting and carrying boxes of books upstairs is hard work, and whoever I hire is going to be the muscle. My wife and I are in our sixties and we can't be doing that kind of work all the time anymore.
4. This may seem obvious, but I'm running a retail bookstore, not some other kind of business. I hired someone who wanted me to put all the good stuff on line. I hired someone else who wanted me to turn the place into a performance space for her and her boyfriend. When she realized that wasn't going to happen, she disappeared with my keys.
5. There are several potential markets who the store could appeal to. It is relatively close to Temple U, thousands of people drive by the store or ride the bus everyday, there are a lot of people in North Philly who don't mind spending 50 or 100 bucks on a stack of books they like, there are thousands of people around the metropolitan area who would take the trip to get good deals on hard to get bookswe need to promote the store to those people. So far, no one except me has had one workable idea to promote either of my stores in 25 years.
6. You have to know something about books, and have a sense of what's good and what's boring. You also have to be able to be able to find the sweet spot in terms of pricinglow enough to tempt a customer, but not giving the book away. The internet is not much help because anything you look up will be double or triple what a retail customer is willing to pay a lot of the time. This skill comes naturally to me and I thought everyone had it because everyone picks out books for themselves. Virtually no one else can do this, as I've discovered.
7. This is more than a business for me. It's scary to me how a few billionaires have a monopoly on information and how every generation that came after mine cannot function without a cellphone. I believe the only way we will not become a totalitarian society populated by idiots is for all kinds of independent entities to open and provide an alternative. That is a big reason why I have made so many sacrifices to keep my stores open during hard times.
