As a former Borders employee, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand: BURN IT ALL! TO THE GROUND! Dance around the funeral pyres of the establishments, lifting your wailing voices to sing the ruin of their corporation! I remember working and Borders and absolutely despising upper management. I hated the corporate rules handed down by some unseen force to essentially make my life suck. $6.50 an hour to have your soul constantly eroded was the going rate.
On the other hand, I had fun. A lot of fun. I met some of the coolest people I ever have working there. Borders Books, Music and Cafe in Stony Brook, New York had great people working there (for the most part. I'm talking about YOU, Jillian! Hater! (actually I loved Jill, she was cool... for a hater)). I managed to get paid for putting books on shelves, screwing around with friends, and occasionally helping people who didn't know how to type things into the Info computer. The hours sucked, the pay was shit, and the boss was a soulless she-beast who would only lumber out of her office to yell at us, but I had a great time working there.
So it is an end of an era. Eric over at Pimp My Novel has said he expects this to hasten the transition into new media, to make print books secondary to electronic. Probably true, much to my chagrin. It's a little scary, trying to get into this world, this career, especially as everything is changing so radically.
But like those corny motivational posters say, ride the wave of change or be crushed under it.
R.I.P. Borders
1974-2011
Wordslinger-117 out.
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