In a past life, not the mystical kind, in the real kind, I was a bookseller. Before I worked on computers, I helped to sell books. From January 2001 until November 2006, I live some of my best vocational life. I worked for, at the time, the book selling chain, Barnes & Noble (not Barnes and Nobles).
It was about this time that an upstart online company began to eat at BN’s status at the top, Amazon was just getting its wheels on and charging full bore ahead. At the time, they still weren’t what they became just a few short years later. During my time at Barnes, as we still refer to it, BN.com had a used section where one could find almost anything. It was amazing, just like my job.
I started in receiving and I still claim that I touched every book in the store. Not in sordid way, rather in a ministerial way (really, not in a sordid way). I guided the books to where they belonged and I helped the books to go with whom they needed to go with. I knew where every book in the store was. I was the one people came to when they couldn’t find a book.
It doesn’t last. One feels that one needs more. One feels that there is more money to be had. And I chased the money and I chased other vocational options. I worked at Barnes & Noble longer than at any other company. It’s not the same, now. You can’t go back. Barnes is a shell of what it was and I am not the man who worked there any more.