Shoplifter's Notebook, Volume 2

I'm not going to whine about every book or sideline I discover missing. It, was, however, a bit ironic that we got in a new batch of bookplates from Saturn Press (and some really beautiful letterpress cards too), including one that says "Stolen From."

Ha, ha, ha! That kills me.

Later on I discovered a missing space in our new Bananagrams rack. We waited for a sale (that's happened before) or for a banana lounging around somewhere in the store, to no avail. Schwartz sold B-grams quite well, and we might have moved onto something new, but there is a book coming from Workman next month and it seemed like a good idea to restock. Now the idea is less good.

There is that booksellers adage, the less something looks like a book, the more it is stolen. I guess Bananagrams could be mistaken for a game, which has better resale value, or nice, delicious fruit, which has better nutritional value.

I'm still trying to balance the relaxed store atmosphere with my shrinkage. It's a cost of doing business. However, I do have my eye on a good mirror.

Oops, I've got to get back on the floor now. We decided we'd be really dead today so Jason, Sarah and I are doing the full July 4th shift at the store. July 3rd turned out to be busier than we expected, and best part of all, a good percentage of the biz is out-of-town visitors. I was thrilled to see two ex-coworkers, Eugene from New York and Liz from Las Cruces, now lawyer and librarian respectively. Eugene is very hot on the Colin Cotterill series, the newest of which is The Merry Mysoginist.