Seven Years at Powell's Books
- By Karen Wright
Powell's City of Books. From Powell's website.
by Karen Wright
About 1991, I went to work at Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon. It was a dream come true. "The City of Books", it was billed then, as it is today. But today it is much more of a city than it was 13 years ago. They have expanded and expanded and expanded the main store, and still have their other six stores scattered about Portland and surrounds. It is a giant in its own mind and in the mind of others, as well. It is arguably the largest independent bookstore in the U.S., but certainly it is that in the western U.S. When I mention that I worked at Powell's to almost any book person, they sort of drool and get all goggle-eyed and use adjectives such as "heaven", "paradise", "utopia." Anyway, you get the idea. But just as with any other job, it had its good and bad points.
At the time I was originally hired, they plunked me down in shipping and receiving, where most newbies are plunked when they have no book experience at all. The best part of that was that I got to see all the new books as they came in the door. The bad part was that I only made about $6.00 an hour, not enough to buy any books at all, much less used books. It was what they called a holiday hire, so the chances, the personnel gal told me, of staying more than a couple of months, were slim. I had been itching to work at Powell's for years, so when a number of folks happened to quit shortly before New Year's, my little heart did a few palpitations. And the old ticker was right on. I was put on full-time, and by the end of three or four months, I was transferred from shipping to section work in Americana, probably not because I was a history major, but because I was the only one who really wanted that section at the time.
Section work consisted of going to a designated place in the massive storage room and taking all the books in the bins that were related to your section, new or used, out to the section on a rolling cart. Then each book was placed in its appropriate place on the shelf. Sections were divided by subject, then the books were placed in their subject area alphabetically, by author. There was nothing really different from any other bookstore about doing it this way, except that Powell's puts new and used books of the same title together on the same shelves. This was a chance to see everything new and used that came into the section and to pine over the ones you couldn't afford. It was great fun for a long time, but even finding cool books every day can become monotonous.
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Seven Years at Powell's Books
- By Karen Wright
Powell's Rare Book Room. From Powell's website.
Just about the time that Americana got somewhat boring, however, the gal who did the Gardening Section quit. Well, now, I know gardening! I have gardened all my life. My grandma had me out pulling weeds and picking potatoes and tomatoes when I was just knee high to the proverbial grasshopper. So I applied for the Gardening section, and I got it. No raise this time, but I moved into the part of the store with the big windows. Additionally, they needed help in the Mystery Section, and since I love a good mystery, I did that part-time as well.
After about two years as a Section Head, maybe a bit longer, there was an advertisement in the store employee lounge, for a job as Administrative Assistant to the boss, Michael Powell. The job was just the standard secretarial type stuff, but apparently no one else in the place had the necessary experience or interest in being an office-type. I wasn't too thrilled about it, but the pay was double what I had been making in shipping. Oh boy, I could buy a few books! It was a policy in those days, to hire folks from within whenever possible. The fact that I had been an administrative assistant for a number of years before Portland, that I could type really, really fast, and the fact that I now had a minor idea of what the book business was all about, shooed me into the job.
During the two years that I was administrative assistant, I had a chance to instigate and edit the company newsletter, work on a committee that drafted the employee guidelines, and watch the company computerize. Many were the nerds and geeks that went nearly crazy trying to get the computer system set up to handle the book inventory that comes in over the counter at Powell's in any one day. But finally, the system was set up and the task began of putting the million or so books that were already on the shelves (these were called the lake) into the computer whilst also listing the thousands of books that were bought daily at the various stores (these were called the river.) It took a very long time - my recollection is that it took more than a year - to finish the lake and catch up with the river.
Powell's purchased an old Bookmobile and I volunteered to drive it in parades and to book shows and the like. It was too much fun, hailing from the late 1950s and being about 1 ton in size. The whole interior was beautifully finished wooden bookshelves. I think they let me drive because I grew up on a ranch and I was old enough and also mechanically inclined enough to keep it running. The battery cables would slip off and it would stall and I would have to lift a panel on the floor and tinker with the damn thing for twenty minutes to get it going again, but then it would spring into life and we'd go tootling off to the next show. About a year later, they decided it wasn't cost effective, so I lost my fabulous toy. It's probably moldering away in the truck graveyard somewhere.
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Seven Years at Powell's Books
- By Karen Wright
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By then I was pretty sick of being in the office where I had not much chance to play with books and my dream of being a book dealer was fading away. I applied for a job as Assistant Manager of the Technical Book Store and got it. The only trouble was, there were too many chiefs and not enough Indians and after about a year-and-a-half at the Tech Store they decided to thin out the assistant managers. Long about then, we got the two waters dammed up, the lake and river. As if this chaos wasn? enough, the store went online and within no time at all, the store was selling thousands of books over the Net. Just then, a job came open as manager of the Cookbook Store, one of the satellite stores on Hawthorne Avenue in Southeast Portland. I applied and interviewed with about ten others for the job. Sadly, though I came in second in the race to managership; I did not get it. If I had I would probably still be there. By then, we had been in Portland for seven years and the rain was starting to get to us. We decided it was time to move on to warmer, dryer pastures and I bid Powell? a fond farewell. I left with warm, fuzzy feelings about the book business, and though opening my own store was a while away, I had amassed a nice collection of books to start with.
I've now owned my own bookstore in Nevada (warmer and dryer) for six years, and about every two or three years, I go back up to Powell's for a few days and trade books in for more books. There are many of the same guys and gals buying their books as were there when I was there. They buy fewer books now and they pay less for them than they used to. The shelves have a lot more new and remainder books than they previously had, and the feelings of camaraderie and "family" seem much less prevalent than they did when I was there. The store is unionized, which happened amidst much feuding, fussing and tussling right after I left. Perhaps that has something to do with the changes. The clerks are much more polite, but not as much fun as they were when Powell's was a much smaller, less corporate entity. The book buyers tell me that the incredible skills that used to make up their jobs are not nearly as necessary as they were before the computers arrived and that they miss the old days. Then again, don't we all miss the days before the Net?
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