The Last Announcement at Borders

This is how I remember it. Some names and identifying details have been changed.

I worked at Borders for about five months in 1999, which is long enough ago that I can now say "1999" and make a room feel briefly antique.

At the time, I had just been laid off from a military job and needed work. Anything. I got hired at Borders and was genuinely relieved. It was books and music. I could spend all day shelving CDs, reading things I did not need to buy, then buying them anyway with the employee discount.

For a little while, it was good.

My training manager was a guy named Tim who was very sincere about books. During training, he told us that reading online would never replace a physical book. People wanted the smell, the weight, the whole thing.

Tim was nice. Which meant he was gone almost immediately.

Then there was my manager.

I had been there maybe two or three weeks when he started telling me I was too slow.

My job was to stock music. I would load hundreds of CDs onto this rickety metal cart and put them back on the shelves. It took me about an hour to clear one. Later I found out it took most people closer to two.

I took the criticism seriously anyway. I got faster. Eventually I could do a whole cart, accurately, in thirty minutes.

Then my breaks were too long.

I got two fifteen-minute breaks. I smoked then, so I would go outside, have two cigarettes, and come back in twelve or thirteen minutes. One day he walked up and told me my break had run long.

I assumed I had screwed up.

The next day I set an alarm for ten minutes. I came back early. He told me my break had run long again.

The day after that, I checked out with him before I left. I told him the time. I came back ten minutes later and told him the time again. He looked at his watch and said I had probably left a little before I said I did.

There was no way to win that conversation because the conversation was never about time.

For a while, I tried to prove I was a good employee. I worked faster. I stayed out of the way. I did not take long breaks. I did not complain, except once.

He scheduled me for ten shifts in a row that ended around midnight and started again at seven in the morning. We called it a reacharound. It had a name because apparently it happened enough to deserve one.

I went to the general manager and asked if the schedule could be fixed. I did not make a big speech. I just told her what it was doing to me.

She said it had been a mistake.

About fifteen minutes later, my manager called me into his office.

The office was cramped. There was a wall of security monitors showing different corners of the store. He closed the door, paced for a second, then looked at me and said, "I don't like you, Adam. I want you to quit, or preferably be fired. And I'm going to make it happen."

I remember asking him why.

"I don't like you," he said.

That was it. That was the reason.

I told him I would be moving back to California soon. I would be gone in a month or two. We could avoid each other, get the work done, and he would never have to deal with me again.

"Not soon enough," he said.

I went back to work because I needed the money. That is the part of being young and broke that is hard to explain later. You can know something is wrong. You can know someone is treating you badly. And you can still show up the next day because your options are not concepts. They are rent, gas, food, and a ticket home.

It got worse in all the small ways. My schedule moved around. Every technicality seemed to become a problem. I was told I was early when I was early, late when I was not late, and lazy when I was working harder than I had ever worked at a retail job.

I eventually bought my ticket back to California and gave notice. I had three days left.

On one of those last days, he called me into the office again.

He told me I had been six minutes late the week before. Under company policy, he said, I had enough points to be let go.

"You're firing me?" I asked.

He nodded. I remember thinking he looked pleased with himself.

I stood there for a second, then held out my hand.

"Well," I said, "it's been a pleasure working for you. I hope there are no hard feelings."

He paused, then shook my hand like he had just found a live snake in it. He said he would let me get my things and say goodbye to everyone.

Then he left the office.

I shut the door behind him.

I slid the deadbolt into place.

The office phone had an intercom line that reached the entire store. Customers. Employees. The cafe. Every aisle of books and music and people just trying to buy a magazine without becoming part of somebody else's work meltdown.

I picked up the handset and took a breath.

Then I said, as clearly as I could, that there was a manager in the cafe area who had made my last five months miserable. I said he had messed with my schedule, threatened me, and used every petty little rule he could find to get rid of me. I said he was not the decent professional he pretended to be.

I did not phrase it gently.

At the end, I thanked my coworkers. I thanked the customers. Then I said:

"Fuck you, and thank you for shopping at Borders."

The store lost its mind.

From the security monitors, I could see people stopping in the aisles. The general manager and my manager were running around trying phones and trying to figure out where the announcement was coming from. At one point they rattled the office door and I heard someone say, "No, I locked it."

Which was not true.

I turned off the intercom, grabbed my backpack, and walked out through a building full of noise. Customers were leaving. Employees were talking over one another. The managers were yelling.

I stepped outside and kept walking.

A few days later, someone from the company called and asked for my version of what happened. I gave it to them. After I got back to California, another person called and told me there would be no charges and that they were looking into the complaint.

"You don't need to worry about any of this," he said.

"Thanks," I said. "I won't."

Then I hung up.