The Dewey Decimal Disaster
At the second-hand shop where I worked, book sales were down, and customers were complaining about being unable to find books they liked, so I was assigned by the manager to organize books.
Discovering they were arranged more or less randomly, I spent much of my workdays for an entire week sorting them out into sections based on customer requests for specific topics (arts and crafts seemed to be a very popular one, followed by manga) and labeling the rows on the bookshelves. Every row was organized alphabetically by the author’s last name. As more books came in, I would come by to put them on the shelves in their correct locations. I would answer questions customers had about books.
Due to the nature of how we ran, we had no control over very specific books, but customers were satisfied that they could now easily find books on particular topics and check if works of fiction by a particular author were available. Book sales had steadily climbed during and after I reorganized the books section.
Some months later, we got a new person working there. After a few days, I overheard her going around asking who does the books, but I didn’t think anything of it. I had also been working in other parts of the store, so I hadn’t really seen her. Eventually, she finds me and engaged in a cheery mood.
New Hire: “Are you the one in charge of the books?”
Me: “Yes, does a customer have a question?”
New Hire: “No, I just sorted them out. I want you to see it. I think you’ll like it.”
She proudly guides me over to the books section; all my work sorting out the books had been undone. They were now sorted by color of the spine, and from tallest to shortest. All of the labels had been removed. I felt panicked and exasperated that all the work I had done prior had to be restarted from scratch, and I think she could tell from my facial expressions and body language. I was going to tell her that the customers won’t be able to find the books they wanted, but as I looked over, she was gone–she had already retreated to the back area.
She…kind of avoided me for the rest of her brief time there. By the following week, she was gone. If she’s reading this, sorry for the emotional outburst at that, but please understand that I sorted the books for customers who wanted to read them, not for decoration.
