Chapter 2
It turns out that Anais can be very patient, just not with me. I do try to aggravate her on occasion. Maybe I should stop doing that.
“So Lucy, spill the dirt, she’s gone, you can talk about her now.”
“Laura,I was telling the truth, she really was very nice to me. She said if I do as well tomorrow as I did today. Then we can schedule a road test.”
“Wow, that's terrific. You’ll be running off to the post office and other errands before you know it.”
“You are really going to let me drive your car.”
“You just came back from driving it, so I already let you drive it didn’t I?”
“Yes but that was under strict adult supervision.”
“You don’t have to tell me, she criticized my driving all the way home last night, that’s why I was surprised that you said she was patient. Yes, after you get your license I expect you to do some driving for work. There are two things you have to promise me. One you will never drink and drive. That’s a quick trip to the cemetery, and do you know how bad I’d feel if I had handed you the means to kill yourself. Well it might kill me. Second, no one can ever sit in the back seats.”
“Why no back seats, I’ve seen Amy ride in the back with you and Anais many times haven’t I?”
“Yes, but you don’t tell anyone that, tell them it’s soaked in cat pee. Then they won’t want to sit in it.”
“Alright, but I don’t understand why?”
“Because that is the second most common thing that kills teenagers in cars. Distracted driving, I’m sorry one more thing to promise me about, no texting.”
“That’s illegal.”
“Right as it should be. So you do those three things and you can drive unsupervised, after you get your license. But I hope you remember that cars are evil, CO2 is killing the planet and your generation will have to clean it up if you are going to survive, so I hope you still ride your bike except in the bad weather. It’s better for your heart, your health, your complexion, your legs, your butt. In general just better. Here comes a delivery, do you want to handle it?”
“Sure Laura, I’ll head to the stockroom and open the door for him.”
“It’s office equipment, so after he leaves, open it up and check to see it’s in good shape.”
She went into the stockroom and I could hear the delivery driver drive away. I heard the box cutter slit the box open. Then I heard a gasp. A minute later Lucy stood before me. Laptop box in hand.
“Laura, did you order a new computer?”
“Yeah Lucy, I thought it’d be good if the store manager had a work laptop. I hope I ordered a good one.”
“It’s a perfect one, it’s just like the one I’ve been saving for.”
“That’s good then, I’m glad because I expect a lot of work out of the manager and the pay really will suck. It’ll be right at the poverty line, but I thought some perks would sweeten the deal. Free food, free books so they can make recommendations to customers. Use of the company car so they don’t have to pay for insurance. What about a company phone, how much is your service plan? ”
“I don’t know, my father has me under a family plan, but I always try to use wifi when I can so there are no huge data bills. In school we can’t use our phones anymore and you have great wifi here and it’s okay at home so I must not be using much data anywhere. But if you are giving away all these perks why not just pay them more and let them pay for their own stuff.”
“Well if I pay them a salary, there is no minimum wage to worry about and if I make that salary, as high as possible on the poverty line which is fourteen thousand five hundred dollars the government is going to take around eight percent for social security and medicare. So they will make about thirteen thousand two hundred and fifty dollars after taxes. The reason I want to do this is so that the government can’t take any money to actually run the government. This is my civil disobedience. Thoreau went to jail because he wouldn’t support his government. If we keep our salaries low enough then we won’t support them either. Plus there are a lot of positive benefits to not having a lot of money, as long as you have a support network. This could never work for truly poor people, unless they collectivize. They have pushed rents so high it is criminal. Amy could have rented out her house and in a month or may a month and a half she would have enough to pay her property tax for a year. The other ten months would be straight profit, that should be criminal. Houses are so expensive they are talking of fifty year mortgages. If you buy your house when you hit thirty, you’ll be eighty by the time it’s paid off. Maybe the store and the collective could buy a house together and give free board to the employees and have a couple of writers live there. So the short answer to your question is I don’t want to be complicit in the things the federal government does. So I’m not going to take a salary from the store. Any profit the store makes is going right back into the store. That way we make no profit. We may be the only business in the town, or the state or the country whose entire aim is to get literature into their customers hands while just squeaking by financially. The manager will also get a tuition stipend of five thousand dollars, unless the government raises how much a company can contribute without the employee having to pay tax on the amount. So that raises the pay to almost twenty thousand, health care, free food, free laptop, free use of the company car. What do you think?”
“I think if they don’t have a family it would be perfect, especially if they were going to college. So when I make these posters, do you want me to write on there that it is for a managerial position?”
“No, I’d rather promote from within, this new person is just going to be expected to do sales. They’ll get the same pay as the manager, but I just thought of a way to sweeten the deal for the manager. For each year that they remain as manager they will also receive one percent of the company if we can figure out how to make that happen without the manager having to pay taxes on it. That’ll be up to Bianca to figure out. So what do you think?”
“What do you mean promote from within?”
“I mean, why hire a manager when we can hire an employee and just promote one of the current staff to manager.”
“So Lis is going to be the manager?”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because Lis is your only staff and you said promote from within.”
“What are you, chopped liver?”
“No.”
“You Lucy, I'm asking you to be the manager, I’m asking you to set up the laptop for the manager. You’ll get five hundred and fifty dollars every two weeks. I’d suggest saving it, college is expensive, so you could build a nice nestegg while you don’t have any expenses. As the manager it will be your responsibility to see if we can order college textbooks. It’s criminal how much they charge for those, so it would be a nice perk for the manager to get them at cost. So, yes or no?”
“Yes, yes, yes. Thank you so much. But I have to go back to school in seven weeks, what then?”
“Same deal Lucy, work as much as you can but keep your grades up. You can always study here in between customers, or you can just keep an eye on your employees while they wait on them. But you are right, seven weeks isn’t a lot of time and we want a one month trial on new employees to see if they will work out. So tomorrow you better get to work on those posters.”
“What’s wrong with right now, Laura?”
“Nothing Lucy, I just thought you might want to set up your new laptop. After you get it all set up and your files all transferred, if you want to donate your old laptop, I know an old yippie who would be able to put it to good use.”
“I can’t believe you bought me a new laptop, the one I already have is pretty old, beat up and slow.”
“That’s all right, so is the guy we're going to send it to. The only thing it needs to do is open up the text editor or better yet notepad++. Then we’ll ship it to Willow, she’ll be handling his tech support.”
“How did you know exactly what laptop I wanted right down to double the ram and a one terabyte SSD.”
“Willow.”
“So she knew you were going to make me the manager and didn’t say anything?”
“No, she only knew that you were getting the laptop, I didn’t talk to her about making you manager, but I wanted to make sure I got you the right laptop and I knew she wouldn’t blab.”
So Lucy started to setup her laptop, but ran into a snag right away. During setup, Microsoft first downloads the updates it needs, so while she was waiting for her brand new machine to update. She worked on the page sized poster for the library. When she was done I grabbed it and walked down the street to the library. There was a line at checkout. So I looked around for a bit. Lines at the library usually ran in cycles. It was like everyone wants to leave at once, then a period where you couldn’t get people to leave even if you wanted to.
While everyone was trying to get out, I poked around. The library clientele were two very distinct groups. Young parents and their toddlers, almost exclusively young women and their children, although I did see a rare father with a baby at the library. Was he here like Lachlan had been to pick-up bored young housewives or was he trying to give the baby an early start in socialization skills? It is hard to tell from just a moment's observation. You’d be able to tell further during storytime, where was dad’s interest directed, on his toddler, or on the hot mom with her toddler on the other side of the room. The young mothers also might be on the hunt, after such a rare sighting, a male caring for his young. The most obvious move would be to suggest a play date, would he see right through the subterfuge and think her too forward.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Probably not, most men are pretty oblivious. The only men who I would expect to see the guile behind the offer would be those men who had lots of sisters. Those men are lucky indeed, as are the women who’ve lots of brothers, they understand the opposite sex unlike others of their gender. Because they had a larger sampling and as any researcher knows you get the best data with the most amount of observations.
Then as you move deeper into the library you see the other of the most common patrons. The retirees are here to pass time in the library. Personally I like my reading time in the reading nook, it’s quieter and I don’t mind the solitude in the least. Honestly I prefer it. Perhaps their spouses tossed them out for some alone time or maybe there is no spouse and they are here to check and make sure that there are other people alive in the world aside from those on the TV.
But you hardly ever see middle aged people of either sex in the library, they must be too busy at work, to spare frivolous time at the library reading. But I had penetrated as deep into the library as I could, so I turned back to the check out desk and the person that I’ve come to see.
“What’s the queen of fiction, want in our humble library.”
I handed her Lucy’s job notice.
“Would you mind hanging that up on your notice board tomorrow, please. My intern, soon to be manager, needs to read up on the interview process. Could you give me a couple of recommendations for her to read, please Sarah?”
“What are you paying, maybe I’ll come apply?”
“Not enough to give up a librarian’s tremendous salary , it’ll only be around twenty hours a week, ten till three.”
“What about a young mother?”
“Not if they have a baby in tow. Their screams just make my whole body ache.”
“Laura, that is just evolution. They are supposed to elicit sympathy, not a trip to the doctor.”
“Even so Sarah, I’d rather work alone than have a crying baby in the store on a regular basis. It takes a lot to disturb me when I’m reading but that would do it. You wouldn’t like it either.”
“Me, Laura, why should I care if a baby is crying in your bookstore.”
“Because then I’d be down here bothering you, instead of quietly reading in my reading nook.”
“In that case take one of the retiree’s. I’m not taking any, Lucy’s doing the hiring and the firing. How do you think the retiree’s would take to being ordered around by a sixteen year old, Sarah?”
“It depends of course, but most of them might be happy that anyone of any age was talking to them.”
“I have some elders working for free, or at least I hope I do. Maybe some of our elders have information I’m looking for. You have any old hippies, I can brainstorm with.”
“You Laura, are our only bonafide hippie, that I know about. But what exactly are you looking for?”
“There are a lot of people protesting right now and rightly so. But some of them are getting hurt and some as you know are getting gunned down by federal agents in the street. I want to put together an ebook encouraging people to protest, while also making sure they aren’t hurt or worse killed. There will also be a chapter on the history of the yippies told through the eyes of three of the yippies that were at the Chicago police riots of nineteen sixty eight.”
“That sounds interesting, how much are you going to sell it for?”
“Nothing, we don’t want to make a profit off the horrible behavior of the government. We just want them to stop being horrible. I’d also love to put a lot of jabs at dumpy trumpy and sycophants but I will refrain as that would just make it dated when he is done in three more years. Plus it really is more about keeping people safe than politics. Written correctly it could also be used by white supremacists if only they could keep themselves from committing a violent act. But those guys only read the bible and Mein Kampf, so they don’t have any idea what nonviolence even means.”
“Laura, I’ll tell you what, why don’t you come back tomorrow around noon and I’ll set you up in the community room. A How to Guide on Protesting, needs essayists.”
“Alright I will, I have to pitch to the authors I live with tonight so that will give me a chance to think of something to say.”
“Good, now you can hang up your sign as well.”
“So how about those books I need?”
“Well if you carried real books, real nonfiction books you wouldn’t need to run to the library, you’d have your own section on business.”
“Thanks, I know all I want to know about business. I don’t like it. I think we should have a lending tool library, a lending car library, a lending board game library, a video game library, anything that isn’t an appliance size and only used occasionally. I’d like to see a major expansion of your fifth column: you get some of the seniors to help out with income taxes, what if you expanded that to rides to doctors offices. Recipe swaps, tech help.”
“Laura, are you running for mayor?”
“No, it just seems to me that you have a lot of untapped knowledge sitting there playing wordle. Instead of playing with some letters maybe they’d rather be involved in something that needs doing.”
“It all comes down to insurance and what the town attorney thinks we would be libel for.”
“What a world Sarah, every single decision people make in America revolves around money one way or another. What a world we could build if lawyers and bankers were made illegal. At least lawyers who sue people. Seems like mediation would work a whole lot better. You see those billion dollar cases, “class action lawsuits”. The lawyers get rich, they get a couple of hundred million dollars and the poor saps that were cheated get a check years later for a fraction of what they lost because a third of what they won back goes to attorney fees. Lawyers should only be used for criminal court. Civil court should be just people having their say in front of a judge and jury then let them decide or send it to a mediator. People that get a regular salary not one third.”
“Laura, you go tell the mayor. I’ll lend anything that will fit in the building, from rakes to banjo’s.”
“See there is a great idea, Sarah. I never even thought of musical instruments.”
“Laura, you need to come in more often. We do seed swaps in the spring and fall, used book sales. The library is all about sharing.”
“I know and I wasn’t criticizing you, I know that if the town gets sued, their insurance rates go up, so instead of helping people, people get harmed by rising property taxes. But you still haven’t answered me. What books should I get for my budding manager?”
“Hiring for Attitude by Mark Murphy, it’s about hiring the right ‘fit’ for your store. Some hippie type I would imagine. Interviewing: The Art of Science by John Sullivan it goes into the science of interviewing. The first might be more practical, the second the nitty gritty details.”
I went down to the business section and found both books and brought them back to the counter. There was another line. But I managed to wait patiently and finally checked out. Promising to be back to look for some hippies the following day.
By the time I got back to the bookstore, Lucy had her laptop all set up and was working on a page sized poster for the used bookstore.
“Lucy, I skimmed through these while I was waiting in line to checkout and Sarah said these are the best. But they seem to focus more on a corporate type workplace and that is the last kind of atmosphere we want to foster. So skim through these and maybe look around online and see what others who are doing the interviewing are interested in. Then ask yourself, is that what we are interested in? Like we don’t want any pushy sales people. They aren’t going to be paid on commission. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, you don’t want car salesmen, furniture sales people, we want laid back people. Maybe I just ask them what they like to read. If they say Any Weir, I know that they enjoy fiction where the main character has to solve puzzles. So maybe they are either problem solvers themselves or would like to be. If they say Tolkien, they might be environmentalists and probably pretty laid back. If they say Walden, you would probably fire me if I didn’t hire them on the spot.”
“That is very smart and that is exactly why you are the manager. I didn’t even think of asking them about books.”
“That was one of the first things you asked me about, when you hired me.”
“Hmm, Lucy, you might not need those books at all, just skim them and you decide. But I like that idea of asking about their favorite authors. We want readers working here above all else. If you really like someone, call them back for a second interview and then if you still like them offer them a two week trial. We only have seven weeks to get this right. Do you think you can come to the store by three once school starts again."
“My last ‘class’ is study hall. I may be able to get work study, if I got an offer from you and permission from my father. Then I’d be here every day by two. Plus all day Saturday and Sunday.”
“That’s perfect so you’ll offer them minimum wage, for twenty hours a week, then if they are great and if we need more help, especially during leaf peeping season and right after is christmas shopping season. Then we might offer more hours. If you tell them that during the interview, you’ll be able to see if they are more interested in the extra money or the free time. Maybe they are running their own business out of their home but not yet at the point they can afford to be without a job. Lot’s of writers work at least part time to keep food on the table especially if they have a family. Even published authors with lots of books. It’s a hard business, and I’m afraid that it is only going to get harder now that AI is truly on the scene. Real authors are going to have a hard time competing if you can tell an AI exactly what it is that you want to read. If you go on the reddit book subs you can see it in the grocery list of what a reader is looking for. I see it especially in romance and lit RPGs. Where they have a very specific idea of exactly what they want to read. I used to think that with such a list of requirements they would be better off writing the book themselves. Then they would get exactly what they want. But the more capable AI gets instead of writing it themselves instead they give their list of wants and what they want left out and tell the AI to write the book. The writing quality isn’t there yet, but if they got their list of requirements and also nothing that they dislike was included, it might be just the book they were looking for.”
“What’s that say about our business, Laura?”
“No one has a clue, no one knows what it will mean for almost any job. Until they develop robots with precision skills, some jobs will be safe. Doctors, nurses for example. But I read an article that said AI was doubling its capabilities every seven months. It’s helping to write its own code now. What happens when it writes all of its own code. Will that doubling shrink to seven weeks or seven days? Nobody knows if there is some kind of limit, like the speed of light. Even doctors and nurses might just be doing what the AI tells them to do as the AIs become more and more capable. But we live in a democracy and as long as the AI doesn’t develop consciousness we can always turn them off.”
“Laura, what if they develop consciousness?”
“Well, then it’s too late to turn them off. Then it would be murder.”
