DO NOT Unplug This Phone

By Jarek Steele
Co-owner, bookseller, webmaster,
co-op manager, e-mail manager,
bookkeeper, wielder of tape
measures and duct tape.


There is currently a questionable tomato resting in the
garbage can next to my desk. I put it there, not because I
found my office waste basket to be the most logical place
to put discarded food items, but because, quite simply,
there is no more room on my desk. The tomato traveled
from my home roughly three days ago, but I don’t really
recall which day it is anymore. As the late, great Janis
Joplin said, “It’s all the same day anyway.” I’m sure Kris
planned to use the tomato in a salad or layered on a
sandwich. She does that sometimes, packs my lunch for
me and I’m forced to alternate computer keystrokes with
lunchtime feeding.
On top of the garbage can is a three-ring binder filled with
old gift certificates we don’t use anymore, that I wanted to
use for contributions. But that idea was quickly discarded
because after spending some time on Photoshop designing
new certificates I realized that I was falling behind on
posting our bills. Those are piled in my inbox directly on
my spare packet of Effexor. I use the extras as a sort of
carrot to help me get to the bottom of my inbox every day.
Lately, though, I’ve been woefully behind in the bill posting
arena. Our phone system, which has served us well since
1988, has seen better days. When the phone near my desk
got tangled beyond repair, my attempt to replace the cord
was thwarted by the plug that had worked its way into the
depths of the phone. Neither paperclip, nor pliers nor
Andrea’s screwdriving skills made a difference. Later, on
the phone to Intertel, the manufacturer of the phone, the
customer service person asked what color we would like
our replacement handset to be. When I told her our phones
were the color of dirt and rubberbands she laughed. Hard.
After our Events Coordinator, Carrie, left to work at the
County Library, we decided to rethink our office space.
Get a new lease on life down here in the basement, er, I
mean executive suites. The “dark side” got a thorough
scouring, paint job and makeover. Design on much, much
less than a dime. I peeled old networking cables and phone
lines from their original spaces and fished them, duct taped
them, and plastic tied them along the ceiling and through
the concrete wall dividing the office bathroom and furnace
room. I’m going to have to make extra therapy
appointments to deal with the post traumatic stress from
putting my hand in that hole.


We surprised everyone with the new space and I decided to
finish the upgrade to our DOS based (yeah, you read that
right) inventory system complete with dot matrix (yep, they
still exist) printers. Piece by piece, we’re working on
actually having desktop computers that will simultaneously
access the internet and our inventory system, and— AND
have multiple screens! In the midst of my glee, the kind
folks from the phone company came by with their work
orders to switch all of our service to the new, and hopefully
cheaper, system.
As I write this, I’m somewhat hurried because I still must
work through the handwritten time sheet to do payroll
while listening to the co-mingling of dot matrix (we still
have it) and tape gun. After that I’ll update the staff picks
and try to get home sometime tonight.
Tomorrow, I’ll get up and do it all over again. After all, I
love this place like I loved my first car, a 1970 Ford
Torino. I had to bungee cord the doors shut, the radio was
broken and I had to put my foot on the gas midway
through a red light to get the transmission to catch on the
green. I still wish I had that car.
I heard a story about someone moving to St. Louis from a
larger metropolitan area. One of the reasons he didn’t
mind, he said was, “At least I know Left Bank Books is
there.”
This amazing group of people here at this store has learned
an intricate bookselling dance that begins when our
customers walk through the door, come to one of our
events, order on our website or call us on our
rubberbanded phones and it never really ends. Bookselling
isn’t about the machinery. It’s about the books and it’s
about people. And in that arena, I think, we’re light years
ahead of the pack.