big bluff, ruddy older guy in a straw sun hat comes to the counter.
"Oh hey, when's the owner in?"
I tell him.
"Because, you see, I want to get hired. I'm not looking for a job, you know, I just want to work in a bookstore."
"Huh."
"I'm disabled, and I can't really work, you know, but I'd love to work in a bookshop."
"Huh. Well, good luck."
Because, you know, small independent business in tough industries are dead eager to hire people who admit up front they're less than keen on actual work.
It's an attitude often encountered among those who fancy the bookselling life, a belief that it's all reading Dickens over a hot cuppa while the store cat naps on your feet. The reality of humping endless boxes of books, sorting through veritable mountain ranges of garbage in search of the few salable nuggets contained therein while wrangling the spectrum of retail shoppers never intrudes on their Utopian vision.
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