Do you have any job skills that are now obsolete?

[Aristus]

162. I was a bookstore savant.

I worked in a bookstore (remember those?) for a couple of years after I got out of the Army. I was good at it.

If you think that’s not something that is important to be good at, I can’t tell you how many times I had gone into a bookstore prior to that, and had to deal with staff who didn’t know the first thing about books, literature, authors, or reading. They were just drones collecting a paycheck.

Well, when I worked in a bookstore, I knew where every book in the store was, and could take you right to it. When we got new shipments of books, the manager would toss a promotional copy of a pending publication to me, and ask me to read it and give him my impressions.

I could find a book for a customer, and recommend three or four other books they might like.

I was a bookstore god…

It’s not a case of the bookstore leaving me; I left the bookstore, because you can’t live on minimum wage and no benefits. Their loss.