by Iris
Our Leidschendam store in the Westfield Mall of the Netherlands opened its doors in 2021. It was pandemic times and the many extra rules and regulations didn’t make for the smoothest of starts. But four years later we’re still here, and it’s well past time to bring you along on a day in the life of a bookseller! (For a day in the life in our The Hague store, check out this post that our Naomi wrote previously.)
Some people think that working in a bookstore means getting to read behind the counter all day. Sadly that is not the case—there’s always something that needs doing. It starts with getting the necessities out of the way: turning on all equipment, sweeping the floors, putting cash in the register, checking the inbox for urgent emails… A fun thing in our Leidschendam store is that you never have to look at the clock to know when it’s time to open. All stores in the Gallery (the part of the Mall where we’re located) open at the same time, and the clanging of the metal gates is impossible to miss.
My first real point of order is usually to straighten out the shelves and display tables. Between the dozens, if not hundreds, of book lovers who browse our wares every day, things can get messy pretty quickly! At ABC, we all have our own sections that we are stock buyers for. In Leidschendam I currently have Horror and Poetry in my care, so of course I spend some extra time on those, making sure that they look their best and adding necessary titles to an order list ASAP. Much of my time is also spent behind the computer: working on my Highlights, planning and editing content for our Instagram page, or writing blog posts such as this one. 😉
I’m usually in Leidschendam on Fridays, which is a shipment day. This means that somewhere in the early afternoon, our Giorgio shows up in the ABC van. He comes bearing fresh new stock, customer orders, office supplies, and—perhaps most importantly—a few bad jokes to tide us over until his next visit. The shipment brings a whole new list of tasks: new stock needs to be unpacked, loaded onto our cart, and shelved in the correct sections (an activity not entirely unlike 3D Tetris). Customers need to be contacted about their orders, and supplies need to be put away.
In between all of this there are our customers. While ABC attracts a pretty varied clientele in all three stores, the Mall crowd tends to skew younger. Manga, Romance and Romantasy are among the most popular sections. Our Blind Book Dates also do particularly well in Leidschendam, which is always fun to see (and very rewarding, as they are definitely more labor intensive to make). But as is the case in all of our stores, we aim to be a place where anyone can find something to their liking.
