From: Robb Shecter <rs@...>
Date: 2002-04-16T03:42:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Barnes & Noble putting on the squeeze

>
>
>I'm not sure that complaining to a B&N store clerk that they have no Ruby books will do any good since they are a national chain and decisions like this are probably made in their corporate headquarters. 
>
Here's an eyewitness report of just how centrally controlled and weird 
the whole process is:

I have a friend who works at B&N. The best way I can describe it is that 
the workers there are like "borgs".  Here's one of her tasks:  She walks 
around with a sort of fancy barcode scanner, and just scans the books on 
the shelves, one after another.  This thing then emits of two beeps 
after every scanning.  A pleasant sound meaning, "leave the book on the 
shelf".  Or, a loud obnoxious sound meaning, "take the book off the 
shelf and place it on a pile of books that are getting shipped back to 
B&N headquarters."

The managers don't explain the criteria for this, and how it all fits 
into the grand scheme of things.  My friend suspects it has to do with 
how long a book has sat on the shelf.  The device does tell you how many 
copies of the books should be on the shelf, etc., so it looks like part 
of the function here is to even out inventories in various stores.

Pretty spooky, though.

Robb