THE NINETEENTH PAGE

I was hoisted upward from clerk to paperback department manager. This simply meant I got to do everything. Life is simpler for a clerk who does little more than arrange the books for sale, relocate them after they have been misplaced, and take the money.

The department manager must deal with his store management, including a home office who doesn’t have a clue about what sells in the shop and orders the same books for all the stores. Shop needs in the Penn Station shop are different from those of the Fifth Avenue venue. Commuters wouldn’t know their Palinurus from their Cyril Connolly and the carriage traders wouldn’t know Taylor Caldwell from Erskine Caldwell.

This management’s manager had no difficulty ringing up Viking and telling the order department that the Murdoch order from the home office was mistaken; thirty-five copies of A SEVERED HEAD, not five, were needed. As long as you make money, you can get away with anything.

New responsibilities meant a higher pay scale, so I could quit the night work, and take home a different night work by working on the “short” lists of books sold during the day and registering replacements for order from the jobbers the next day. They get you one way or the other.