{"id":20620,"date":"2017-03-07T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T12:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=20620"},"modified":"2017-03-07T07:30:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T12:30:00","slug":"the-most-dreaded-task","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=20620","title":{"rendered":"The Most Dreaded Task?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"First order of business: awarding the prize from last week’s contest<\/a>. The person who guessed which Jason Chin book was the next bestseller after Grand Canyon<\/em> was Linda, who aptly reasoned, “Island: A Story of the Galapagos<\/em> because kids like big tortoises.” I’m thinking she might have a future\u00a0as an acquisitions editor! Linda, send me an email as per contest instructions, and we will send you your signed copy of Grand Canyon<\/em>. Heck, or Island<\/em>! Your choice.
\nAnd now on to the dreaded tasks.
\nWith three fairly new staff members at the bookstore, all added dring the last year, I’ve been paying attention to the kinds of projects\u00a0they gravitate to and the ones they seem less enthused about. Obviously, we all have to do things we don’t love at work, but playing to people’s strengths and interests creates a happier staff.\u00a0Since every job has a number of tedious, frustrating, or difficult tasks,\u00a0as well as a number of opportunities for creativity and innovation, I wanted more specific feedback, so I created a survey.
\nHappily, one of Word’s templates is a questionnaire, so I used that to create the Flying Pig’s Handy-Dandy Task Preference Form. In a hurry, I listed all of the major tasks of the bookstore as they came to mind, in no particular order. I showed them to Laura, who loves this kind of thing, and she added another dozen ideas. Even after printing them out, I thought of several more. We had three pages of tasks \u2013 no wonder we are always on the run!
\nI left out anything that is only a manager or owner’s task, or anything we all always have to do, like ringing up customers and answering the phone. I did make one\u00a0exception about handselling, since some people can have differing levels of comfort recommending books in various genres or age ranges. It’s worth knowing people’s areas of dubiousness, so we can strategize.
\nI asked my staff to rate their enjoyment of these tasks on a 1-5 scale:<\/p>\n