I must confess something. I don’t really like wrapping books. Of course we offer wrapping, you have to this time of year. As much as I don’t like to wrap, I do like to see the look of utter relief on customers’ faces when we offer to wrap their books. I wrap quickly, somewhat sloppily, and am forever not doing enough curling ribbon.\u00a0This year I got smart and finally took up the offer from a friend to come in and wrap on the weekends.
\nSue not only likes to wrap, she’s good at it. She came in at 9 on Saturday to wrap the books that folks bought to give to kids who are getting food shelf baskets. There were two completely full-to-the-brim boxes of books that customers had picked for a range of kids from babies to teenagers. I have to confess she did something that in the 16 years I’ve had the store has never occurred to me. She pre-cut sheets of paper. Our “wrapping station” is not one where the paper is hung on the wall in a cutting dispenser looking all tidy with ribbon hanging off a dowel ready to measured out — no, that would be too easy. Our wrapping station consists of massive rolls of wrap on the back counter and the floor that you need scissors to cut. Sue just cut about 20 sheets of the snowflake wrap, and then cut them in half (gift wrap often comes in 24-inch widths, which make it very wide for books) and set about to wrap in a very efficient way. I marveled at this and shook my head. It’s shocking to me how often the utterly obvious can just escape me. Pre-cutting and then cutting in half the too-wide paper made wrapping go very quickly. What took her an hour would have taken me at least twice that.
\nWe’ve never had someone at the store whose main job was to wrap. So this weekend every customer was asked, “Would you like that wrapped?” and just about every customer said yes. Sue was flying most of the day. Having her wrap freed the rest of us to handsell books, which is really what we do best. I know I love getting my presents wrapped before I leave a store. It’s just one less thing to do during this very busy time of year. One thing I’ve heard over and over this year is how time seems to be sneaking up on people. Maybe it’s the lack of real winter weather, but folks appear to be behind this year. People are scrambling, and being able to help them get on with the rest of their shopping knowing that the presents are ready to go under the tree is a lovely thing.
\nDavid, our high school staffer, just learned how to wrap and he’s getting good at it. We were all talking about wrapping and he said in response to me saying I’ve been wrapping books for 16 years, “I’m 17. I’ve been wrapping since Wednesday.” That might have the best laugh I’ve had in weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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