Reverend vs Retail Wrap-up

WOW! Life went by quickly the last few weeks. Sorry to not have summed this up sooner, but the week before Christmas was—like in ministry—a whirlwind of working. Then we got to spend a lot of time with family and being the social, family-loving creature I am, I spend time with them instead of updating the blog—you can understand, I am sure :)

A few last reflections on working at Barnes and Noble versus being in the church for Christmas—or actually, really, in general.

Here’s a winning moment for Barnes and Noble: questions. While occasionally a bookseller must field a question such as: “I read this book once—written in the 70s—about drug-trafficking on the Mexico-Arizona boarder, but I don’t remember the author or the publisher. Can you tell me the name of it?” to which, five google searches and an indexing of bn.com later, you must indeed answer, “No,” most questions a bookseller gets are so wonderfully easy to answer. “Why yes, we have an entire table of the Twilight series.” “No, but I can order that and have it shipped directly to your house if you would like.” “We have several books on John Deer tractors right in this area here.” Would that questions in ministry were so easily answered and a minister could regularly feel truly helpful in say, a discussion of the afterlife or what’s going on with the Trinity. Barnes and Noble is deliciously factful; only those with a deep appreciation for mystery will settle happily into faith.

Here’s another winning moment for Barnes and Noble: no disenchantment. Barnes and Noble’s number one goal is to put the book in the customer’s hand. That’s it. At BN, a bookseller gets paid to be nice to customers and put books in their hands. And even after working there, I have no problems with this goal and in fact, find it an entirely worthy expedition. Working in church left me with lots of questions—is ministry about caring for people in the congregation or out of the congregation? If I’m supposed to be light in the world, why am I spending so much time answering emails about what color poinsettias go up at Christmas? Should I get paid to perpetuate an imperfect not-nearly-focused-enough-on-others organization in the first place?

Also, you’ll notice I’ve not given any stars for the above comparisons. I’m not much of a pros/cons-lists-determine-the-best-choice kind of a person anyhow, so if you want to add up the stars, go for it, but here’s what I think. I think that for the short-term, Barnes and Noble wins. I loved working there. I loved the energy. I even loved grumpy people in line because when you are nice to grumpy people they have a REALLY hard time continuing to be grumpy. In fact, they have to really work at it, which says they like being grumpy in the first place. I enjoyed my co-workers. I loved the energy of the place. I loved that after I worked there I loved Barnes and Noble even more. Long-term, though, of course, church wins. Because I believe in and love Jesus far more than I love Barnes and Noble, and while helping people find and enjoy books is a worthy occupation, I personally feel called to serve in a way that purposefully connects people to God.

That being said, it’s the new year, it’s been over a year since I had deeply meaningful long-term employment, and it’s almost my birthday, so I’m feeling a bit philosophical. And what I reflect on 2009 is this: all of our long-term goals are shot to hell. It took a really long time to sell our absolutely lovely house in North Carolina where housing is already ridiculously inexpensive and the equity we got out of it wouldn’t have covered the security deposit we put on our two-bedroom apartment in town where housing is fairly expensive. I went from having a great set-up at First Pres in a Presbytery where I was known, respected, and appreciated to moving somewhere where I am regularly interpreted as suspiciously conservative or unfaithfully liberal, and I have heard more times than I care to count from heart-felt search committees, “You will be a great minister—somewhere else.” And without going into all the nitty gritty of life, I can assure you, this was not my plan nor is it exceeding my expectations.

That being said, I’ve loved most of each day this past year. Not every day, but most of them. Even though I’m part of a gaggle of unemployed ministers here in Madison, I love living in Madison. There is so much to offer and after having lived in a town without a real downtown or much to do, the lakes, the downtown, concerts on the square, bike trails, parks, euchre clubs, and countless things to do on Friday nights are amazing. I learned to sail this summer—and I could write several entries just on the things I learned from sailing from courage to leadership. I spent four of my six top holidays with family and have my best friend less than an hour away. Day to day, life is so so so good.

And so when trying to assess working at Barnes and Noble vs serving in a Jesus-centered organization, when the short-term wins out but the long-term loses, I have to think of this past year where the long-term definitely loses but the short-term is amazing. I mean, all the philosophers and wise-ones-of-old will speak to living in the moment. So then, how can you hand out stars and hope for any real conclusion. Of course, I didn’t really expect this to be much more than a series of reflections in the first place, which is what you got throughout the blog. And unlike the haven of yes or no answers in bookselling, these reflections are far more like life and faith and the mystery of seeing how it all works out.

So here’s to it all and the next adventure. Happy New Year! I won’t add more to this blog, so if you would like to continue reading my miscellaneous reflections, check in on http://77squaremiles.blogspot.com/ now and then.

Peace, love, great books, and all things good,
Jess

Ring-a-ling? Ding-a-ling!

Spoiler alert—nobody gets any stars for this and I’m pretty much just whining, but the topic of the day is cell phones. Let them ring at church? No, no, never, never—uh-uh-uhhh! Seriously, leave them in your car, then you don’t even chance it. I’ve had them go off while leading prayer meetings, Bible studies, Sunday morning worship—even the contemplative Maundy Thursday service. Come on….

Talk on them while in the check out line? Same answer. It is totally rude—and while you maybe are thinking you are saving time by multitasking, you’re now increasing line-time for everyone behind you. And it’s rude. I’ve had random questions about impossible books to find, grumpy customers, people thinking they’re clever trying to use three coupons on the same book (really?!), and multiple cases of “after the fact” requests once the receipt is printed and you are supposed to be out the door, and I can smile for each of these cases. But customers on their cell phones—so so so hard to not spit on your book, almost impossible to keep smiling. And did I mention it’s rude?

Yeah, I know, I’m whining. And I’m probably a reflection of rude customers—just because you can talk anywhere (write anything) doesn’t mean you should. So be it.

By the way, we’re wrapping this shindig up in a week, if you can believe that. Christmas Eve is my last day! More over the weekend. Fa la la la lah, la la la lah.

Coffeetime

I feel like I’m stacking the deck toward ministry, so I’m going to give BN a serious one-up today: coffee. There’s something about Starbucks coffee—some sort of magic ingredient. And p-shah to you that say they over-roast their beans—no, no, no—not scorched but perfectly toasted. They have some of the best decaf around and if you want to venture out into “drink your dessert” land, well, the possibilities are endless.

Watered down church coffee, however, leaves about everything to be desired. Yuck. I am taking an admittedly unfair sweep across the church-coffee board here. Being back in the Midwest, the coffee is exponentially better that my southern friends who prefer sweet tea anyhow (bless their hearts), but still—it lacks the robustness and variety of working in a coffee shop.

Barnes and Noble: five stars Church: one (a token as a shout out to good coffees at some churches, especially the increasing number of fair trade coffee servers and First Pres, Burlington, NC, who keep the Peru connection alive by roasting their own Peruvian beans and brewing truly delicious coffee at mission conferences!)

No Advent in Retail

I just got a call from Barnes and Noble—I was supposed to work 8:45 – 4 today, but they’ve called me off due to lack of sales this week (and it didn’t help that the mall was closed on Wednesday along with most of the rest of the city due to the blizzard—which, btw, for those of you in West Michigan facebook updating that it’s much ado about nothing, it was not that here in Madison—we got a lot of snow and it is very cold—and yesterday my total commute time of 40 minutes—round trip—was a whopping THREE HOURS!!!). Back to BN—this call is like grace since I’ve been busy juggling orientation at two hospitals, starting back with the taxman, and the BN gig—I can clean, go to the gym, wrap presents, grocery shop (Tom’s been the grocery man for the last two weeks), and try to hunt down a lost extra computer battery in our storage unit (I think I may have had too much coffee this morning, you think? whatev). And while it’s grace, it’s also a big reminder that I’m spending Christmas oriented around retail.

BLECH!

For all my soap-boxing about how it is NOT Christmas now—it is Advent—a time of waiting and reflection and withholding from celebrating—until Christmas-tide actually begins on December 25 and then last twelve days AFTER that until Epiphany (traditional celebration of the arrival of the wise men), I’m working in retail. We begin our shifts with the doom and gloom of how sales are down: press those gift cards—don’t forget about memberships—upsell with the book drive. And I’m cool about it—I happen to be better at sales than I ever thought I would be, and my personality intuition serves me well for figuring out who might buy into what. But it’s like I have to set aside a whole principled part of me. Well, not the whole part—I mean, I’m selling BOOKS, which I love. And I’m upselling by getting people to donate books to children in foster care. And I do love BN, all things considered, so it’s not as bad as it could be. But still….

I’m also scheduled every Sunday morning early enough that I’ve only been able to attend our beloved Westminster Pres one Sunday in all of Advent, and I’m missing the kids program and caroling and I’ll just barely be able to make it to the Christmas eve service after working all day.

All of this wraps together under some sort of umbrella of Christmas/Advent spirituality, and Barnes and Noble gets the big zero on stars; church gets four.

Church should get five, right? Nope. Because I also remember how good Christ-followers overschedule themselves to death in Advent so that by the time Christmas finally arrives, the very next day they are taking down the tree and ending all the celebrating. What happened to being in the world not of the world? And arguments like “Why don’t we sing Christmas carols in worship during Advent?!” and “I want red poinsettias this year even though it’s a white poinsettia year!” can also dampen the old spirituality at least one star.

Well, I’ve preached enough for one day. Amen. Let us pray. And Advent blessings to you all!

Pay: the Short of It

Brevity being the soul of wit and all, let’s rate pay. Reverend: four stars vs Retail: one star (I mean, I do get paid something).

I could bore you with the details of the deals and compare other retail jobs with this one and consider that if I weren’t simply seasonal I might make more money and have benefits and then list out other jobs with masters degrees versus pay blah, blah, blah. But essentially, ministry gets it hands down on compensation.

While we’re at it, it’s all totally random and all, but here’s the score so far out of 20:

Reverend: 18                Retail: 12

Kiddies!!!

Guess, guess, guess who got to do the big story time last night at BN? ME!!! Awesome. It’s been on all the BN websites for weeks—at 7 pm last night across the country (we’ll pretend we’re all in the same time zone) semi-circles of little ones listened to the Polar Express—howling like the wolves, ringing Santa sleigh bells, and cheering along with the elves. How much fun that I got to do storytime. LOVE it—made my whole night, even after three other booksellers said—“You got stuck with storytime, huh?” (like it was a bad thing) and I was left with the disaster of spilled hot chocolate and 800 random books strewn all over the children’s section. Five stars for Barnes and Noble, simply because leading storytime is awesome.

I still give the church five stars for kid interaction as well. One of my favorite parts of being a pastor at First Pres was preschool chapel on Wednesday mornings—15 minutes of story-telling and sing-songing. Good stuff.

The Cush Factor

While there’s a part of me that’s pretty sure ministry will win out in this silly adventure, I still hold on to hope for Barnes and Noble. (Let’s examine the psychology behind that another day.) But after working a full day earlier this week with my feet killing me as well as trying to schedule some other meetings around a rather inflexible schedule that only comes out a few weeks ahead of time, I realized there are a lot of ways ministry obviously wins. Lumping a bunch of these reflections together, I will call this the “Cush” factor.

Cush factor one: time flexibility. While there are certain times of complete inflexibility—say, Sunday mornings—for the most part, a minister has a lot of flexibility. Ministers’ prayer meeting the 17th of December? All the ministers can be there—the BN bookseller cannot. The schedule’s already been set—there’s no leaving campus for lunch let alone an hour lunch prayer meeting, let alone the ½ hour drive in addition to that.

Cush factor two: happy feet. Other than maybe a day when I thought I wouldn’t be walking much so I wore some serious heels but ended up doing hospital visits and maybe grocery shopping on the way home from work, I don’t ever remember having sore feet at the end of the day. Eight hours standing at cash register in uncomfortable shoes (who even things about the comfort level of your shoes?) and the cush factor struck me as five stars for ministry, never mind all the scheduling flexibility.

Cush factor three: activity flexibility. In other words, a minister can do ministry things, but when I needed to, I could also spend a bit of time pricing tires for my car or checking my personal email (and responding now and then). I heard of a minister who would go get his haircut on “church” time—a regular working day as opposed to a day off. I find that excessive, but still—most ministers work plenty of hours. In fact, most salaried people can do these things as well. Hourly at BN? Nope—no email checking, no phone calls other than answering customer questions, no quick running an errand on your short lunch break. When you’re on, you’re on.

So overall ministry gets four stars (there is still a good chunk of the congregation that thinks they own you since they pay you, so let’s not go overboard here) based on the flexibility/cush factor. And for the most part, I was planning on giving BN a big fat zero. However, it’s Thanksgiving, and I’m sitting here watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with not one possible chance that I will get called because someone died (yes, on Thanksgiving) or spend the morning on the phone with a stranger telling me his life’s story who—as it turned out an hour and a half later—thought he’d called the pastor of the First Pres in a different town. I am free this day—REALLY free. And that counts for a star—because the call could come any minute to any minister out there—but not to a bookseller whose bookstore is closed for Thanksgiving. And THAT is something to be thankful for.

We have oodles of other things to be thankful for this day as I’m sure you do as well. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!