Chapter Ten: Farewell to Tempe

This week marked the last of my time at Changing Hands' Tempe location, a bittersweet thing because although I am excited to move over to the Phoenix location for the final three weeks of my project, I really enjoyed working with and getting to know all of the people in Tempe. Here's what I did during my final week in Tempe:

Day One

Today I got bounced around a bit, which I didn't actually mind because it meant I got to work on a bunch of different things throughout the day rather than just one or two like I had been doing for the past couple of weeks. I started by entering a batch of used books until I had to get out of the way so that a new used book trader could be trained.

I then moved over to the children's section to do a bit of section maintenance. The children's section is by far the largest section in the store, basically a miniature version of the store since it has almost all of the same sections and genres for kids as there are for adults throughout the store. Because of this, all of the shelves require constant maintenance to get them into their proper orders, especially since kids probably pay the least attention to alphabetization of all of Changing Hands' customers. I worked specifically on the kid's graphic novels section, a section that I had noticed was never quite in the right order every time I tried to shelve there. Although that section only consists of one bookcase, there are a few different sections within it, making its organization a bit tricky. However, I did manage to get all of the serial graphic novels in order (alphabetical by series title) before moving on to the next project.

Next, got to help out Jazmin again with a new project of hers. If you'll recall, Jazmin is one of the gift buyers, and last time I worked with her, I helped both Faith and her with some spring book and gift displays. This time, Jazmin was working on the beginning of a new display system for all of the cards that the store sells. By the end of this project, the idea is that there will be a uniform, color-coded labeling system for all the different types of cards for various occasions. The occasion I helped out with was birthday, so I helped fold a pretty hefty stack of card holders. Here's a look at what I was doing:

After folding to my heart's content, I worked on restocking the displays in the front from backstock. I feel like I was kind of terrible at this because I would forget what needed to be brought to the front by the time I got to the back. However, after a few haphazard trips back and forth, one of the employees, Leah suggested that I take pictures of the displays to look at once I got to the back. This made my productivity go up significantly, and eventually I finished up and moved onto the next activity.

For my penultimate activity of the day, I got to work with Joel and see how ticketing and promotion for events works. First, we printed out the tickets for an upcoming event and labeled them with the different letter groups that are used to put the line in order. Then, Joel showed me the template he uses to create the posters for events and how he fills it in with all of the specific information for different events using the information that is put on Changing Hands' website.

Finally, as my last project of the day, I worked with Faith on putting together donations for various organizations. These consisted of giftcards and Changing Hands mugs wrapped up all nice and pretty. This put my bow-tying skills to the test, but at the end of the day I managed to make all of the packages look nice, so that's all that really matters, right?

Day Two

Today was a bit of a slow day at Changing Hands because some shipments were going to be arriving late because of a truck malfunction. Thus, I spent the day yet again entering used books. Something I never really mentioned before when I talked about entering used books is the advantage of being one of the first people to see what books are coming into the store. Today, I saw a copy of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews come in, a book that I had been wanting to read for a while. Since it is a very popular book, used copies never stay on the shelf for long, so I or course took advantage of this and grabbed it for myself. Also, when I was putting some used books on the shelf at the front of the store that holds more of the popular books that come across the used book counter. While I was there, I noticed that there was a signed first edition of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, which I was pretty excited by until I noticed a signed first edition of Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. If you remember, I mentioned in a previous post that I saw this book in the science fiction section and was really interested in reading it. Since the used, signed copy was half the price of a new one (and a one-of-a-kind copy in the store), I couldn't help myself and just had to pick it up. 

Day Three

I spent my last day at the Tempe Location conducting a customer survey. I was asking questions about how often customers shop at Changing Hands, what their book-buying habits are, and why they chose to come specifically to Changing Hands. I got 25 responses, and although I haven't gone through all of them yet, the overwhelming consensus of all of the customers I talked to was that the store was someplace that they felt was important to stay open.

In between getting survey responses, I helped out a bunch of customers at back info. A few customers were asking for book recommendations, something that I should have been super confident in since I love reading, but actually ended up being one of the most difficult things to help with. Every time someone asks me for a book recommendation, for some reason my mind goes blank and I forget pretty much everything I've ever read. However, with the help of some of the other employees and a quick look at the shelves, I was able to give out some recommendations for books I truly did enjoy.

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I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Tempe location and and so grateful for the amount I was able to learn and experience. Next week I will be writing about my escapades in Phoenix, but until then, happy reading!