It’s no wonder Amazon is crushing small business.

I visited 3 used bookstores and one comicbook store today and the people working the registers at all FOUR were rude and I won’t be back.<br><br>The first used book store I went into, the address on their door had a “.com” on the end. I’ve never seen this before and I was wondering if it was a new thing so I asked the man at the desk if it was a new thing. <br><br>He said, “nope we just own a lot of the buildings on this street along with the parking lots and the like.” I asked him if he was the owner of a specific business on the street, “yes that’s mine, along with...” he rattled off 4 more. <br><br>I asked him if he works in the book store, “no, I own it, but need to be here because of the employees.” <br><br>I asked him “why not just automate the register?” He laughed and said “I would if I could, but there are so many laws against it.” <br><br>I asked him why he hasn’t fired the employees if they aren’t doing their job right. He said that it was impossible to find anyone wanting to work for him. <br><br>I asked if he paid his employees poorly. He said that he pays them a lot more than he would like to, but he’s desperate to hire anyone. <br><br>He seemed like he had a bad day and wasn’t very happy about answering my questions, so I said “sorry man, I’m just going to look around.” <br><br>The second I touched a book off the shelf the lady next to him said “Don’t touch that book if you’re not gonna buy it!” I told her I was gonna buy it, so she said “no you’re not!” <br><br>So I left and went to another books store. That’s when I found out they aren’t actually used bookstores, but rather the company hires people to go to a book auction, then they just put the books in the book store. <br><br>I asked the lady at the desk about this and she told me “unfortunately” they don’t hire people anymore. “Why?” I asked. <br><br>She said, “That was a much better model than what they’re using now. I used to just go to people’s homes and look through their books. I would circle the books I wanted and then tell them how much I would be willing to pay, then they’d let me take them home. <br><br>That was a much better way of acquiring the books because we could get a wider variety of higher quality books. Unfortunately, the company put a stop to that because they want all of the stores to have the same product. So a lot of the lower end books, we just throw them away because we don’t have the room. It’s a waste.”<br><br>I thought the story was kind of sad and I wanted to hear more because I was really interested. So I asked her “is the company doing well?” <br><br>She said “I wish I owned a tiny fraction of the company. It’s a very profitable company. It makes a lot of sense for them to work how they do, but you’d have to ask the owner why he wants it that way so bad. <br><br>I’m just a humble store clerk, so when my suggestion is I think we should do x, y, z, the owner says we’re not doing that, and then hangs up the phone.” <br><br>As I was listening to her I was browsing the shelves, and I noticed a hardcover of a book I love that is a very high quality edition. It was $1.50. I also noticed that they marked the books a little weird. Fiction was marked with an “f”, Non Fiction was an “n”, then they were labeled with a letter/number and everything is organized that way. <br><br>What I noticed was that if a book had what looked like tape on the spine (I guess that means the dust jacket was gone or something), they would mark the price down. If you touched the tape at all, it would ruin the spine of the book and make it worthless. <br><br>I asked her about this and she said “yeah,” then walked over to a bunch of the books I had touched, and narked me out for it. <br><br>The male worker said “You’re gonna be here a long time, she’s gonna go through every book you touched and make you pay for it if it’s ruined.” <br><br>I told them I would happily pay for all of the books I touched, because they were only $1.50, and I didn’t realize I was ruining the books. <br><br>She raised her voice at me, “You’re not going to be leaving with any books if you touched them wrong! And I’m going to have to write them down because we’re going to have to throw them away and we need to know what to restock.” <br><br>I told her I was just gonna go, and get out of there, but before I did I asked my lungs capacity of questions, “Is the owner your dad or something?” <br><br>She said “no, he’s just a very demanding man.” <br><br>I asked her “Do you like him?” <br><br>She said “no, he’s a terrible, greedy man.” <br><br>Then I left and went to the comicbook store and it was closed. I looked online and it was open. I walked around the block a few times, then I called the number listed on a flyer they had on their door. <br><br>The guy that answered told me that he was the owner, but he’s “not really the owner”, because the real owner won’t let him do anything different. <br><br>He said that his boss is very very smart and knows much much more about the comic industry than him, so he lets him make all of the decisions. <br><br>I told him I was standing in front of his store and the hours of operation on the flyer I had said he was open. <br><br>He said “Don’t call the number on the flyer, it’s the owner’s number. If you want to know the real hours, you need to either check the website or check the social media pages.” <br><br>Then he hung up on me. <br><br>I don’t know who this evil owner is, but I’m guessing it’s the same owner of all of the book stores I visited. I’m so confused as to why the employees hate him so much. They’re not treated poorly, they’re just treated like shit.