L3: The Bookstore is a Machine

The Book of The Man
Lesson #3: The Bookstore is a Machine

Like a watch. That's the kind of machine a bookstore is. A shiny, beautiful, ticking watch.

Watches are full of tiny little cogs and wheels and springs. Those are you. You, bookstore employee, are a cog, a wheel, a spring. What do we know about these little parts of a watch?

Ok, I guess they're important. But what else are they?

Small, yes. Very true. But what else?

They're hidden! No one sees the cogs and wheels and springs. No one! No, all they see is the nice, perfect hands, ticking away past the beautiful numbers.

Only the watchmaker may see the springs. Him and the guy that replaces the battery. But no one else. Unless...

Unless the watch is dropped and broken and shattered all over the ground where the shards of glass and little bits of cog and wheel are scattered everywhere to be stepped on and cut someone's foot and make it bleed and get infected and make the foot get amputated so they have to get a fake wooden one and walk with a cane and never be normal again.

The parts of the watch (that's you: the little, tiny parts) must never be seen, except by the watchmaker. Thus! the customers shall never see you working. You must hide your work, squirrel it away beneath counters and behind doors. Never shall a customer know that we need notes to keep things straight, they shall never see the machines and notebooks, or hear of the special secret systems that churn in the watchmaker's den. Never!

They shall only hear the ticking* and the see pretty numbers**.

That is all.

*The beep of the barcode scanner.
**On the credit cards and bills they give to us.