Welcome to Gaia! ::

Jessie was tired. Jackson had the week off for spring break and between her 'knight life' and her hours in the store a nap would be greatly appreciated. So far she had not really encountered anything bad, a few rather low level youmas that she dispatched with a handy branch, she met other's like her and learned more about her skills. Solitary training was always interesting. And she spent the morning re-shelving the myriad books that find there way in the wrong sections. All the trinkets were placed correctly, the windows were clean of finger print smudges, and the place was quiet, only the soft sounds of the fairy wind chimes in the fantasy section marked the passage of time.

She had only put her head down at the front counter for a moment to rest her eyes when the next thing she knew the bell over the front door was ringing and someone was calling out. Groggy and with a brain not firing with all cylinders Jessie answers "Um... here...hello.....can I help you?"

It wasn't more than a moment when the first voice responded and she could see that it was a young man with dark hair but bright blue eyes. She nearly mirrored his move but quickly changed it to rub her hand over her eyes and properly fixing her glasses, they were sitting slightly asscue from her impromptu nap. "Yeah it appears that way." Jessie said on a sigh and glanced at the time on the register..... she had been sleeping for around a hour and it felt like she needed twelve more before she could string together a full thought.

With a mental shake she focused back at the task at hand, the young man standing in front of her. She was about to ask what she could help with when he answered her first. "Oh, um, yeah. Another set of hands would be really useful," and hopefully I can sleep in now that I'm roaming the streets at night she silently added. After a moment of digging around in the various drawers behind the counter she pulled out an application form. "Here is the form. It pretty much covers the general info; name, address, prior work history, and references." Jessie stifled a yawn as she held the paper out. Her mind was slowly getting up to speed and she began to have an idea but first, "If you want we can do the interview now if you want." Some would rather have the interview later but since appearances never really bothered Jessie, most of the time she didn't even notice them, holding a interview in casual clothes was no big deal.

Jessie looked at his clothes and his general appearance and shook her head no, "It just preempts my question on if you're in school." She smiled and pulled off her glasses to clean them. The world went blurry as they always did without assistance. That had to be the most surprising about her 'night job', her glasses were now no longer needed. She could see the world around her clearly without needing to worry about her glasses or contacts, it was almost worth looking into getting corrective eye surgery... almost.

Jessie yanked her mind away from the tangent it went on and quickly replaced her glasses. She slipped the finished form into the folder with the other applications and grabbed the second stool from behind the counter. "Well I have to stick by the door so right here would be best for now." She placed the stool at the end of the counter after moving the stack of held books. "So, um.... let's start with introductions. I'm Jessie and you are?" Her mind was not quite up to speed and she was trying to rack her brain for ideas to questions.... interviews were not really her thing but her earlier idea was still forming and it was not quite worth asking just yet.

“School is not a big deal. Most of my part time help comes from students, both in high and college. The only thing I say about that is if you start to fail your classes your hours here will be cut back so you have more time to study.” Jessie had never had to enforce that rule; it was one her mother started when she hired students. Most of the time the part timers learned that when not busy they could study or work on homework and if they had a problem they could ask Jessie for help. Although that was a mixed bag since half of the time she would dig up more information than the student ever needed.

She stifled a yawn and asked “Is there a particular genre or author you like?” She found that asking normally gave her an idea of the person and besides it’s a bookstore, if you weren’t a fan of reading then it would be a bit strange to apply for a job in a store full of books… not that it really mattered to Jessie. She had hired a few people who were more into games or other things but found that they worked just as well as others who loved books, a few even helped her expand her sections on their particular topic. “Have you ever worked with books before?” She knew she could look on the application but she didn’t want to know if he was paid to work with them but rather if he had ever organized his own books or handled library books or even volunteered for his school library. Jessie remembered that she worked in her school library her senior year for one of her classes, maybe Dominic had as well.

“Personally I never understood why some places hired part time students and then wouldn’t cut their hours when they had finals or were being hard pressed in classes. It just added more stress to the kids and made doing both jobs that much harder.” While Jessie herself never had this problem, her part time job was here at the store when she was in college and at the local library when she was in high school; she had been too many restaurants where the servers were students. It became clear that they had other things on their mind when the time for finals had arrived. Many of her classmates would complain about the work load on top of their class load, not that they ever knew that Jessie was listening in… who ever noticed the quiet child in the corner with a nose in a book.

Jessie remained silent as Dominic explained his reading preference. When he trailed off she smiled and said, “That’s pretty normal for me as well although I normally fall back on fantasy books not DIY. Sadly our handyman books are more or less a sub shelf in the art section since it has to deal with working with your hands.” She looked away and internally for a moment as she added in a quieter more curious tone, “Although the self help books have their own little section. I guess it is possible to move some things around and make the DIY books a section of their own but they would have to be in a single shelf…” She trailed off as thoughts of shifting things around permeated her tired mind. The self help books were actually in the small ‘alcove’ created by several taller shelves behind the main counter; the wall that the counter sat in front of was the back of the cases. The self help books were in a short case in front of one of the windows and Jessie knew that she could move cases around and take out a chair or two to add a second short case for handyman books.

She returned from her mental jaunt through the bookstore to Dominic answering her second question… rather she caught the tail end of it and assumed that the rest of the answer was a further explanation of the ‘no’ she did catch. “Oh, um, nope. It just means that it will take a bit more training for you to get the hang of things.” And with that though the idea that had been sitting in her sleep deprived brain, fully bloomed. “Actually if you have the time right now, I can take you around the store and if you want you can help me shelve some of the misplaced and last minute discarded books.” She gestured to the basket that was behind the counter that had a good two dozen books stacked neatly in it. They were books that were pulled out by customers who then decided not to get them, books that were miss-shelved for whatever reason, and a few that were returns. Although she had re-shelved quite a few of them earlier in the day, this stack was what was left.

“As interest raises and falls sections grow and shrink. That and its amusing to see people who are regulars get surprised by the shifting of the store.” All total the store had been changed no more than a handful of times since her mother opened it several years before. It took weeks to plan the change and at least a week to move everything around so major changes were carefully thought out. “Thank you, but let’s see how everything goes. I’m always thinking about expanding the store but there is only so much space.” If she decided to move her apartment on the second floor could be opened to a second level of books but that would mean leaving the store… no more wandering the shelves in the middle of the night, or sleeping in and starting work when she wanted to, or leaving the store open later because she could and it wasn’t like she had a commute.

“Hum?” Jessie was pulled from her thoughts once more by Dominic’s question. “Well…” he had a point, if Jessie started to teach him what was up in the store it would be as good as hiring him but she wanted to check out his application. “I guess it would be better to consider it a soft hiring. It will take a few days to get the paperwork that will be needed for taxes and everything.” She winced slightly as she remembered the last time she hired someone on the spot… her accountant nearly had an apoplexy and threatened to quit if she did it again. Apparently hiring someone on spur of the moment is just not done. And Jessie really didn’t want to deal with the books for her store… the only type of books she didn’t want to deal with. She was much more interested in researching the new books and figuring out what would sell well in the store, not crunching numbers and figuring out W2 forms. Benjamin Franklin once said that ‘In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes’ and Jessie certainly saw taxes as a type of death, or at least trying to figure them out was. “I can’t really pay you for today, not legally at least. But if you want I’ll trade you some time for some books.” This type of trade actually worked out pretty well for Jessie since it evened the mental scales she kept but not everyone liked that kind of trade.

Jessie smiled at Dom and had a feeling he would do fine here. "Well let's start with a tour of the store and if you see any books that look interesting go ahead and pull them out." She smiled and began to head into the stacks, explaining as she went.