Booksteve's Bookseller Stories--Interviewing

A FEW YEARS BACK ON FACEBOOK, I POSTED A SERIES OF 50 ESSAYS ON MY NEARLY 30 YEARS AS A BOOKSELLER. THE INTENT WAS (AND KIND OF STILL IS) TO DO 50 MORE AND THEN PUBLISH THEM AS A BOOK. JUST NEED TO FIND THE TIME TO DO THAT. MEANWHILE, HERE'S ONE OF MY FAVORITE PIECES. 

Interviewing is a necessary evil if you’re a Retail Manager but I never cared for it.

A typical Waldenbooks interview consisted of about 20 minutes of asking the company’s pre-planned questions to your interviewee while they fed you back the answers that you wanted to hear.

“This job often consists of heavy lifting. Would you be able to lift up to 50 pounds?”

“Sure.”

“Great. Next question. What is your favorite book?”

(Remembering one they read in school) “Uh…I guess Lord of the Flies.”

“What did you like about it?”

“It had a good ending.”

“Okay, moving on. Next question.”

With these interview questions, every interview was essentially a crapshoot. One time Brenda took a young woman in the back to interview her and they were back there for two full hours! The rest of us were joking about what was taking so long. Eventually the bell on the back door rang and the young lady came walking straight out. I stopped her before she could exit and said, “Just wanted to tell you that was Brenda’s longest interview ever. Pretty sure you’ve got the job.” Turned out she did…and I later married her.

Brenda had me sit in on interviews sometimes but I never really had to solo on them until I was actually promoted to Store Manager in 1995. Unlike Brenda, I wanted to teach my own inherited Assistant, Cheryl, to do interviews (figuring that the more people trained to do my job, the easier it would be for me) so I let her solo on one early on. She and a young woman were in the back room talking and I would go in and out just checking on them. Neither one seemed particularly animated. I finally asked, “Everything going okay?”

“Oh, fine. I guess we’re about through. Did YOU have any questions for her?

Off the top of my head, I said, “What’s your favorite TV series?”

That did it! Suddenly she was animated. Spinning around in her chair, she said, “Oh, that’s an easy one! STAR TREK!” She proceeded to then do about 10 minutes of “selling” us on the brilliance of STAR TREK, ending by showing us her STAR TREK-related ankle tattoo.

She apologized for her “unprofessionalism” but I said, “Can you start Monday?” Maureen did and turned out to be one of the very best booksellers I ever worked with and a wonderful human being, besides!

Eventually, I decided to give up their stupid standardized interviews and make them more into just chats. I cheated a little when I sat down and wrote some questions along the lines of the “television” question, designed to tell me useful things about the interviewee. I’d start out with the company’s questions, by that point in a thin booklet they sent us dozens of copies of per month. I’d ask one or two and then I’d say, “This is ridiculous! Let’s just talk!” and I’d rip the booklet in half and toss it in the garbage. Then we’d chat about life for about half an hour. I’d be talking about how much I hated to clean my room as a kid, for instance, and get them telling me how in-depth they were when it came to cleaning. We’d talk about movies, TV, parents, kids, whatever animated them.

I hired one girl because she had blue hair. As we talked, she said her mother kept nagging her that no one would hire her with blue hair and she was going to make her dye it back to normal…so I hired her. She worked out great for a short while but then her mother made her do it anyway and she freaked out and quit.

Brenda’s hiring instincts had always been pretty good, in spite of her actual interviews so I learned to trust my instincts as well. One person got bad references but I hired them anyway and they lasted for years, going on to manage a bookstore elsewhere. Another person I was worried was trying to steal a dirty magazine instead asked me for an interview just before I was going to confront him. He also worked out extremely well. One young woman seemed very shy at the beginning of our interview but by the end, we both said it felt like we’d known each other all our lives. She also worked out and we remain friends to this day.

One guy, though, I had a great interview with. We had a lot in common. He collected comic books, liked the same movies and TV shows and his interview was memorable all around. He quickly became a millstone around my neck for various reasons and since firing him was tricky and involved all sorts of warnings and write-ups, I literally talked him into quitting.

One night a woman and her two kids came in. Well, hardly kids. Her son was in his early 20s and her daughter 18. The woman said, “Are you hiring?”

“Yes”

“My daughter is looking for a job.”

I looked at the girl and asked her a question. Again, her mother answered. I asked another question. Again, the mother gave the response. Next time I asked, “Can SHE talk?” This ticked off the mother but the girl laughed and I agreed to interview her. I didn’t end up hiring her…then. Normally after an interview is over, I would quickly forget the names of rejected candidates. In this case, though, six months later when I found myself hiring again, I remembered her name and my instincts told me to call her in for another interview. This time I hired her and she was great. So great that I later hired her again when I was at the airport! In fact, Brittany became my best friend, an unofficially “adopted” member of our family, and my creative muse! I even officiated at her wedding! (In a way. But that’s another story).

Jerry Lewis at 100

 

I can’t recall the very first time I ever saw Jerry Lewis. I know I knew him from somewhere by the time I started seeing his comic book in 1966, with Jerry living with his obnoxious little nephew Renfrew and their witch housekeeper. I remember seeing posters at the local theater for the re-release of CINDERFELLA in 1967. At age 8, I knew CINDERELLA, of course, and thought the movie’s title was hilarious…but I didn’t catch it at the theater. 

  

I did end up catching several of Jerry’s movies on the big screen in the late ‘60s, though. I guess my parents found his silliness safe and kid-friendly. I remember in particular seeing DON’T RAISE THE BRIDGE, LOWER THE RIVER, HOOK, LINE, & SINKER, and WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT? at Covington, Kentucky’s Madison Theater. Meanwhile, I also savored Jerry’s movies on television, particularly WAY, WAY OUT one Saturday afternoon and THE BELLBOY (his masterpiece in my opinion) one Saturday evening. THE NUTTY PROFESSOR was another favorite. 

  

In 1970, Jerry ostensibly starred in a Saturday morning cartoon series called WILL THE REAL JERRY LEWIS PLEASE SIT DOWN? I say ostensibly because Jerry was actually voiced in that mercifully short-lived series by David (Squiggy) Lander. The real Jerry was all over the TV in those days, though, with multiple failed shows of his own in the ‘60s and ‘70s as well as frequent guest appearances on just about every variety series except Dean Martin’s. I actually had no idea that Dean and Jerry knew each other, let alone had been partners in the most popular comedy duo of their day. I first heard about the team when ABC ran their 1952 naval comedy SAILOR BEWARE in prime-time in 1973.

 

Apparently that opened the floodgates and Martin & Lewis movies from the 1950s began to be shown again on local stations. I even learned that Jerry’s DC comic book had also originally co-starred Dino! In 1976, on Jerry’s annual Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day Telethon, Jerry’s pal Frank Sinatra engineered a surprise live TV reunion of Martin and Lewis. It was short, awkward, and yet so cool to see them together. 

 

Jerry’s film career had not gone well in the 1970s. The decade began with the utter collapse of his attempt at making the now-notorious THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED. On top of some major health issues and addictions, his movies took a back seat. He did write a marvelous book entitled THE TOTAL FILMMAKER about his unique style of directing. 

  

Jerry had an international comeback with HARDLY WORKING in 1980, although its old-fashioned and now tone-deaf goofiness was trounced by critics in the US. Subsequent starring vehicles fared no better. As hard as it was to believe, Jerry Lewis’s time as the ranking comedy icon was now in the past.

  

Two years later, then, he starred in a drama…or let’s say a very black comedy. Martin Scorsese’s THE KING OF COMEDY cast Jerry as an obnoxious talk show host, similar to himself, opposite Robert De Niro, the reigning dramatic actor of the day. Jerry not only held his own but received raves from fans and critics alike. 

  

It wasn’t enough to revive his film career as a major star. Even two films made in France, which had always equated Lewis with the likes of Chaplin and Tati, were second-rate at best, What THE KING OF COMEDY did do, though, was to help him to plateau. No longer considered an outdated has-been, his reputation as an all-time entertainment icon was now locked in. 

 

By all accounts a mercurial man in real life, more like the somewhat monstrous Buddy Love in THE NUTTY PROFESSOR than Julius Kelp or “the Kid” he played opposite Dean Martin, Lewis alienated many who knew him over the years. I personally have known a few people who had more than just a passing relationship with Jerry. One, who took a comedy class offered by Jerry at Paramount in the early sixties, had nothing nice to say about him. Another, who spent a lot of time with him in his later years, describes him as belatedly humbled and appreciative.

  

Love him or hate him—and it’s easy to do both, often at the same time—today is the 100^th anniversary of Jerry Lewis’s birth, and there’s no question that the world would have been poorer without him. “Hey, lady!” Go watch your favorite Jerry Lewis movie today.

Bess Sellers--1990/2026

 

 Longtime readers may recall my attempt at winning a King Features contest for a new comic strip back in 1990 with BESS SELLERS. Today, I found an unfinished strip idea from back then and had ChatGPT finish it from my layouts.

Ted Knight-1954

 

The French Dispatch-2021

 

No matter how flashy they make it, most directors today--not all, but most-- just point a camera and let the actors tell the story. Wes Anderson doesn't do that. Wes Anderson makes MOVIES! He uses all the tools at the filmmaker's command--music, sets, dialogue, action, inaction, color, lack of color, sound effects, shocks, language(s), familiar actors in unfamiliar settings, designs, lighting, shadows, and time, even animation! Love his movies or hate them, there's nothing else like them today! Endlessly fascinating! I just watched this one, from 2021, and it may be his best to date!

Challenger--40 Years On

This one stunned me. I had been at work at the bookstore all morning. We were understaffed and I had been alone since 9 AM that morning with only a few customers straggling in. Our mall was largely unoccupied, with only about 15 stores in the entire place, even though it had been built for 99. I was shelving some books when my 1 PM staffer, Melissa, came walking in like a zombie.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"The space shuttle exploded," she said in a thick Southern accent I can still hear in my head.

My immediate response was, "The one with the teacher??"

The space shuttle missions had quickly become largely routine but this one, with civilian social studies teacher Christa McAuliffe, chosen from thousands of applicants, had been generating a lot of interest and good publicity for NASA. There had been multiple postponements, though, and I hadn't even remembered they were going to try again that day.

The only TV set in our near-dead mall was in the sleazy video store up on the top level so when Melissa came out of the back room, I ran up the escalator. The two guys there hadn't heard about Challenger either as they had been running a movie from a tape. They turned on the news when I explained what had happened and we all stood there dumbfounded as the story unfolded. We watched for an hour just...trying to take it all in.

It was inevitable that at some point there would be another major accident in the space program but this particular shuttle, with the civilian teacher, represented so much hope. So much optimism died along with these seven astronauts. May they Rest in Peace.

 

State Fair Superman-1957