As you are aware, the original Record Store Tales are almost done. There are only a few sub-chapters left in Part 320: End of the Line. I believe that, taken as a body of work and not cherry-picking bits and pieces, that it is a story of human frailty but also human strength and survival. There are laughs, and there are tunes. Lots and lots of good tunes.
Even though the entire story is almost told, I will continue telling tales of life’s absurdities. These Post-Record Store Tales (if you will) are already being written and are ready to be rolled out! The title, as suggested by you, will be revealed soon.
I just needed a new mascot. I felt that the old GI Joe LeBrain had run his course. Finding a new mascot, a new LeBrain, was a bit of a quest but I’ve finally settled on one. May I present to you:
Emotional material ahead. If you have been upset by past Record Store Tales, do not read on.
I’m not fucking kidding.
RECORD STORE TALES Part 320: End of the Line #3 The Last Day
The last two weeks at work after giving my notice were difficult, but now I had light at the end of the tunnel. My boss took me aside and asked me not to buy a hundred CDs with the last of my discount.
One thought that had occurred to me after giving notice was this. If I had gone to my doctor on December 19 for some Prozac or something, instead of writing my letter of resignation, he immediately would have written me a note for at least two weeks sick leave, right in the middle of the Christmas rush, absolutely screwing them over. Without question. That’s how much I had cracked. I chose not to do that. Instead I chose to leave on an upstanding note, head held high. I stated in my letter that I understood that this was the busy season, and I had no desire to cause scheduling problems for them. I offered to stay until the end of the month of January 2006. This would allow them plenty of time to find a new manager.
One thing that disappointed me was way that the store handled my departure. They waited until my last day to announce that I was leaving. This hurt my feelings. In my experience, when somebody like me leaves, an email will go out a week or two ahead of time. “So-and-so has decided to move on to new opportunities. His-or-her last day will be Friday the 13th,” or whatever. I didn’t get that. I speculate there was a certain amount of shell-shock. When your longest serving employee moves on to greener pastures, it’s hard to spin that positive, I guess? I really don’t know the reason behind it, all I know is that it stung.
Christmas had come and gone. I have almost no memories of that Christmas at all. All I really remember was that I went to Brampton on Christmas Day to meet Jen’s extended family. I met her Uncle Peter, Nana and Granddad for the first time. And I couldn’t stay long, since I had to open the store for our big annual Boxing Day sale the next day. I have no memories of Boxing Day, New Year’s, or any of the other days from that period. I really only remember my last day.
Thankfully my journal has some details of my last two weeks, but they are few and far between:
Date: 2005/12/27 10:09 am
I have been at this store every second that it has been open since 1:30 pm on December 23. That is an utterly depressing thought. How many more days of this? I do not yet know.
Date: 2005/12/28 8:13 pm (I had been told what my final scheduled work day would be)
January 4, 2006, I will be a free man again. The emotions I am feeling run the entire spectrum. But on January 5, there’s a good chance I may just sleep the entire day, just because I can. For the first time in 12 years I will have no reason to think about that store. That is a very liberating thought.
Date: 2006/01/04 08:00 am
My last day.
I was hoping to just go home quietly today, but I hear there’s something planned. I know my boss is buying me lunch, I don’t know what else is going on. I hate being the center of attention at work. At a party, sure, I’ll gladly take center stage and ham it up. At work I’d rather just fade into the background.
Meh, I shouldn’t be complaining. It IS my last day. Hard to believe. Well, I’d better be getting ready.
Date: 2006/01/04 10:49 am
The goodbye phonecalls and emails have started pouring in, they made the official announcement of my last day this morning. It’s overwhelming. So many people I may never see again! The emotions I am feeling, they are overwhelming. No matter how bad it got here, I had so many friends. I lost sight of that fact. I sure will miss so many people.
They bought me one of those giant “farewell” cards and had loads of people sign it. I still have that. It was a kind gesture.
I still miss a lot of people, but life does go on. I had never done anything like this before; leaving a place I had worked for so long. It was like losing a part of myself. But, that part had become dark and cancerous. So, my health gradually returned. I slowly became myself again, a long journey in itself.
To be continued…
Jen and two great co-workers arranged a surprise party for me a couple weeks after. I have some pics from it. I also have no idea who that guy is in the picture with me.
Emotional material ahead. If you have been upset by past Record Store Tales, do not read on.
RECORD STORE TALES Part 320: End of the Line #2 The Last Straw
Date: 2005/12/20 08:32 am
Well, I guess it’s time for some major news. I quit my job yesterday. I feel that I have been pushed one step beyond what I am willing to accept. I wrote my letter of resignation yesterday. My last day has yet to be decided but come January I will be free as a bird to de-stress and spend every day finding that new job that I know is coming.
I have never disclosed my exact reason for leaving the store. I spent almost 12 years there, but the last several of them were not pleasant. There were personality clashes and other issues that I will not get into to protect the guilty. Suffice to say that if I wanted to, I could have written another 320 Record Store Tales about all the shenanigans behind the scenes.
One of the biggest signs of a problem was the fact that I was losing my love of music. That is not something I thought would happen, but it set in slowly like a cancer.
I had been looking for other work for a little while but only half-heartedly. I had discovered that, even though I had 12 years’ experience with 10 of them as a manager, retail experience was not valued in many of the jobs I was looking at.
Events became unbearable on December 18, 2005. It was exactly a week before Christmas and our stores were busy. I managed to get myself a couple days off for that entire month, the 18th being the last of them (besides the 25th itself). I spent the morning with Jen and my parents, having breakfast at a local place that they enjoy. We had a great breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and beans. It was a chance for my parents to get to know Jen a little better, who they only met two months previous.
As soon as I got home from breakfast, I found two messages on my answering machine from the store. Somehow, I had a gut feeling that would be the case. They had only been open for two hours. Apparently there was some sort of power surge and our computer was on the fritz. They couldn’t ring in sales, so all transactions were being done on paper. In addition, somehow, the computer’s monitor was now displaying sideways! They had turned the screen on its side just to read it. The messages on the phone asked if I could run down to Office Depot and buy some receipt books for them to record manual sales on, and check in on the store. They had already called in some extra help for the shift. When I got the messages, I called and said I was on my way.
The store was busy when I got there but not overwhelmingly so. I stayed an hour to help, and then went home. All was well and there was nothing else I could do that day. The computers were even working again. Jen was with me the whole day and will stand by all of this.
The following morning, Monday the 19th, did not go at all like I had expected.
I went into work an hour before we opened, as I always did. The monitor had righted itself, and all was more or less back to normal. All was well with the world again.
Except for one person.
This one person was not happy. At all. Apparently, when the store’s staff couldn’t get hold of me (remember I was at a breakfast with my parents) they called someone higher up. And that person proceeded to tear me a new asshole for it. This person was not interested, at all, in the fact that I did come into the store on my day off and help. I did everything requested of me. This was not good enough.
“You have to leave your cell phone on, all the time, from now on,” the person demanded.
My personal cell phone. I had owned my cell for about 6 years. I selected it and paid for everything myself, for my own personal use. Work never had anything to do with my personal cell phone. It was mine, and I rarely used it.
So, I did what I had always rehearsed in my mind, should a demand I deemed unreasonable ever come up. I nodded, paused, and the words came out of me automatically:
“Then I’m going to have to give you my notice.”
There was a very brief silence.
“Then you’ll have to write a letter of resignation.” Into the office. Door closed.
That was it. I had done it. Finally, I had done it.
In my letter of resignation, I stated simply that I no longer wanted to deal with the stress of a job that had almost become 7 days a week, 365 days a year. I signed the letter, perhaps the most important letter I ever wrote in my life.
RECORD STORE TALES Part 320: End of the Line #1: The First Interview
Every journey starts with a first step.
By 2005 it was obvious that my career at the Record Store did not have a future. Franchises were struggling, and I found myself on the outside of the clique of people who ran the show. I had sunk into a deep depression, which was exacerbated daily by the store. I was working as hard as I ever had, returning home exhausted each night, but the writing was on the wall. It had been for years. I put together a resume and began applying for jobs.
Assembling that first resume was interesting. I hadn’t had to look for a job in over a decade. Retail experience was one thing, but I was beaten down so much that I struggled to play up my skills. I couldn’t see my strengths. As I worked on it and sought advice from people I trusted within the organization, I realized my experience was anything but limited to a cash register. I had been responsible for training dozens of employees, and even some franchise owners too. I had been responsible for bank deposits, and sometimes I was carrying thousands of dollars in cash on my person. I had also spent a couple years running our website. I had travelled all over southern Ontario helping to deal with staffing issues. There was so much responsibility, and I had received so little credit for it, that I was selling myself short. Once I got some help and got that resume into shape, I started applying for jobs. One franchise owner wrote me a glowing letter of recommendation that I still treasure. It gave my spirit a huge boost.
Not having done a job interview in a decade, I was applying to anything, just to get my interview chops back. I had applied to sales and management-type jobs, but was shot down each time for “only having retail experience”. Even though I had managed a staff many times, it didn’t seem to matter. I worried that spending 10 years in one job wasn’t necessarily a good thing, like I thought it was.
I got a call back from a local chicken restaurant. They were hiring for an assistant manager position, so I gave it a shot. The interview with the manager was set for a Sunday; an odd day for sure but at least I had it off. I put on a pair of dress pants for the first time in a long time; I remember they were uncomfortably tight. I squeezed in and headed off to the interview. As far as a first interview in years goes, I did pretty well. As this blog attests to, if there’s one thing I like talking about, it’s music. If there’s two, it’s music and myself. I’m good at conversing, in other words. (I get this from my Grandfather who had “the gift of gab”.) However I had no food service experience and I really wasn’t all that interested. I was more curious what was out there.
Of course I did not get the job, but that interview experience taught me two things. One, doing an interview is like riding a bike. Once you learn how, you never forget; you might be rusty but it’s easy to climb back on. The second thing I learned was to always make sure I have a pair of dress pants that fit!
My second interview went much better. I had applied for a position at Manulife and I nailed it. Even though I had given what I still think was the best interview of my life, I did not get the job, and my mood sank further. These journal entries have all the details:
Date: 2005/12/15 11:37 am
Man, that interview went so well. I was told that I was the best candidate they interviewed, but that there was also an internal candidate who was a favourite.
45 minutes after the interview concluded, I got an email saying the other candidate got the job.
Date: 2005/12/15 19:22 pm
Yeah, I guess I can admit I’m just really bummed right now. I definitely gave the best interview of my life today. And she said so many great things about me:
“You have such great personality, I would hate to see that stifled in you.”
“You are by far the best candidate I have talked to.”
We bonded over Pink Floyd, Helix, the St. Jacobs Market, Walkerton…it was a damn fun interview.
Ahh well. One thing for sure, I had a taste while I toured their building of what a REAL job is. They even had a Tim Horton’s on site! There’s a professionalism that my current job couldn’t even dream of having. It was fantastic. I have a very clear vision of what I want now, and I WILL get it.
Regardless of my bravado, this rejection hit me extremely hard.
I really had this coming. In Part 314 (The Musical Crimes of Mrs. LeBrain) I exposed the somewhat embarrassing contents of Jen’s CD wallet. I knew retribution would come. Enjoy this penultimate episode of Record Store Tales, and its final guest shot, courtesy of Mrs. LeBrain. (Warning: LOTS of pictures!)
By MRS. LeBRAIN
RECORD STORE TALES Part 319: The Musical Crimes of LeBrain
#10 HIM – And Love Said No. That deep dark gothic prince Ville Valo makes lonely girls swoon, but he is also hanging out on LeBrain’s shelf.
#9 Soundtrack – SMALL SOLDIERS. I don’t know how this made it into the LeBrain home. I understand his need for everything Geddy Lee has ever created, but “Mixed by DJ Z-Trip“?? Is that really worth it? (Not to mention that you have to rock out to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony to get there.)
#8 ROD STEWART – “If We Fall In Love Tonight” CD single. Going through my adventure here, I came across this single, designed to get the listener to first base. YOU’RE MARRIED. THAT SHIT DOESN’T NEED TO STAY.
#7 Soundtrack – THE KARATE KID, Part III. “Wax on, wax off.” The case and book for this CD do not meet the demanding criteria that LeBrain enforces on his collection, but neither does the track list. (I don’t know who most of these people are, but I have heard of the Pointer Sisters.)
#6WOODSTOCK 99 – Various. Look at the first six tracks from crap bands, and try not to laugh (a challenging task). The second CD is just as bad.
#5 Soundtrack – SON IN LAW. The Pauly Shore franchise was known for making really bad movies. The soundtracks are not much better and this shouldn’t be taking up valuable shelf space.
#4 ELMOPALOOZA – Various. If LeBrain were a daddy, this CD might make sense (Steven Tyler has a song about trash). But LeBrain is childless, and Tickle-Me-Elmo is pretty pointless here!
#3 ZZ TOP: A Tribute From Friends – Various. Three words:
MIKE OWNS NICKELBACK!
#2 AVRIL LAVIGNE – The Lavigne Collection (see below). In Part 314, LeBrain threw me under the bus for wanting to marry Joey Mac from New Kids on the Block, 25 years ago. Payback time! Just because he wanted to be her “Sk8tr Boi” doesn’t mean he needed to buy her entire repertoire.
And #1! HIT ZONE 4– Various. LeBrain’s messiest musical moments have been in his “Various” section, but this one takes the cake. My husband owns tracks by NSync, the Backstreet Boys and Boyz II Men? And to top it off this boy band festival, here’s Hanson! Regardless, I think the most disturbing thing about this CD is cover. Look at the scratches and scrapes on the case. This tells me the CD has been well enjoyed.
CONCLUSION:
LeBrain, with all the mess on YOUR shelves, you really can’t make fun of me. But no matter what crap you listen to, you’re still mine.
RECORD STORE TALES Part 318: The Last of the Emails
I’ve been sitting on this installment of Record Store Tales for months. I couldn’t post it without heavily editing it. The emails in question are too raw and emotional for me so I had to edit them down for public consumption. But these emails are relevant, as we wind down our story. They highlight exactly how bad it got for me and why leaving was my only option.
The whole ending has been really difficult to finish as it is. I’ve been delaying and delaying, not wanting to look at it. Part of that is the pain associated with the whole period. The other has been that the Record Store Tales have been so fun and I don’t want it to end.
These truly are the last of the emails, the barrel is now all but dry.
9/13/05
Work just called, I FUCKING HATE WHEN WORK CALLS. They lost somebody’s CDs. They were RIGHT THERE yesterday. They ask, “Did you move them?” No, I did not. The only person who could have is you. Now I have THIS to deal with. I’m pissed off that something so simple gets fucked up even though I left everything extremely clear. AND I AM PISSED THAT I WILL CATCH HELL FOR IT! I’m annoyed every day. And I only get one more hour of peace and quiet at home before I have to go in and deal with bullshit for 8 hours. :(
11/25/05
I have to admit that I am depressed today. The idea of dragging my ass to work is killing me. I can’t do another Christmas. I don’t know what to do. I want to quit. Of course I know what a bad idea that is but I’m dying inside. I can’t even eat. I just want to quit, say goodbye, leave, dedicate all my energies to finding a new job. I mean, who am I kidding? Someone calls me for a job, and we play phone tag for days because I’m never home during business hours. And then when do I schedule an interview when I’m always working? It’s impossible. I don’t know what to do.
12/06/05
This has been the worst Christmas season so far, it has been really difficult to put a smile on my face and put any effort into work. I need out so bad.
You can see I was fraying at the ends. It feels like…a different person.
There were very few people that I had standing orders to kick out if they ever came into the store. Sure, there were some. The Barefoot DJ was to be kicked out if he ever came in without shoes on his feet. The Creepy Twins, a couple of racist identical twin brothers, were to be kicked out if seen. The one that I remember most clearly was the owner of a rival CD chain. He was notable for his coiffed blonde mane. He looked like he was a member of Def Leppard, and still does to this day. The fear was he would steal ideas for his own store.
That CD chain owner, who I shall dub Mutt Lange, had a longstanding rivalry with my boss, the owner of our stores. Mutt seemed like a total douche. Just a pompous ass. When we first started out, we based our pricing scheme on Mutt’s own catalog. He published an annual catalog, which we bought several copies of each year. When we first started creating our own price database, we used Mutt’s as the starting point. That really would have chapped Mutt’s ass if he had known. I was even sent into Mutt’s locations to buy the newest catalog. They needed to send someone that wasn’t recognizable.
I recall not really being into Mutt’s stores. I don’t remember ever buying anything there besides the catalogs. T-Rev found some old Saga CDs there, but it wasn’t really my kind of place. A lot of cheap mainstream “Super Saver” CDs, but not a lot of the stuff I was looking for. The catalog was useful, because it not only indicated retail prices, but would tell us if an album was still in print (or not).
My boss also checked out Mutt’s website regularly. I learned a valuable lesson there.
“Look at this,” my boss said while loading up Mutt’s site. “This hasn’t changed in three years. His site is exactly the same. He hasn’t added anything, he hasn’t changed format, or changed the look at all. It looks like a place that isn’t even in business anymore.” That was a good point, so when we started up our own site, he made sure we gave it a good solid revamp semi-regularly. They’d change the graphics, the layout, and the way the search engines worked. That was probably the best lesson that I learned about e-commerce. Keep changing things up. People have short attention spans, but if it looks like your store is defunct, they’ll probably assume it is.
Back to Mutt himself – I recall seeing that blonde mane walk through my doors one summer day. It was actually T-Rev’s doors; I was filling in for him while he was helping to build a new store. And yeah, I had to kick him out! Not a fun experience I wanted to repeat!
Happy Anniversary to my beautiful soul mate Jennifer. Every day gets better and better, and you look younger and younger! I don’t know how you do it. Meanwhile I’ve turned into a grey-bearded old man with a bad back and lactose intolerance, and you still keep me around! Must be love. It’s the only possibly explanation why you live in a house full of Transformers, CDs, and records.
The last six years have been the happiest of my life. Thank you for being the puzzle piece that was missing all that time.
Love you, sweetie. Here’s one of the songs we danced to six years ago, on the best day of my life.
In 1996, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Juno Awards, a box set titled Oh What A Feeling was released. It was four CDs loaded to the gills with Canadian music, from all corners of the country and all styles of music. It was a great set and one which sold regularly in our stores. The original run of the set sold out briskly. We had a hard time keeping it in stock new, and a few years later, used copies were somewhat scarce. We sold it at a very reasonable price of $19.99, used.
We had one customer, who I never gave a name to except for “Eastern European Guy”. He had an accent and broken English so that worked for me. He pulled Oh What A Feeling off the shelves and asked to listen to it on one of our six crappy listening stations. I popped in all four CDs, handed him the headphones and remote, and left him to listen.
One thing that always pissed me off was people who constantly need help on the listening stations. It’s not hard. Volume controls were right there in front of you. The remote was like any remote that people would have had at home. People who couldn’t figure out how to skip tracks pissed me off. How do you listen to music at home? I didn’t get it.
Eastern European Man motioned with his hand for me to come over. “This song…there is a problem with it. Listen please.”
“Hey, I have an idea. Let’s stick the lead guitar player behind the bassist for this video.”
I placed the headphones on my head. It was track 1, disc one. “American Woman” by The Guess Who. I listened for a few seconds, nodded my head in approving time with the song, and removed the ‘phones.
“Sounds good. What problem are you having?” I asked as politely as I could manage.
“This song…there is strange sound. Listen again.”
I placed the headphones back on. Dah da da da da, dah da. American Woman, stay away from me-hee. Sounded fine. I heard no strange sounds. I told him I heard nothing unusual.
“There is a sound…ticking sound. Tick tick tick. Listen please.”
I put the phones on for the third time. Finally I got it. I heard the ticking. It was the cymbal.
“Oh, OK, I get it. Yeah, that’s not a defect. That’s the drummer playing cymbals.” I made a drumming motion to get my point across.
“No, no. There is ticking sound. Tick tick tick. This not right.”
I explained again, “I hear the ticking sound you’re talking about. It’s part of the song. It’s the drummer playing cymbals, it’s a percussion instrument, like this.” I made the drumming motions again.
“I not like. Can you order me other copy?”
Man, I freaking hated ordering shit in when I didn’t have to. There was nothing wrong with Oh What A Feeling. If I ordered in a copy, it would be coming from another store in our chain. We carried this item as a used item, but they were all going to be the same. When we brought in this item from another store, we wouldn’t make any money on it. The store that sent it to us gets the sale. So, even if he buys it which was not guaranteed since the next copy would have the same tick tick tick, I would be losing the sale.
He insisted. I ordered in the box set, we called him, and inexplicably, he bought the new one even though they were identical. He never even returned it, which I completely expected.
Later on, the same man came in and picked out Bruce Dickinson’s album Balls To Picasso to listen to. Once again, I brought him over to the listening stations, and left him to listen. Once again, he signaled me over with a hand gesture. I made my way to home wondering what the hell could be wrong this time.
“Did you put in correct CD? I know this singer. This is…not him.”
I put on the headphones and turned it up. It was Bruce singing “Cyclops”, track one.
“This is the right CD. This is Bruce Dickinson,” I told him.
Puzzled, the man said, “He changed his style!” Well, win some lose some man. I left him to listen once again. I got back to my work, I had lots of customers to deal with that day. About 10 minutes later, he motioned me over once again.
“The player…it not working.” This happened quite frequently. Our stuff was used and abused by the lowest scum and passersby who needed to kill 10 minutes while they waited for the bus. Tire kickers. They like to try things, but not to buy things. Eastern European Man was not one of these, he did buy things. However our stuff took a lot of abuse from others and was always on the verge of failure.
Attempting to joke around with him, I put on a happy voice and said, “Oh, did you break it man?”
Not understanding the humour, he answered, “Ehhh…perhaps.”
He bought the disc. After a while, I never saw him again. It’s funny. You dread people like this coming into your store, and you having to wait on them hand on foot when they want to listen to something. You hate them constantly signaling you over when you’re busy with other customers. But, then you miss them. You miss that eastern European accent because hey, he might have been annoying but at least he wasn’t a dick, and he did buy things. He might have treated you like a servant to him, but technically that’s what you were. You might have been a manager but to these guy you’re serving them, and they’re the customer, and that’s it, and I don’t begrudge it anymore.
But what happened to him? Did he return to Eastern Europe? Did he go online and start listening and downloading there? Who knows. After all, I never caught his name. He was just Eastern European Man.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m getting closer to the end of the line with the Record Store Tales. These are some bits and pieces I had lying around that I never managed to make full stories out of. Below are four memorable characters from the Record Store days. It’s funny how even 20 years have gone by in some cases and I still remember these customers.
1. Richard the Indian. I don’t like making racial jokes, but Richard the Indian (nickname applied by himself) liked to make them, and always about himself! Richard had a First Nations Status card, which he had to present to us to be exempt from the Provincial Sales Tax. He used to joke at the front counter about his barely-working Discman: “This Discman must have been made by Indians, it already broke!” He was a nice guy, but I always felt like I couldn’t laugh at that joke! You know what I mean?
2. “Oops There It Is” Kid. This kid came in every week for a year, looking for the song “Whoomp! (There It Is)” by Tag Team (except he couldn’t say the name right). Being a kid, he wasn’t allowed to spend money, so he could never buy one of the albums we had. Then one day, we got in a whole bunch of cassette singles on clearance, including “Whoomp! (There It Is)”. It was a buck or two. You should have seen his eyes when we finally got a copy in that his mom would let him buy! I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a happier kid.
3. Hammond Organ Man. I think this may be the same customer that I referred to as Jaded Rock Guy. The reason he was also known as Hammond Organ Man was that he refused to believe that one of our store managers even knew what a Hammond organ was (even though she did). I don’t know why that’s so hard to believe.
4. Johnny. This guy was a burn-out from my old highschool. He was in the same class as the store owner. In mid ’94 he was always coming in asking, “When is the new Cult out?” We hadn’t seen any release dates at all, but every week he asked the same question. “When will the new Cult be out?” Finally my boss answered him, “Next week,” just to see what Johnny would say. His eyes went wide. “Really? Can you hold one for me?” My boss told him he was just kidding, but he stopped asking about the new Cult album. Then when it finally came out in October ‘94, he hated it! He bought it from me new and sold it to me used.
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