GW Bookstore should be commended for an excellent beginning to the new academic year. On the whole, lines are shorter and employees are friendlier. The new system of checking bags outside rather than in the crowded area near the front of the store clears up space for walking and facilitates quicker turn-around times. Small organizational changes and simple modifications like these are what make the difference.
Another innovation seen in past years but working more smoothly this year is the assignment of a bookstore staffer to point waiting customers to free cashiers. The unruly throng that used to angle for a position in the fastest-moving line has been replaced with an orderly queue winding its way through stacks of colorful and strategically placed notebooks. Not only are they good crowd-control devices but great impulse buys, too.
Problems still exist at the bookstore, but many of them are beyond the control of those who stock shelves and scan purchases. Textbook shortages have much more to do with professors signing additional students into closed classes and ordering books late than with some clever conspiracy in which employees horde books in the stockroom. Books do not arrive magically on the shelves. They must be ordered and shipped – a process that takes time.
The new atmosphere of customer-friendly service at the bookstore is most likely a product of more student workers seeking a well-paying job complete with textbook discounts. Student employees are able to more easily guide their wayward peers through the mountains of books overflowing into the aisles, which results in fewer confused students spending inordinate amounts of time searching for the elusive shelf tag corresponding to their class.
Books are still expensive, but lines move more quickly thanks in part to better organization, more time between move-in and the start of classes, more efficient staffing and a genuine desire to help the customer. Any college or university bookstore is a tremendously busy place near the beginning of classes, but the employees at the GW Bookstore have found a way to ease the congestion and settle customers’ nerves.
