Bash Compactor: Good Help is Hard to Find
Good Help is Hard to Find
At the party held last week in celebration of its name change, Soho bookstore McNally Jackson was packed with writers, readers and revelers. Though the champagne was gone by 8:45Ministry of Special Cases author Nathan Englander poured me the last glasseveryone remained in high spirits. As owner Sarah McNally darted around with her new baby on her hip, guests lined up to have their photos taken with favorite books, take suggestions from noted authors and enjoy the Napa Brut that Englander and Colson Whitehead were doling out.
Kate Christensen, the award-winning writer and Brooklyn resident, was planted firmly at her postbehind the cash registerall night long. Authors, you see, had been drafted to work at the store during the event.
Im a whiz at math and Im incredibly good at working a cash register, Christensen said from across the counter. The author of The Great Man said that her last office gig was in 1996 at a subsidiary of a Japanese bank based in the World Trade Center; but this was her first real job since then, as she prefers to write from her Greenpoint studio. And how was it going?
I came late and it was just like showing up late for a real job, she said. But what are they going to dofire me?