Due to christmas shopping I went to a tiny little bookstore this week. I found it right in the middle of our city, it has always been there, but since it technically isn't on one of the big High Streets, I never noticed it before.
I tend to buy a lot of books as christmas presents, I guess it's a habit very typical for people of my profession. So we went in there and went out half an hour later with 5 books in my fiances backpack and one more being ordered for us for two days later. It was a lovely shop, two floors, one with German books and one with English ones, all decorated with a lot of love and care. The employees were typical booksellers, you could just sense their love for their goods, they were authentic and with burning passion for their work, and of course helpful and polite as they should be.
When I left the shop I bursted into tears. Being in such a lovely little bookshop hurt.
Why? Because I miss this. I miss being one of those passionate booksellers instead of one of those indifferent office job workers. I miss caring for my work. I miss burning for my work.
I always did burn for selling books. I burned for every bit of it, from unpacking the boxes full of new books in the morning to handling even the most tedious customer with a smile to counting the cash in the evening, hell, I even burned for dusting the shelves for hours. All the boring, unnerving, exhausting tasks I thought I'd be happy to leave behind when I started at my current job, I even miss those. I miss all of this a lot.
Sure, my current job is not too bad. It does pay more than I'd get in a bookshop, I don't have to do physically demanding works like carrying several kilos of books up and down stairs, I don't have to deal with customers too often and if I don't feel like smiling I don't have to, my colleagues are lovely, my superiors take pretty good care of me, I can work flexible times and I have a lot of chances to learn and grow as a person work-wise. This job does have a lot of perks. But it is not what I burn for. I don't really care for what I am doing here. If it wasn't for paying my bills, I propably would not go here everyday, 40 hours a week. It's a bearable job, it's pretty ok, but it isn't great. It doesn't make me happy.
Now this would be a lot different if I would have actively decided to do this instead of working in a bookshop. Then it would be a) my fault and b) changable. However, the reason it hurts even more is that it was never my decision to make. There are simply too few jobs in book selling, especially if you want them to pay you a living (there are mostly part time jobs that would hardly cover my rent and food) and limit yourself to one city. Thus, I never stood a real chance to decide if I wanted to stay in bookselling or do something else. I was kicked out of my personal paradise and took my current job only for the sake of having a job at all.
For the first time in my life I feel truly betrayed by capitalism, personally offended. In Germany, several hundreds of booksellers are trained, but there are not even closely enough jobs for them after they finished their apprenticeship. There are a few lucky ones who can stay in the shops where they did their apprenticeship, there are some who find work in other shops and some who don't want to be a bookseller anymore, and then there's people like me who would die to keep doing this job but don't find a job in their field. A lot of booksellers are basically bread for unemployment and it is frustrating. It is frustrating having worked so hard for years below minimum wage for nothing. It's even more frustrating wanting to highly recommend this work field because it makes you so happy just to realise you couldn't possibly bear to see someone becoming that disappointed as well.
In the end, it feels a bit like being in love with someone who doesn't reciprocate your feelings. It hurts a lot but you can't change it, they can't change it either, it just is what it is: Not meant to be. Their feelings might change at some point, but you have no guarantee for it, so it is the best for everyone to move on for now.
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