MARK RUINS BOOKSHOPS
Oh dear, where do we start? Tim Waterstone, the founder of a little company I know quite well.
Basically, the crux of his memoir is one of annoyance. Annoyance of what happened to his company after his sold it for what I am sure was a nice tidy profit. He’s not happy at what the corporate world of capitalism and profit margins did to his company. I mean, what did he expect? But now he is once more, as the company has shifted once again. That’s pretty much all you need to know.
Tales of his early life are as dull as the dirty post-war dish water he had to bathe in and the bread and dripping sandwiches his young self had to consume. There are the usual plethora of dysfunctional family holidays and general dynamics. He repeats the same two anecdotes in the first two chapters, which isn’t the fault of the author, but his sloppy editor.
My father never loved me, yada yada. His lack of love gave him the determination to be a successful national purveyor of bookshops, that sort of woe is me thing. Waterstones was just an almighty fuck you to his dad essentially. Yawn.
In fact, his prep school headmaster masturbating to his exposed bare pre-teen bottom is worryingly the most interesting and entertaining thing in this book. But then he becomes an apologist for bullying and sexual abuse in schools, simply saying that it turns boys into men.
Seriously.
Waterstone is decidedly unapologetic about the number of independent book shops in towns he gleefully takes responsible for closing. The reprehensibility and gall of the man is truly something to behold. He was admittedly ruthless and clearly doesn’t care about it. He’s just like, they weren’t good enough, fuck them. I bet he sleeps like a fucking baby.
The beginning of Waterstones was all about rebellion, something he learned from his time working for WHSmith, who fires him. Something he is still pissed off about to this day. Not to mention the period they took over his company and gutted the original ethos and spirit.
The book is peppered constantly with gushing praise and comment from ex staff members back in the early days when individual stores controlled their stock and their place of work was something to be proud of attending every day. Back when they were told to treat their stores as independents, an ethos that had somewhat dissipated when I worked for the company. You weren’t allowed to be creative and any imagination or ideas were immediately stifled and quashed.
I created from scratch a local author initiative and dedicated events programme at a time in the mid 2000s where not only was a rare thing in the company but I was actively discouraged by head office, putting immense on a succession of consistently harangued branch managers over what I was attempting to create, that being a place for the local community to be cherish and be a part of and not a bunch of faceless shareholders. Essentially what we were doing quickly paid off and was incredibly successful. But they resented us because it was something that they couldn’t take responsibility and credit for.
HMV then tried to turn Waterstones into Tescos and eventually failed. They employed a company director who had never worked in a bookshop in his life. He wasn’t even from a retail back ground, coming from a food distributor. Gerry couldn’t organize his way out of a revolving door and soon left. But before he did, he took the company away from that literary tradition and focused on crap like the “books” from Jordan and Jade Goody instead. Which went down like a shit taco in London’s Notting Hill, I can tell you. In the end, I just refused to put certain ghost-written tosh out onto the floor. Instead they filled the Goods In room rather rapidly, much to the consternation of the staff who had to work in there.
These days branch managers have no say at all over their stock and are not allowed to do any purchasing for the local market they know best, despite his description of the new James Daunt era. Head office and regional managers still control everything. In a way, I’m glad I don’t work for them anymore because I wouldn’t be able to hold my tongue and accept that sort of shit at all. Just like some of my friends still do.
A large part of me wishes that I could have worked for the company in those early days or right now when they seem to have gone back to that original independent spirit (which is what I wanted to experience when I applied in 2004), even though the managers still can’t order their own stock. But it does seem a lot better than those awful HMV stranglehold years I witnessed. But hey.
When it’s all said and done, the general tone of ‘The Face Pressed Against A Window’ is both vindictive and a bit sad really. Tim Waterstone is a bitter man, a little full of himself. His wife and family are pretty much an afterthought in this book and are only mentioned in passing towards the end. It’s interesting for anyone interested in entrepreneurs and business, but aside from that, it’s not enjoyable as a read.
Oh dear indeed.