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Endcaps. The cap on the end of an aisle of merchandise. Typically used for displaying more products that couldn’t fit in their section or for displaying themed items down a highly trafficked area. They don’t typically hold much, and for The Bookstore, the plastic shelves that are used to hold up the products on display are small and flimsy.

The exact opposite of small and flimsy are Study Aid books. SAT, ACT, GRE, MCAT, TOEFL, all of those books are usually massive. Hundreds of pages dedicated to tests and facts and school stuff. Endcaps in our stores can hold maybe 15 books, two copies each. When we have to display study aid books, those are two to three times the width of your everyday James Patterson novel. Also, while James Patterson sells a lot of copies year round of his hastily ghost written schlock, you can’t say the same happens with study aid books.

Home office likes to ship us more than enough copies of a particular title for purposes of refilling displays, but, once again, endcaps are not like the other displays. We can set up maybe half the amount on an endcap of books compared to a table or bay of shelves. So with all the extra stock of extra thick study aids books that don’t sell nearly as well as Home Office wants, we’re up a very unfriendly creek.

Most copies sit in overstock shelves, gather dust, and then eventually get shipped back to the warehouse.

What a wonderful use of payroll hours…