Comic Shop Cardinal Sins: Organizational Folly

We’ve all been there: The seedy, low-rent comic shop that looks like the bastard love-child of a hoarder’s garage sale and a disaster site. Comics, toys, games, and t-shirts are haphazardly arranged in no discernible organizational style. Back issue boxes are virtually inaccessible, covered in random detritus. Aisles are so narrow and crammed with so much flotsam that the slightest mistake could lead to a Wall-E style garbage heap collapse. And, to top it all off, the guy behind the counter can’t be bothered to look up from his copy of Fangoria long enough to answer a simple “Do you guys have the latest issue of Invincible?”

Local comic book shops are an interesting breed of retail establishment. In an industry that thrives on repeat customers driven by intense fandom, a successful comic shop must toe the line between catering to the hardcore fan-base and serving new potential customers without scaring them away. It’s a tough tightrope to walk, and attention to the right details is an absolute necessity.

The focus of this week’s article: Organizational Folly.

Let me begin by saying that this entry won’t cover stores that don’t even attempt to organize – I’ll hit that subject in Clutter, Clutter, Clutter. For now, I’m going to focus on stores who make baffling and frustrating choices in how they organize what they do have in their store.

Nonsensical Divisions

Some divisions are logical, the simplest being to just alphabetize your entire stock regardless of other factors. Dividing by publisher makes sense as well, and is probably the most common division used by the average local comic shop. Virtually all shops have an “indie” section, mixing the books from smaller publishers like Boom! Studios or Oni Press.

What about the major-label imprints like Icon or Vertigo? Do they belong with their parent company, or in the indie section? I suppose arguments can be made either way, but putting them in with other “indie” or creator-owned books doesn’t seem to make sense. If you’re going to separate by publisher, separate by publisher. Just because Vertigo books tend to be more oddball or mature doesn’t make them indie.

Also, don’t put your new releases on a separate shelf from your standard organizational scheme. If I’m looking for the newest issue of The Walking Dead, I’m going to go to the same place where all the other issues of the Walking Dead normally are. When I don’t find the newest issue there, my first thought is that it must be sold out. Making me look in two different places for “new” issues versus “recent” issues is annoying, and can lead me to just give up on finding something.

Current Issue Stacks

One of the most aggravating organizational blunders is deep stacks of current issues cluttering up the shelves. These stacks can happen for two main reasons: over ordering of an individual issue, or leaving too many issues mixed in on the “current” shelf. In either case, archive. If an issue is more than 6 months old, it belongs in a back-issue bin.

Invariably, these giant stacks start sliding around, mixing with other books or falling off the shelf, potentially damaging the books and/or causing patrons to have to shuffle through giant, disorganized stacks to – in all likelihood – not even find what they’re looking for. Archiving laziness leads right into my next subject…

Lack of Maintenance

This is probably the most common problem with smaller independent shops. Take pride in what’s on your shelf, and work hard to maintain your organizational scheme, regardless of what it is. Be more organized than the geeks that come in and ruin your setup. Customers will invariably pick up books and put them back in the wrong place, knock something over while searching for a particular book, or just be outright sloppy and inconsiderate.

Every evening after closing, fix any organizational issues that customers have caused. Every morning before opening, make sure everything’s in order. It shows that you care about your shop’s content and, by extension, your customers.

“The Long Shelf”

This one might just be my own pet peeve, but is probably the worst organizational scheme in existence and the most off-putting for a customer. The “Long Shelf” occurs when, for example, a shop has one long wall that contains all of their current issue racks. When the comics on those racks are alphabetized, they are placed in one long line across the entire top shelf, from one end of the store to the other. Then, when that shelf runs out, the next letter starts a new shelf clear back on the other side of the store like some sort of giant, infuriating typewriter drum.

This is especially frustrating in a store whose racks already contain natural divisions every 3 or 4 feet. Use these divisions! Nobody wants to walk back and forth across the entire store to find the book they’re looking for. Let me stand in front of a single shelf section and follow the natural alphabetization, each shelf acting like a page in a book rather than turning the entire wall into an irritating scroll.

The Ideal

I can go either way on separating books by publisher. I see advantages and disadvantages to it, but my preferred organization is simple alphabetization. With the preponderance of indie and creator-owned books, I may frequently know the title of something I’m looking for without knowing who it’s actually published by. This is especially true of the casual reader – someone looking for a book after seeing a movie – who may not even know the publishers at all.

In my ideal world, books would be simply alphabetized, and separated into individual shelf sections. Only 4-5 months worth of current issues would remain on the shelf at any given time – put the rest in back-issue bins. Put new releases in their normal slot on the shelf and just mark them, don’t put them in a different section. Last, but not least, put effort into maintaining your organization, and show your customers that you care as much about their experience in your shop as you do for the products you’re selling them.

Comic Shop Cardinal Sins: Introduction

We’ve all been there: The seedy, low-rent comic shop that looks like the bastard love-child of a hoarder’s garage sale and a disaster site. Comics, toys, games, and t-shirts are haphazardly arranged in no discernible organizational style. Back issue boxes are virtually inaccessible, covered in random detritus. Aisles are so narrow and crammed with so much flotsam that the slightest mistake could lead to a Wall-E style garbage heap collapse. And, to top it all off, the guy behind the counter can’t be bothered to look up from his copy of The Lost Girls long enough to answer a simple “Do you guys have the latest issue of Captain America?”

Local comic book shops are an interesting breed of retail establishment. In an industry that thrives on repeat customers driven by intense fandom, a successful comic shop must toe the line between catering to the hardcore fan-base and serving new potential customers without scaring them away. It’s a tough tightrope to walk, and attention to the right details is an absolute necessity.

Over the course of these articles, I’ll discuss what I believe are the cardinal sins that local comic shops should avoid to keep customers – new and returning – happy for the long run. There are very few shops I’ve encountered that manage to avoid all of these problems, but the ones that have come the closest tend to be the most successful. There are five cardinal sins that I’ll cover in the coming articles: Organizational Folly, Ordering Blunders, Employing Trolls, The Blank Stare, and ClutterClutterClutter.

I’ll start things off simple, with a problem that I consider to be half a sin:

Inconsistent Hours

I understand that the vast majority of local comic shops are sole proprietorships; small businesses run by one person or a small group of people. As such, it might be common for a shop to be unexpectedly closed, or closed during a lunchtime hour. These situations are acceptable – sometimes stuff happens, and you gotta do what you gotta do.

How many times, however, have you seen something like this:

    HOURS:
      Sun: 12-5
      Mon: 11-6
      Tue: 12-8
      Wed: 11-6
      Thu: 12-6
      Fri: 12-8
      Sat: 11-7

Really? Regardless of what you think your sales performance might be in the opening or closing hour of a day, your customers have to be able set reasonable expectations for your store’s availability. I shouldn’t have to look up my shop’s hours every single time I go there because I’m not sure what they could be that day. Set a reasonable, regular schedule.

And most importantly, stick to it. Just because your store is slow one night shouldn’t mean closing early. What happens to the guy who rushes down to the shop one night, only to get there five minutes before the posted closing time to find the shop shut down? I can’t count the number of times I’ve stopped by some of my local shops after work during the week, only to find that they’d bailed early. If I can’t expect consistency, I’ll find somewhere else to get my books.

The PSN Outage and Gamer Entitlement

Earlier today, I got into a rather lengthy argument on Twitter with a good friend of mine over the current PSN outage. For those of you living under a rock in the Australian outback, the Playstation Network went down last Wednesday and has been down ever since. PS3 owners have been up in arms for days, demanding information.

The timing of the outage is horrible for Sony, coming during the week of three major game releases that all use online functionality. Gamers who purchased SOCOM 4, Mortal Kombat, and/or Portal 2 are understandably perturbed that they can’t get online with their new games, but the outage also affects all online-capable PS3 games, the Qriocity service and the Playstation Store. As the outage continues, gamers are becoming more and more upset, lighting up the internet with complaints.

Sony initially identified the source of the outage as an “external intrusion”, and let gamers know that they shut down the services in order to identify the breach and determine a course of action for fixing it. This backed people off for a day or two, but then began the complaints of Sony’s vagueness in identifying the problem to consumers.

On Saturday afternoon, Sony posted the following update to the Playstation Blog:

“We sincerely regret that PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have been suspended, and we are working around the clock to bring them both back online. Our efforts to resolve this matter involve re-building our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure. Though this task is time-consuming, we decided it was worth the time necessary to provide the system with additional security. We thank you for your patience to date and ask for a little more while we move towards completion of this project. We will continue to give you updates as they become available.”

This time, gamers were not appeased. Since this post, people have been complaining about every aspect of how Sony has been handling this situation, but primarily about the perceived lack of details regarding the process of restoring PSN service. Many feel that Sony should be providing more information – on any number of fronts – and that we as gamers and Sony consumers are entitled to more information. But are we actually entitled to anything?

Absolutely not.

First, people want to know what caused the outage. Of all of the different aspects of this issue that people are complaining about, this is the least valid, and least likely to get answered in any meaningful way. Gamers don’t need to know exactly what caused the issue, and Sony is under absolutely no obligation to publicize that information. If the problem was internal to Sony, releasing that information does them no good whatsoever, and if the problem truly was caused by a breach, then that information just points other hackers in the direction of a successful hack.

Sony has to be very careful with what information they release, and whom they release it to. It is fair to say that the PSN is a selling point of many products, and that a lack of the PSN would constitute the removal of a feature integral to those products. This argument would be valid, if Sony were permanently removing the PSN. But they’re not – it’s just an outage, caused by external forces out of Sony’s control, which is something everyone should expect with any service. Sometimes shit happens.

Besides, Sony is still smack dab in the middle of dealing with this crisis. If their info is to be believed (and we really have no reason to disbelieve them), they’re working around the clock to restore service and plug the holes, lest another incident occur and cause another extended outage. Why should any of us expect to be spoon fed information about their processes? Giving gamers minute-by-minute updates of their progress would do nothing but open them up to further scrutiny by a community of people who have no real knowledge of the problem. They’ve told us they’re working on it, and that’s what we need to know.

Similarly, people are bitching that Sony has not offered any kind of timetable for the return of the service, and are vilifying Sony for it. This is like saying “My favorite restaurant closed down because someone blew up their kitchen with a pipe bomb, but the owners aren’t telling me how long it’ll take to fix or when they’ll reopen, SO FUCK THEM.”

I’m going to sound like a broken record here, buy how are they even supposed to have a timetable? Building an infrastructure like this from scratch takes months, if not years, and rebuilding, testing it, determining a re-launch strategy, and re-launching it is not going to be an instant (or even fast) process. They’re not just deciding to flip the switch mid-stream to sate our hunger for gaming – they’re going to put the service back up when they’re damned good and sure that they’ve done everything humanly possible to ensure that we, their consumers, don’t have to endure something like this again.

Then there’s the question of compensation. Most of the complaints lie along the lines of “What are you going to do for me?”. I won’t deny that Playstation owners are probably due some sort of compensation for lost time. As I said before, the PSN is an advertised feature and a selling point for the console and a great many games. Playstation Plus subscribers have the most valid complaint, since they actually pay for the service directly and can’t partake. Is now the right time to be asking that question, though?

The outage hasn’t even ended yet, and Sony likely doesn’t even know the extent of the damage or cleanup time. With the amount of work they’re doing to fix the problem – namely rebuilding the PSN from the ground up – they likely don’t even know when it’ll be fully back up and running again. If they don’t know how long the outage will last or what it will take to fix it, how exactly are they supposed to determine a proper course of compensation for the affected users?

Probably the worst part of all of this, to me, is that the gaming media are fanning the flames of discontent. Gaming journalists repeatedly lambast gamers for their hot-headedness, even to go so far as to make fun of them (us) for flying off the handle at the tiniest little thing or for making entirely uninformed complaints. This is a time when users need to calm down and back off, and the media is a) making the PR hit that Sony’s taking from this even worse than it would have already been and b) acting just as reactionary as the gamers they make fun of.

What does this all boil down to? Under normal circumstances we, as consumers, are entitled to one thing: to get the product we pay for, as advertised, and to not be misled. That’s pretty much it. Sony hasn’t misled anyone, they haven’t engaged in false advertising, and – most of all – this is all out of the ordinary. Concessions must be made for off-the wall situations such as natural disasters or hackers or other situations out of Sony’s control.

We, as consumers, are not entitled to any specific amount or frequency of information from the companies from which we consume. How Sony handles its consumer service is entirely up to them, based on how they (not we) think it will affect their business and their consumers. Once the problem is fixed and they can take a step back and look at the big picture, they’ll determine a course of compensation and let us know how they are going to try and make it up to us. It would be stupid of them not to, because we are the reason they’re in business in the first place.

Complaining about the flow of information while still in the midst of the issue displays a frustrating sense of entitlement amongst the gamers making the complaints.  If, after all is said and done and we know Sony’s post-outage course of action, you feel that Sony has not treated you the way you want to be treated as a consumer of their products, the solution is simple: stop consuming their products. That is your recourse, and it is available to every single citizen of this wonderful capitalist society.

Semantics Rant: Retro vs. Classic

In weeks leading up to building Geekerific.com and recording the After The Fact podcast, I did a lot of research on the online community surrounding classic gaming. I looked at websites and forums, listened to a few other podcasts, got some information about classic gaming shows & conventions, and spent some time just checking up on what my fellow geeks were up to. In that time, I’ve come to the conclusion that the vast majority of the gaming community has no clue whatsoever about the difference between “retro” and “classic”.

Retro, by definition, refers to something that is new, but is created in an old style. The 2010 Dodge Challenger, for example, is a retro car. A 1969 Dodge Challenger, on the other hand, is a classic. A game is not retro if it’s an originally from a classic era, even if it’s being played on a new system. Playing A Link to the Past on a Wii doesn’t make it retro – it’s still a classic game. New games made in an old style (i.e., Mega Man 9 and Gradius ReBirth) can reasonably be called retro games.

Don’t call real classics “retro”. The ones we truly love are classics – the ones that got us into this silly hobby in the first place. It’s the true classics that inspire the retro games that come out now, and it’s the classics that built the foundation of the industry. Don’t confuse the two.

Not enough time.

When I read a part of an article that asked the reader to describe themselves in a single phrase, my immediate thought was “I don’t really have time.” As it turns out, this was not only appropriate for the situation, but a surprisingly accurate answer to the question. I’ve come to realize that the amount of time different parts of my life occupy is startlingly disproportionate to the relative importance of those parts. This isn’t a new idea, nor is it a revelation to anyone who’s ever felt overwhelmed. I know that everyone, at one time or another, feels as though they’re spending too much time at work, not enough at home, and not getting shit done that they want to get done. For me, it’s the first time that it has slapped me so coldly across the face.

In 2002 I was laid off from what now qualifies as the best job I’ve ever had at a company that – at the age of 23 – I would have sworn I’d retire from. Afterward I was completely aimless – I had all but given up most of my creative pursuits because, frankly, I loved my job so much that they lost importance in my life. You’d think that losing a job like that would encourage me to pick them back up, but it didn’t. I was so distraught at the loss that any other pursuit just faded to an ugly gray-brown at the edges of my vision. That was, I know now, the point in my life when my priorities had become muddled, and I started losing sight of the things that were truly important. Priorities shifted around in my mind and my life, and my primary focus became pulling down as healthy a paycheck as I could manage.

All I could think about was how badly I needed a new job. I freelanced for a year until it dried up, then ended up getting another job through a friend. Temp work desk job, but overall pretty fun stuff, if at times monotonous. It paid the bills, which reigned as supreme priority, and so I stuck around. I spent four years working ungodly amounts of overtime and striving to get hired on full-time. I’d apply for jobs and get denied, and it would eat away at me just a bit, but somehow drive me to believe that I just needed to try harder to make it happen. Trying made me grow more angry over time, but each time I’d take a break I’d think of it as time to reset and come back with renewed vigor. By the time I reached one of those breaks in the middle of 2007, I was ready to quit (and maybe I should have). I left with the intent to decompress, and my wife and I decided to take a vacation: 9 days in the northwestern corner of Glacier National Park – the middle of nowhere. 3 days in, my mother unexpectedly passed away at the age of 59.

The next two months of my break were spent dealing with my mother’s death. By the time I returned to work, I was more frazzled than when I had left, and quickly decided that I was either getting hired right-the-fuck-away, or getting out. I started pushing, and at the end of 2007 the “dream” finally became a reality: I got hired. The job was a huge boon financially, as it roughly doubled my pay and included full benefits (holy shit! health insurance!!). I rode a wave of euphoria, again giving me a reason to ignore the fact that I still hadn’t regained my priorities. The job, in all fairness, was pretty great at the start, and I was well suited for it. It still wasn’t really what I wanted but, fuck, who cares, right?

After the glow of the first year wore off, the job got worse and worse for me; each day became a bigger bundle of frustration and apathy. I began to resent not only the job, but people I worked with and the organization that employed us all. I haven’t yet been able to determine how much of that worsening was real and how much was perception, but there are countless arguments about perception vs. reality that I could use to prove or disprove whatever interpretation I feel like supporting at the time. The key was that I was growing steadily more dissatisfied with where I was, and I couldn’t readily identify why.

Outside stresses definitely contributed: in 2008, my father told me that he had been diagnosed with ALS – Lou Gherig’s Disease – a degenerative nerve disorder that would eventually rob him of his motor skills, speech, his ability to eat and drink, and finally his life. Over the course of that single year, he went from being the strongest, most self-sufficient man I’d ever known to having to quit his vocation of 40 years, pack up shop, and move in with my wife and I so we could take care of him. 2009 was even harder, as I watched his condition deteriorate until he was beginning to lose his ability to walk, speak, and perform some simple tasks. On Christmas Day of that year, he mercifully passed away in his sleep, well before the disease could place him into the motorized wheelchair he had received just the day before. My dissolution with my job got worse and worse in the year after his death, to the point where I went home grumpy every night and woke up to a sense of dread every morning.

My mom’s death came with a shock of perspective: that time was short, and not even remotely under my control. Two-and-a-half years later, my father’s death heaped on another revelation: that I needed to use what I’ve got while I’ve still got it. I began searching in earnest for a new position, looking for any opportunity I could find just to make a change. My creative juices also picked up again, my brain shifting into high gear, pumping out idea after idea. I started writing, drawing, and designing games again. I started a podcast and a novel, and began to feel like my priorities were starting to return to their natural state, but now they no longer meshed with my time. When one’s focus shifts away from family or free time or creative projects and settles on work, time tends to warp around the career. Work time slows and every minute extends to stretch around the top of the bell curve, and “free” time rolls off the top of that curve and rockets past us, full of raised hands and screams of all the fun and happiness that we can’t seem to find the time for.

After busting ass on job interviews, I finally got that new position (at the same company), only to find that I’m still disgruntled, acutely feeling the effects of time as each minute of work leisurely ambles by. My new job is a gigantic improvement over the previous, and I (actually) love the day-to-day. The job has shown me, however, that I’d likely be disgruntled at any job that isn’t of my own creation. While you’re at the bottom of the corporate food chain, the job demands more of your time because you physically need to be there to get it done. As you rise through the ranks, the paradigm shifts so that you’re no longer required to put in extra time, but you’re expected to, whether that rule is spoken or not. And in both situations, the expectation is that the job comes first. After all, that’s what they’re paying you for, and what would you be without the corporation?

All this has finally led to me regaining my sense of priority. My job, awesome as it may be, has to begin taking a back seat to my family, my free time, and my creative pursuits. Will this lead to me having more time? Probably not. In fact, the shifting of priorities has already extended the middle of that bell curve and made me feel like I’m floundering in the quicksand of my job. It has, however, caused me to stop letting the rigors and frustrations of my workplace follow me home, and has begun to wash away that gray-brown muddle, revealing the goals underneath:

– To start a blog. DING!
– To finish my first novel by the end of 2011.
– To finish at least two of my current game designs, and potentially work on getting them published.
– To make steady progress toward one of my ultimate goals. More to be revealed on that in the future.
– To write more. All the time. Even if it’s crappy, overlong blog posts.
– To draw more.
– To design more games.
– To play more.
– To never let my priorities shift away from the things that truly matter to me again.

We’ll see how this all holds up to reality.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! If you’re wondering what it’s all going to be about, you and I are in the same boat. As with most blogs, the intent behind this is to be a (hopefully) steady stream of consciousness that will (again, hopefully) be entertaining to some degree. A little rundown of my brain-pan might help define what things I’ll post about, and the categories I intend to separate everything into:

First and foremost, I’m a geek. If there is a geeky pursuit, I’ve probably done it, primarily in the form of games. I play games, and that occupies most of my free time. I play video games, card games, roleplaying games, board games, poker (lots of poker…), and I’ve even spent a good chunk of my life LARPing and playing live-combat games. I’m a gamer, in both the purest and broadest sense of the term.

I’m also a husband, a game designer, an artist, and a writer. I’ve just finished the first draft of my first full-length novel, and I’ve got several traditional game designs in the works.

The posts on  my blog will be split into one of the following categories:

EDITORIAL, which is further divided into:

Thoughts:
thinker_feature

Rants:

and
Reviews, which doesn’t have it’s own image because it’ll usually be tied to one of the categories below.

ENTERTAINMENT, which is further divided into:

Books (including my own):

Comic Books:
comics_feature
and
Movies:

and GAMING, which is further divided into:

Poker:

Video Games:

and
Traditional Games:

Hopefully you’ll find it as entertaining as I find it cathartic. I’m not here to take you on a journey, I just plan on putting myself out there and seeing what people think. Let me know, okay?