Part 4: The Reprise

Usually I only see sunrise from an L platform after a really good night out. It's gorgeous - I would watch the sun rise every day if it didn't happen so darn early.

My new (temporary) home away from home.

You might want to skip these next few. I was just so happy to be merching speed tables again that I took pictures of how pretty they looked before we opened!

Graffiti of all kinds is frowned upon, of course. Still...thanks!

...Not to be confused with a guitar panhandler.

As they emptied warehouses, we got as many as 15 pallets some days. I came in one morning to find 6 pallets inside the sort room...

...and another 3 pallets in the hallway to the loading dock.

They sent us "augment product" from the liquidator's warehouse. This is just some of the backstock.

I filled and merched the bookmark spinner one last time. Pretty..!

Breakfast at Borders.

Look at my magically-merched Vera Bradley table!

Front of the newly-merched Vera Bradley table (and some pillow pets).

Breakfast at Borders, part 2.

The sign we put on our bathrooms.

If this whole bookstore thing doesn't work out, I could always go work at a party store...

Tools of the trade - booksellers must be prepared for anything.

I noticed one day that the new Joffrey building has trees lining part of its rooftop.

In response to The Daily Show's segment on Borders.

I should work in marketing. These sold instantly, thanks to my signage.

Why do these fake Lego people all look like drag queens..? Creepy.

After work one day, I stopped at the lake on the way home to relax. It was the weekend of the air and water show, and it was beautiful out!

It's true. Muppets died to make those "sherpa" throws.

Sunrise on a cloudy morning / moving train.

View of the store from Block 37.

"Hoked" on Phonics? Atlas fail.

Same train platform, this time for sunset.

We had boxes and boxes of these little bargain kids' travel activity and board books that were impossible to keep neat on shelves. I made this endcap and it sold within a day.

The sign I made for my endcap...hehe.

Instead of going to liquidate Borders one morning, I went to the ER to get myself "liquidated." Five days(!!) later, they let me go home.

They decided I had pneumonia. I got multiple doses of antibiotics on top of regular IV fluid. My doctor called it "excessive," but better safe than sorry?

When I made it back to work a week later, they had cleared the 3rd floor. Many pictures of empty cases ahead...

It's our general manager's cheerful optimism that gets us through the days. This sign is on his office door.

I spent all morning getting the Kids' books (and several other sections) upright on the shelf. First customer in the morning did this.

Remember all that augment overstock in the Paperchase stock room? I was quite happy to finally get it all out on the floor.

Somebody had fun...but you can't say it isn't true.

Just to give you an idea of where this sign was located - closeup follows.

Yep. We went there. (I can't take credit for this - it was D.V.)

Mandatory invisibility cloak gag.

On average, during liquidation, 2 to 4 carts of recovery that look like this greet us every morning.

VERY limited quantities!! We only had about 500 copies... Gotta love the Borders Exclusives.

Our Kids' section, emptied and closed off.

We had fun thinking of ways to market Borders branded e-reader cases. This one wasn't mine, but one of my favorites! (Think it was that D.V. character again...ha.)

This one was definitely D.V. I love that we got away with it.

Our liquidator called at 6am one morning and asked us to get him "2 feet" of boxes. Any veteran booksellers want to guess how many boxes are in "2 feet"?

Breakfast at Borders, part 3.

Those "Huggable Pets" will hug anything - including Area E.

"Thanks for calling Borders sauna. How may we melt you?" Our building's AC was out for several days. The temperature outside was in the high 60s, but inside it was mid-80s. Yikes!

We cleared the 2nd floor. More pictures of empty cases/areas ahead.

Paperchase area on the 2nd floor.

FixtureLand, formerly known as Seattle's Best Coffee cafe.

72 degrees is a great improvement!

When I cleaned out the information desk on the 2nd floor, I found one compartment had nothing but razors and bandaids. Nice!

Someone posted a thoughtful addendum to our motto. The blankets in question are the augment product sent by the liquidator.

When I came in before we opened for our last full day, this is what the Romance section looked like.

I knew it was pointless, but I went ahead and recovered the Romance section one last time...

One of our last remaining frames was found at Area E with this note, left for us by fellow employee Paul.

This was up in a corner of the sort room. For anyone who didn't spend years of their lives shipping out RPL, the green sticker originally said STRIPPED COVERS.

We spent our last morning before opening building boxes for the bulk order (someone bought our remaining stock). I made a fort out of them! Please excuse how completely exhausted I look in this picture, and thanks to Arabel for taking it.

We closed our doors to the public at about 8:20am, September 14, 2011. This is our remaining stock, staged on library carts to be rung up. It was about 2,100 items and took three of us a couple hours to ring through. (We got to manually modify the price on each item, whee!)

Luckily, after two hours of ringing and modifying prices, our GM brought lunch.

The sign on our door after we closed.

I think this is a great picture to end the album - a nighttime shot of the store. Thanks to Jamie from Chicago Ex-Patriate for sending it in!