On the perils of working from home

We (that's 3 of us plus several thousand books and a hamster called Rocket) live in a Victorian terraced house. It has a very small hall just the width of the front door. Through this hall come visitors, deliveries, books and us. It can be a squeeze especially as logistics mean the in-coming books must go up to the study to be processed into stock before going down two flights to the book room where they are stored till sold. The hall can be a bit of a bottle neck therefore as books arrive and await processing. This morning I had just cleared it so some furniture could be delivered when five boxes of books arrived for me to purchase from a regular customer.

The hall was now blocked again.

So I heaved the boxes into the sitting room. Having got them there I decided I had better unpack them. What a delight. The customer who has sent the book is a customer of many years standing, who knows what I buy and just sends potential stock without telling me what it is going to be. It is almost always very good recently out of print literary criticism and the arrival of these boxes is a bit like bookseller's Christmas, being a total surprise and often a great pleasure.

In the end I was well satisfied with the lugging about as this is what was inside (they're stacked 3-5 deep):

They're not technically speaking in stock quite yet as I haven't paid for them, but they will be soon and will be catalogued and on the website in 2-3 weeks.

The dratted furniture delivery still hasn't arrived but I had a fun morning.

Comments

[Pat]

I remember things like that well from my previous existence as a bookdealer. We used to come home from auctions with the car loaded to the gunnels with boxes and (weather permitting) we'd sort them as we unloaded into the good stuff, the possibles and the utter dross, piling them up on the driveway. Sometimes we'd find a gem hidden in the bottom of a box we hadn't spotted at the auction which really made our day. Not quite sure what the neighbours thought!

[Juxtabook]

Hi Pat - all sounds very familiar. Unfortuantely we don't have a driveway. We do have 12 steps up to the front door though. Once my husband or the delivery man has heaved the boxes up that then that floor of the house gets taken over!