The First Day Of Classes At DU

Today is the first day of classes at the University of Denver. It has been 11 years since I worked at the DU Bookstore as the Finance Manager, but I still pay attention to this date, since it was the busiest day of the year. No doubt due to some sort of PTSD. Virtually the entire staff, plus something like 15 temporary employees, were on the sales floor, ringing up customers on the cash registers, helping students find textbooks, and answering questions at the information desk, which back then was located in the center of the store, where the question mark is located in the photograph on the left. It was such a busy time, I did not take many photographs, but I did take some, although I have no idea what year they are from.

It was a much different business back then. Students still bought most of their textbooks at the bookstore, and months of planning went into making sure we had all the titles on the shelf before classes began. The year I worked at the bookstore after the University of Denver outsourced the store to Follett Higher Education Group, things were a lot different. To avoid having a lot of books to return at the end of the quarter, Follett would only order a limited number of copies, and then place special orders for students when those copies were gone. And the books that were special ordered came from other Follett stores first, instead of being ordered from the publisher. I remember one time a title was ordered from a Follett store in Alaska for a student who needed the book right away. You can guess how that turned out.

The thing I miss most about the DU Bookstore is the people, a wide variety of individuals, a lot of them with unique senses of humor. I still keep in touch with many of them, but others I have lost touch with, such as Dave, who was both the supply buyer and the advertising coordinator. He is pictured on the left holding up one of the signs Valarie, the Operations Manager for the store, made to keep cashiers from screaming at the next customer in line to come to their register. Of course, if the next customer in line was on his or her phone, waving a sign around does just not work, and so the screaming continued, although there was less of it. Happy First Day of Class DU Students!