I am so utterly done with this week. If you work (or ever have worked) at a college bookstore, the words 'rush week' doubtlessly fill you with your own personal horror. If not, let me try to explain it to you...

First of all, there's the general crazy. It's there like background noise. It is the first couple weeks of classes everybody is back from whatever they did for break and attempting to get back into the swing of things. Rushing about with new schedules and demands and yadda-di-dadda-di-da. It is crowded. The bookstore is full of a bunch of other people all trying to do the same basic thing you are doing. You are all there at the same time because with one thing and another most of the classes start/end around the same time. Neato.

Some of the things that we tell ourselves/each other in the course of our day-to-day lives are necessary falsehoods. If we all went about being utterly honest with each other things would get ugly out there real quick. An example of this would be the idea that when you come to me with your attitude, and you misplaced sense of entitlement, and your flat-out wrong ideas about the way the college textbook racket works; I'm going to give half a hump about helping you. I'm neither altruistic nor masochist enough to be that guy. Simple cause and effect, you come into my life and piss on my foot; I'm going to be less inclined to go out of my way to help you. Which is not to say that I won't help you, I will--treat me as badly as you like and I will guide you through your transaction safely. I'm still getting paid to do a job, after all, and I'm far too selfish about my own morality to waste my bad karma on the likes of you.

Now, I know what you are thinking--"Hey, jerkhole! These textbooks are expensive! Infact the whole college experience is too expensive!" You would, of course, be correct. There should be a way to make higher-education less expensive for all of us. Textbooks and materials are ridiculously expensive. As Mr. Pink once said; "If you show me a piece of paper that says it shouldn't be that way, I'll sign it. Put it to a vote, I'll vote for it. But what I won't do is play ball." Here is the key thing to understand. I didn't do it. Neither did the company I work for.

The ire that you are so desperate to place with us belongs at the feet of the textbook publishers. Publishers set the prices, they put out a new edition every two or three years, they load up the book with all manner of needless pieces of ancillary material. Why? Quite simply, they do this because they are desperately trying to cling to a market that is changing. The edition hopping and the computer programs and the shrink-wrap is all just trying to put a hole in the secondary market. When you buy used textbooks, the publishers loose money. It's that simple. So here's a tip--write to the book publishers. Write to your congress-people and school governments. Talk to you professors about reusing textbooks (The sooner the bookstore knows what they need, the more used copies we can buy back from YOU.) talk to anyone who will listen. Please, for the sweet love of all that's holy, do anything BUT take you sticker-shock out on the poor bookseller. It won't help.

/rant