Confessions of a Luddite.

All right, I admit it. I fight and/or ignore technology every chance I get.

I remember trying to read "The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." I was about halfway through before I threw the book across the room and said, "Up Yours! I see no reason I need to know how a motorcycle works. It's for riding, man!"

I fought off getting a computer for a long time; or what seemed like a long time back then but was probably only a couple of years. I couldn't run my business without being online today. Well, obviously.

I think I've only survived this modern world at all because of my friend Aaron, who is a tech wizard and is on retainer at the store. (Well, he gets a big discount for his comics...)

But I'm not completely stupid. I understand objectively that a Point-of-Sale computer would probably be a good thing to get. If I got one, I'd eventually learn how to use it. I's fumble around a lot, be eventually get a functional place. 

But I'm not far away from retiring, a couple years at the most. It's going to be Sabrina's task, and I'm going to strongly urge her to go that direction.

However, I do have some arguments against being too dependent on digital records.  

For instance, we constantly get people who want us to "look up" a title. Here's the thing: I'm literally 5 seconds away from anyplace in my store. I can walk to the spot where the book would be and tell you in another 5 seconds whether it's there. I can go to three different spots in my store and see if it's there. 

Whereas actually going online, hooking up, typing in the title (assuming it's the right title and author and believe me customers get that wrong all the time) would take probably twice as long. 

You can extend this analogy to all aspects of the store. Entering the digital information correctly and in a way that doesn't take much time has to be weighed against the time and effort it takes to do is physically. 

The second reason I like doing it manually is that it imprints the information in my brain. Actually cogitating and examining a book and deciding if I'll order it gives me command of the store, if you will. I can tell a computer that, say, I want a particular book to be reordered only if it has sold in the last six months, but there are so many exceptions to this rule--all the rules--that I feel like it is better to examine each title on its own. 

So that's my defense of my Ludditeism. I'm a small store, that maximizes what its got, and tries to keep a personal touch on the selection and curation of the inventory. 

I won't say "Up Yours!" but I will shrug my shoulders.