A snapshot of my Thursday working at an independent bookstore & cafe in Berlin:

• I am scheduled from 10am-6pm today

• The cafe opens at 9am which means when I arrive an hour later all of the tables are full

• It’s such a pleasant way to arrive to work: the hum of happy customers and my Aussie colleague as the barista serving everyone with a smile and pumping the George Michael playlist

• For the first 1.5 hours, I tidy up all of the bookshelves and make sure all the books look perfect

• We have nearly 10,000 books in English, German and Turkish so organising the books is proper Sisyphus work

  Note: On my best days (today) I find this part of my job very meditative and enjoyable and on my less pleasant days, I find this task a thousand percent annoying

• At 11:30am, I have my first meeting of the day- a super cool woman from a boutique talent management agency comes in to finish organising the details for a private event next week

• The event will be a podcast debut with this theme: how science and spirituality can complement each other and offer broader perspectives on the defining questions of our time (so cool, no??)

• After the meeting, I lock in for an hour: emailing customers who have reserved a book, entering new books that have arrived into our stock system, following up with other partners on event logistics, recommending books to shopping customers (3 different customers bought Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love…mood)

• My next meeting is at 1:30pm with the very kind man who supplies us with our amazing postcard collection

• He also brings his 80 year dad (which we love) and we get them their oat cappuccinos STAT

• Then our Head Chef delivers wonderful news that staff lunch is ready: today we are having a Turkish dish called çökertme- it is delicious and not only because I am starving

• For the remaining 3 hours of my workday, the highlights include:

  • A cute customer who compliments my sweater vest while I was alphabetising books and I say “Thank you, I try to dress the part” (it’s true)

  • I drink a smashing hot chocolate

  • I post stories for our Minoa Instagram account (no rest for the wicked baby!!)

  • And I write this Substack note (how am I doing?!)

• At one point, I try to read my book because

  1) I need to read a lot for my job (customers assume I have read every book in the world and I don’t like disappointing them with reality)

  and 2) Whenever I am reading at the desk people want to buy the book I am reading (don’t hate the player hate the game??)

• Anyway, I am currently reading The Signs By: Dr. Tara Stewart but too many customers keep interrupting (how dare they!!)