STRUGGLE AT THE STRAND
Have the owners of New York’s literary landmark put profits ahead of its soul?

KIMBERLY THORPE writing in New York Press looks behind the Strand’s dusty shelves.

Maybe it was a coincidence, but Nicole Congleton didn’t think so.

As she stood in a manager’s office at the Strand bookstore in February of 2007, getting suspended for being seven minutes late for her job in the Internet department, the 32-year-old African-American woman felt certain that the suspension had less to do with her lateness than with the color of her skin. By the time she was fired from the Strand on July 17, 2007, she was convinced she’d been unfairly targeted for firing by a management that, from her vantage point, appeared to discriminate against African Americans. Congleton wasn’t the only African-American woman to feel the wrath of the Strand management for work-rule infractions over the last 18 months.

A 51-year-old Internet department employee named Saundra Buchanan was suspended in January of 2007 for taking an unauthorized break, her second infraction after seven years of working at the bookstore; after several subsequent write-ups from management for lateness, she was fired by the Strand in May of last year.

A third, pregnant African-American employee was suspended after taking unauthorized time off from work for doctors’ visits, apparently as part of her pre-natal care. These allegations belie the public image of the Strand, the world’s largest used bookstore—its awning at the corner of East 12th Street and Broadway brags of an apocryphal “18 miles of books”—that just celebrated its 80th year in business.

The Strand is a New York institution that stands as a musty, cool symbol of the city’s rich literary life. And its co-owner (and granddaughter of its founder, Ben Bass) is Nancy Bass Wyden, who is married to one of the nation’s most liberal U.S. Senators, Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon, widely known for his impassioned support of equal opportunity in the workplace.People want to work at the Strand because of its hip, independent reputation; they relish the experience of passing the bookstore’s employment test—a simple exam that measures an applicant’s knowledge of English literature. Would-be Strand employees are often young, white, college-educated kids at a fork in their lives.

The Strand is everything from a summer break for indecisive twentysomethings to a job with benefits (because it’s a union shop) for low-skilled employees. The store may smell of decaying paper, but there’s romance in the air. Employees have their nametags hanging below their stylish caps but above their skinny jeans and Converse shoes.

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