{"id":786,"date":"2008-03-06T02:35:17","date_gmt":"2008-03-06T07:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/?p=786"},"modified":"2008-03-06T02:35:17","modified_gmt":"2008-03-06T07:35:17","slug":"what-you-leave-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/?p=786","title":{"rendered":"What you leave behind."},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of my SXSW prep, earlier tonight I took a drive up to East Brunswick to do some shopping at the fat guy clothing store<\/a>.\u00a0 As I drove down Rt. 18 south, I passed the Mid-State Mall and noticed something…odd.\u00a0 Something out of place.<\/p>\n

I’m pretty sure that I’ve mentioned in this space on at least one occasion that I used to work at Borders<\/a> – Borders Store #42, to be specific.\u00a0 The one in the Mid-State Mall in East Brunswick.\u00a0 It started as a part time job between seasons at Six Flags<\/a>, but I ended up staying on full time, and eventually got promoted into a position where they trusted me with a LOT of money. I enjoyed my time at that store, and still keep in touch with a few of the people I worked with there, but after two years, I moved on to new ventures.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I mentioned that there was something odd about the Mid-State Mall tonight, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, because a reasonably-new Starbucks<\/a> (the kind with a drive-thru window) is sitting on the corner of the property where the enormous jughandle used to be, and therefore obscured my view.<\/p>\n

\"borders_fail.jpg\"I took way too much time shopping, but as I returned north on Rt. 18 (heading toward Rt. 1, and eventually, home), I investigated.\u00a0 And while my discovery confirmed my suspicions, it didn’t make it any easier to digest:\u00a0 Borders #42 is officially closed.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure why I was so shocked by this development – the store was chronically understaffed, even when I worked there; the fixtures were falling apart (and sometimes falling on employees!); and the location was, frankly, kinda crummy.\u00a0 (Hell, look at the picture – those letters have been out for 10 years!) And according to an article from the Sentinel<\/a>, Borders says the store was ‘underperforming’, although I find that somewhat hard to believe – Store #42 was (at least when I worked there) always at the top of the sales charts for our region, due in no small part to the high volume of computer books we sold – you know, the ones that are never discounted and weigh 40 lbs?\u00a0 Yeah, those.\u00a0 So I can’t quite fathom how the store ‘underperformed’.\u00a0 But from what I’ve been reading in the press, there were a lot of ‘underperforming’ Borders stores to get the axe, so it shouldn’t be that surprising.<\/p>\n

Still, I’m a little sad to see the store sitting there, closed down and gutted, with only an 8 1\/2 x 11 typed note in the front window thanking customers for 15 years of patronage.\u00a0 It’s another small part of my past that I’ll never be able to revisit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of my SXSW prep, earlier tonight I took a drive up to East Brunswick to do some shopping at the fat guy clothing store.\u00a0 As I drove down Rt. 18 south, I passed the Mid-State Mall and noticed something…odd.\u00a0 Something out of place. I’m pretty sure that I’ve mentioned in this space on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hxip-cG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1284,"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions\/1284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}