A Well-Planned Literature Table
At our recent weekend RC workshop, I was the leader of the literature-sales team.
Mary Ruth Gross, the workshop organizer, had chosen recent literature items especially relevant to the topic of the workshop and the people who attended.
Her team had also done an inventory of the literature several days before the workshop and had made a printed list of what was available. There were a limited number of items, perhaps thirty titles, which made it easier for the literature-sales team. A price list, printed on colored paper, of only the items on the table made it easier to find the prices.
Along with the literature on the table, we offered on-line sales. People could order any of the many RC books, journals, CDs, and so on, available from Rational Island Publishers—right when they were thinking about it and when they were at a workshop, well-discharged and away from the daily grind [the daily work routine].
There was only one pool of literature for the several Areas attending the workshop. So we didn’t need to keep separate the literature and payments for the different Communities.
The literature was sold only during meals and afternoon breaks, and at other times the tables were covered with colorful cloths. This meant that no literature “walked away” unaccounted for.
We never left the cash or checks on the table when the store was closed; we kept them with us.
As leader of the literature-sales team, I knew it was an important job and decided to do it well. When our team first got together, I suggested that we each take some time on our experience with the RC literature and said we were free to be honest. As the first person to take a turn, I said that I rarely read the literature, although I read the non-RC “news” daily. Hearing that was a relief to another person, who said, as he discharged a lot, that he had been in RC for six years and had never read any of the RC literature, not even the Fundamentals Manual.
When I got home from the workshop, I put a note on the wall to remind myself to actually use the literature and CDs I had bought at the workshop.
Colorado, USA
(Present Time 186, January 2017)