Modern Administrators and Textbook Buyers

Just before the pandemic set in, I finally got some bookcases at work.  They aren't perfect:  I can't move the shelves to adjust for larger books.  Then I moved all the old textbooks from an adjunct Vet Tech office where we had been storing them back when the space was more a faculty work space than an office.  I knew that some of them aren't worth keeping--like books that teach us how to use older versions of software (Excel 2010 anyone?), but I decided I'd get them onto the shelves in my office and figure out what's valuable later.

And now, here it is, fifteen months later, and the thought of figuring out the value of the books still overwhelms me.  So when a textbook buyer showed up at my office, I decided to let him tell me which books he would give me money for, and then I let him give me the $12 for the 10 books he took away.

I felt all sorts of twinges.  I do worry about the morality of contributing to the vicious cycle that keeps textbooks so expensive; I know that selling instructor copies to the sort of book buyers who showed up in my office helps keep that cycle going.  I also felt a twinge because those books weren't mine; the instructors who might have claimed them are long gone, and I know that we're not likely to offer those classes again, but still, I felt a twinge.

I put the money in an envelope, and I made the announcement to the two colleagues who saw him take away the pile of books:  "I am going to use this money from the books that were in my office to buy granola bars for the students."

One of my colleagues said, "That's nice of you."  The other one asked why I thought I needed to explain myself.

I said, "I just sold books that don't belong to me.  People have been fired for less."

My colleague laughed and said, "You've got so much in your office that nobody knows what's there.  No one will realize that those books are gone."

I said, "I just don't want anyone to think that I'm lining my pockets through thrift and graft."  And then we laughed and laughed.  Clearly if I'm thinking that I'll make my family rich through stealing from my employer, I need to be in a different kind of industry.  I'm at a campus where we have to ask multiple times to get basic office supplies.

After all, I'm in an industry where I'm selling used books to random book buyers so that I can buy granola bars for hungry students.  

And again, my thoughts turn to Flannery O'Connor, about how she would have transformed the textbook buyer and the administrator into a story that's haunting and revelatory.