Today Erica Eisdorfer, the longtime manager of the Bull’s Head Bookshop at UNC-Chapel Hill, is retiring. (She’s also a novelist whose first book,  “The Wet Nurse’s Tale,” is almost absurdly entertaining.) In a few minutes, they’re having cake down in Chapel Hill to celebrate thirty years of Erica running one of the best bookshops in the state. I am pretty sad I cannot be there. One day at the Bull’s Head long ago an enormously pregnant Erica Eisdorfer lit into me for giving her attitude when she told me to shelve that cart of books that she’s asked me to shelve an hour before. “Dan, it’s not your job to think of funny things to say when I ask you to do something,” she snapped. Her hair was pulled back in a bun and she seemed as wide as she was tall; I might never have been more terrified in a work environment than I was at that moment. She was loud enough so that the other sales clerk that morning, who was shelving books, peeked out from behind Cultural Studies and assiduously turned around and walked to the back of the store. The back of my neck felt hot. “So please,” Erica continued, “get off your butt and shelve the damn books!”I shelved the damn books. Later that day she went off and had a baby. I mention this story not because it’s in any way emblematic of my four years working with Erica, or her 30 years working at the Bull’s Head. I mention it because I *don’t* remember her yelling any other times, which, given the spectacular regard in which I held myself in those collegiate and post-collegiate years, suggests a level of self-control on Erica’s part that verges on sainthood.And while I was surely the worst of the characters in the Bull’s Head at that time, I was not the only character; one great thing about working at the store was Erica’s determination to hire interesting people of all stripes, and so the Bull’s Head became the place where I learned about not only books but indie rock, behavioral psychology, tattoos, Marxist philosophy, classical Greek, and pie crust.Erica had hired all those people to be themselves, so it seemed that while we all worked hard, we also were there to fulfill secondary duties that were just as important to the life and spirit of the store as shelving or pulling or shipping or receiving. Margaret was on the sales floor to be unbelievably nice to everyone, even the horrible people. Katri was in the receiving room to verbally slice and dice the pitiful student employees like me who thought we were funny. George was in the office to dispense nuggets of ancient wisdom. Stacie was in the returns room to play Sebadoh at top volume. And yes, sometimes it seemed that I was getting paid not just to work but to, you know, think of funny things to say when Erica asked me to do something.Though I took plenty of literature classes at Carolina, the Bull’s Head was really the foundation for the reader, writer and thinker I am today. Erica and everyone else at the store took books and writing very seriously, and I learned from that; I also developed my taste by reading the books passed down by all the wiser employees at the store, from the comics that Don told me about to the great southern writers Margaret loved to the actual writers who stopped in the store, most of them because they knew and trusted Erica and saw the Bull’s Head — correctly — as a bastion of free-spirited intellectualism in an academic environment that was (and is) getting more and more regimented every year.So thank you to Erica Eisdorfer for being the best boss I ever had — the best boss, I bet, that most people who’ve worked at the Bull’s Head have ever had. Thanks for not yelling at me all those times you could have. Thanks for seeing something in me, and fostering it, and letting me create YAS and plenty of other (failed) experiments. And then thank you for writing the greatest recommendation letter anyone has ever written, which I am pretty sure was single-handedly responsible for getting me into grad school and my first job. Thanks, in short, for being a great reader and writer and leader and fighter.Congratulations on your retirement!With love,Dan

Today Erica Eisdorfer, the longtime manager of the Bull’s Head Bookshop at UNC-Chapel Hill, is retiring. (She’s also a novelist whose first book,  “The Wet Nurse’s Tale,” is almost absurdly entertaining.) In a few minutes, they’re having cake down in Chapel Hill to celebrate thirty years of Erica running one of the best bookshops in the state. I am pretty sad I cannot be there.
 
One day at the Bull’s Head long ago an enormously pregnant Erica Eisdorfer lit into me for giving her attitude when she told me to shelve that cart of books that she’s asked me to shelve an hour before. “Dan, it’s not your job to think of funny things to say when I ask you to do something,” she snapped. Her hair was pulled back in a bun and she seemed as wide as she was tall; I might never have been more terrified in a work environment than I was at that moment. She was loud enough so that the other sales clerk that morning, who was shelving books, peeked out from behind Cultural Studies and assiduously turned around and walked to the back of the store. The back of my neck felt hot. “So please,” Erica continued, “get off your butt and shelve the damn books!”

I shelved the damn books. Later that day she went off and had a baby.

I mention this story not because it’s in any way emblematic of my four years working with Erica, or her 30 years working at the Bull’s Head. I mention it because I *don’t* remember her yelling any other times, which, given the spectacular regard in which I held myself in those collegiate and post-collegiate years, suggests a level of self-control on Erica’s part that verges on sainthood.

And while I was surely the worst of the characters in the Bull’s Head at that time, I was not the only character; one great thing about working at the store was Erica’s determination to hire interesting people of all stripes, and so the Bull’s Head became the place where I learned about not only books but indie rock, behavioral psychology, tattoos, Marxist philosophy, classical Greek, and pie crust.

Erica had hired all those people to be themselves, so it seemed that while we all worked hard, we also were there to fulfill secondary duties that were just as important to the life and spirit of the store as shelving or pulling or shipping or receiving. Margaret was on the sales floor to be unbelievably nice to everyone, even the horrible people. Katri was in the receiving room to verbally slice and dice the pitiful student employees like me who thought we were funny. George was in the office to dispense nuggets of ancient wisdom. Stacie was in the returns room to play Sebadoh at top volume. And yes, sometimes it seemed that I was getting paid not just to work but to, you know, think of funny things to say when Erica asked me to do something.

Though I took plenty of literature classes at Carolina, the Bull’s Head was really the foundation for the reader, writer and thinker I am today. Erica and everyone else at the store took books and writing very seriously, and I learned from that; I also developed my taste by reading the books passed down by all the wiser employees at the store, from the comics that Don told me about to the great southern writers Margaret loved to the actual writers who stopped in the store, most of them because they knew and trusted Erica and saw the Bull’s Head — correctly — as a bastion of free-spirited intellectualism in an academic environment that was (and is) getting more and more regimented every year.

So thank you to Erica Eisdorfer for being the best boss I ever had — the best boss, I bet, that most people who’ve worked at the Bull’s Head have ever had. Thanks for not yelling at me all those times you could have. Thanks for seeing something in me, and fostering it, and letting me create YAS and plenty of other (failed) experiments. And then thank you for writing the greatest recommendation letter anyone has ever written, which I am pretty sure was single-handedly responsible for getting me into grad school and my first job. Thanks, in short, for being a great reader and writer and leader and fighter.

Congratulations on your retirement!

With love,
Dan