Following the manager's brief huddle, the entire staff swung into action with clockwork efficiency. With less than forty minutes remaining before the front doors officially unlocked, Joan immediately stepped up to assist her senior coworkers. Their task was to finalize the physical layout of the store's primary weapon against the waves of readers: the high-visibility front glass display and the massive, tiered highlight shelves sitting directly inside the entrance.
Joan pushed a heavy rolling cart stacked high with crisp, plastic-wrapped bundles of literature right up to the front windows. "Where do we start?" she asked, rolling up her sleeves, eager to prove her utility to the team.
