dumbfoundry

BERKELEY -- As the new owner of Shakespeare & Co. Books, Jon Wobber plans some upgrades, such as creating a Web site and adding to the used bookstore's collection of 60,000 books.
But Wobber, a multitasking book maven, also will keep many things the same at the compact 40-year-old Berkeley shop, including its job-interview process.

A young job seeker found this out recently after dropping off his resume to the frizzy-haired Wobber, a former 14-year Shakespeare employee. Wobber asked him the same question the previous owner asked prospective workers: who wrote "Finnegans Wake?" The job seeker said he hadn't heard of the book, so Wobber noted that. The job seeker stormed out, returned and wrote his own note: "(expletive) elitist."

Wobber, 50, laughed and shrugged it off. His employees need to be well-versed in literature to serve customers. If they don't know the classics, then they shouldn't be working in an independent bookstore, he said.

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