Specialty Departments: Music/DVD

New Challenges
Laura Miles, music manager
Santa Monica, California

Laura Miles loves working in the Music/DVD Department at her store in Santa Monica, CA. Here’s why: she’ll never forget the customer, visiting from the U.K., who found a British TV show in her store that wasn’t available in England.  The customer ran back and forth hugging Laura and her co-worker until she broke down into tears!  Turns out her mother was dying, and this was a show that they had watched together and it held a special place in their hearts — and now they would have one more opportunity to revisit it.  Scenarios like this happen to Laura all the time. 

Laura originally became a bookseller at B. Dalton when she was a high school student.  After working at B. Dalton for quite some time, she left for a job at a bank.  While the customer service skills in the book world carried over nicely to the teller counter, working in a bank was much more stressful, and she started missing our customers and booksellers.  Serendipitously, a former co-worker called and asked if she wanted to interview with Barnes & Noble and she gladly returned.

After working in just about every area of the store (sales floor, Receiving, Newsstand, cashwrap), Laura saw the Music/DVD Department as a new challenge.  In 2003, she became a music lead at a store in which this was a new position.  A year and half later, she was given the opportunity to interview for the position of music manager at the Santa Monica store and jumped at the chance.

She says, “I love our department because music sellers and customers have such diverse opinions about music and movies and it’s fun to pick everyone’s brain.  Also, many of our customers work in the entertainment industry, and I often have the opportunity to talk to entertainment forces such as Sir Anthony Hopkins, Martin Sheen, Judd Apatow and Dustin Hoffman, and help them research their next project.  And in what other department do the customers routinely sing to you?”