a better reason than that. And it wasn’t like I didn’t want to go. I did. There was something about praying out loud with my friends that made me feel . . . I don’t know. Safe. Deeper. More solid. It’s hard to explain.
But I had to go to work, and I’d already missed the three-fifteen bus.
I threw on a pair of cargo pants and a T-shirt, then popped on a Marc Jacobs linen jacket over it. I took a couple of extra minutes to dash down the first-floor corridor to the dining room and snag a sandwich and a bottle of Odwalla strawberry lemonade from the refrigerator case. It would be warm by the time I got my dinner break, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. Then, stuffing them into my tote bag, which already held my math homework, I pelted across the field and made the three-thirty bus with seconds to spare.
Luckily, I was used to hiking up and down the steep streets around here. I was hardly even breathing fast as the bus pulled away from the curb and headed downtown. It dropped me on the opposite side of the street from Piccadilly Photo, and I was in the back of the shop pulling on my lab coat by five minutes to four.
Philip finished writing up what looked like thirty rolls of someone’s vacation pictures and walked the lady to the front door.
“Doesn’t she know about digital cameras?” I gathered all the rolls up in a wire tray and got them into the development queue. All my pictures were online so I could share them with my family.
I’d already washed and waxed the floors over the course of a couple of days last week, so today’s task was to polish all the display cabinets—again—and find a way to jazz up the displays of Nikons and Canons and their lenses. After that, Philip had promised to teach me how the developer worked. It was kind of intimidating to me, but once I knew how to develop pictures myself, he could take a break once in a while and leave me to run the shop on my own.
“I’m glad she doesn’t. The cameras may pay the rent, but I do like a bit of jam with my bread and butter.” By which, I gathered, he meant that he liked the income from the photo development, too. “Have you thought of any ways to make all this hardware more visually appealing?”
“If you’re in the market for a camera, it’s pretty appealing already.”
“Most people, Carly, don’t know they’re in the market for a camera. They have to be reminded. Hence my question.”
Not even Mr. Milsom, terror of the science labs, used a word like
hence
. Only one of the reasons I thought my boss was either a few cards short of a full deck, or one of the coolest old guys I’d ever met. I couldn’t decide which.
I got out the Windex and a pile of clean rags. “My father says that ninety percent of marketing is making someone want what they don’t need.”
“A man of sense.”
“He is. I don’t know what my mother was thinking.” I stopped myself and got back on topic. “So what we should do maybe is not show people the actual stuff as much as what they’ll get when they have it. You know. Benefits instead of features.”
“Which are?”
I scrubbed at a stubborn nose print until the glass squeaked. Ew. People should wipe off their kids before they brought them in here. “Well, where do people have good times? At a wedding. Or a holiday. Like that lady who just left. Show people having fun with their cameras.”
“Make it part of their experience. Hmm.” Philip’s face took on a faraway expression. “We could blow up some good shots and display them with the equipment that produced them.”
“You could have workshops on how to get pictures like that. Do them online, even. This place has a Web site, right?”
“Er, no.”
“Philip, Philip.” I shook my head with mock despair and gave him a smile. “How am I going to drag you into the twenty-first century?”
“With as little pain as possible, I hope. You must allow I’m getting there at my own pace, snail-like though it may
But I had to go to work, and I’d already missed the three-fifteen bus.
I threw on a pair of cargo pants and a T-shirt, then popped on a Marc Jacobs linen jacket over it. I took a couple of extra minutes to dash down the first-floor corridor to the dining room and snag a sandwich and a bottle of Odwalla strawberry lemonade from the refrigerator case. It would be warm by the time I got my dinner break, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. Then, stuffing them into my tote bag, which already held my math homework, I pelted across the field and made the three-thirty bus with seconds to spare.
Luckily, I was used to hiking up and down the steep streets around here. I was hardly even breathing fast as the bus pulled away from the curb and headed downtown. It dropped me on the opposite side of the street from Piccadilly Photo, and I was in the back of the shop pulling on my lab coat by five minutes to four.
Philip finished writing up what looked like thirty rolls of someone’s vacation pictures and walked the lady to the front door.
“Doesn’t she know about digital cameras?” I gathered all the rolls up in a wire tray and got them into the development queue. All my pictures were online so I could share them with my family.
I’d already washed and waxed the floors over the course of a couple of days last week, so today’s task was to polish all the display cabinets—again—and find a way to jazz up the displays of Nikons and Canons and their lenses. After that, Philip had promised to teach me how the developer worked. It was kind of intimidating to me, but once I knew how to develop pictures myself, he could take a break once in a while and leave me to run the shop on my own.
“I’m glad she doesn’t. The cameras may pay the rent, but I do like a bit of jam with my bread and butter.” By which, I gathered, he meant that he liked the income from the photo development, too. “Have you thought of any ways to make all this hardware more visually appealing?”
“If you’re in the market for a camera, it’s pretty appealing already.”
“Most people, Carly, don’t know they’re in the market for a camera. They have to be reminded. Hence my question.”
Not even Mr. Milsom, terror of the science labs, used a word like
hence
. Only one of the reasons I thought my boss was either a few cards short of a full deck, or one of the coolest old guys I’d ever met. I couldn’t decide which.
I got out the Windex and a pile of clean rags. “My father says that ninety percent of marketing is making someone want what they don’t need.”
“A man of sense.”
“He is. I don’t know what my mother was thinking.” I stopped myself and got back on topic. “So what we should do maybe is not show people the actual stuff as much as what they’ll get when they have it. You know. Benefits instead of features.”
“Which are?”
I scrubbed at a stubborn nose print until the glass squeaked. Ew. People should wipe off their kids before they brought them in here. “Well, where do people have good times? At a wedding. Or a holiday. Like that lady who just left. Show people having fun with their cameras.”
“Make it part of their experience. Hmm.” Philip’s face took on a faraway expression. “We could blow up some good shots and display them with the equipment that produced them.”
“You could have workshops on how to get pictures like that. Do them online, even. This place has a Web site, right?”
“Er, no.”
“Philip, Philip.” I shook my head with mock despair and gave him a smile. “How am I going to drag you into the twenty-first century?”
“With as little pain as possible, I hope. You must allow I’m getting there at my own pace, snail-like though it may
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