Help Wanted

By Felix Carroll

You must be able to tell time. You must be able to alphabetize. You mustn’t have plans to move to a foreign country soon. And if you have psycho friends, forget it.

Also, for good measure, if, in retrospect, you believe the larger step for mankind wasn’t Neil Armstrong’s Tellatubie-like tread on the moon in 1969, but Elvis Presley’s pelvic toddle on the stage of the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, then you could very well be a prime candidate for the coolest part-time job in Great Barrington.

Yep, Ron White is hiring.

Ron White: a man who speaks the words “minimum wage” — which is what he pays — with a shrugging factuality that has lured dozens of teens to his doorway since he first opened at 288 Main Street in 1979. They come as if following a trail of virginal scratch tickets. Sooner or later, they leave — they all eventually leave  — as if they forgot to feed their dog or something.

Probably dozens of businesses in the Berkshires are looking for probably hundreds of part-time employees this spring. But probably no one has mapped the genome of the perfect part-time employee to the level of the tie-dye-wearing owner of White Knight Records, Ron White, retailer of rock ‘n’ roll music (and jazz, and blues, and big band, and whatever you would call Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass).

You must be cool (that is to say, personable and interesting), and you must like cool music (that is to say, not Hilary Duff, for instance).

After all, to create an atmosphere this laidback — where dust is treated like an ancient oak tree (you can carve your name in it, but don’t remove it) — is a form of artistry and hard work in itself. And good help is hard to find.

Yeah, sure, Ron has had some model employees over the years. Plenty of them. There was Dan, his brother, who worked way back when Supertramp was super cool. And Brendan, a big guy who became a bouncer, but not before he perfected the death stare to would-be shoplifters. And Andy, who stayed for three years. (Three years! Oh, Andy, come back to the counter: Career, adulthood and home ownership aren't for you, and you know it!)

There’ve been others, too. But let’s face it, when the bulk of what you’re being asked to do consists of sitting behind a counter and cranking up The Doors, those qualities of character believed to be upheld by hard work have a tendency to devolve into purposeful lethargy. Even the U.S. Department of Labor defines “part-time record store employee” as “a person who dashes out for a meatball grinder while his or her friends watch the store.”

That’s why Ron has been forced to establish some explicit ground rules.

Sarah (or Sara), a former employee, just didn’t get it. When she was hired, she famously forgot to mention she was moving to Europe. She just kinda didn’t show up one day. No hard feelings. Ron hopes she’s happy. But that one wayward apple is why Ron is pretty much a stickler for insisting you have no plans to move to a foreign country anytime soon.

Other employees have inspired the “no psycho friends” rule. No need to elaborate, except to recap what economics classes teach all the time — that standing in the way of a customer and a cash register is what Adam Smith once defined as "loitering."

Also, if you apply for the job, you have to be able to tell time (“You gotta be here on time,” says Ron, who came of age during the 1960s when — well — time it was and what a time it was. “If you know how to tell time but come to work late, then you can use your first paycheck to buy a watch.”)

Alphabetize? Well, that stems from the employee who tended to alphabetize CDs by artists' first names rather than their last names, which means, for instance, that probably for the first time in musical history John Denver was cavorting in the bins with Jethro Tull.

Ron doesn't want to worry about rules. That's not what he's about. But he has to — nowadays more than ever. This is an age in which music stores such as his are experiencing what he calls "death by iPod."

He'd rather be performing an aural autopsy on "Sgt. Pepper's" — the best rock album ever — and explain wistfully what went wrong in music since then. Instead, he's trying to replace Judd, who's taking a waiter job around the corner.

“Unfortunately, people come and go,” says Ron. “That’s how it goes. They work for awhile. They grow up. They move on.”

He's had a couple applications already. I’d apply, but my friends are psychos.