oooh, a scam

it's that time of year again...finals, and that means buyback season. in case you don't know, at the end of each semester, the bookstores buyback textbooks for cash...for some, this is just extra drinking money and is just an easy way to get rid of textbooks they don't want and/or need anymore. for others, such as myself, this is much needed budget padding. not to mention that some of us actually like the books we use in some of our classes, and we realllly don't want to part with them. in fact, i have been known to sell a book in a moment of particular brokeness and then have to buy it right back because i need to use it. but when you are flat broke, this seems like a logical solution. the problem lies in the bookstore...

let me explain...at the beginning of this semester, i purchased a ton of books, but i'll use three as an example. one cost $35, one was $40, and one was $50, give or take a dollar. so, those three cost me a total of $125...we happen to be extremely po' right now, so i trotted them over to bill's bookstore. i walked out with $6 and one of the books. now, i didn't want to sell these three books to begin with, so it's twice as bad. i lost $119, and the bookstores act as if they are doing us a huuuge favor.

now, i have worked for a campus bookstore before. i know that the amount offered depends on whether the text is being used again, whether they have too many already, and oh, i don't know, whether the crow is flying south southeast...i understand that they are not in this to actually help us. they are here for a profit. but give me a freakin break. bill's gave me $6 for two of those books. okay, so one of them is being used this summer, which means they will sell it for around $30 or $40, making 7 or 10 times what they gave me for it. the other is not being used, but they will send it back to the publisher for credit or money. basically, THEY SCAMMED ME as they scam all of us every year. what's worse is, some of us have no choice...we need the money...in a nutshell, they have us by the short and curlies...and there isn't much we can do about it...