‘Way of the dodo’: Campus bookstore’s end sparks firing feud

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Andre Brady loved his job as a sales manager at the Youngstown State University bookstore. Ordering retail books and study guides. Dealing with customers. Coordinating sales of spirit wear, supplies and textbooks. And watching it all pay off as the business ended each semester tidily in the black.

His intimate knowledge of the store’s financial performance prompted Brady to bristle — and take action — when the university abolished his job in May 2016. The northeast Ohio school contended it was outsourcing its bookstore operation “for reasons of economy.”

To Brady, that just didn’t ring true.

“The bottom line is you’re always going to need a university bookstore,” Brady, 44, said in an interview. “It’s just a matter of what it’s going to look like.”

To say that Brady fought his job loss is an understatement. His initial personnel action, filed in 2016, has stretched into a five-year odyssey of administrative and judicial proceedings that’s now before Ohio’s 10th District Court of Appeals.

In a court filing March 31, Youngstown State argued Brady’s case must end. The university shuttered its former bookstore in June 2018 and turned over operations to national book retailing giant Barnes & Noble. The new store has been operating for years just across the street from campus.

Its lawyers argue both the former store and Brady’s position are no more, and everything the university could have done — rescinding abolishment of his job (albeit briefly), offering him back wages — has already been done.

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