Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

It is unfathomable how they operated at the Texas Book Depository. They had an army of "order fillers" who went around looking for the books to fill an order. So, if somebody ordered say 10 copies of, say, Dick and Jane: A Day at the Park. So, the order filler would have to look until he found the box or boxes with that particular book. But, wasn't that difficult? All the boxes look the same to me. And this was before computers. So, what was the system? How did he know where to look? Especially for a new guy, imagine how long it might take to fill a single order. And what if the box you needed was at the top of the stack? Or worse yet, what if it was at the bottom, and you had to move all the boxes above to get to it?  

We mostly have photos of the 6th floor, such as the one above and below. Were all the floors like that?

Imagine if a business today operated at this level of efficiency, that is, inefficiency. It wouldn't stay in business.

So, you're off hunting for a certain book, and I presume you have to read the title on the box. But, how easy was that? How come we don't have a single image of a box or boxes with legible writing except for the word BOOKS? And how helpful is that? 

 Does it not seem like finding a certain book could be like looking for a needle in a haystack? 

Now, the Texas School Book Depository was not a retailer. It wasn't for consumers. They sold to schools; it was a depository for school books. So, if an order came in from a school, how many copies of a book, at a minimum would they order? It would be quite a few, right? They wouldn't be ordering three, would they? 

So, why isn't this place crawling with dollies? How are these order-fillers carrying the books to fill the orders? They say that a single box weighed 55 pounds. Don't tell me they had little guys like Oswald walking around that building carrying such boxes. He only weighed 131 pounds. So, a single box was over 40% of his body weight.  

 Alright, so we have one box, so let's see what it says. Another shipment of fine yearbooks? I can't make out the printing on top but was that done on purpose? But, I doubt it's anything that would help Joe Order-filler fill his order.

Look, people: we've been questioning whether there was any serious floorlaying going on on November 22, but now it's time to question if there was any serious order-filling going on either. Why aren't there box-cutters around to open those boxes? 

  Alright, so there you've got a box, and that BOOKS etc. is all there is identifying it.

Once again: it's illegible except for BOOKS. But, whatever it says, it's not the title of a book. It's just the name of the company and standard stuff. The only way to know what specific books were inside was to open that box. So far, we haven't found anything showing a title. Not a one. Even the one that said Yearbooks didn't identify them. From what year?

Geez McGees! I've been on Easter Egg hunts that were easier than this.

What if the box you need is in the middle of that pile? Is this any way to run a company?

Doesn't it seem like we ought to be seeing more open boxes if they had this army of "order-fillers" running around with clipboards filling orders? But, as I said earlier, if the customers were schools, then shouldn't there be dollies to move whole boxes? 

There is nothing credible about any of this. It's time to sit Wesley Frazier down and demand that he tell us exactly how they were filling these orders. 

 Just my luck, the box I needed would be at the very top of that heap. Who stores books that way? How could you possibly make your way around this insane system?

All that says below BOOKs is From Scott Foreman and Company. 

So, all these order-fillers were running around, and when they found what they needed, they took it to the shipping room on the first floor? Which room was that? And there, they were taking these boxes and re-wrapping them in paper and tape? 

Look: I'm starting to wonder if maybe this whole thing was a scam, that is, a cover. Frazier is going to have to start leveling. He needs to explain exactly how this order-filling was done, how many units the schools would order. Aren't there about 30 kids in a single class? So how many units would each school buy at a time? 

Answers, Frazier. We need answers. Explain in detail exactly what you were doing. Describe the orders and how did you fill them? How did you make sense of those piles of non-descript boxes?