Holiday Help: That Time I Worked Retail

I’m working a desk job in Washington, D.C., these days, doing what I spent much of my career doing: Writing. But three years ago I was employed at a major department store, putting in 30 hours a week. It was my only source of income at the time. While there is nothing remarkable in that – hundreds of people earn a living that way – it was remarkable for me.

I’m a writer. I’ve written and edited at consumer and trade magazines, websites, and radio syndicators. Editor at Billboard. Editor at Essence. Daily news writer for syndicated radio. Interviewed major recording artists and other notables and celebritiess. That’s been my gig: A computer, a phone, a notebook and a microphone. But in November of 2012, my situation got tight. I’d moved from California to Virginia to be closer to family, and during that time I struggled to find meaningful, full-time work. I was in the wrong market, but couldn’t move again. Desperate to tide myself over, I swallowed my pride and filled out an application for holiday help at a major department store. Next thing I knew I was hired.

It’s a blessing to be employed anywhere. I know this, intellectually. But the moment I started the gig, I grappled with Why Me? Syndrome. Working at the department store – even a store I happened to love and still love as a customer -- felt like a punishment, a comedown. I didn’t choose a career in retail management; I wasn’t a student or senior citizen earning extra cash. To me, at my age,in my predicament, I thought retail was what happened to people who couldn’t do better.

Yes, I thought, it was all my fault. Lack of career foresight, weak financial management, a knack for the right decisions at the wrong times and plain old bad luck had conspired to dump me into “can I help you?” land. Worse, I had placed myself in an extrovert’s ideal role – talking to strangers – except I’m a dyed-in-the-wool introvert for whom each social encounter is an energy suck. Yes, I had signed up for my own personal hell. It seemed only fitting that the official employee uniform was black on black.

I was given two days of self-managed video training and cut loose onto the selling floor. My post was in fragrances, front and center when customers came in from the mall. At gift time, people make beelines for fragrances. They’re personal without being too personal, they’re expensive without being too expensive, and scents don’t have to be sized, so they’re great gifts for everyone.

My first few days on the floor, I was miserable. However low I had imagined the position to be, it was nonetheless challenging in ways I hadn’t anticipated. In trying to memorize selling policies, transaction codes, product details, special promotions, employee guidelines, and the names of my coworkers, I felt completely out of my league. A failure even at this! Ah, the irony. The truth was my perfectionism kicked in, with an expectation that the work would be so easy that I would immediately kick ass. When I found myself stumbling around, my feet hurting and my snobby ego crushed, I decided that I hated working there with the fire of a million white hot suns. But as I got the hang of things, I came to appreciate it a bit more.

OUT ON THE FLOOR

My official title was “holiday support ringer,” or in plain talk, a cashier. If I managed to engage a customer, I was supposed to lead them to an actual salesperson, who earned points and commissions for sales, whereas ringers did not. At first, this was good because I didn’t know the fragrance lines, the perfume lingo, or even where to find the products on the displays. But the other ringers – legion for the holiday season – were either unaware or in willful defiance of their non-selling status, causing much conflict. More than a few lectures were doled out in shrill tones by the sales team to the baby ringers.

Eventually it got so busy that the vendors and associates let me ring their sales. It was the best way to master the register and the product lines. Alas, math is also not one of my strong suits. Credit cards, checks, gift cards I had down. But when someone handed me actual cash, I stumbled. In a single day I misrang three cash purchases, one at the height of the Saturday evening rush. The other associates were all like “It’s OK, don’t worry about it” but their faces said plainly, WTF??? Can’t you do anything right?

CAST OF CHARACTERS

I thought of it as the Circus Maximus because of the sheer number and variety of people constantly orbiting the display cases on what felt like a repetitive track. The salespeople, who were store employees, and the vendors, employees of cosmetics companies like Chanel, Calvin Klein, or Gucci, never stayed in one place. They circled the floor trying to scare up prey – er, customers. During Black Friday weekend and the days leading up to Christmas it got plenty loud as they pitched customers with snappy patter, the lure of flashy packaging, and the heady scent of splash cards. The ringers followed them in undulating packs, hoping for a chance to ring up the sale like hyenas waiting for the lions to finish feeding to have at the leftovers. Except sales associates and vendors could ring up their own sales and often did as a way to provide extended customer service.

Then the department managers would drop in to rally the staff about exceeding their sales numbers, or harangue the ringers over housekeeping tasks like cleaning the counters, wrapping gifts, setting up displays, or moving stock. All of this while piped in holiday music burned our ears and gaggles of shoppers pushed through the deliberately constructed maze of merchandise fixtures designed to slow them down and catch their eyes.

The regular sales team came in all shapes, sizes, colors, and religions. There was a motherly East Indian woman who never wore deodorant; heavily made up Ukrainians; a boisterous, big boned sister who called customers “honey,” “baby,” and “gurrrrl,” and whose whole down-home act charmed customers of every color into buying anything she shoved at them. There was a 20something mixed chick in exquisite face paint who only spoke to customers; a couple of Italian mid-career ladies in dyed hair and too much face powder; some 20-something Latinas; a Filipina grandmother who wore elaborate scrunchies to match her ‘80s outfits; a slight 60something Chinese lady who disdained the others; and a softspoken yet eagle-eyed sister. Most of the sales associates were highly competitive, gossipy, and resentful of the others --though they would never admit to being that petty. Still, “she stole my customer/ my sale/ my hours” was a constant theme.

The ringers were mostly younger, filling in time between semesters or trying to earn more for Christmas gifts for their kids. One girl was pregnant and barely made it through a month before her doctor put her on bed rest; another girl looked like a model and wore six-inch heels onto the floor.

The vendors were another class altogether – not store employees, they were there to push their own brands. Some were friendly, but others behaved as though they were erstwhile supermodels or high powered cosmetics executives who should not have to fraternize with the riffraff of run-of-the mill store employees and holiday temps like me.

The department manager was a classic metrosexual who looked all of 25. He resembled Brit actor Jonathan Rhys-Myers, if that means anything to you, with aquamarine eyes, spiked hair, and a bee-stung pout. He was attractive and could have been a model himself, but he had the distracted, driven air of a calculated career climber. He wore sharp, skinny-leg suits and barked out stunted orders as if calling the score of a tennis match and not managing actual human beings. Talking to him left me with the feeling that I was needlessly bothering him with bullshit and there were more important places he needed to be in that moment. Manager Boy was also a lightning rod for conflict. When the younger staffers weren’t fawning over him, he was setting people against each other or issuing contradictory directives. A couple of months after the holiday rush, he left for a non-retail management gig.

With every shift, the cast of characters on the selling floor changed, partly due to the labyrinthine work schedules. No one had regular hours. You had to go online and bid for available shifts weekly, and the start and end times were always slightly different. Maybe this plan kept employees from colluding in some way, or just diffused the clock in/clock out process, but it also made it near impossible to hold another job. You could go online to snag your preferred shift, only to find that someone had beaten you to it. Since you had to work a minimum number of hours per week in order to keep the job, you were forced to pick up shifts that weren’t as convenient. Employees were allowed to swap shifts, but this caused animosity too, because when you went hat in hand to beg someone to trade shifts and they said no, you weren’t inclined to feel kindly toward them afterward. This resentment spilled out onto the selling floor.

COMPANY RULES

Even during lulls, employees were never to lean or linger in one place too long. Sitting was verboten. I never knew exactly where to be as the pack of saleswomen circled the imaginary track around the counters. Time often slowed to a crawl as I paced and posed and paced some more, occasionally asking customers if they needed assistance that I was in no way equipped to provide.

As it was, learning to stand on my feet for hours almost broke me. Athletic shoes were not allowed. I tried standard flats, but they offered little support and my ankles felt ready to cave in. I must have gone through 12 pairs of different footwear – indeed, even bought shoes that I thought could improve my dilemma. Limping home with tears in my eyes at the end of those first few shifts was humbling in the extreme. I was struck by the class differences between those allowed the luxury of sitting to do their work and those who must remain upright morning to night. I was soft from years of sitting. I tried cold water soaks and massage, but a couple of my toes went numb from nerve damage and have yet to recover. People were fond of telling me I was wearing the wrong shoes – but it seemed that any shoes I wore were the wrong shoes. I noticed that most of the sales associates had huge tote bags stashed behind the counters so they could change shoes a few times during the day.

Another rule: No eating on the sales floor. You were allowed 15 minutes for a break and 30 minutes for lunch -- barely enough time to get to the break room, wash your hands, microwave or unwrap a meal, choke it down, and clock in on time. And it was even less time to dash through the mall to the food court. If it was busy, many salespeople and vendors didn’t take breaks at all in order to meet their sales numbers.

SCRATCH & SNIFF

One side effect of working in fragrances was that I was covered in smellaciousness for the duration. While suffering through my first couple of shifts I actually felt dizzy enough to faint just from the olfactory overload. Another day, Dandy Manager Boy sent me to the second floor to be that annoying person who spritzes customers. I sprayed so much perfume while scenting splash cards that my nail polish actually disintegrated and my thumbnail became stained with fragrance. It was months before my hand stopped reeking of Prada Candy. Driving home after hours of pushing Calvin Klein and Burberry and Gucci and Chanel, my Jetta smelled like a flower bomb.

My preference was men’s fragrances. I’ve been known to buy men’s cologne and wear it myself because I find many women’s scents too flowery or cloying. Plus, working the men’s lines was easy. Most men don’t like shopping; further, they often wear scent to gratify a partner or attract a date. They were quick to take advice from a female sales person, and buy so they could get the process over with. Women were the tougher sell. They would pick up and try every single tester on every single counter of the four cosmetics bays, sometimes more than once. Sometimes they would spritz themselves liberally and walk away. If they bought, they wanted all the bells and whistles – gift wrap, promo gifts, extras. And it was women who would buy the fragrance on Saturday and return it on Sunday.

LIVING IN THE LIFE

As the weeks turned to months, the other holiday part-timers dropped away, but I continued to clock in through January, February, and March. I was still sending out resumes for full-time editorial work, but getting no response. As the holidays faded and the employee throng thinned out, Manager Boy told me I’d been upped to associate sales person, able to earn commissions above my hourly wage.

By this time I knew all the players left on the sales floor. I had developed a special fondness for Chanel Bleu and Paco Rabanne Millions for men, and Gucci’s entire line of women’s perfumes. I did stints behind the counters at Estee Lauder, Fashion Fair, and Origins. I didn’t mind standing on my feet anymore; in fact, walking, standing and bending – not to mention never having time to eat during the day -- shaved off ten pounds. I made my sales goals 90 percent of the time. Working retail had become less of a trial, but it still fell far short of what I imagined my career to look like. And in the end, my paycheck seemed to only cover my gas and meals.

The final straw was a run-in with the Fashion Fair saleswoman. My shift put me behind her counter several times a month. Cosmetics were tougher to sell than fragrances, and each of the 30 products offered could have dozens of shades. A customer could ask for a cream-to-powder foundation in Sienna, and I’d have to search through three drawers and a couple of cases to find it. New shades would be introduced, old ones phased out, or it would be so popular that we’d be out of it. This was complicated by the fact that the writing on that packaging is hella small. It could be frustrating. At one point I even made myself a scrawled map of the bay to find things. But I’d always put things back in order. And then the Fashion Fair lady – someone I’d considered to be a friend or at least friendly -- accused me of stealing her sales and messing up her cases.

Looking back, it wasn’t that serious, but she caught me wrong. She was the Queen of Fashion Fair, she considered that cosmetics bay to be her own personal domain, and I had encroached. Which was ridiculous. I’d been assigned to that counter, I had sales goals to make too, and it was a store not a museum, I retorted. OK, I screamed. With my hand on my hip. My neck might have been going too. And then tears came, because I cry when I’m angry and can’t scratch someone’s eyes out.

I had to leave the cosmetics area and hide in the back of the menswear department to calm down. This store is that lady’s life, I realized. She will be at that counter next year and the year after that, and her pride and joy is keeping those little metallic cosmetics packages lined up in exacting rows inside those glass cases. But it ain’t your life.

NOT MY LANE

Fortunately, I got a line on another short-term job that paid better and was able to quit my gig at the department store. But once that assignment was wrapped, four months later, I wound up selling cosmetics for the same store again, just in another location. This time I was permanently assigned to one beauty brand, slinging eye shadow, lipstick, and skincare products. But I’m not a natural salesperson and that again became apparent. Though I wear cosmetics, I’m not a beauty product fanatic like many of my co-workers. I muddled through from July to October, when I locked down my current job.

As I said, it’s a blessing to be employed anywhere. I was thrilled to get out of the retail world. But I gained respect for the people who work there. It’s not an easy row to hoe, and the constant pressure to meet sales goals can subtly grind away at the morale of the employees during those down periods.

So next time you are in a major department store and an employee rushes over to say “Can I help you?” -- please be kind. It could be you.