Retail Hell (11 page)

One day at the top of Mount Fancy where the handrail began its descent downward on the eighth flight, they attached a laminated yellow sign with black lettering:

Caution, hold on to the handrail.

No fucking duh. How stupid do they think we are? Look, Ma! No hands.

Although, I don’t think I ever saw anyone intentionally freestyle their way down Mount Fancy, it was nice to know the store truly cared about my safety as I rappelled down their steel edifice. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if this safety propaganda had anything to do with the disappearances of salespeople like Elsa and Trina.

One night after closing down the store and having to stay late by myself cleaning and straightening because the jungle was a fucking mess, I lumbered across Mount Fancy’s top platform like a zombie. The
Caution, hold on to the handrail
sign beckoned me to perform its command. I reached out and grabbed the rail like a good Mount Fancy Climber.

Unbeknownst to me, some kind of greasy shit had been slathered all over the metal railings of Mount Fancy, and my hand slid down and off the rail, causing me to careen forward and flail my arms out for balance like Charlie Chaplin on a tightrope.

After a few seconds, I was able to bring my body back from the ledge, saving myself from a horrible accident. I had nearly plunged down sixteen steps.

My brain was not happy.

YOU SEE THAT? YOU ALMOST FUCKING KILLED US!
Once our head smacks a step,
it’s
lights out. And our legs and arms . . .
don’t
even let me get started about what would have happened to them. No
million-dollar screenplay or Oscar for you, dude. What kind of fucking moron
puts grease all over the handrails of a 50-foot, eight-flight, 112-step Employee
Entrance? Are they trying to kill everyone?

After the rant, my brain also told me to march back into the store and complain to someone that the rails of Mount Fancy had been tampered with. But then I realized there was no one to complain to in the store, except for Security and a few people in Customer Service. I further realized there was no other way to leave, as all the other doors were locked. The only way out was down the slippery slope of Mount Fancy.

My brain was pissed.

I’m
not kidding. If you
don’t
fucking be careful, I swear to God,
we’ll
end
up in a coma.

So I went down Mount Fancy without holding on to the handrail.

I went down so slowly you would have thought I had vertigo. Each step was taken with full in-the-moment concentration. It must have taken me fifteen minutes, but I got to the bottom safely.

My brain was relieved.

Thank god that fucking disaster is over. Your nerves are now demanding
cocktails. I suggest you comply. And they
don’t
want just beer or wine, they
want something that will make them forget this horrible incident with a full-on
blackout.

Luckily, I had two days off after that. When I returned to The Big Fancy and prepared to climb the great mountain, either the stairwell rails had dried or someone had wiped them down. I wondered if any-one died or ended up on life support in the hospital. Would there be enough healthy salespeople left to open the store? In my Screenwriter Mind I saw it as a disaster movie — all the salespeople grabbing the slippery rail and tumbling down the stairs. One after the other, like at the end of
Titanic
when the ship goes upright.

I later found out from Judy that housekeeping had been prepping for Clean It Up Day the evening I worked, and they had polished the railing with some sort of greasy metal cleaner polish or some shit. She said it was a one-time deal, and their hours had been cut. They were no longer cleaning the stairwell.

While this was good safety news, not cleaning the stairwell at all left me concerned. What about growing stairwell cooties, like dust mites? What about bird flu?

I stormed up to HR, where I found Two-Tone Tammy at her desk analyzing reports. I passionately suggested that housekeeping keep cleaning the stairwell. All she needed to do was make a new sign:

Caution, handrail slippery when wet. Carefully crawl
downstairs.

Unfortunately, she didn’t like my idea.

Fresh out of Handbag School, I was eager to make as many sales as I could, so I stopped at nothing in my attempts to find bags for women. One of my early selling techniques was to simply take customers on a tour of the jungle, show them as many bags as I could, talk to them in a fun way, and find out what they were looking for in a handbag.

I found women bags that were expected to be transformed into mobile doghouses, gym lockers, makeup stores, junk food pantries, office supply rooms, and medicine cabinets. Every handbag has a unique purpose, depending on what the woman carrying it puts inside it.

One of my most unusual requests came from a toothpick-skinny chick with massive curly blond hair. She resembled one of those scary shiny dolls they sell on QVC late at night, but after probing, I found out she was actually a sweet, friendly prostitute who worked at Wild Horse Ranch outside of Vegas.

The first words out of her mouth upon seeing me were: “Hey there, Sugar, why you are just the cutest little thing. I love your spiky blond hair.”

How could I not want to help someone who said that?

“Why thank you, I love your hair too,” I replied.

“I need something for going out,” said The Prostitute, “Something small that is classy, sparkles, and is completely waterproof.”

Waterproof? Is your whorehouse underwater?

When I asked her why, she said, “More times than not, it falls in the toilet, and I hate it when my money gets wet and everything inside is ruined.” I could visualize several reasons why her evening bags were falling into toilets, but I decided not to dig deeper.

The Prostitute and I had a great time. Her dirty mouth and mind kept me laughing as I found her a $400 Whiting & Davis ornate evening bag completely made out of metal mesh and nylon. Totally waterproof. I told her it could withstand a hurricane.

Thrilled out of her mind, she pulled out a wad of cash and paid me in $20 bills. She promised to tell all the girls at the ranch about me and said she’d come back and buy a fashionable overnight bag for her upcoming trip to wine country.

Some days after that, my handbag-searching talents were needed on the other side of the law. I waited on an attractive woman who reminded me of Mariska Hargitay from
Law and Order: Special Victims
Unit
. She confessed right away that she was a detective in a quandary.

“I hate shopping for clothes and I hate shopping for bags even more,” said The Detective, “If I could, I’d rather not carry anything at all.”

“I understand,” I replied, “I hear that from so many women.” (I was fast becoming the Dr. Phil of handbags. Bring it on, ladies. I’ll find the answers to all your bag-carrying woes.)

The Detective told me she wanted something that was trendy and fashionable but was also small and could be used for going out at night.

Unlike The Prostitute, she wasn’t concerned about its falling into a toilet.

“It’s got to be big enough to hold my gun and handcuffs,” she said.

She proceeded to pull her gun and cuffs out and try them in every bag I showed her. I had won the handbag-helping lotto! This was beyond cool. We tried the gun and cuffs in several different bags before she decided on a pink signature Coach Demi Pouch with embroidered butterflies. At first she was concerned it was too girly, but I reminded her that just because she was a detective, it didn’t mean she had to be unfashionable!

While The Detective stood in front of the full-length mirror modeling the bag she would be taking home, I asked her if I could pose with her gun in front of the Coach shop and have Cammie take my picture for Facebook.

Unfortunately, she said no.

But she did leave telling me that many policewomen have trouble deciding on handbags, and she’d tell the other women on the force to come see me.

I smiled and thanked her. I hoped they didn’t come in at the same time as the prostitutes.

9:10 a.m. The Big Fancy felt like Death Valley in July. I’d been there for fifteen minutes, and already my no-name dress shirt had sweat rings.

But that wasn’t from lack of air conditioning.

The perspiration flowed as a result of the twenty boxes of hand-bags Cammie and I were unpacking. When we arrived, they were stacked up on the Handbag Jungle’s edge, overflowing onto the hard aisle floor. We couldn’t even see Women’s Shoes.

Everything in the wall of boxes needed to be taken out, unwrapped, and merchandised, and then the duplicates had to be put away in the stockroom. All before the store opened and without a stock person.

As much as we all bitched to Judy about the stock-work–sauna situation, Suzy Davis-Johnson stood firm. Stock people and morning air conditioning just weren’t affordable.

Neither were box cutters.

The only tool available to open the wall of sealed boxes was an old pair of dull scissors with one of the blades broken off. My dull, broken scissors had managed to unseal ten boxes of Coach, Kate Spade, Kenneth Cole, and DKNY. The bags were all still layered in plastic and tissue, but at least they were unpacked.

As I threw an empty box onto a mound of cardboard and tissue that looked like kindling for a really good fire, sweat dripped into my eye, forcing me to wipe my eyes with my shirtsleeve.

I looked down and saw my no-name dress slacks covered in dusty dirt from moving the boxes.

At 9:20 I continued to open boxes, dump out handbags, and unwrap, while Cammie sorted and lugged everything to the stockroom. We were nowhere close to getting the entire shipment unpacked. Ten boxes still barricaded the front of the handbag department.

No matter how understaffed we felt, The Big Fancy morning expectation remained the same.

Everything had to be unpacked and displayed on the handbag floor.

“You can’t sell it if it’s in a box,” Suzy Davis-Satan once said to me after I ran out of time and pushed several unopened boxes to the stockroom.

“We are all taking on more, doing more with less,” she said, “You need to jump a little higher and move a little faster. The expectations do not change.”

Morning stock-work duties did not end at unpacking, merching, and putting away extras. As Judy had informed me on my first fateful day at The Big Fancy, it was our responsibility to dispose of all the tissue, plastic bags, and boxes.

The image of the Perfect Department Store must be maintained at all times.

At 9:25 we were anything but perfect. The place was in total shambles.

I had managed to get everything out of the boxes, and Cammie had put away a few things, but there were still piles of plastic-coated handbags and wallets scattered all over. The mountain of empty card-board boxes waited to be hauled away.

If only I had some kerosene and a match. Or maybe a magic wand.

Cammie and I looked as if we’d climbed Mount Fancy ten times; our faces were slick and our clothes damp. I began to sweat more, throwing boxes into a pile as fast as I could.

I looked at my watch. 9:29.

I stared at the jumble of handbags and trash all over the main aisle.

We were in trouble.

It was too late.

Before I could come up with some sort of emergency plan that involved using one of the larger cardboard boxes as a bulldozer, the sound of a bell clanged across the store, followed by the sound of stomping and marching, and then the voice of famous boxing-event announcer Michael Buffer bellowing,
“
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.
WELCOME TO THE MAIN EVENT!
LET’S
GET
READY TO
RUUUUUMMMMMBBBLLLLE!!!!”

My skin crawled
.

Then came an electronic DUN, DUN, DUN, DUN, DUN, DUN, followed by fast-paced techno music. Nightclub/workout techno music. Blasting out of huge speakers in Cosmetics.