“Yes, Father. Why not let me try it? Let’s say . . . for two weeks? If you’re not completely happy with the work I’m doing by then, I’ll agree to come home again.”
I don’t think anyone was as surprised as I was when my father finally agreed. It showed how truly desperate he was for help. I would have gone to the store with him that very morning, but he made me wait until after graduation. “I need to shuffle people around and find a suitable department for you to manage,” he explained.
He didn’t want me to run Ladies’ Fashions or the Millinery Department, because I wasn’t the least bit fashionable. I couldn’t tell a Gainesboro hat from a Shepherdess style. Likewise, I was the wrong person to run the Jewelry, Perfume, and Shoe departments. All of the men’s departments were off the list because the middle-aged male clerks—not to mention the customers—would never take me seriously. “The Children’s Department is much too important,” Father said, “to be managed by a woman with a strong aversion to marriage and children”—and I had been outspoken about both. In the end, Father ranked all of the departments in order of importance and gave me the most unimportant one he could find: China, Glassware, and Silver Goods.
“What an excellent choice for me, Father,” I said, pretending to be overjoyed. “As you know, I’ll bring a great deal of experience to my work. Mother has trained me quite well in understanding the differences between a salad plate and a dessert plate, between a tablespoon and a dessert spoon, between a—”
“That’s quite enough, Harriet.”
“But I was just explaining about the differences—”
“The most important difference you need to know is that male managers don’t aggravate me with their excessive talking.”
“Yes, sir.”
I had never even seen the China, Glassware, and Silver Goods Department in my father’s store until my first day of work. It was in such an out-of-the-way location in the basement of his vast emporium that I was going to need a map to find it again tomorrow. Mine was a small department with only three salesclerks, Bertha, Claudia, and Maude. They weren’t much older than I was. Their shifts were staggered so that no more than two of them were on duty at one time, and only Bertha and Claudia were there to greet me on my first day. They stood at attention in my father’s presence, gracing me with a small curtsy after he introduced me as Miss Sherwood, their new department manager. Next, Father showed me my desk—piled high with sample catalogs, invoices, and order forms—behind a curtain in the back room. I shared the space with three other department managers and shelves full of inventory.
“You can ask Mr. Foster from Linens, Pillows, and Bedding to show you how we do things,” Father said. He nodded toward an elderly gentleman at the neighboring desk, who looked as though he had been selling pillows and bedding since the War Between the States.
The first thing I did after my father returned to his office was to peruse my new domain on the showroom floor. It consisted of a tall shelf of glassware on the back wall and four long display counters— one for ridiculously elaborate silver serving pieces, another for silver tableware in silk-lined boxes, and two for porcelain dishware. My two salesclerks were busy trying to look industrious. Bertha twirled a feather duster over the glassware while Claudia rubbed tarnish off a silver pickle castor as if she expected a genie to pop out and grant her three wishes.
“Tell me how my predecessor used to run this department,” I said after gathering them into a huddle. They looked at each other, then at me.
“Mr. Osgood had his rules,” Claudia said, “and as long as we remembered them, he left us alone.”
“What kind of rules? Can you give me some examples?”
Claudia gazed at the ceiling as if she had pinned a crib sheet up there. “Um . . . we had to say, ‘May I help you, ma’am?’ right away whenever a customer came. And when there weren’t any customers we had to keep busy. No sitting allowed.”
“And we can’t chew gum,” Bertha added—although I thought I spotted a wad of it tucked in her cheek. “Our clothes have to be pressed and neat, our hair clean and tidy, and our shoes shined.
And if we get married, we lose our jobs.”
The last rule seemed arbitrary and unfair to me, but I kept my thoughts to myself. “Do you like working here?” I asked.
Not surprisingly, they both replied, “Yes, ma’am.”
I spent the entire day familiarizing myself with all of the paper work I would be required to do and listening as Mr. Linens, Pillows, and Bedding droned on and on about ledger books and accounting practices. My eyes started to glaze over, and if I hadn’t pleaded so fervently for this job in the first place, I might have decided to enlist in the army myself. When I emerged from my underground kingdom at the end of the day, I was glad to see sunlight again.
“How was your first day?” Mother asked.
“Wonderful! I learned so much! I never knew they made sterling silver mustard pots.” I didn’t mention that we hadn’t had a single customer. At least reordering new stock would be simple.
By the end of my first week as manager of China, Glassware, and Silver Goods, I knew I had to do something differently in my department or die of boredom. I decided to go on a spying mission to our competitors’ stores, comparing their selection and services to ours. I returned to give Bertha, Claudia, and Maude my report.
“The clerks in the other stores acted so haughty and superior, they made me feel like I was trespassing. I was afraid to peruse the shelves or ask them any questions. I don’t want you to be that stuffy. Smile and be friendly to our customers. Ask about the occasion for the gift and whom they are buying it for. Show some interest in our customers.”
I got the standard reply of “Yes, ma’am.” But as I turned to leave, I thought I heard Bertha whisper, “What customers?”
Yes, something would have to be done about the customer problem.
During my second week of work, I marched into Father’s office on the top floor and asked, “What’s my budget for newspaper advertisements?” He stared at me as if he’d forgotten my name. “I’m great at writing ads,” I told him. “I used to help Grandma Bebe write them all the time.”
“Budget?” he finally replied. “You don’t have a budget. Our advertising department handles everything. That’s their job. Your job is to sell china, glassware, and silver goods.”
“How am I supposed to do that if nobody can even find my department?”
“Well, it’s your job as manager to figure that out. Now go away and stop bothering me, Harriet. I’m busy.”
I spent a week pacing the floor of my department, desperately searching for an idea. “How would you describe our typical customer?” I asked my salesclerks one day. Claudia began to giggle as if the notion of having actual customers was hilarious.
Bertha pushed her gum aside with her tongue and said, “They’re mostly girls who are about to get married. They come in to pick out their wedding presents.”
I sat at my desk in the back room beside Mr. Linens—whom I suspected was asleep most of the time—and thought about it some more.
I came up with a brilliant idea.
I ran up the stairs from the basement two at a time—the elevator was much too slow—and hurried outside to the nearest newsstand, where I bought all three of our town’s daily papers. When I got back to my department, breathless, I gave one to Bertha, one to Maude, and kept the third. “Open it to the social pages,” I told them, “and find the engagement announcements for me.” They did as they were told, but they were eyeing me warily. “Now, add up the engagements. How many are there?” Bertha counted four, Maude had three, and I struck gold with seven.
“Here’s my idea: Sherwood’s Department Store is going to offer the happy bride-to-be a free sterling silver serving spoon in her choice of four different patterns as our way of congratulating her.”
“Free?” Bertha echoed, nearly swallowing her gum.
“Yes, free. Once she has that first spoon, you see, it will be your job to convince her that she needs the rest of the set, as well. That means service for at least twelve with all of the accessories to go with it—gravy ladles, carving knives, pickle forks, jelly knives, salad sets. And why not add a beautiful set of berry spoons and shrimp forks?”
My staff appeared dubious, but they set to work cutting out the engagement announcements for me while I got out order forms for Rogers Brothers Silver and boldly ordered six sets of serving spoons in four of our most popular patterns. Then I went upstairs—taking the elevator this time—and borrowed several sheets of Sherwood’s Department Store stationery from my father’s office. That evening I typed up letters of congratulations on Grandma Bebe’s typewriter to all fourteen prospective brides. I mailed them on my way to work the next day.
“Now, this is the most important part,” I told my clerks. “The free spoons are going to be in a box on my desk, but don’t run into the back room and bring it out to the customer right away. Make her wait a few minutes so she has time to wander past our display counters and examine the dishes and the sterling silver tea sets while she’s waiting. Suggest that she sign up for our wedding registry. The free spoon will draw new customers in, and before you know it, every bride in town will have registered their silverware selections at our store.”
My gamble worked. All fourteen brides-to-be hurried into the store for their free spoon. I sent out more letters. Business boomed. Then my father heard about my scheme.
“What’s this I hear about you giving away my stock for free?” he asked at the dinner table one evening.
I quickly explained my idea to him and finished by saying, “It’s just a serving spoon. And dozens of new customers have come in already to get theirs.”
“Can’t you give away teaspoons? They’re cheaper.”
“I know, but a teaspoon is too small. The bride will toss it into her hope chest and forget about it. But a serving spoon carries a lot more weight. It’s big and shiny and elegant, and she’ll put it on her bureau top and dream about serving mashed potatoes to her new husband every evening.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You won’t think I’m ridiculous when you see our sales figures in a couple of months. I’ve sent out thirty-five letters so far. And do you know how many brides came in for their free spoon? Every single one of them. We counted them. And every single one of them signed up for our gift registry. You can bet they’ll be back for the rest of their silverware in the pattern of their choice.”
“Well . . . I suppose you can continue.”
“You won’t be sorry. But listen, Father. I’m going to need some help typing letters. I can’t keep doing them all myself. Grandma’s typewriter ribbon is about worn out and my salesclerks need me on the floor.”
“I suppose my secretary can do them.”
By the time summer ended, China, Glassware, and Silver Goods was thriving down in the basement of Sherwood’s Department Store.
And I loved my job.
I was supposed to start college in the fall of 1917, but I no longer wanted to go. “You need me at the store,” I told my father. “The war is far from over, and besides, the college campus is like a ghost town with all the young men overseas.” From my desk in the back room I could hear Bertha, Claudia, and Maude bemoaning the shortage of men, too, as they kept our stock shiny in between customers. But they complained about the shortage for an entirely different reason than my father did. All three of my clerks desperately wanted to get married and live happily ever after, but only Bertha had a steady boyfriend. His name was Lyle, and she worried about him constantly.
“He’s going to get called up, I just know it!”
He did.
“He’s going away for training, and I’m going to miss him so much!”
She did.
“I’m going to worry myself sick if he gets sent overseas.”
She did after he did.
One weekend in November, Claudia and Maude asked if they could work extra hours to cover Bertha’s shift and give her the weekend off. “Lyle is home on leave,” Claudia explained. “This will be the last time Bertha will get to see him before he sails for France.” I gave her the time off. She cried for days after he left.
Once Lyle landed in France, Bertha kept track of his steps and all the battles he fought more diligently than General Pershing did. Her daily news reports brought the war right into China, Glassware, and Silver Goods. It didn’t look like the war would be over anytime soon, which was bad news for Bertha and Lyle, but it was great news for me. I loved my job.
I did miss spending time with Grandma Bebe, however, now that I worked such long hours. In December, she called one day to ask if I would drive her to the train station and water her violets while she was away. “Where are you going, Grandma?” I asked.
“To Washington, dear. I don’t know if you’ve been following the news, but the prohibition amendment is coming up for a vote before both houses of Congress this month. I can’t sit quietly at home and wonder about the results. I’ve waited much too long to see this day and worked much too hard for it.”
I was happy for her, but a little sad that I had become so wrapped up in my job that I had lost track of her progress. America had been fighting in Europe for only nine months, but Grandma Bebe had been waging war against alcohol since she was my age. I eagerly awaited news from her in Washington. On December 17, the House of Representatives voted to pass the amendment. The next day the Senate did the same. I thought Grandma Bebe would be triumphant when I picked her up at the train station again, but she seemed surprisingly subdued. Considering how hard she had worked to get the amendment passed, it seemed to me that she should be jubilant—even if she couldn’t toast her success with champagne.
“What’s wrong, Grandma?”
“We can’t sit back and rest just yet. The amendment still needs to be ratified—which means getting thirty-six out of the forty-eight states to approve it. Many state legislatures won’t even get around to voting until after the Christmas recess.”
“How many years have you been fighting this battle, Grandma?”
“Oh, I don’t know . . . let me think. We started our local chapter of the WCTU before the Great Flood of 1876 . . . so it has to be more than forty years by now.”