Original-From: Ken Wolman <mhwpa!ktw>
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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.words-l
Date:         Wed, 23 Dec 1992 16:34:23 EST
From:         ktw@MHWPA.ATT.COM
Subject:      A Christmas memory....
Comments: To: WORDS-L <WORDS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>

During my drive to work this morning, I listened to some guy on NPR
talking about his hideous job as a Santa's elf in a mall Christmas
display, and it reminded me of my first "real"--i.e., on the
books--job, working during the Christmas season in Macy's Herald
Square in New York, back in 1962.

I don't remember why I decided to get a night and weekend job: maybe I
wanted the money, or maybe I was trying extra-special-hard to flunk
out of Hunter College.  I succeeded in both areas.  In any event, one
Sunday the _Times_ had a notice soliciting seasonal floor sales
help/good pay [yeah, right]/will train/employee discounts, to work in
The World's Largest Store in the middle of exciting Herald Square.  So
on the Monday before Thanksgiving, after my last class, I took the
subway down from the Bronx to 34th Street, and lined up with a bunch
of other people of all ages and races in a cramped hallway and
stairwell off the 35th Street personnel entrance.  After an hour, we
were admitted in groups to a large room broken into tiny cubicles with
a partition and a writing surface you really couldn't call a "desk."
We were given an exam that involved addition, subtraction, and
multiplication.  After 20 minutes I was called in with another group
and was told I had myself a job, three nights a week plus all day
Saturday.  I was to report with my "class" the following Monday for a
night of intensive training.

In those precomputer days, training involved learning how to work a
big, bells & whistles mechanical cash register, and how to write
various kinds of sales order forms for cash, charge, take, and send.
It also involved some security secrets.  We have these guard dogs, the
trainer told us: German Shepherds, Dobermans, and Alsatians.  There's
no reason for the shopping public to see them because they're never
around during business hours.  If you ever get stuck in the store
after closing, and while you're heading for the employee exit, you may
come face to face with one of these animals.  There is only one rule
to remember: Do Not Move.  The dog will growl and act unpleasant but
it not attack unless you move.  The dog's handler is about 30 seconds
behind, and will call the dog off.

Then they assigned me to a department.  I was hoping for something
relatively pleasant, but I was kidding myself.  I was told where to
report the next night: Bulk Toys.  Kiddie furniture, rocking horses,
little ride-in pedal cars, bicycles.  I felt like I'd put in for
Special Services duty in a USO show in Hawaii, and instead got sent to
Iwo Jima in the first wave....

It turned out that I only saw the kids on the Saturdays I worked
there.  On weekday evenings, I saw the assorted parents, grandparents,
uncles and aunts.  Most of them probably were perfectly nice in the
Real World: but turned loose inside a toy department during Christmas
season, I could not imagine having most of these people in _my_
family, which had enough of its own semi-dysfunctional maniacs to
populate Yocknaptawpha County, Mississippi.  The customers
assumed--rightfully, perhaps--that because we Worked For Macy's, we
had some sort of special product knowledge.  We did not.  We wrote up
orders and wrapped stuff and ordered stuff to be sent, "Cash or
charge, ma'am, take it or UPS, ma'am, have a nice day, you're kinda
cute, lose your husband and come sit on my face...."

Saturdays were their own kind of madness.  The store opened at 10 AM
sharp, we had to be at our stations by 9:45, so you got in by 9:15,
went to the lockers, got rid of your coat, had some coffee, and made
sure your sales book was neat and ready to go.

At 10 AM the doors were open.  We were on the fifth floor, about 100
feet from the west bank of elevators, but we knew....  And at about
10:02, the elevators would open and you would brace yourself like a
Polish pikeman on the battlements of a castle, waiting for the
Cossacks to climb over the walls.  From that point on it was nonstop
pressure until closing: kids climbing on the toys, breaking the
demonstrators, pulling at you, the parents and other ostensible adults
asking six questions at once, and you prayed for a full bladder so you
could excuse yourself and go to the bathroom, take a relaxed leak, and
smoke.

The pressure even got to the career guys, the department supervisors
and managers, called Red Flowers or White Flowers for the color of the
paper blossoms they sported in their lapels, and which really DIDN'T
give the whole enterprise any overtones of Lancaster and York.  One
Saturday, after a long day of fending off kids and foaming-mouthed
parents, a woman customer examined a playroom kiddie table and asked
me if the surface was scratchproof.  It could have been a formica top,
for all I knew, but I wasn't sure.  I don't know, ma'am, but I'll
check.  And I went into the back room where the managers were
chainsmoking and swearing.

Lady out front wants to know if Model 328B'll scratch.

One of the managers--I still remember him--a disreputable-looking guy
with a blond mustache that made him look like Martin Mull's father
(maybe he was...) shouted "SCRATCH!?  Sonofabitch!  It's a fuckin'
piece a' wood!  She wants wood??  Hey, go out there and tell her we
got six guys back her with big logs, we'll give her WOOD!"  It took me
about two minutes to stop laughing before I could go out and tell the
woman the table she was buying for her grandkids probably would
scratch...and I didn't repeat my boss's offer.

On the last night, after I got paid, I went down to the book
department and bought a copy of T. S. Eliot's Complete Poems with my
employee discount.  There's no significance to it being Eliot's poetry
unless you want to read something into it: it's just what happened.
--
Kenneth Wolman          |       To die of fear of revealing yourself
AT&T Bell Laboratories  |       to the person who loves you is murder.
(908)582-4815           |
Kenneth.Wolman@att.com  |               --Stan Rice, "Anne's Curls"
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