The Macy's Way Charade

                           I.  Pre-employment:

Late November of last year, I was searching for a job.  This search led me to apply for a seasonal job in retail, an area where I had no experience.  I barely had experience going into retail stores honestly.  But still, they were hiring a ton of people to prepare for the post thanksgiving onslaught of consumerism in the mutual gift giving season.


 

And so I applied online through a process that included a personality test, a long one.  These kinds of tests are long and repetitive and strangely worded to make it very difficult to consistently lie about how you really feel.  They are designed to show if you are lying, and if you are, where your true feelings in the customer service realm lie.

However, within days, I received an email of a time for my interview.  Evidently I was not sociopathic or antisocial enough to disqualify me from a minimum wage position at the largest department store chain in the world.

Dressing for an interview is always a self-conscious process.  My father, every time without fail, implores me to wear a full suit w/tie dress shoes et al.  However, having actually gone to a job interview since 1990, I know that this would be a bit too formal than is necessary.  I’m always amazed when I go into an interview, having followed my father’s advice, what the other applicants are dressed like.  So, despite his insistence that the only way I could get such a prestigious experience was to dress like, well, like I already worked at Macy’s was disregarded in favor of a much more casual appearance.

Still wearing jeans and my Vibrams was a risk, but I also answered on my quiz that I don’t think it’s wrong to disobey authority or something along those lines (hard to remember the exact phrasing of those convoluted questions designed by the class of psychologist that would devote their life to writing questions for application quizzes).  So I had to prove it.  Still, a button up shirt and a black blazer over my jeans and ‘toe-shoes’, I thought, was a smart choice.

(“So what?”, you and I are thinking  Fair enough, but still, I’m not getting rid of it.)

I had a friend who worked at Macy’s and so she would show me exactly where I had to go in order to find the “office’ in the huge department store that I was not familiar with at all.

In fact, walking around there makes me incredibly self-conscious, mostly of my gender.  Surrounding by women of mostly mature age, it just feels strange to walk through aisles of women’s clothing aimlessly like a tourist.  Which is what I was, in the strange world of department stores.

I found my friend who immediately criticized my choice of dress for the interview (“Jeans!?”  and “What are those things on your feet?”.)  As I stood at her register as the female coworker next to her stared blankly at us and an old woman with a small pile of clothes draped over her arm waited impatiently, knowing I had no actual buying to do.  I moved out of the way, and stood idly by as the woman tried coupon after coupon before just giving up and giving my friend her “Macy’s Card” (more on this later).  They discussed how good of a deal the cashmere sweater was and how the old woman never bought anything expensive (her total was over $200.00).  It was strange watching this transaction, my friend acting like I had never seen her act, this niceness just pouring out flawlessly, with a perma-smile to go along with it.

After the transaction, which also included my friend searching the racks for a size in this particular garment for the older woman, she was allowed to go on break.  We took a couple laps around the department store’s first floor, before I finally looked at my cell phone to see it was a reasonable time for me to show up early for my interview.  My stomach, like it always does in this situation, churned.

I walked through the hall where my friend instructed me to go, and I approached to doorways.  The first, to my right had a long table with chairs around, like a boardroom, while the one to my left had a few chairs and two computers that I could immediately see.  Peeking into the room with the long table I saw it was empty and ventured into the second room.  A guy around my age was wearing jeans and a large jacket talking to a woman at the reception desk.  I waited behind him as he signed something onto a clipboard.  The woman moved her head from behind this guy to see me and asked what I need.  

“I’m here for an interview”

I was instructed to sit down and wait.  I sat next to the two computer consoles while someone used it with headphones on, staring at the screen intently.

“Mark?”

I looked up to see a short woman with short black hair, in the ubiquitous all black of Macy’s employees.  I stood up and followed her to her “office” which was little more than a storage closet where a tiny desk, computer, and two chairs were placed between stacks of files, discarded clothing, and large binders.

I shook her hand before we sat down and had the obligatory “nice to meet you’s” etc.

The only question, besides practical ones about scheduling etc, I actually remember was:

“What would you do if you saw an employee stealing?”

At this I could either lie and say what I thought would be what she wanted to hear:

“I would turn them into management immediately”

But I couldn’t do it.  Instead, I performed some miraculous bullshit that allowed me not to sellout my actual believes towards exploitation and all, while still getting the job:

“Well, if I saw an employee stealing, I would confront this employee about the theft, ask why they did it and if it was worth it, and implore them to cease any further illegal activity or else I would be forced, (through knowing about it and the possible implication this knowing could cause me) to consult management about the issue, and how my coworker’s theft was putting me and our fellow coworkers in a terrible position."

“Ok” was the response after she nodded and smiled through the whole question, probably just checking a box when I said the keyword “management”.

She then instructed me to go back to the receptionist’s desk and figure out when I could come in for the first time.

These kind of “go and talk to a person who wasn’t involved in the interview” thing always leads to awkwardness for me, as apparently I am forever unable to express myself in these junctures. 

(For example, I spent over an hour going office to office searching for someone to sign my ‘change of major’ form at my former university.  As I explained, again and again, that I needed signatures for this form, the looks on the recipient’s face changed from forced to smile to genuine confusion.  Perhaps it is less my inability to express myself to various administration members and more the inefficiency and confusion inherent in all bureaucratic/hierarchical business structures.)

“Uh, I need to figure out when to come in for my training”

“Oh, have you done the computer training yet?”

This is when I stand stunned, scratching my head wondering if there was something I missed, as it was the same woman whom I told I was interviewing for the job.

“I just, uh, well, I just had my interview so I don’t think I’ve done any training, was I supposed to?”

“So you haven’t done the computer training yet?”

“Uh, I guess not”

“Well you’ll need to come in for that before you can start.  Have you had your register training yet?”

Etc.

             II.            Training

My ‘computer training’ was scheduled at eight a.m. on Black Friday, the holiest of all Fridays.  The day that people, on the night previous, camp out in front of stores in anticipation of savings.  The day that every store in the country prepares their employee’s months in advance for the onslaught of customers that morning.  The day that is heralded as the major sign of the state of the economy, that is, if people don’t buy more stuff than last year we are in a recession.

 

Thankfully, I just sat at a computer for the hour and a half next to a 18ish looking girl on her own computer listening to a black cartoon female (name Maci) with impossible proportions and the voice of the whitest Barbie doll you could imagine.  Her being black was justified with her pro-Macy’s sass in between explanations of the dress code, the history of Macy’s, and an explanation of what “she” (the customer) is looking for in her Macy’s Experience ™.  Mixed in were quizzes testing how well you paid attention to the slideshow of the history/culture/values of Macy’s.

I finished the whole process in far less time than the trainer, who had left us alone during the whole process, had told me it would take.  This left me wondering what exactly I should do next.  I was getting paid, so I just waited till the girl next to me finished, which didn’t take long either.  Finally she asked what we were supposed to do next.  I shrugged.

Little did I know I already had the veteran Macy’s employee’s response to any question.

The next training day came a few days later, once again at 8 a.m.  It was the “orientation” day.

I forgot to mention earlier that, even though I wasn’t explicitly told to, I began to follow the dress code for the computer training and every subsequent event in my Macy’s career.  My choice in ‘expressing myself’ through the faux lax dress code (for men: You can choose the color of your tie!) was a black tie, black shirt, black dress pants (the latter too being a necessity.  You could, however, wear a differed colored shirt if you chose to wear a black sports jacket.  I decided to go with the least amount of clothing possible.).  The tie was plain black and I had had it since I was seventeen.  The thing you are supposed to tuck the tail of the tie into so it doesn’t poke out had broken off on one side, so I just stapled it back on to fix it.  Meaning there was a visible staple on my tie that I had tried to sharpie black, to no avail.

So, orientation day:

I arrived about ten minutes late, having mis-set my alarm.  I thought I was fucked, but I walked in, apologized, and the person responsible for telling us all about Macy’s was nice about it, wearing a bright smile the entire time.  About thirty minutes later a girl arrived, far later than I was, and I felt much better.

Except for the fact that my black shirt was almost completely covered in cat hair, at least for me it felt so.  I looked at everyone else’s shirts to see if anyone else had had a similar problem.  Sadly, I found was alone, and with that I shrunk into my chair.

We were told about the M.A.G.I.C training, which was key to the Macy’s experience.  

Magic stood for: Meet, Ask, Give, Inspire, Celebrate.

Here is how it works.

You find a customer minding their own business looking for stuff.  We are told that every customer really wants and needs help, even if they act like they don’t (we are later told in the security/shoplifting section that declining help from an employee is suspicious behavior).

(In this group, most were people around my age, with the exception of two: One I cannot remember because I never saw again, and the other, who I will just call Tom, a middle aged guy who never ceased trying to please his employer, consistently looked confused.  Despite his all-aboard the Macy’s bullshit express attitude, he once confided to me about ‘morning meetings’ [one of which I never had to attend, thankfully], how he thought they were stupid.  

The morning meetings were mini-pep rallies for the employee’s about meeting sales goals [which will be discussed in detail later] and giving each customer the best experience possible.  There was a cheer where everyone put their hands together and chanted like a football team, which I wished I would have at least seen. Remarking upon this, in a whisper out of the side of his mouth, he told me if they wanted him to get ‘inspired’ they ought to pay him more instead of trying to get him to work hard for no benefit.  I agreed, while all of my anarchist views on wage slavery rushed into my head and I bit my tongue, knowing that it probably wasn’t the time or place to try to convert.).

You ask this customer if they need help finding anything, etc.  Basically be the person you try to avoid when you go shopping.  This was the part of the job where I walked aisles asking everyone I saw if they needed anything and being shut down nearly every time (every customer wants to be helped!).

A= Ask, covered in the previous section.  Ask what are you looking for today, etc.

G= Give.  This one is hazy.  Give advice? This I actually had to do quite often, when someone asked if this would match something else, or what the best material was, or whatever you could imagine.  At first I told the truth, that I wasn’t the best person to ask, but soon I learned just to bullshit it and they would leave me alone quicker than if I feigned ignorance.

Give attention? That was a given as some customer’s could demand literally hours of attention, as one of my best friends that started working there at the same time can attest to, I’ll call him Zippy (he still works there as of the writing of this parenthetical). [Author’s note: I’ve made it a rule of mine not to use anyone’s real name for the most part, and so I will continue to do so here.  I know this friend will read this blog, and that he probably wouldn’t mind if I used his real name, but still, policy etc.].  He has many stories of dealing with the same customer for hours.  The one I remember the most came in every weekend to see if a train set was on sale or not, and told Zippy the entire history of searching for this train set at a reduced price all over the tri state area. (Zippy, don’t try to correct this story, artistic license etc).  This story last over an hour, and spanned multi-topics, I’d guess.

Give encouragement?  I couldn’t, not matter how far I was from my sales goal.  I knew some of my customer’s couldn’t afford to add all that money to their Macy’s credit cards, and I wasn’t going to encourage them to buy “that matching tie or pair of socks” when I had the chance.

I= Inspire.  Inspire them to purchase.  Covered with the encouragement.  Morally objectionable to me, but vastly important to an employee’s stats, and Macy’s bottom line.  In a video we watched during this meeting, one of a series of ‘real life situations’ we would encounter during our career at Macy’s , featured a heavy set man who ‘feared’ going to department stores because the employee’s scared him.  That is until, before ‘the big meeting’ he spills coffee all over his shirt.  Thankfully there was a Macy’s nearby.

He runs in, flustered.  He finds the first employee, the emergency forcing him to face his fears, and asks the employee where he could possibly find a replacement for the shirt.  The employee gives him three options, and the fat man’s face begins to sweat.  “I don’t have time for this” he cries out in despair, the existential despair of a man trying to escape the burden of his free will.  The employee, well versed in Kierkegaard and Sartre, sees the man about to have a crises, a dark night of the soul, and says “but wait, this one is wrinkle free, you can wear right away!”

And like God stopping Abraham from killing his son Isaac, the fat man is released from this awful burden, so happy is he he decides to buy a pair of socks he just sees lying near the counter.

C= Celebrate.  Celebrate the purchase.  Woo, way to go, thanks for helping keep the wheel’s of capitalism and vapid pointless consumerism going.  Congratulations and enjoy the short lived high purchasing consumer goods can give you.  You’ve done such a great job filling the empty hole in your soul with brand named clothing I’m sure you’ll never be sad or want again!

I’m told by the Zipster that he has to redo the MAGIC training every few months.

The other video I remember was the Union video.  We were all handed a brochure detailing the ‘pros’ (there are no pros listed) and cons of having a union at Macy’s.

 

The union video started out with the promising claim that “Macy’s isn’t against unions, we just want you to know the facts”, followed by the most anti-union propaganda I’ve ever watched.

(It was reminiscent of a presentation of abortion I had to sit through for my gender studies class where the most religious girls in the class got together and picked abortion because they all hated it so much, and said the same “This presentation isn’t anti-abortion, we just want you to know the facts” followed by a video with the saddest music possible and the fetus talking to its mother “I love you mommy, I can’t wait to be your baby, I love being in your stomach, your voice sounds so sweet, we will be happy together forever” and then “that doctor sounded cold and evil and mean, I don’t think you should talk to him”, followed by “I don’t want to die mommy” and finally “I’m with Jesus now and I still love you”.  I couldn’t help laughing throughout, though I was the only one who found the whole thing incredibly absurd in the context)

It featured union representatives jumping unsuspecting Macy’s employees in the parking lot, trying to get them to sign up for the union so they could get them to start paying union dues.

But, Macy’s reminded us, unions are just big businesses nowadays (I couldn’t help but find the irony in a huge corporation using business as an insult towards unions) only interested in increasing the union roles.

Also, Macy’s told us, they already had a perfectly good way for employee’s to address their grievances with their open door policy (a policy that is so complicated it has its own hour long section during the computer training.  I can’t remember all the steps involved.) and a union is unneeded as Macy’s gives all the benefits of a union without any of the downsides (like good wages or collective bargaining.  I mean, who needs collective bargaining when you can bargain with a giant corporation with endless resources by yourself while an endless amount of people are right behind you willing to replace you if you step too far out of line).

“And remember,” the video’s narrator implores “collective bargaining can either lead to higher wages, the same wages, or even lower wages than before! (how, exactly, a union could be bad enough to shave the $7.50 wage down a quarter to minimum wage is beyond me).  

They explained the repercussions of signing a union card, and urged you to really think about this decision and how it might affect the great thing Macy’s has going.  I mean, you do like it here, don’t you?  

I’d heard about this kind of thing, but I never thought I’d actually see it, but it really happened, and the video was as bad as I imagined it could be.  It could have just as easily been a satire, but it was serious.

Lastly in this meeting we discussed security and shoplifting.  We watched a video where a man talked about how anyone could be a shoplifted, regardless of race, gender, and age, and that despite preconceptions, most shoplifters were middle aged white women. (Still, despite Macy’s best effort, there were employees I met who would call security on every single black male they saw).  It was explained to us that there was a team of security guards watching at all times, and if you saw any suspicious activities (the list of things considered suspicious was so long and general and at times stupidly obvious it was of no help whatsoever) you were instructed to call security immediately and tell them to keep an eye on someone.

We were told that if we assisted in catching a shoplifter, we would receive monetary compensation.  Also, if we assisted in catching a coworker shoplifting the reward was even higher.  The orientation leader, in a somber tone, told of one employee that was caught stealing, and how she felt violated because “we all kept our purses in the back rooms, and if this person was willing to steal from Macy’s they would certainly steal from anyone.

After we finished the videos and talking about MAGIC, which took about an hour and a half, we were to take the tour of the building.  Just like the tour of my high school, it seemed confusing and I still couldn’t put anything in relation to where something else was.  Obviously this would come with time, but the tour was useless other than the other employees staring at this huge group of black wearing teenagers (and two old guys) walked around in a line.

Lastly was my cashier training, where I was taken into another storage room with two computers next to the cash registers where we were guided through every single transaction we could face, without the pressure of time, or an annoyed customer with impossible demands and expectations.  

Something else that was stressed during training: The Macy’s Card.  We were told in every step of training, to push everyone to sign up for the Macy’s credit card.  Every time someone made a purchase we were to ask “would you like to put that on your credit card?” and if they said they didn’t have a Macy’s card we were to act shocked and tell them the litany of advantages they were missing out on.

We were given a list of common misconceptions and concerns customers had about signing up for the card.  Missing from this list was, to me, the most obvious excuse someone would have for not signing up for this card “I’ll probably get rejected”.  

Every employee, in order to receive their discount, had to sign up for a Macy’s card.  I was declined and given a prepaid card.  Essentially a glamorized gift card.

We were given, at the end of our training, coupons for an additional 20% (that could be used in combination with our employee discount) off clothes that could be worn in accordance to the dress code.  And here, I think, we get to one of the really strange things about Macy’s employment, the discount and employee’s buying stuff from Macy’s. 

I myself never used my discount and didn’t buy a single thing the entire time I worked there, instead I wore the same stapled tie and black shirt/pants/shoes.  But some employee’s would, after their shift, buy tons of clothing for their families.  My friend Zippy told me the reason that the Macy’s stayed open later than the mall it was connected to, despite the fact that no customers really came after the mall closed, was to give time for employee’s who got off work to shop.

My girlfriend, studying the economics of fashion and department stores told me that the employee discount is even included in the price of everything sold.

So, this seemingly kind gesture of 40% off for all the employees (a vast majority of whom will not keep the job after the holiday season) is yet another “Macy’s sale!” employed to maximize gains, and get people who would normally not buy stuff from Macy’s to buy things from Macy’s.

         III.           Employment

A week later I was scheduled for my first shift.  I was given a special card that would allow me into the building through the employee entrance, which was the only one I could use for security purposes.  I tried sliding the card over and over to no avail, and just decided to enter to building normally, even though my veteran friend had said that security would be watching me like a hawk if I did this.  Never heard anything from them, so I guess it wasn’t too big of a deal.

Once again, my black shirt had all this damn white cat hair on it from the Persian cat my mother has.  I kept forgetting to bring a lint roller, but even after I did it could never remove all the cat hair.  The drawback to the black dress code.

My department was young men’s, “hey, I’m a young man!”, I was to think at this designation.  The men’s department took up most of the second floor along with the children’s department, women’s underwear and I guess clothing that didn’t fit in with the clothing downstairs, and the home department filled with home stuff and appliances and junk your grandmother buys you that ends up in the closet.

This is especially true during the holidays where Macy’s has junk products seemingly everywhere.  Really off-brand e-readers, mp3 players, projectors, and all kinds of other strange things whose purpose is to allow Macy’s to be a one-stop destination for all x-mas shopping needs.  This works especially well on those with Macy’s cards with a large credit who don’t have any experience at niche stores 9electronic stores, etc) or with buying things over the internet.  Instead, the women who depend on Macy’s and are addicted to the ever present sales see these electronics and doesn’t notice the bizarre names attached, nor considered whether the products are quality.

Perhaps these products are good, and brands, when it comes to electronics, have far too much influence over me.  I just read numerous positive reviews of the pandigital ereader macy’s offers, and, though every review was a female from the age of 40-49, they all loved it (you can get on FACEBOOk!).

One story from Zippy regarding the e-readers-

A woman approached with headphones in her hand and asked if she could use them with a book.

“A book?”, the emphasis on book I think you can imagine clearly.

“An ebook or whatever, not a book” she replied, as if he was at fault for this miscommunication.

Back to my first shift (if I had a grasp on how to footnote properly, this would have several footnotes so far as to not interrupt the flow, but whatever).

 

I hadn’t actually received any instruction whatsoever on what to actually do when I arrived for my first shift, sure I learned to use a register when no one is around and the commands are straight forward a week ago, and I knew about MAGIC, but they didn’t bother with the practical things.  I remembered hearing something about having a training buddy, so I walked up to the first employee I saw in the Men’s department, and asked “Hey, it’s my first shift, who should I talk to, or what should I do to get started?”.  This question, I found out, was the largest burden I could put on my fellow employee’s.  It was like asking them to multiply two digit numbers in his head on the spot.  I mean really, how long ago could have it been for these people when they were first trained, that they had no idea what to do with someone who had just started?

This fellow (who I after introducing myself, I embarrassingly realized I went to the same schools as him for over five years) told me to go to the other desk and ask the ladies over there.  So I did, and I repeated the question, they repeated the confusion and clear distress of being given such a burden.  

“Did they give you a department number?” 

“No” 

“What’s your name again?”

 “Mark” 

“Oh yeah, here you are, just go over to that station”

So over to that empty register station I went, and as soon as I got over there a customer approached with a pile of clothing.

“Uh, uh, uh” shouted my brain, unprepared for a customer right away without anyone even wanting/willing/caring to assist me.  I tried to remember the register training from a week ago, but ringing up actual clothes was different than a piece of paper that said “Jeans $40.00” with two barcodes.

“I need to return these and buy these”

Fuck fuck fuck fuck, of course!, I thought, first customer needs a return, no one wants to help me, and I can’t even see another employee.

It was a sink or swim approach that seemed counterintuitive to the Macy’s idea of great customer service.

“Uh, sorry, this is uh, my first shift”

I learned that with customers, “first shift” was the magic phrase to acquire a nearly limitless patience that I would never experience again.

“Not giving you much help are they?” said the customer, with good spirits.

I excused myself to find an employee, and repeated my plea from earlier “Hey, I need some help, this is my first shift”.  Sadly, that phrase had little to no impact on my coworkers, as once again, they could not imagine someone being new.  With a sigh, and a probable eye roll towards another employee, I got a short haired old lady to follow me to my register and guide me through the process.

Once the customer was dealt with, there were no others in sight, so I went about getting acquainted with where everything in my section was, and ‘folding’ clothes (folding clothes at this point just consisted of trying to make the clothes take up the smallest space possible without much form nor consistency to the process.  This would lead to problems on-)

My second shift was horrendous.  The night previous I had gotten terribly lost in Evansville walking around, though I couldn’t remember a moment of it.  When I awoke in time for work, I was still drunk, and I was still drunk when I arrived at Macy’s, but only for a short while before I was struck with a terrible hangover.

My first shift was a night shift, but this one was my first morning shift, and the crew was strictly old ladies.  Who, for whatever reason, hated me immediately.  I walked to the same desk, and this larger lady who looked like Ursula from The Little Mermaid (especially with the all-black dress code), could smell how new I was apparently.  I explained my situation (second shift, still not sure how things work, what station should I go to, etc) this Ursula character instructed me to “fold clothes”.  So I walked around looking for clothes that clearly looked bad, and “folded” them, like I did yesterday.  

No one had taught me how to fold clothes, so I just did my own thing.  Once everything had been folded by my standards I went back and asked if I should get on a station now.  She decided she would inspect how I did folding.  

“No, no, no, none of this is folded!  She pointed to the racks that I thought looked fine.

“How, exactly, should they look, I mean, what is the goal here?” I asked, having no other recourse but to lay my ignorance on the proverbial table and hope Ursula had some shred of humanity.

“What do you mean?” she asked, giving me a look that one might give a child who asked how to use the potty long after the appropriate age.

“No one explained how to fold clothes, the only practical training I got was on the registers”

“Well I don’t know what they are having you do, but here, let me show you” and she did show me, and from that point, I could fold fucking clothes.

Later I was told by Zippy that Ursula condemned me for my utter stupidity in front of several of her coworkers.

I folded clothing for the first two hours of my six hour shift until a manager approached me and asked why I wasn’t helping sell on a register.  If I wasn’t so ill already, I would have became ill at the question.

“I was told by-“ as I looked towards Ursula.

“Well, you have a sales goal and you need to try to meet it.  Get on that register over there.”

I learned, later, from my female friend, the veteran, that I needn’t have listened to Ursula at all, her being an equal to me.  She told me that had Ursula told her to fold clothes she would have told her to fuck off.

These first two shifts I fell drastically short of my sales goal.

Sales goal? You might be wondering.  I’m sure other places have this as well, but at Macy’s it is a point of pride for the employees.  There is a newsletter released every day with a ranking of the top sellers and a ranking of who signed up the most people for a Macy’s card.

Another note on the Macy’s card: When an employee signs someone up for a Macy’s card (even if they are rejected for the card) the employee is rewarded with coupons, and eventually, cash.  Though the coupons can never be redeemed for more than a total of 50% off an item, meaning that even with these rewards for signing someone up for yet another credit card they don’t need, Macy’s will still make money off your purchase, one way or another.

I discovered that the meaner the employee was to me, regarding selling on a certain station, or just general rude behavior towards me, the better they ranked.

At the same time, I knew that the sales goal was integral to getting to keep the job after the holidays ended, as all of Macy’s staff started as seasonal employees.

And I started to see that Macy’s didn’t need to show that union video.  There was no chance the employee’s would ever want to act in solidarity.  The petty competition was what kept these long time employee’s going.  It allowed them to buy clothes the cheapest way they could, and really, most of these women didn’t need the job, they just wanted to get the discount and qualify for these rewards.  Some men were the same way, to be fair.

I’m hoping none of this comes off as sexist, but it’s hard when a vast majority of the work force are mothers of around the same age and income bracket.  Employment at Macy’s seems to be a strategic business calculation, one that has paid out over and over again.  After all, Macy’s, with its large employment pool, has created a group of well-off mothers who will buy exclusively at Macy’s.  These women (and the men that work there) would have likely shopped many places (unless they are too tied to the Macy’s charge card), until they got the job and no longer had a reason to shop elsewhere.

The rest of my employment is fairly uninteresting, I wasn’t kept on after the holidays, which I decided was fine by me, this being my worst job experience (with the  exception of the Vacuum thing, which I’ll talk about elsewhere) ever.

I did want to press on one more thing about Macy’s and department stores in general.  Sales.  During my stay at Macy’s almost everything that was on sale when I started was still on sale when I left.  Zippy confirms these items are still on sale.

But why?  Psychology.  It always comes back to psychology when it comes to consumerism, because even though the effectiveness of clinical psychology is up for constant debate, the effectiveness of corporate psychology, the psychology of advertising and consumerism is so effective that these kind of tactics are universal.

The sales tactic lies in the area of psychology that deals with our perception of value.  If you sell something for ten dollars, for example, one might see the item as low quality, not worth buying.  

However, if you remark the item as originally sixty dollars, and mark it down to twenty or less, it will sell far better than it did before.  Even if you never list the price as it’s original, the customer will never know that.  The sale seems so fleeting, and the amount of money saved always makes it seem worth it.  Why buy something at original price when you could buy something else that is one sell?

And what was on sell?  The macy’s exclusives, the brands only Macy’s sells, mostly.  Contrasted to brands like Levi and Polo, which were never on sale and were always exempt from coupons.  People will always by Levi’s and Polo’s, the price is part of the attraction.  But these Macy’s exclusives, without the brand appeal, need something to set them apart from the other brands at competitors which include even target and walmart.  And that difference is a high value at a low price.

It’s the Macy’s Way Charade.