Authors: Freeman Hall
Retail Hell
How I Sold My Soul to The Store
Confessions of Tortured Sales Associate
Freeman Hall
Avon, Massachusetts
Copyright © 2010 by Freeman Hall
Originally printed in hardcover in 2009. All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in anyform without permission from the publisher; exceptions aremade for brief excerpts used in published reviews.
Published by
Adams Media, a division of F+W Media, Inc.
57 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA 02322. U.S.A.
Paperback ISBN 10: 1-4405-0577-2
Paperback ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-0577-5
Paperback eISBN 10: 1-4405-0876-3
Paperback eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-0876-9
Hardcover ISBN 10: 1-60550-102-6
Hardcover ISBN 13: 978-1-60550-102-4
Hardcover eISBN 10: 1-4405-0433-4
Hardcover eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-0433-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is available from the publisher.
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their product are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and Adams Media was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed with initial capital letters.
RETAIL HELL
“[Freeman is] a retail-centric Perez Hilton.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“[
Retail Hell
] was delivered this morning and . . . I’ve been laughing ’til I’m burple in the face!”
— Michael Tonello, bestselling author of
Bringing Home the Birkin
“. . . An amusing window into the world of hyper-consumption . . . full of outrageous — and humorous — tales of shoppers behaving badly, all in pursuit of an ‘It’ bag.”
—
LA Times
fashion critic Booth Moore
“Gucci hawker-turned-author Freeman Hall shares hilarious tales of his twenty-year servitude as a sales guy, from crazy customers to the cloyingly cheerful store culture.”
—
Washington Post Express
“An entertaining look at the view from his side of the handbag counter. . . . Meet the Piggy Shoppers, the Discount Rats, and the Blood-suckers — all of them customers who shop at fine stores, terrorize the sales staff, and now are exposed . . . .”
—
Reuters
“
Retail Hell
. . . omits few offenses that writer Freeman Hall faced on the sales floor. Readers . . . will get a glimpse of the crassness of shoppers and salespeople, depending on the situation.”
—
Women’s
Wear Daily
For my mom, Janie Burchett, who encouraged me to follow my dreams and taught me that where there’s a will, there’s a way.
The situations and characters in this book are based on my twentyplus years of retail experience. However, the names of stores and people have been changed, timelines are out of sync, and the situations have been cleverly disguised, ripped inside out, and run over several times. For the purposes of the book, my Retail Hell takes place at a department store I’ll call The Big Fancy. As satisfying as it would have been to name names, my ass would be sued up one side of the escalator and down the other. And that would be painful on my ass.
Introduction: Freeman’s Inferno
Act 1: The Big Fancy Underworld
Can I Interest You in a Dead Animal Hide Hobo Named Lucifer?
Act 2: Sinners, Serpents, and the Craziest Crazy-Lady Customers
Monique Jonesworthy, Nasty-Ass Thief
Act 3: Misfire and Brimstone at The Big Fancy
Merry Strep Throat and a Happy New Flu
Free Gift with Purchase!
Bonus Section
The Do’s and Don’ts of Shopping
Retail Hell
Readers’ Discussion Guide
Free Bonus eBook Content: Customers Behaving Badly!
Move over, Dante.
A Wednesday afternoon at The Big Fancy. Someone out sick. Some-one at lunch. Someone in a training class. And my manager in a meeting with the store manager. Probably playing footsie. I’m flying solo at the handbag counter.
As usual, because I’m by myself, the gates of Retail Hell open up: An indecisive woman wants me to retrieve every evening bag we have inside of a glass case, forcing me down on my knees at least sixty-five times. Another woman fires off a barrage of mind-numbing questions about a Juicy Couture bag. The phone rings nonstop: “Why aren’t the markdowns done?” “Can you check on a handbag?” “Is Tiffany there? No? Then can you help me?” A wellknown customer who returns a lot of merch rolls up to the counter carrying two shopping bags loaded with handbags. She wants to have some returned, some exchanged, and others checked to see whether they went on sale so she can get price adjustments. Her receipts look like a pile of wilted lettuce leaves and don’t match the price tickets, which are not attached to any of the bags. While she’s trying to straighten out her mess, another customer gets pushy and begs me to ring up a wallet because apparently
she’s
the only person on lunch break and in a hurry. I make the annoying Returner wait and ring up the wallet, only to get a code on the register not approving the sale. I call Credit and am immediately bounced to hold. A woman wearing a dirty Mickey Mouse sweatshirt appears at the counter with a $3,000 Marc Jacobs handbag stuffed into a plastic grocery bag. She wants to return it and get her cash back. I can already tell she’s a Nasty-Ass Thief. Another phone line begins to ring. I debate answering it, but risk losing my connection with Credit . . . which would mean I’d have to start all over. The Returner asks me if I can call someone else to help her. The Juicy Couture Questioner seconds her motion. And like the cherry on top of a shit sundae, a new customer forces her way up to the counter and shouts in my face:
“Excuse me, do you work here?”
I look like an octopus at the Aquarium of Insanity. How can she even ask me that?
A dumb-ass question deserves a dumb-ass answer:
“No, I sure don’t.”
I turn my back on her and continue to wait for Credit while praying to God to please keep me from freaking out and picking up the fucking register and hurling it at all of them.
I wasn’t born a Retail Slave. I didn’t pop out from my mother’s womb with a feverish desire to sell things people don’t want or need. I don’t have the bouncy game-show-host personality that would make it easy for me to go up to strangers and say, “Hi! How are you today? How can I help you? Would you like to see our new Coach bags for spring? Let me tell you what’s on sale! Can I answer any other idiotic questions you might have? Please! Treat me like shit and ruin my day!”
No, I wasn’t born a Retail Slave, but I was born into a family
full
of them. My uncommon first name, Freeman, was bestowed upon me in honor of my grandfather, who was named Freeman in honor of his father Freeman. Yep, that’s three Freemans in the family. But the name wasn’t the only thing gifted to me by my elders. I also inherited their retail genes.
My great-grandfather Freeman owned a furniture and appliance store in Reno, Nevada, where I’m from. He was known as a tenacious salesman who could sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo. My grandfather Freeman, on the other hand, spent most of his life at the store on the other side of sales: in the service department. His willingness to fix problems could turn a ferocious customer into a purring pussycat.
How could I dodge that retail bullet?
My mom, a divorced, single mother of two, spent most of her life in retail, hawking everything from jewelry to drapery to tractors. She could charm anyone into maxing out their AmEx for an antique bauble, saying, “You need to buy this! It’s going to be a collector’s item someday. $3,999 is a real bargain.”
I, however, showed no signs of a soul headed for a life in retail. As a kid, I hated cleaning and folding, didn’t like talking to strangers, loathed math, couldn’t do ten things at once, wasn’t aggressive, despised cheerleading, and did not like being told what to do. Not exactly a blueprint for a life in retail.
I had a different plan. I wanted to be just like Steven and Stephen — Spielberg and King. In fifth grade, my English teacher was surprised by my disturbing and detailed book report on
The Exorcist
. But rather than sending me to the school counselor, she recommended I read
’
Salem’s
Lot
. I thought it would be a lame snooze, but it scared the shit out of me. Stephen King had sunk his teeth into me and that was it. I was his forever. At about the same time, Spielberg put out
Close
Encounters of the Third Kind
and became my hero. And even though I cherished
Jaws
, the book, my love for the director was cemented once I saw the movie. For days I slept curled up at night, rather than stretched out. My legs were not about to become fish sticks.
At a young age, my heart was set on emulating my idols and crafting a million-dollar screenplay . . . so what in Retail Hell happened to me?
I’ll tell you what happened. In a word: clothes.
We all have our addictions. Belgian chocolate. QVC porcelain dolls. Crack cocaine. Mine just happens to involve shirts and pants. Designer shirts and pants. And trendy shoes that look hot with them.
No big surprise there. Young gay guy lured to the dark side by fashion. It’s not headline news. But as I neared adulthood, my love for cool clothes got the best of me when I won the underage lottery by scoring a fake ID.
In college, during the early 80s, I fed my film obsession by working at a majestic old movie house downtown, selling tickets to classics like
E.T.
and
Flashdance
. The assistant manager was a cool guy who was several years older. He also happened to be the owner of a driver’s license displaying a picture that looked exactly like me. After begging and offering everything in my bank account (a whopping $50), he agreed to get a new license and sell me the “lost” one.
This was a huge social coup for me. Most of my friends were over twenty-one, and I hated not being able to hang with them at clubs and casinos. Thanks to my older, blond-haired, blue-eyed twin, that was about to change.
Fake ID in hand, I rushed to my favorite department store (one of only two in Reno). If I was going to dance and drink the night away at the only gay club in town, I had to do it looking like I’d just stepped out of the pages of
GQ
. I was a broke college kid, but I desperately wanted a pair of Calvin Klein jeans. Everyone wanted his name on their ass, and I was no different. But sadly, the only thing I could afford on my meager movie-house paycheck were Calvin’s undies — and that was only if I bought them at Marshalls! After trying on a bunch of sale-rack rejects, I found a funky brand-name shirt that would have to do. As the cute Preppy Sales Guy rang up the shirt, I asked him if the Calvin jeans ever went on sale.