Retail Hell (9 page)

They’ll
also break every rule in the Employee Handbook
.

For the next half-hour Judy continued to rag on us for everything. Misfire. Not selling enough. Returns. Not sending thank-you notes to customers. Rag. Rag. Rag. Holds. Opening new accounts. Insufficient cleanliness. Rag. Rag. Rag. Not approaching customers properly. Failing to capture clients. Rag. Rag. Rag.

When the General started barking about customer service, things went sour. The once-silent group of six women was now not so silent, and a fight erupted. The Handbag Angels and Demons tore into each other.

“Great service isn’t possible when
some
people in this department refuse to acknowledge the doubling up policy, and they wait on more than one person at a time,” said Jules.

“Amen to that,” said Marsha.

“Oh hell yeah,” said Cammie, slapping palms with Jules in a high-five.

“I don’t think that’s really the problem here, it’s about paying attention,” said Tiffany.

“When it’s busy,
some of us
don’t have a choice,” said Douche.

“You chose to steal my sale yesterday,” said Jules.

“You weren’t helping her,” said Douche.

“Barbara is my personal. I called her,” said Jules.

“You say
everyone
is your personal,” said Douche.

“And you steal everyone’s sales,” said Cammie.

“I do not steal sales,” said Douche.

“Last week, you snaked that three-thousand-dollar Marc Jacobs from me,” said Cammie.

“Aagh! I did no such thing. You lie,” said Douche.

“Hon, I saw you do it,” said Marsha.

“She was not helping that woman. I know for a fact,” said Douche.

“If I knew Cammie was waiting on her, certainly you must have known too,” said Marsha.

“Douche doesn’t pay attention on the floor half the time,” said Jules.

“That doesn’t make her Cammie’s customer,” said Douche.

“Excuse me, Douche, but
it does
make her my customer,” said Cammie.

“We really need to set some boundaries,” said Marci.

“Some people are always out for themselves,” said Marsha.

“I think people are just jealous of Douche because she’s at the top of her game,” said Tiffany.

“Jealous? No we’re sick to fucking death of it,” said Cammie.

“We all have personal customers, Douche. So do you,” said Jules.

“I’m not talking about my personal customers,” said Douche.

“Then what the fuck are you talking about? This is bullshit,” said Cammie.

“I don’t appreciate the awful language, Cammie,” said Marci.

“There are more professional ways to express yourself, Cammie,” said Tiffany.

“Is your mother happy that you talk like that? Aagh!” said Douche.

“I should kick your mother-fucking ass right now, you sharky whore,” said Cammie.

“THAT’S IT! I WANT YOU ALL TO SHUT IT!” yelled the General.

Cammie and Douche were about to hit the carpet for a hairpulling wrestling match. Being the newbie and the only man, I stayed out of it, though if called to duty I would have definitely cheated for Cammie and smacked Douche on the back of the head with my chair.

Judy finally got things settled down and redirected her meeting toward merchandising and the new handbag lines that were coming in. Tempers cooled, and so did my interest as she went into a lengthy discussion about what was going to be hot for spring.

I nearly went to sleep.

Even though the department meeting had been some thirteen hours earlier, I couldn’t get it out of my head. The handbag haunting was in full force.

“
That was my Coach
customer!”

“
You say everyone is your
customer!”

“
We need to get the sales up in this department or shifts will be
cut!”

The voices of Angels and Demons snipping away at each other.

A fate worse than writer’s block.

So I did the only thing any writer would have done at that point. Turned off the computer, started guzzling beer, and flipped on
Reno 911.
The soldiers of the Argonne Forest would have to wait another day to meet their monster. I had to get rid of mine first.

“Freeman, do we have a Dolly in red?” Jules called out to me from the Corral.

The place had been a morgue, so we were all on cleaning duty. I had the Allure shop. The Big Fancy’s own brand. Marsha had Juicy Couture, Cammie had Coach, and Jules had the Corral’s countertops. When the phone started ringing, Jules was closest, so she answered. It turned out to be a check from another Big Fancy store. A salesperson wanting this Dolly thing in red.

I stared at Jules like she was speaking in Arabic.

“Well, do we? I can’t see from here?”

No clue what the hell she was talking about. The only person I know named Dolly is the fabulous singing legend, Dolly Parton, and I certainly did not see her in red sitting anywhere in The Big Fancy handbag department.

“It’s an Allure satchel,” said Cammie from the Coach shop.

“What’s a satchel?”

Cammie said, “What the fuck?” and Jules dropped her bottle of glass cleaner. Cammie quickly came over to where I was, reached over on the shelf behind me, and grabbed a red, two handled, midsized Allure handbag off the shelf. “This is a fucking SATCHEL, and its goddamn name is DOLLY. Dude, you should know this!”

But I didn’t.

“Hon, you don’t know what a satchel is?” asked Marsha.

“Umm . . . no . . . Judy never told me about satchels. Is that something in the Handbag Guide?”

“Shit on a stick,” exclaimed Cammie, “He’s screwed unless we help him.”

“You got that right, hon,” agreed Marsha. “Poor thing doesn’t even know what a satchel is.”

“That’s it. We are just going to teach you ourselves,” announced Jules.

My official handbag training began at that moment. I didn’t really give a shit what a fucking red Dolly was, but it was time to start using handbag lingo. The General had been pressuring me. She kept asking how my Guide studies were going. “Suzy doesn’t like cashiering. You need to improve your sales by selling, not waiting for customers. You NEED to find the TIME to READ the Guide.”

Sorry, General Judy,What I NEED is to hurry up and write my Million-
Dollar Screenplay and quit The Big Fancy!

I’d found Judy’s so-called Guide completely useless, reading it was like reading a legal deposition written in Latin. There were no pictures, just a list of companies, their uninteresting histories, and a bunch of bizarre handbag terms that sounded like an inventory sheet for a military weapons arsenal: roll bag, drawstring feedbag, tote, cross-body, demi pouch, barrel, hobo, mini, messenger, carryall, duffle, and convertible bucket.

Convertible bucket? Are we selling cars? Drawstring feedbag? Does it come
full of apples and oats? Roll bag? Who invented that? Cheech and Chong?

“Every handbag silhouette has a name,” said Jules, “They may sound strange, but many shapes and designs are actually taken from the names of bags in other industries. Dooney & Bourke once copied an old ammunition bag and made it in three sizes, and it was the hottest style for several years.”

“Did they call it the Ammo Bag and fill it with bullets?” I asked, teasing.

Jules laughed and replied, “No, but it was heavy as hell. Dooney called it the Spectator.”

“Spectator sucks,” I said, “I would have called it the Bullet or maybe the Uzi.”

Then Marsha jumped in on the trip down Handbag Memory Lane: “What I remember about the Dooney & Bourke Spectator is how much I hated merchandising them. They wouldn’t stay standing up. Fell over constantly like dominos. They were always a mess and I pulled a muscle lugging those bastards out of the stockroom. Sold a lot of them, though.”

Jules was on the move in the leather jungle. She grabbed a pink medium-size structured bag with a single handle. “This is one of my favorite handbag shape stories,” she said, “They call this shape — with the single rounded handle — the Kelly bag. It was created by the famous French fashion house Hermès. Then in the ’50s Grace Kelly was photographed wearing it because she wanted something stylish to cover her pregnant belly. Next thing you know, everyone goes nuts and women around the world had to have it! Any bag made in this shape is now called the Kelly bag. The Big Fancy makes this one on our private label and they call it Amanda.”

I was mesmerized by the Grace Kelly story because I love so many of her films, but then I realized Jules had called that Big Fancy brand Kelly bag Amanda. Handbag names 101 was getting complicated.

“Wait,” I said, “Are you telling me they have silhouette names AND people names?”

“Afraid so, hon,” said Marsha, “Just like my plants and cats!”

“And my dog, Ginger,” added Jules, “She’s a Yorkshire Terrier. Absolutely gorgeous.”

Cammie tossed a slouchy-looking bag over her shoulder, “This motherfucker is named Rodan. How fucking stupid is that?”

“A satchel named Rodan?”

“Umm . . . Freeman, that one is a hobo,” said Jules.

“Hobo? I am
so
fucked. I’ll never remember all this. Maybe I should leave right now.”

Marsha’s arm went around me. “You’ll do no such thing, hon. We love you! It’s been a breath of fresh air having a guy around here for a change.”

With the Handbag Guide in tow, the Angels went over every shape, showing me what was what. Turned out a demi pouch was small with a short strap, a roll bag looked like a giant Tootsie Roll with a strap, and a drawstring feedbag was definitely something a horse could eat out of.

In my mind a hobo was a vagabond, a shoulder was a body part, a clutch was a car part, a tote was a crate in a warehouse, and a satchel was the name of some four-legged, tree-hugging creature in a rainforest. Not so in the Handbag Jungle.

A clutch was flat and carried in the hand, a tote was usually square-shaped with two handles but sometimes had straps, and a satchel had two short handles and has been around since the Middle Ages.

“A hobo is a large, rounded, unstructured, slouchy bag designed to be worn on the shoulder,” said Marsha while Cammie modeled a variety of different hobo styles.

“It’s called a hobo because the shape sort of looks like the bundle at the end of a stick that hobos used to carry way back when in movies and cartoons,” added Jules.

I couldn’t believe one of fashion’s hottest handbag shapes came from bums on skid row.

What’s next? Traffic-cone hats and bedpan shoes?

Learning the basic shapes wasn’t too difficult, but the stuff that really annihilated my brain cells were all the feature add-ons: triplezip satchel, push-lock satchel, hand-held satchel, east-west shoulder satchel, zip-zip satchel, and multifunction box satchel.

“I don’t get it. Why don’t they just call it a satchel?”

“I know it’s confusing, hon,” Marsha said, “But you’ll get the hang of it with practice. Just remember, there are five basic handbag shapes: satchel, shoulder, tote, clutch, and hobo.”

I felt like Audrey Hepburn’s Eliza Doolittle in
My Fair Lady
struggling over the “rain in Spain” phrase, except that my nightmare of words was north-south oversized satchel zip-top.

It only got worse after that.

“Do you know anything at all about leather?” asked Jules.

“Umm . . . I have a leather motorcycle jacket and lots of shoes.”

The Handbag Angels stared at me.

“But dude, do you know about the different kinds of leather?” asked Cammie.

“Not really. Can’t I just say it’s leather and looks cool?”

“Hon, that will
not
fly in here,” said Marsha.

My Angels taught me that Napa leather feels buttery soft, mock-croc is embossed to look like crocodile, and washed leather has an aged, crinkly, wrinkled look. They gave me the rundown on all the different fabrics, from jacquard to wool to terry cloth. I discovered handbags are made out of just about everything but sheet metal and drywall. Could it be possible that one day women will actually be able to live in their handbag satchels named Dolly? I think so.

The list of leathers mentioned made my head hurt: vachetta leather, distressed leather, patent leather, silk-screened leather, metallic leather, glazed leather, and washed leather.

What the hell is washed leather? Is it preferred over dirty leather? Do they
use a really good detergent like Tide when they are washing the leather? How
long does it stay in the rinse cycle?

And the skins all these handbags were made out of? Calfskin. Lambskin. Buffalo skin. Deerskin. Snakeskin. Goatskin. Ostrich skin. Croc skin. Rabbit skin. Oh my God . . . I could feel the ghosts of dead animals staring up at me.

Should I call PETA? Do they know about Big
Fancy’s
House of Hand-bag
Horrors?

“Is any of that making sense, sweetie?” Jules asked in her breathy Marilyn Monroe voice.

I groaned. “Dead animal hides everywhere.”

Cammie agreed. “It’s a fuckin’ dead-ass zoo in here.” Then she held a bag from the clearance table that looked like suede with white fur around it. “You know what this bitch is made out of?”