During this past Holiday Season, I took a part time job selling handbags and leather goods in a boutique at a local shopping mall.
I hate malls.
I don’t even like shopping.
My daughter, Conor says, “If you had more money, Mom, you would find shopping healing…” I disagreed. To me, shopping of any kind, whether it is for food to sustain our existence or Shopping Therapy for Our Soul, I find the experience completely exhausting and incredibly time consuming, as much a waste of time as watching T.V. Shortly after working at the store, it only took about five hours of retailing and being surrounded by beautiful and vibrant colored leathers, jacquard and sateen fabric bags, wallets and accessories, for my imagination to take hold of my mind. Before I knew what was happening, I wandered around the mall and wondered about nothing other than handbags! Suddenly I was being enveloped and adorned by accessories I have never thought I needed until now.
They say we become our environment and I am beginning to believe some part of that statement is true.
Just last night I dreamt of a lovely lime-green “crossbody” bag that I am quite confident I must have. (I never even thought I could like lime green!)
Hopefully the notion of “needing” handbags will wear off, but for now it feels as though I could use a bag for breakfast, lunch and dinner and a nice wallet in between, not to mention the lovely matching printed silk scarves that look—oh-so-lovely, tied and looped through the handles of the color coordinated handbag! (Simply irresistible!) Within the first few days I found myself feverishly racing around the mall during my breaks to compare prices and brands to ours, I was becoming so immediately obsessed with handbags that when I found myself calling my daughter on my breaks to tell her about my latest “must-have-bags” for everyone I knew, she shouted into the phone, “My God Mom, you sound like an attempted vegetarian in the meat packing district!” I refrained from laughing to contemplate whether she was right or if I was just enthusiastically and proactively engaging in the understanding of handbag language so I could better sell them.
“If I don’t stop shopping, I’ll end up a bag lady; a Fendi bag lady, but a bag lady.”
Carrie from Sex and the City
However, working in retail this past holiday season changed my perception of handbags and wallets, and accessories, but not the experience of shopping. I still hate shopping, yet this holiday season I found myself talking with the Y.O.U.’s of men and the Y.O.U.’s of women deeply engrossed in conversations from the zip closure wallets vs. snap, (zips hold more), the leather or fabric, why the bag was suited for a particular individual or not and then the conversations typically segued into more substantial dialog about life, politics, love, a person’s career, their children and even their pets. While handbags initiated the topic of conversations, the discussions were less about the details of the bag and more about life. Eventually the conversations closed with either the bag being purchased or at least why it was not, but in between all the adjectives describing product—there were plenty of other parts of speech—to convey how one felt about—life. Customers were mostly engaging and conversations were enlightening and uplifting. And, yes, sometimes they were sad too. The dialogues might have revolved around the customer’s potential acquisition, but at the core and underneath the expense, fashion statement, particular leather or fabric, there were deeply rooted emotions, thoughts and feelings that had noting to do with retail other than the retelling of it.
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I have my favorite stories too.
A kind man young man eagerly came into the store to buy his wife a Christmas present. He desperately wanted to find just the right bag as he mentioned how all the other handbags he bought her over the years were stuffed in a closet, wasting away as his wife never used them. He chose a periwinkle leather handbag, not the safe and typical black… in his thoughtfulness he told me that he just wanted to check one of the other department stores and after he was sure and confident of his choice, he would return—and he did…
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I wish all women could secretly watch their men shop for them. I think they would appreciate who they are more—their sensitivity; their desire to please and at the same time they would see the observation to detail and care that these men take in trying to find a gift that is representative of their love. Only on a few occasions did I question or wonder if someone was buying a special-something-for –someone-other than the usual suspect: the wife.
One of my favorite customers was a woman in her early sixties with a bad shoulder, acid reflux and Barrett’s Esophagus. She did not buy anything this time, but when she left, she had told me that our conversation had made her day and that she would be back to get her bag once her shoulder healed.
Another woman came in, one evening, telling me that she had just been promoted at her job that day. She had bought an $800.00 hand bag from our competitor around the corner, but she came in to see us before she closed the night, as she was determined to find an additional bag to compliment the bag she just bought and to celebrate her new position. When I asked her what style she was looking for, she responded in a loud and almost guilty voice, “Girl, I have over thirty bags in my closet and I use two, I don’t need any more bags…!” Still, she was determined to not leave the store without another bag. I showed her some styles to accommodate her daily work needs. I tried to not get too involved with the psychology of what she was doing and I maintained Selling-Poker-Face as I held tightly on to my little pda/scanner and quickly processed her order before she could change her mind. I kept thinking: this woman has three dozen bags at home, all apparently nice and usable and she is in here, probably at the end of an exhausting day to spend $1,000.00 tonight on more of what she already has. I tried to process this way of thinking and not judge because I really did want to understand the meaning and significance behind owning these products—and so many of them.
I had three not-so-new-handbags before this part-time, retail position, and never considered matching any of them with an outfit, let alone a wallet. Now I own a few more handbags, (and I don’t have a wardrobe to go with them…) yet, I would not know how to house thirty handbags, let alone be able to rationalize the purchase of them. (One woman recently told me that she had at least 100 handbags in her attic and that every now and then she ventures up the stairs to shop there!) Just the week before I sold a pair of shoes to a woman who had two hundred pairs in her closet, you can imagine my surprise when I asked her, “so you must use a different pair for every day and you still have room in your closet for another 165?” She shook her head authoritatively and justifiably informed me, “no, no sweetie, I never use those shoes, I just like to have them to look at!” When I inquisitively asked her what she was going to do with them, she told me that she would probably have them taken away some day by a removal company at some point and I wanted to ask her why she would consider buying another pair. I refrained from my immediate impulse to challenge her when it occurred to me:
1. How many shoes this woman has is none of my business or concern;
2. I am here at this moment in her life for one purpose only:
to sell her another pair of shoes!
(and so I did.)
These bags, shoes, wallets and accessories have different levels of functionality and meaning. In some way, perhaps they validate one’s self-worth, even if it is only a temporary feeling of worthiness. Their purchases on some level represent a fine piece of art or collectible. These shoes and bags are artifacts, valued pieces of attire that women keep on display to make them feel a certain sense of importance and value, even if they cannot afford what they have, their appearance and how they carry themselves would dictate otherwise.
My favorite person was an elderly African, American woman who sported a large, brown wool hat with a pink flower on it. She told me that she didn’t have a husband and she wanted something special for herself to go under her Christmas tree. The bag she purchased was a crisp, $700.00 and she bought it without hesitation and when I suggested that we wrap it up for her, she said, unequivocally, “that would be nice…”
A friend of mine came in to buy a bag the other day and told me, “I know I shouldn’t, with kids in college…but I gotta do what I gotta do…” and I smiled, telling her: “Guilt is a waste of time and serves no real purpose. The bag won’t leave you, hurt you or abandon you: men and children have the potential to do all three. But a nice handbag? If it is a good one, it will last for years and never disappoint you, not to mention you can stuff it without repercussion.”
“If men liked shopping, they’d call it research.”
Cynthia Nelms
There is impenetrable joy on the faces of women when they buy something for themselves or when they take the time to purchase something for someone else. Men take extra pride in buying just-the-right-handbag for their special someone and yes, sometimes they act as if their shopping is research!
Of course not everyone is wonderful who comes into the boutique, all stores have their fair share of The Miserable’s and Cosmic Misfits of the world. Some walk through our door seeming as if they would rather hit you over the head with their handbags than buy one.
Typically, people come in to socialize, browse, buy or just connect with humanity. There are days when all you hear from customers is, “just lookin” and each sales person cringes in their own, outward or private way and we wish and pray, “please—say anything, except “just lookin.”
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Lately, I feel as though my mind is being hijacked by the retail industry and I am praying to the Karmic Debt Holder to assign me another position to mend my past lives! It is getting so bad that I cannot bring myself to ask the entering customer their name or what they want! At times one can feel predator-ial with co-workers, even cannibalistic, as if you feel like you are all in a cave, starving as you forage for food in a small confined space and the rare entering customers are exactly the tasty meal you are hankering for. I try to curb my appetite if it is slow and a customer walks in –you can sense from your co-workers eyes-darting for the targeted prey…Sometimes the relationship among co-workers reminds me of a scene from the movie, The Godfather where, I think what’s-his-name was about to kill Fredo on a boat, he looks at his “family member” as he points the gun at his head and before shooting him, the gunman remarks in a detached way, “Don’t take this personally, it’s just business.” Maybe that line wasn’t from the movie, The Godfather, but it sounds like something that a gangster would say and taking a sale from someone is in a sense, “just business”, but there is a fine line that one must not cross and that line is where one is challenged whether it is business or if it is something more valuable—one’s personal integrity and the value of the relationship of your co-worker. We are supposed to work as a team, but numbers are always “the bottom line” in any business…
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When someone walked in the other day, so not to invade their personal space, as I could see that they wanted to be left alone, I said jokingly, “I am a life-like mannequin and I will help you if you need, otherwise just ignore me… ” It takes constant practice and diligence to remember personal space and how to approach a customer and not be considered beyond reproach.
Retail is draining, even for the best sales people. No matter how positive one is, at the end of the day, every sales person is tired of saying a-lot-of –the-same-things, hearing the same CD play over and over again, and ready for the music to stop, the customers to leave and the lights to go out so we may depart retail and reenter our other world.
And while tomorrow might appear as just another day of the same thing, it really never is. No matter where one is in life, professionally or personally, one can make the most and best of any given situation. We can all brighten someone’s blue day. Every one of us can show another a bit of compassion and empathy and even love. Sometimes we do this by selling a handbag or two or a wallet and scarf. There is even that rare occasion where we can sell someone one-more-pair-of-shoes—and sometimes we can brighten a person’s day by selling someone nothing at all. Yet when we cast a light on someone’s day in a way we change his or her world, even if only in some small way. When we change the world of another—for the better, we alter the way we view retail and life.
So, when that Clock is about to strike 12 and that noon train is approaching around the bend; the tracks are laden with golden bricks pointing in a Direction and your life is asking you: Decide, Decide, Decide…who are you going to listen to? Your heart or your mind?
(only time will tell…)
