Retail Confidential: Life as a Sales Clerk
Source: SmartMoney Magazine – November 19, 2009
By: Anne Kadet
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IT’S AUTUMN IN NEW YORK, and there’s no shortage of options for frittering away a gloriously crisp Saturday afternoon. The Chelsea galleries have new exhibits, there’s a goofy skateboard race in Central Park, and a pal from out of town wants to meet for lunch. But this is no day to make plans. The manager at my new job has me “on call,” just like a doctor or troubleshooting tech specialist. Only I won’t be rushing in to perform heart surgery or stop a system meltdown. No, this is about folding trousers after the lunchtime rush.
Who knew being a part-time retail worker could be so demanding? This season more than half a million Americans will be working holiday jobs, greeting shoppers in stores ranging from Target [TGT: 47.66*, -0.21, -0.43%] to Prada. It is, in this tough economy, the ultimate fallback job–not only for the traditional assemblage of after-school teens and moms earning Christmas cash, but also for legions of ex–mortgage brokers, bankers and other laid-off white-collar types whose job hunts have fizzled. In the past year alone, the number of retail applicants over age 55 jumped 25 percent, says workforce-management outfit Kronos. But if the new wave of aspiring shelf stockers expects a waltz down the candy aisle, they’re in for a reality check: That minimum-wage gig behind the cash register is harder to get than ever–and even harder to keep.
Though few customers can see it, retail work is undergoing a revolution of sorts, with companies going to new extremes in their quest for efficient hiring (think online psychological testing) and more productive work. (They’ve calculated how long it should take to hang a shirt.) This shift couldn’t come at a worse time for all those unemployed professionals seeking a survival job or even a new career. Folks who thought they’d have no problem landing a job at the Gap [GPS: 21.69*, -0.61, -2.73%] actually face daunting odds, with retailers shedding more than 850,000 jobs since early 2008. Seasonal?hiring is down too. In fact, Kronos calculates that retailers are hiring just three workers for every 100 job applications they receive, a 57 percent reduction from three years ago. And once on the job, workers used to a degree of autonomy can find it tough to adjust to a world of tight control–where much of the customer interaction is tightly scripted, and managers routinely search workers’ bags at the end of their shifts.
Retailers say all this helps them maintain quality customer service and boost efficiency in tough times. Still, with all the changes going on in the do-more-with-less era, I decided to go hunting for a holiday gig in New York City–disclosing to store managers that I’m a reporter and might write about my experience. I expected to visit a few?stores, breeze through the interviews and enjoy a colorful reprieve from office work. I was, to say the least, in for a few surprises.
September feels like a fine time to find a Christmas job. After all, stores have been pushing the holidays earlier every year. But in store after store, harried managers tell me I’m jumping the gun: “We’re not hiring yet. We haven’t gotten our budgets.” Indeed, analysts say that’s because retailers, unsure of their holiday sales prospects this year, have delayed their usual staffing blitz. At Barney’s I’m directed out of the swanky showroom, around the corner and down a dank flight of stairs, where an irritable security guard tells me applications are available only from 2 to 5 p.m. (Barney’s says hours are limited to half the day because its human-resources people are “multitasking.”) At the sleek Apple [AAPL] outlet on Fifth Avenue, a clerk with a shaved head and thick black glasses waves me away with a curt response: “Apple dot com slash jobs.” In other words, paper applications don’t exist–I have to apply online.
Evidently, the days of old-fashioned paper applications are numbered. Discount retailers like Target, Sears [SHLD: 73.14*, -2.63, -3.47%] and Wal-Mart [WMT: 54.20*, +0.05, +0.09%] have job?seekers complete applications on in-store computer kiosks. Even Frederick’s of Hollywood [FOH] (yes, I tried there, too) tells me to go home and download an application. Experts say chains are striving for a consistent customer-service experience across hundreds of stores and that a centralized hiring system is the best way to filter job hopefuls. “We don’t have the resources to interview 800,000 people,” says Michael Theilmann, chief human-resources officer at JCPenney [JCP]. But that means having my fate decided over and over by a computer. And there’s little human interaction–unless you count the time a Sears computer kiosk invites me to return for an interview. The meeting lasts all of four minutes, and my interviewer doesn’t bother saying my name or introducing herself. (A Sears spokesperson says the interview should have included a discussion of my qualifications for a specific position.)
Human interaction isn’t a problem at Restoration Hardware, where I encounter another intriguing innovation, the group interview. With a half-dozen fellow job seekers, I sit in an office dotted with peppy slogans as an upbeat manager pops the routine questions (“How would a former employer describe you?”) and watches us duke it out in real time. One silver-haired gentleman in a crisp suit makes frequent allusions to his last job, at Tiffany; a woman in her 40s gushes about her past work experience at a “Resto” in Georgia. Not to be left out, a college student valiantly makes the case that working for his hometown parks department was perfect preparation for selling $4,000 sofas.
As the competition builds, the word love gets tossed around with alarming frequency. Everyone in the room loves Restoration Hardware. Everyone loves providing fantastic service. Everyone loves a positive attitude. The manager loves our answers. And yet, the exercise has been surprisingly revealing. In one hour, it’s clear who can think on their feet, hold the group’s attention and make a persuasive sales pitch. Through the company’s chief values officer, DeMonty Price, I later learn that’s precisely what they’re after: Group interviews, he says, reveal “high-energy people who can energize others.”
Alas, Restoration Hardware’s training schedule doesn’t work out, and two weeks into the search, I’m getting nervous. Bloomingdale’s [M] e-mails a curt rejection with a forbidding P.S.: “Please do not reply.” The purple-vested manager at Ralph Lauren [RL: 78.50*, -0.96, -1.20%] says he’ll keep our application “on file.” What am I doing wrong? Maryam Morse, retail practice leader for the Hay Group, says I should just apply at my favorite store; it’s probably where I’d make the best fit. And that’s how I land a job at J. Crew [JCG: 40.85*, -1.68, -3.95%].
Turns out, J. Crew is fairly old-school when it comes to hiring–I get the job with a paper application and routine interview, which takes place out on the mall concourse. “Welcome to my office!” says my interviewer. He steers the conversation from my current job to how I’d handle sticky customer-service scenarios and whether I can work until midnight during the holidays. Eight days later, I get the call offering a part-time sales-associate position for $9.60 an hour, plus commission. Maybe I’m not such a bad prize after all. In fact, says Doug Fleener, managing partner of retail consulting firm Dynamic Experiences Group, I’m actually a “dream hire”: professional, brand loyal and willing to work late. My complete lack of sales experience? No biggie. Retailers expect to do a lot of teaching.
I figure the training at J. Crew will be pretty intense. After all, Restoration Hardware puts new workers through a weeklong course, while Home Depot gives employees six months of product training in categories like lumber. But my two-night, six-hour J. Crew group orientation, conducted in a back room packed with boxes and a vacuum cleaner, is mainly devoted to administrative issues. We cover tax forms and scheduling procedures and review the list of “unacceptable behaviors,” like sleeping on the job and threatening to use a gun. Everyone perks up for an exhaustive discussion of the employee discount and sighs over the dress code. It’s very Hillary Clinton circa 1992–dark bottoms and button-front shirts, headbands encouraged. It’s also strictly enforced: Thanks to our New York location, CEO Mickey Drexler could pop in at any time. “I feel your pain,” our manager says.
The managers are so good-natured and enthusiastic, it’s hard to take offense at anything they say. I barely blink when one tells us that using the bathroom after we punch in constitutes “stealing time.” (When contacted for comment, J. Crew says it doesn’t want associates dressing and grooming on company time.) And it hardly feels intrusive when, at the end of the night, the managers smile and inspect my bag; one ultradiligent one even asks to see inside my wallet’s coin compartment. Such precautions, it turns out, aren’t limited to J. Crew, which says it’s trying to prevent employee theft. At some mall stores, employees have to carry their personal belongings in clear plastic bags.
But that’s hardly on my mind when I start my first shift at Store 700, two stories of prep heaven in a chic urban mall. It’s among the busiest in the chain and usually packed with inquisitive tourists. Despite plans to have me shadow a veteran clerk on my first day, there’s no time to observe. And since I have no idea where anything is located, how the clothes fit or where to find the “hold” slips, I have to learn on the fly. With my headset buzzing every 30 seconds with chatter between sales clerks and the back room, it feels like working the floor of the stock exchange.
J. Crew says that, had I stayed longer, I would have received additional training. Indeed, after several shifts, I do start getting the hang of things and can see how I might soon keep up with my fellow clerks who cheerfully juggle multiple customers–along with their refolding duties. Plus it’s fun to, say, encourage shoppers squeezing into toothpick cords to try the more flattering boot cut. Unlike retailers that create elaborate scripts dictating every potential interaction, J. Crew allows its clerks considerable freedom in handling customers, encouraging us to provide honest feedback in the dressing room. (“They’ll love you for it,” says our manager.) I also appreciate that I’m not immediately held to a stringent hourly sales goal. In some chains, even rookies have to meet tough quotas for sales, card applications and shelf upkeep–or face the ax.
Still, it’s easy to understand why annual industry turnover in retailing tops 100 percent. One manager discourages me from chatting with coworkers, even when the store’s closed and we’re stocking displays. In the back, a grimy locker room doubles as the break room, with a few broken, stained office chairs, no table and notices from management about a cockroach problem. According to Ron Wince, CEO of Guidon Performance Solutions, a Phoenix consulting firm, space in the back of the store costs just as much to rent as space in the front, so retailers tend to scrimp on employee areas. The average break room, he says, is “a pit.” J. Crew’s response? It’s up to every associate to keep the break room clean.
Then there are the unpredictable hours, perhaps the toughest adjustment for anyone used to the office 9-to-5. J. Crew’s policy of putting hourly workers “on call” actually isn’t so unusual in this climate; such flexibility helps companies align labor costs with traffic flow, says consultant Fleener. My other surprise? A midweek, nine-hour overnight shift to help unpack and fold hundreds of cartons of new holiday inventory. It feels odd to punch in after dark and downright surreal when the manager tells us to take our dinner break before 2 a.m., because that’s when he’ll be locking the doors for the rest of the night. Consultants say this practice, which J. Crew says it adopted for associates’ safety, has become common in the retail world.
Sometime around sunrise, I’m having an existential zombie crisis over the fact that I’ve just spent four hours folding a small table of T-shirts. But a cheerful coworker says not to worry: He once spent a whole night on a single sweater display. “It was a good-ass table,” he adds proudly. He’s right–a decent 5 a.m. folding job is nothing to scoff at. Still, my manager thinks otherwise. “Not so great,” he says, and he ruffles up my stacks. “We’ll just have to give them a ‘vintage’ look.”
All contents © 2009 SmartMoney Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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