The inside of a retail store manager’s office is a hellish place. No matter your position in the temporal world of retail sales, you are always trying to escape its caged fluorescence. Whether you’re the manager who is constantly strategizing his or her way to the next level, or their employee, just trying to get back to work, this space is fleeting--it wants to leave itself. Any attempts toward improvement can, at any moment, all be placed in a single cardboard box and removed. This is a place that has no definition or character all it’s own. It’s the lukewarm that God spits out.
An 8 x 8 afterthought in the corner of the floor plan, this specific office doesn’t even have ventilation. The door needs to be opened time and again so that its occupants do not die. At various points throughout the day, from the corner of your eye, you will see the door gasping for air as it is forcefully opened-closed-opened-closed. Oxygen is violently sucked in and spit out like so many of the workers it temporarily sustains. There is likely some great corporate design in this. I think someone was promoted for their brilliant idea of using the threat of impending suffocation to encourage managers to periodically patrol the sales floor.
Inside, other than the manager’s furniture and palpable lack of oxygen, there are two things every one of these offices should have. Every store manager should have, within their reach, surveillance and acrylic. The former to monitor his minions, the latter to remind him how good a job he does at it.
My distaste for acrylic is a recent development. I have no good reason but that it decorates the walls of this 64 sq. ft chamber, to hate it. Logical, if not necessary, in shower doors, aquariums and false nails, acrylic serves its purpose in numerous applications. In award form, it is cheap. It is plastic. It is not significant. It is not valuable. No one every received their “Longest Streak without a Sick Day Award” at the company picnic and exclaimed “Oh, it’s heavier than I thought it would be!” If you ever receive more than a handful of these acrylic awards, you should shave the fifth one down to knife form and jam it into your thigh.
This particular manager’s office is an armory of acrylic. Two walls are lined with “Most New Phone Line Activations”, “Outstanding Achievement in Accessories” and (lately) “Rockstar of Retail” awards. There must be 40 plaques and awards (though some are embarrassingly self-produced certificates that still have the printer date/time stamp on the bottom).
Sadly, the awards are not even given in earnest. When the Vice President of Sales hands you an acrylic award and says “great job”, he is placating you. Your acrylic award is your official pat on the head. I don’t mean to discourage anyone who has received one of these tokens. Surely, you should be proud of any accomplishments in your job or career. But when it comes to acrylic in the retail world, you don’t want it weighing you down. Never accumulate more than you can fit in that cardboard box, or you’ll never escape your acrylic cage. One or two of these is a sign you’re headed in the right direction. Twenty of these means you’re already buried.
The subterranean man standing beside the desk has his name etched into every one of these awards. “Cock Bombay.” Cock Bombay is not a real name, of course. Cock Bombay has earned this moniker because he is short, struts around like a rooster, and is from Bombay, India. Oh yeah, and he’s kind of a dick.
He asks me to sit down as he walks around his oversized leather chair, placing his hand on its shoulder. He takes a deep breath, puffing up his chest as he reads his own name on one of the plaques. “So, Mr. Jason.” He exhales while pulling the chair back and slowly slinking in. He breathes again and begins to thoroughly rub his face as if the answers are under his skin. He closes his eyes dramatically and tilts his head back. He opens them on the ceiling tiles.
“Customer was very upset.”
“Yeah, I know.” I am already agitated by this routine and I am quick to respond. He’s milking the drama as the line of customers is growing outside.
“Do you know why customer was very upset?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you think customer was very upset?”
“Because she has unrealistic expectations that could not be met.”
Hands to face, he rubs, searching. He gives me that what-are-we-going-to-do-with-you sigh.
“Put it to you this way,” he butchers and pauses again, “customer is not always right.”
I cautiously agree. The other foot should be on its way.
He continues, “but at the bottom of the line, the customer must be right. The customer is boss. Without the customer, there is no job. Make sense?”
I nod. Make sense.
He stands up. He is wearing a mustard yellow shirt with a tie his wife left out that matches as well as orange can possibly match mustard(Tupperware and the '70's tried this once). His torso is short. He ties his tie so that the fat front falls equal to the narrow back. Even then, and with his greatest efforts of leaning back, protruding his chest, the tie still falls just bellow his belt. He grabs his belt and tugs on it, less to pull it up and more to recruit it for moral support. His pants are pressed, his shoes are shined. He is well-presented. His hair is always unimaginatively coiffed. It fades up the sides to a predictable 1.5 inch slicked-but-spiked top. His dark brown skin makes the false smile stand out but somehow supports his intense, deep brown eyes.
He breathes again slowly, but then builds up speed for an inspirational finale.
“It may be goddamn hard sometime, but we have to remember who pays the bill. I bet you my job, if you take care of the customer, she will come back and buy from you. If customers happy, the wolume will be there. The customers will be back.”
It’s not on every v-word that the upper row of teeth fail to buzz the lower lip, it’s only a select few. “Wolume” comes up in every sales meeting that mentions our numbers. It's one of my favorites.
“Got it?”
Got it.
He’s as ready as I am for this meeting to end. Air is precious and we must resurface.
“Go on. Go make money.”
“You mean take care of the customer.”
“That’s my guy!” He chuckles before realizing, “Oh! and take your hi-liter.”
“My what?”
Then, “oh, yeah” as I hang a hi-liter around my neck.
