Return to the Big Fancy: A Riotous Descent Into the Depths of Customer, Corporate, and Coworker Hell by Freeman Hall

Author:Freeman Hall [Hall, Freeman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440541742
Publisher: F+W Media, Inc.
Published: 2012-09-17T18:30:00+00:00

The Open Door to Nowhere

Like many companies, The Big Fancy pretended to care about what their employees had to say.

At meetings, in videos, and on posters and fliers, the execs were famous for stating, “The door is always open.” In a world where sales associates were treated like dog biscuits—devoured one day, and shit out the next—we were led to believe the company wanted to listen to our ideas.

Even though their hearing was selective and they had ears mostly full of wax.

Maybe it’s all those deafening rallies!

One day I decided to walk through the legendary open door and see if I could make a difference—even though I was intellectually aware that it would probably be slammed in my face.

During my lengthy tenure with The Big Fancy as a salesperson and manager, I’d never unleashed any kind of complaint or displeasure in a formal way. However, the current conditions were so bad in the store, I felt I had to speak up for my coworkers.

The place had never looked gloomier: It was a morgue of melancholy faces and overall depressing energy. Whispers of unhappiness floated across every department. If it wasn’t NATs and renters emptying out their closets and car trunks, it was the lack of buying custys and new merchandise to seduce them with. Salespeople were struggling to get sales and being fired left and right. Some were newbies left over from the holidays, but a few had long histories at The Big Fancy. The lucky ones got sales with low returns and didn’t misfire. That was how you survived at The Big Fancy during slow times.

For most, if you had three bad selling periods in a row and you didn’t meet volume expectations, you were terminated, regardless of how long you’d worked at The Big Fancy. Poor Lisa in Hosiery got canned, and half the store employees and many custys were crying over her departure. Lisa was crying. Her manager was even crying—because she didn’t want to do it. But there was one person not crying—The Big Fancy high priestess, Suzy Satan. It was well known throughout the store that she’d issued forth the firing with the attitude “let’s make an example.” Lisa was an amazing, personable salesperson with a great custy clientele, and she’d been a Super Seller and a Super Star in her Big Fancy past. But unfortunately for Lisa, she had three crappy selling periods in a row during a slow part of the year. And when you work on the sales floor at The Big Fancy, you are only as good as your last sale. Not your next one. The obstacles to success at The Big Fancy were insurmountable at the moment.

It was taking a toll all over the store. I could almost hear Suzy Davis-Satan screaming from her Mount Fancy lair: “If they misfire, they’re horrible salespeople, and I don’t want them here! Off with their incompetent heads!”

While salespeople were scared of losing their jobs, managers were also shaking in their dress shoes for fear of being fired if they didn’t follow Satan’s decrees and the corporate guidelines.

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