Another Source of Holiday Stress

With Thanksgiving behind us, we’re full on into the Christmas shopping season. And like most overburdened single mothers, I’m dreading the upcoming weeks of frenzy and desperation.

But it’s not the hordes of humanity unleashed upon local malls that I abhor. Or the overflowing parking lots that turn us into human vultures, forced to trail menacingly behind weary shoppers searching for their cars, eager to pounce as soon as they vacate their spots.

Those are hazards that I’m resigned to accepting, a sort of sine qua non of the Christmas shopping season.

What sends my blood pressure soaring are dumb-as-a-post salesclerks, those clueless types who either don’t understand or don’t care that their primary job is to serve me, the customer.

It’s not a problem that’s limited to the Christmas shopping season, and heaven knows this is the time to cut inexperienced and overworked salesclerks some slack. I don’t imagine it’s easy waiting on the 14th person that day demanding a sold-out Holiday Magic Barbie or complaining because those fuzzy moose slippers don’t come in size 12.

But it seems to me that just when stores need their smartest, most experienced hands on duty, if only for crowd control, they bring in the clowns. And the combination of untrained temporary help and frayed shoppers’ nerves can make Christmas shopping the ultimate test of fortitude.

Where do they get these people? Follow me.

*

Macy’s Holiday Hiring Open House at the Glendale Galleria is only 10 minutes old, and already the line of would-be Christmas help snakes out of the cramped customer-service area and around carousels of clothes.

More than 100 people have shown up for a chance to be among the 1,500 that Macy’s plans to hire in Southern California this season. Across the San Fernando Valley, hundreds more will be queuing up this week at hiring fairs in Woodland Hills, Sherman Oaks, Ventura, Burbank, Thousand Oaks and Northridge.

The Glendale crowd is mostly young and well-dressed, though there is a handful of older job seekers--some retired, others displaced from careers of long standing.

They jostle for space to fill out applications--leaning on walls, counters and each other’s backs--then line up to march in groups through the children’s department. Then they line up again and wait to be summoned by store managers, who talk to them briefly, sizing them up lickety-split in what passes for interviews in the seasonal-hiring game.

Some are offered jobs on the spot--a chance to make $5 to $7 an hour, working from 10 to 35 hours a week until the day after Christmas. Others are told to call back next week, when staffing needs are clearer and a new crop of candidates has been picked over. And others, undoubtedly, get the old “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” routine.

Checking out the crowd, it’s not hard to make some quick guesses about who will be hired and who won’t. The dapper young man wearing a tan suit and a dazzling smile is a natural salesman, never mind the hoop earrings in each ear. The young woman in the spandex dress with the missing front teeth who mumbles to herself as she stands in line will probably get the heave-ho.

The employee market is good for department stores this year, said Donna Pohle, human resources manager for Macy’s in Northridge and Woodland Hills. “There are lots of people who are unemployed. We’ve had pretty heavy traffic [at holiday hiring fairs] . . . and a lot of the people we see really seem to want the jobs.”

More than 80 job seekers showed up last Tuesday for an open house at the Woodland Hills store, which needs to hire about 90 temporary clerks to get through the holidays. The candidates included college students with time on their hands, housewives seeking a little extra holiday income and older people who want to keep busy during the holidays, Pohle said.

The temps are given eight hours of training, Pohle said, including a four-hour computer session to familiarize them with the cash register and store procedures, and two hours of customer-service training.

That covers such things as “approaching and acknowledging customers [and] wearing their name badges,” as well as the fine points of selling: Be sure to suggest additional items if we don’t have what the customer wants. And always close a sale by asking, “Will this be on your Macy’s charge?”

“It’s about fostering additional customers for repeat business,” Pohle explained. “And leaving the customer with a pleasant experience--satisfying the customer.”

*

Today’s store execs have mastered the vocabulary of customer service. Salesclerks are “associates” and customers are “guests.”

But during the busy holiday season, stores are hard-pressed to provide adequate training to temporary “associates,” short-timers who may be off the payroll even before their first paycheck arrives.

“Unfortunately, the department stores go on the theory that these people have experience--they’ve been customers before, so they ought to know what to do as clerks,” said Robert Kahn, a veteran of more than 50 years in the retail business who publishes the newsletter Retailing Today from his Northern California home.

“They put them behind the counters, and they don’t know a thing. They don’t know the merchandise, and they don’t know where the ladies’ room is.”

Kahn spent 13 years on the board of Wal-Mart, the industry giant known for its strong customer-service ethic. There, he recalled, employees had to follow the “10-foot rule”: “Whenever a customer gets within 10 feet of you, you stop and ask to help them.

“Now you go in stores and it seems like the 10-foot rule is working in reverse,” he said. “You get within 10 feet of a clerk and they suddenly get very busy or look the other way,”

Or worse. A co-worker recounted this experience with clerks from hell. He and his wife approached a drugstore sales counter and waited patiently while the two clerks chatted about their dates the previous night.

After a few minutes, his wife sought their attention: “Excuse me, I have a question.” The clerks glared at her.

“Wait just a minute,” one intoned icily, returning to the discussion of whether that guy was a born creep or just drunk.

And I was among a group of hapless shoppers waiting in line recently in a chain store’s children’s department when a feud between two “associates” shut the register down, leaving half a dozen bewildered “guests” in its wake.

“I told you I was taking my break after this customer!” one clerk yelled to the other, stuffing her “guest’s” newly purchased clothes into a shopping bag.

“Well, I have to do the fitting rooms and I’m going to do it now,” the other said, as she disappeared among the racks.

“You do whatever you want, but I’m leaving for my break,” the first clerk yelled back. And she stomped off, without a word to us.

Kahn says most shoppers suffer in silence when they are ignored or mistreated by store clerks. “People are afraid of confrontations, so they just take it,” Kahn said. “Believe me, I could write a 22-volume encyclopedia on abuse of customers by salespeople.”

I believe him.