6th Time

 The one department that I had worked in retail the most was Luggage.  When Macy's took over Rich's, they did away with the Lamp Department.  I had turned that dept. into the number one Lamp Dept. in all of Rich's.  With Lamps gone, I was moved to be the sales associate in Luggage. 

 At the time, Luggage was located in a small corner of the store near the break room.  This is where it was when I worked there the first time at Rich's.  It was in an area near the manager's office, so he/she saw me every day.  You just couldn't hide out from the bigwigs.  As I started selling Luggage at Macy's, I achieved some success.  The sales reps already knew me from my previous work in Luggage, and they knew that I knew something about the product.  My supervisors weren't very pleased that I knew more than they did, but it worked out well with the higher ups.  I started making sales so much that the store awarded me with new fixtures for the department.  I started selling so much Luggage that eventually the store saw that I needed more floor space to expand the selection, so they moved the department to an area twice the size as where I had been.  It was actually in the same area as Lamps had been.  I was named "The Luggage King of Columbia."

 There were other Luggage stores in Columbia, and I would refer customers to them, as long as they would also refer customers to me.  That relationship worked out well.  I immersed myself in how bags were made and which ones would tear up faster than others.  Most companies would offer "lifetime warranties" on the bags.  It wasn't your lifetime.  It was the lifetime of the bag.  Hardside lifetimes were around 15-20 years.  Softside bags ranged from 2-7 years.  And one cool thing was that if a customer wanted to use the warranty, they would have to ship it back to the manufacturer themselves, and most people didn't want to do that.  Of course, Macy's policy was that they would take back anything.  I didn't adhere to that policy much.

 My sales techniques were very successful.  The first thing I would ask a customer was were they flying or driving.  If they said "flying", then I would move them to the more expensive bags.  If they said "driving", then they could pick any bag including those that were very cheaply made.  If a customer was flying but didn't want to pay top dollar for a bag, I would tell them the story that happened to me in Frankfurt, Germany.  

 I was getting my suitcase off of the carousel at the airport, but my clothes came out before my bag did.  I told them that I had to get a belt and tie it around my bag, because the locks had broken.  It was a true story, but it made the customers think that they didn't want my experience to happen to them.  They would then buy the more expensive bag.  There was something else that I had to tell the customers, and that was that I had some ethics.  I was always truthful with the customers, and I would tell them that if their bag broke coming off of the carousel, the first one they would be mad at would be the airline for breaking the bag.  The second one would be me for selling the bag to them.  I just would rather not have to deal with that guilt.  Consequently, I had very few returns.  My bosses would be mad at me, because I wouldn't sell the cheap luggage which was advertised.  

 I also got spiffs from manufacturers for the bags I would sell in a particular brand.  Sometimes, I would have customers come in, and I would try and get them to buy Samsonite, because I was getting a spiff for every bag I sold from them.  The next week, a customer might come back, and I would suggest Delsey instead.  They would ask why I was suggesting one over another, and I would have to make up a reason.  I couldn't tell them that I was getting a better spiff from one company over another.  The spiff was like a commission, and it helped out a lot with my take-home pay.

 I would go to meetings in Atlanta having to do with Luggage, and I got a lot of freebies from shirts to umbrellas to accessories to bags.  At one time, I had more bags than I knew what to do with.  I gave a lot of that stuff away to charities.

 I worked in Luggage for Macy's for about 5 years.  Right before I left, my sales were so good that the Macy's Columbia store was in the top 5 in Luggage Departments for the South Region of Macy's stores, and in the top ten of all Macy's stores in the company.  I was selling close to a million dollars a year in product.  After I left, Luggage sort of dried up.  But for me, the 6th time selling Luggage was the charm.

No Brakes

 I had gone to see my Mother at Martha Franks in Laurens one Sunday afternoon.  I tried to get up there every week to 10 days.  As I got in my car to head home, I noticed that I didn't have much brake pressure.  I continued on down the road and found all of the pressure had gone.  I had no brakes.
 Normally, I would drive home on the "old road", because I hate interstates.  And besides, I like the scenery.  But on this day, I realized that I needed to go on the interstate, because all of the town in between Laurens and Columbia had stop lights.  I could get into an accident.  So, off I went on I-26 with no brakes.
 The good news was that I could take a steady speed.  The bad news was that I didn't have enough gas to get home.  I decided to drive as if it was snowing.  I slowed into turns like I would with ice on the road.  It was the summertime when this happened.  Some drivers honked their horns at me, but I just yelled back that I didn't have any brakes.  I started looking for a gas station off of the interstate and found one at the Newberry exit.  I slowed to a crawl on the ramp and eased into the gas station.  I opened the door and dragged my foot for it to stop.  I felt like Fred Flintstone. Someone told me later that if I had shifted into neutral that the car would have been easier to stop.   I filled up and eased out and onto the interstate again.
 As I got closer to Columbia, I knew I had to get to a repair shop that was open on Sundays.  I decided on Pep Boys on Decker near Columbia Mall.  That meant that I had to get on I-20 before getting to Columbia.  The exit is a long curving one, so I slowed to another crawl to take the curve.  More cars honked at me, but I had no brakes.  Some drivers saluted me with one finger.  I waved back.  I was fortunate that this was a Sunday afternoon, and traffic was light.
 I got up to the Two Notch exit and slowed to the traffic light at the end of the ramp.  No cars were coming, so I turned right onto Two Notch.  I got up to the Decker Road turn that I had to take to the left.  The light was green, so I proceeded on to Pep Boys.  In order to get into their parking lot, I had to go down a hill.  I was just creeping along and got to a parking space.  I went in and told them what had happened that afternoon.  They were amazed I was still alive.  I had learned how to drive in ice and snow, when I lived in Fort Worth, so those memories helped me get back home.  They fixed the leak in the break line, and all was well.  It was a scary day, and I had to go to the bathroom big time, when I got home.

Macy's

 Macy's bought out Rich's during my tenure there.  The main change was the name and some of the merchandise.  Basically, it stayed the store.  We still went to Atlanta for vendor meetings, just like we did at Rich's.  Those trips were fun, when we got to rarely stay over.  Most of the time, we had to go there and back in one day.  Those were the zombie trips.  Leaving at like 4am to get there for the start of the meeting, and then getting back home around 10pm.  One nice thing we usually did was to stop at a place called Social Circle to eat at a Southern-style restaurant outside of Atlanta.  I went with my supervisor on one trip.  She was African-American.  We stopped at a housing development and had the real estate agent show us around.  We just thought it would be fun to have the agent think we were a couple.  We got some interesting looks.  Another trip was for Electronics.  I went to the meetings, and my then supervisor (different one) went out to clubs instead.  When he picked me up at the end of the meeting, I had to tell him what it was all about, so it would appear that he had gone too.  He also drove very fast going back to Columbia, and we made it in under three hours.  But, the real difference that I saw between Rich's and Macy's was that Rich's was run more like a family business, while Macy's was run more like a corporate business.
 One day, I was in Housewares just after the company change.  A woman came up to my register to buy something.  She asked me if I had seen any change since Rich's had become Macy's.  With a straight face, I told her there had been one major change.  All of the employees were required to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV and then report about it the next day to our store manager.  The woman's mouth dropped open in shock.  Her husband walked up, and she told him what I had said.  He looked at me in shock, and I told him it was true.  They went away in horror that a company would make us do that.  Oh the humanity!  I would like to apologize to that couple, whoever they were, for my joke on them.  We didn't really have to watch the parade, but it was encouraged.