Yet this is but one of Macy's shops under that giant roof of Herald Square. There are others in close proximity—like those for the making of mattresses and bedding of every sort and variety and the establishment which brings broken toys back into life again. To my own Peter Pannish soul this last forever has the greatest fascination. Once, long years ago, I went into a great store in a distant city and found up under its roof a man whose sole task from one year's end to the other was the making of repairs upon toy locomotives. How I envied that man his job! And how the other day I envied the job of the Macy man who was repainting dolls' houses, one fascinating suburban villa after another. The doctor in the far corner of the room, whose patients ran all the way from lovely dolls of the most delicate china and porcelain to Teddy Bears who apparently had been badly worsted in some terrific nursery struggle, was a man with a position in which he might have genuine pride; but for the painting and re-arranging of those small houses a man, with an imagination in his soul, might almost afford to pay for the privilege of doing the work!
Five-thirty!
Again the doormen to their posts, two or three minutes in advance of the exact hour set. The minute hand upon the face of the clock no sooner reaches the exact bottom of its course, before a bell rings within the store and the great doors shut—simultaneously, as in the morning they had opened. But not permanently, of course. Dozens, hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more shoppers still are left within the store. Each is to be accorded a full opportunity to finish his or her transactions. There is no hurry; no ostensible hurry, at any rate. It would not be good-breeding to hasten the customer upon his way. And a canon of good merchandising is good breeding.
Gradually, however, the late-stayers eliminate themselves. The big doors open to let them out, but never again this day to let newcomers in. No rule of the house is observed more inexorably. And so gradually the store empties itself.
In the meantime certain departments have already ceased to function. The salesfolk are dismissed for the night and go scurrying off. A few bring out the dust-covers and these go out upon the stock. Counters are emptied. The stock, wherever possible, is put away, and when not put away is carefully covered. Nothing is left to chance nor to dust. System reigns. And the section manager, the last to leave his department for the night, makes sure that everything there is ship-shape against the coming of another day.
Before he is gone—and he, in Macy's, is multiplied into ninety or a hundred human units—the cleaning squads are out upon the floor, rolling out their bin-like carts in orderly formation and proceeding upon the debris like a miniature army. Four, five, six hours of hard work await them. It will be midnight, perhaps later, before the store is absolutely clean again and settled down to the monotonous presence of the watchman, to await the arrival of another dawn.
In the meantime the Macy family is pouring forth into the side streets through the doorways through which they entered before nine of the morning. There is little restriction, no red-tape about their leaving. Their brass discs—each individual and bearing the employee's designating number—which they dropped in the morning have been returned to them in the course of the day for use again upon the morrow.
The only formality about their leaving—if indeed it might be called a formality—is the quick-fire inspection made by two store detectives who stand either side of the descending file at the main employees' stair, to see if any packages which are being carried out are lacking the check-room stamp and visé.
These last are the store's protection against possible theft through its inner walls. The workers who bring packages in, either in the morning or at any later time in the progress of the day, are asked to take them to a well-equipped check and storage room close by the lockers, where they may regain them at night, stamped and viséd, to go out into the open once again. Any purchases that they may make during the day follow a similar course. It is a definite and an orderly procedure. Any other would be indefinite and to an extent disorderly.