"My first lesson on the store system came on my first day in the store—and then one every day for an hour, during the whole first week. I liked that—for then I knew how things were supposed to be done. They even took us out into departments that were not busy early in the morning and had us make out certain kinds of sales right behind the counter, and carry the whole thing through—all that was lacking being the real customer. It gave us confidence and showed us things that we thought we knew, but that, when it came right down to it, we didn't know at all. The training department also gave us pamphlets and notices about how to use the telephones and telling us to do certain things, as well as how our salary and commission were to be figured. Also one leaflet told us about Macy's underselling policy, and what we should do in case a customer reported merchandise as being cheaper somewhere else—and, although I had heard before of this policy of Macy's, I came to believe in it faithfully, after I had read the booklet.
"When you're new in a department the 'higher up' man can do much to make you feel glad that you are there. My section manager and buyer were both fine. The buyer told us in a talk she gave us all about how she'd been with Macy's for twenty-five years; that she had worked for several years, when she first began, at six dollars a week. She made us feel that there surely must be a chance for every one of us—that a firm that is worth staying with that long must be pretty fine indeed—and that it was just up to us individually, whether or not we would go ahead. As for our section manager, he was always so nice in the way he handled any transaction with us—giving us an extended lunch-hour or signing any sales checks that needed his 'O. K.' In many stores the section managers are so disagreeable about doing their work that the salesgirls hate to have them 'O. K.' things—but I have found it quite the opposite at Macy's. And when he had the time and saw any of us looking glum or tired our man would talk to us and succeed in cheering us up.
"There are many things, too, that I discovered Macy's doing for its employees—all sorts of clubs and parties. One of the most useful of the first of these I found to be the umbrella club. All I had to do one day when it began unexpectedly to rain was to go up to the training department, deposit fifty cents and receive an umbrella. If I left Macy's within the month, I would get my fifty cents back. Of course, I was to return the umbrella the very first clear day but any time thereafter that I needed one I could go upstairs and get it.
"Then, too, there's the recreation room—you have two fifteen-minute relief periods a day in the store in addition to your lunch time. You can go to the dressing rooms and wash up a bit and then go to the recreation room, where there are plenty of large, comfy chairs, a piano, books and the like. The room is a veritable social center all the day long—I always found lots of friends there, no matter at what time I took my relief periods. And you go back to your work refreshed and 'full of pep' once again. Another place where you have a chance to see your friends is the employees' lunchroom—and it certainly is a popular place. Despite the clatter and rush, the Macy folks have a good time in their cafeteria; the crowds that eat there every day prove the wholesomeness of its food. It is good home cooking and, as far as its cheapness is concerned—well, I've eaten veritable dinners there at the noon hour, day after day, and never had my check total more than twenty-five cents; with thirteen or fifteen nearer the average.
"One morning we all came early to the store—to a courtesy rally. Thousands of us—yes, literally thousands of us—gathered on the main floor, on the central stair and everywhere roundabout it, and we sang songs about smiling; and other optimistic things. Then, after good addresses by Mr. Straus and Mr. Spillman, we all sang again and, in response to an inquiry from one of the store executives, all shouted that we would try to carry on with the new Macy slogan of 'A smile with every package' and 'a thank you as goodbye.'"
Frank testimony, indeed. And honest.
To bring this atmosphere about the worker in the store may no more be the result of hit-and-miss than the right sort of hiring. In the modern marts of the new Bagdad the creation of morale, not merely the retention of a good industrial relationship between a store and its workers but a constant bettering of it, has come to be as important a problem as that of the buying or the delivering of its merchandise, or even its problems of making its public constantly acquainted with its offerings and advantages.
The work of such a department—in Macy's the department of training—divides itself quite logically and clearly into two great avenues; the one educational, the other recreational. Each takes hold of the newcomer to the store almost from the very moment that he or she enters upon its lists of employment. The new salesgirl's name is hardly upon the rolls of the department to which she is assigned before a member of the store's reception committee is upon her heels and steering her straight through all the maze of fresh experiences that necessarily must await the novitiate. She is told all about her time disc of brass—the individual coin that bears her distinctive number (built up of her department number plus her own serial one) which she must drop into its allotted slot at the employees' entrance when she comes to it in the morning and which she must see is returned to her before the day is done in order that she may have it to use again upon the morrow; how, going from the locker room to her department at the day's beginning, she must sign its own time-roll, which then becomes accountable for her comings and goings through the rest of the day; how she can go and when she must return; how she is paid—her salary, her quota, her commissions, her bonuses.
All of this might sound complicated, indeed, to the new girl, were it not for the kindness of her assigned "committeeman." Complications in the hands of a woman who has been through the mill, herself, and who has come to see how they are really not complications at all, but cogs in the grinding wheels of a great and systematic machine, are easily explained. The new girl catches on. The simple but accurate psychological tests through which she was put before she was accepted for Macy's assure this. She catches on and within a year—perhaps within a space of but a few months—she, herself, is on the reception committee and helping other new girls through the maze of first employment.