As teachers in Macy's department of training there are enrolled today only those men and women who have received a thorough normal school education in this great new science of retailing. They do nothing but instruct the store's workers and then follow up to make sure that these are putting into practice the principles in which they have just been instructed. Except for the training of the future executives the school time is taken entirely from regular business hours and so, at the expense of the house, itself. This schooling—under the Macy roof, please remember—consists of individual instruction, informal classes and practical demonstration.
Specialized training under the roof includes instruction under the direct supervision of the Board of Education in fundamental school subjects to those classed as "juniors" and "delinquent seniors"; a junior salesmanship course given to all employees promoted from the non-selling divisions of the store to its selling divisions; a senior salesmanship class—including the study of textiles and non-textiles, and covering three busy months; the instruction of special groups of salesclerks to be transferred for special sales; "demonstration sales," in which teacher and pupil "play store," with the teacher impersonating various types of customers; the executive course to prepare employees for high executive positions of different rank and order; and the specialized instruction for dictaphone and comptometer operators, correspondence and file clerks and the like.
In the limited space of this book, I shall have no opportunity to carry you further into the details of this fascinating department of the modern store. The saleswoman's little black book that we saw but a few minutes ago ought to show it more clearly to your eyes than any elaborate presentments of schedules and curriculums. The result's the thing. And Macy's has the results. It has already achieved them. Not only has it lifted retail selling from the hard and rutty road of cold commercialism but it has lifted the individual seller, himself—which, to my way of thinking, is to be accounted a good deal of a triumph. In such a triumph society at large shares—and shares not a little.
It is house policy—sound policy—to encourage employees to look out not only for the store's interest, but for their own. An ambitious salesman is indeed an asset; and there are ways of keeping him ambitious. There is, for instance, the system of bonuses for punctuality, which takes the final form of extra holidays in the summertime. A week's holiday with pay is given without fail to each and every employee of eight months' standing. But a record of good attendance and punctuality for fifty long weeks brings another week of vacation, also with full pay. Department-stores not so long ago used to penalize their workers for tardiness. The new Macy plan works best, however.
The list of those bonus possibilities is long. There is, of course, chief amongst them, the bonus which takes the concrete form of a sales commission. The salesclerk is set a moderate quota for his or her week's work. On sales that reach above this figure he or she is paid a percentage commission. And, lest you may be tempted to dismiss this statement with a mere shrug of the shoulders, as a perfunctory thing perhaps, permit me to tell you that but last year a retail salesman in the furniture department earned in excess of $6,000 in wages and commissions.
One other thing before we are done with this main chapter on the Macy family and starting up another which shall show the super-household at its play; it is a thing closely associated both with department-store employment and training: this "special squad" which has become so distinctive a feature of the big red-brick selling enterprise in Herald Square. Concretely, it is a group of college graduates—the heads of the firm are themselves college men and have none of the contempt for education that has become so blatant a thing in the minds of so many "self-made business captains" of today—who desire to enter upon this fascinating and comparatively new field of department-store service.
As one of the executives of the department of training himself says, "Many of these young grads come in here with the rattle of their brand-new diplomas so loud in their ears that for quite a while they can't hear anything else."
Yet they are good material—as a rule, uncommonly good material. So Dr. Michael Lucey says, and Dr. Lucey knows. As a supplement to his educational work in the commercial high schools he entered Macy's last summer and spent the two months of his vacation in the special squad, studying the store from a variety of intimate and personal angles. On his first day in it, the distinguished educator sold clothing—men's clothing—and he sold to his first customer, an accomplishment which he notes with no little pride. His pride at the moment was large. But the next moment was destined to take a fall. A floor manager down the aisle espied the new clerk.
"Don't let those trousers sweep the floor," he admonished.
And the educator had his first taste of store discipline.