Sooner or later all these young men out of college get that first taste. It does not harm them. And it is not very long before they begin to observe that, after all, there are still a few things about which they know practically nothing. After which their real education begins.
A department-store is, among other things, a great melting pot. An Englishman who came into Macy's special squad last year inquired just what work might be expected of him. He was told.
"Manual labor," he protested, "I can't think of it. I wear the silver badge."
Which meant that he was one of the King's own—a pensioner of the late war. The store executive who first handled this bit of human raw material possessed a deal of real tact; most of them do. He smiled gently upon the Britisher.
"After all," he suggested, "you know you don't have to tell your King that you had to use your two good hands in hard work."
The Englishman saw the point. He laughed, shook hands and went to work. In six months he was an executive, himself. It's a way that they have at Macy's. And here is part of the way.
Manual labor is demanded invariably of those who enlist in the special squad. It has a regular system through which each of its workers must pass. First he is given the history and development of the store and of its policies. This work is followed by a week on the receiving platform and then a good stiff session in the marking-room. The college boy follows the merchandise along a little further. He proceeds for a while to sell it—then does the work of a section manager. After which there come, in logical sequence, the delivery department, the bureau of investigation, the comptroller's office, the tube system, an intensive study of the departments of employment and of training. These are not only studied but written reports are made upon them. After which he should have a pretty fair idea of the store and the things for which it stands.
The course is only varied in slight detail for the woman college graduate. Macy's has naught but the highest regard for the gentler sex—not alone as its patrons but as members of its staff—yesterday, today and tomorrow. A woman may not be able to handle heavy cases upon the receiving platform. But there are other sorts of cases that she may handle—and frequently with a tact and diplomacy not often shown by the more oppressed sex. I might cite a hundred instances from within the store where she has shown both—and initiative as well. But I shall give only one—where initiative played the largest part. Some few months ago a young woman who has climbed high in the store organization, to the important post of buyer of a most important line of muslin wearing apparel, found herself in France, but a few hours before the steamer upon which she was booked to sail to the United States was to depart from Southampton. To take a steamer across the Channel and then catch her boat was quite out of the question. She did the next best thing. She hopped on an aëroplane and flew from Paris to London; seemingly in almost less time than it here takes to tell it. She caught her boat. Her instructions were to catch the boat. And long since she had acquired the Macy habit of obeying orders.
Upon this, again, a whole volume might be written—upon the thoroughness of an organization which really organizes, a training department that really trains, a system which really systematizes. And all under the title of a family group—in which affection and tact and understanding come into play quite as often as discipline and energy and initiative.