My Santaland Diaries
Every Christmas I’ll buy somebody Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris. I’m a big fan. I especially like his Santaland Diaries about his time working as a holiday elf at Macy’s Herald Square. I even saw the play last year in St. Petersburg, Florida, though I was wholly disappointed and extremely offended that they changed the character from gay to straight. I mean, really. It’s not even referenced until the end and only by the use of “he” instead of “she.” I hope that was just some southern chickenshit behavior and not the way the play was really written.
Besides being a big Sedaris fan, the other reason why I like Santaland Diaries is because it reminds me of a million years ago when I was a regional human resources manager at Macy’s here in New England. My first beefy HR job. So exciting! Ah, yes. Retail. Mmmm. Never having a job in retail as a teen, I had no idea. What I learned is that in retail, people work so damn hard.
Also, they are all out of their everloving minds, each and every one of them.
I present to you my own Santaland Diaries of a sort.
My job combined Employee Relations and Recruiting, which is a terrible combination, especially in retail. With recruiting it was more on a strategic level, planning recruitment events, managing the advertising, monitoring the process, coaching the managers on interviewing and selecting candidates. The ER side of things was more hands-on, in that I got the phone calls when the shit really hit the fan – discrimination, workplace violence, union issues, bitch slapping, smelly employees, sexual harassers, nervous breakdowns, oh-no-you-didn’t-come-to-work-in-a-tubetop. Call Rebecca.
At one point or another I covered all the stores in New England but once they hired a few more people, I finally ended up with three stores, probably about 800 or more people to cover. All fucking nuts. These could not be more different stores and I could not have received more different phone calls from them. A typical list for the week might include:
Store #1: Big urban issues. Someone’s shooting heroin in the bathroom. The union is up in arms about such and such and threatening to strike, and there’s a catfight between the Clinique girls and the Lancome girls.
Store #2: Typical suburban issues. Attendance, dress code, claims of discrimination by both customers and employees, and even bitchier catfights between the Clinique girls and the Lancome girls.
Store #3: A tiny little store where the average age of the employee was like 63 because all the retirees would move to the area and get part time jobs. “Gertrude is going senile, but I don’t want to fire her because if I do, I’m afraid she’ll have no reason to get up in the morning and she’ll die. Oh, and FYI, the Clinique girls and the Lancome girls hate each other again.”
Then Christmas came and everyone went even more batshit. One employee complained that the Dancing Santa’s swinging hips were too sexual and she couldn’t think so she had to go home. The managers, blind with exhaustion and desperate to fill all the temporary jobs, began hiring anyone. This one obviously mentally ill woman would call me almost every day and leave me long, bizarre voice mails on why working at Macy’s was her lifetime goal. When she finally got it together to come in for an interview, a manager actually hired her. When the manager told me I just shook my head and went to the ladies room for a break where I found said new hire sitting on the pot taking a shit with the door to the handicap stall wide open, swinging her legs and chatting with me like we were old pals.
Another new hire had great potential but then started changing the dosage to whatever meds she was taking. I received a phone call a week into her holiday employment with the Domestics department that a customer had found her asleep on a Ralph Lauren bed display and couldn’t be woken up.
Oh, and it’s always great when a job teaches you something new. One time two girls got into an all out hair pulling, face scratching brawl just outside work and my HR assistant took statements which she handed to me with a smirk the next day. I will never forget reading that piece of paper. Man, I wish I had kept a copy. It read like a Jerry Springer episode written in juvenile loopdeloop writing, complete with big circles to dot the “I”s. “Kitty and I were friends…or so I thought!” And it went on to explain how Kitty and the other girl became friends at work. Then the girls realized that Kitty was dating the other’s ex boyfriend who also worked at the store. Well, Kitty told the ex “guess who my new friend is?” So the ex started telling Kitty about all the things he and the girl used to do together and Kitty told the whole store. Thus, the fight. I remember just looking up at my assistant and saying in all innocence to her, “what does ‘tossed his salad’ mean?”
Oh those crazy crazy people. I did love them so. Maybe I’ll pop in and visit while doing my holiday shopping and convince the Clinique girls to fork over the good samples because the chicks over at Lancome gave me an extra free gift.
Besides being a big Sedaris fan, the other reason why I like Santaland Diaries is because it reminds me of a million years ago when I was a regional human resources manager at Macy’s here in New England. My first beefy HR job. So exciting! Ah, yes. Retail. Mmmm. Never having a job in retail as a teen, I had no idea. What I learned is that in retail, people work so damn hard.
Also, they are all out of their everloving minds, each and every one of them.
I present to you my own Santaland Diaries of a sort.
My job combined Employee Relations and Recruiting, which is a terrible combination, especially in retail. With recruiting it was more on a strategic level, planning recruitment events, managing the advertising, monitoring the process, coaching the managers on interviewing and selecting candidates. The ER side of things was more hands-on, in that I got the phone calls when the shit really hit the fan – discrimination, workplace violence, union issues, bitch slapping, smelly employees, sexual harassers, nervous breakdowns, oh-no-you-didn’t-come-to-work-in-a-tubetop. Call Rebecca.
At one point or another I covered all the stores in New England but once they hired a few more people, I finally ended up with three stores, probably about 800 or more people to cover. All fucking nuts. These could not be more different stores and I could not have received more different phone calls from them. A typical list for the week might include:
Store #1: Big urban issues. Someone’s shooting heroin in the bathroom. The union is up in arms about such and such and threatening to strike, and there’s a catfight between the Clinique girls and the Lancome girls.
Store #2: Typical suburban issues. Attendance, dress code, claims of discrimination by both customers and employees, and even bitchier catfights between the Clinique girls and the Lancome girls.
Store #3: A tiny little store where the average age of the employee was like 63 because all the retirees would move to the area and get part time jobs. “Gertrude is going senile, but I don’t want to fire her because if I do, I’m afraid she’ll have no reason to get up in the morning and she’ll die. Oh, and FYI, the Clinique girls and the Lancome girls hate each other again.”
Then Christmas came and everyone went even more batshit. One employee complained that the Dancing Santa’s swinging hips were too sexual and she couldn’t think so she had to go home. The managers, blind with exhaustion and desperate to fill all the temporary jobs, began hiring anyone. This one obviously mentally ill woman would call me almost every day and leave me long, bizarre voice mails on why working at Macy’s was her lifetime goal. When she finally got it together to come in for an interview, a manager actually hired her. When the manager told me I just shook my head and went to the ladies room for a break where I found said new hire sitting on the pot taking a shit with the door to the handicap stall wide open, swinging her legs and chatting with me like we were old pals.
Another new hire had great potential but then started changing the dosage to whatever meds she was taking. I received a phone call a week into her holiday employment with the Domestics department that a customer had found her asleep on a Ralph Lauren bed display and couldn’t be woken up.
Oh, and it’s always great when a job teaches you something new. One time two girls got into an all out hair pulling, face scratching brawl just outside work and my HR assistant took statements which she handed to me with a smirk the next day. I will never forget reading that piece of paper. Man, I wish I had kept a copy. It read like a Jerry Springer episode written in juvenile loopdeloop writing, complete with big circles to dot the “I”s. “Kitty and I were friends…or so I thought!” And it went on to explain how Kitty and the other girl became friends at work. Then the girls realized that Kitty was dating the other’s ex boyfriend who also worked at the store. Well, Kitty told the ex “guess who my new friend is?” So the ex started telling Kitty about all the things he and the girl used to do together and Kitty told the whole store. Thus, the fight. I remember just looking up at my assistant and saying in all innocence to her, “what does ‘tossed his salad’ mean?”
Oh those crazy crazy people. I did love them so. Maybe I’ll pop in and visit while doing my holiday shopping and convince the Clinique girls to fork over the good samples because the chicks over at Lancome gave me an extra free gift.
posted by Rebecca at 6:24 PM
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