Places and Persons

...Perhaps they had all changed as drastically as the first one I had really noticed in years...

...The general impression created by a porch crowded with them was no whit different from that of a group of women drawn from any other station in life—assuming that there is any wide divergence still possible in this standardized country of ours...

...They also learn the routine of store management...

...What she said was true, but not one person in a thousand would have recognized it...

...Sometimes a dentist is also available free of charge...

...Then, because she had demonstrated ability, she was placed in charge of the merchandise that was sold in her department—made "head of stock"—and was responsible for having everything that should be on sale available for the possible customer...

...All of those women were highly paid executives...

...Banks and savings funds are also maintained and every encouragement for thrift is given...

...Since becoming a buyer she had developed into a department-store executive...

...She worked hard, appeared intelligent and pleasant and within four months she was regularly employed as a salesgirl...

...The clubs were invariably well attended...

...At present she has an income, which was shown to me on the auditors books, of more than $10,000 yearly...

...Interest accretions during the period have helped considerably—but it is nevertheless a remarkable achievement...

...supervises the goods she acquires after it reaches the store...

...Endowment insurance plans which provide for the eventual return of the money deposited are common...

...We had to agree with her...

...All of them keep nurses on duty in an emergency hospital, usually in the store building...

...Many of them have already done it...

...the conference is held largely to permit the people concerned to feel that they have had some small part in bringing about the improvement...

...There is an ever-increasing number of splendid young women who are entering department stores as salesgirls, as the first step in a career which they intend to push through to success...

...It often seemed absolutely incredible that shopgirls were the subject of my numerous conversations...

...Importations were purchased by the buyer, a much older and more experienced woman who bought for several departments...

...The store had helped her, by means of the customary employee's discount, to keep herself attractive and youthful in appearance, and it was expected that she would make use of these advantages...

...They are entirely desirable and as far removed from the dreary room on the third floor back of twenty years ago as they can be...

...Provision is made for the continuance of income in the event of sickness or injury...

...The department-store managers whom I saw, and there were many of them, unanimously favored either fairly young women with a college background as the most desirable employees or else women in the vicinity of thirty-five or so who have had a number of years of department-store experience...

...It happens that most of the women with a college background have less than four years' attendance at college but what they have is increasingly valuable to them in their present work...

...I glanced at her with mild surprise...

...Promotions made in the organization carried her into the position of assistant buyer, and she acquired all the domestic merchandise for her department...

...Miss Jones was a competent and capable employee, modern in every way...

...The woman has been a buyer of imported merchandise for more than ten years and has earned high salaries, much of which she saved...

...At the end of several years she was averaging nearly $50.00 a week...

...They were not obscure institutions of learning, either, for almost every very good woman's college was represented...

...The several clubs I visited were apparently identical with other well-operated, similar institutions with tennis, golf, bathing and frequently riding available...

...She knew our likes...

...Despite the fact that I went into department stores more or less regularly to buy various things I still retained a vague opinion that shopgirls—or salesgirls, as they are now called—were not vastly different from those I had met in literature of the O. Henry period...

...For instance, I discovered that as many as 10 percent of salesgirls in many of the large stores, especially in metropolitan centres, are college women...

...Changes in methods are usually the results of conferences, where everyone likely to be affected is invited to offer opinions...

...SHOPGIRLS: 1930 MODEL {Places and Persons} By PAUL BROWN WE WERE looking at a rare and beautiful Chinese vase in the secluded gallery where such things were for sale in a great department store...

...However, all successes are not made because of eventual promotion to buyer, although most of them are...

...In that same store the personnel director was a woman...

...and generally oversees the departments for which she is responsible...

...The habit of saving is the thing stressed, not the amount put aside, yet I saw the savings account of one of these modern shopgirls which boasted a balance slightly in excess of $50,000...

...Lunches were served on the verandas, rooms were rented at trivial cost and everything was done to dispel any impression of either patronage or surreptitious surveillance...

...she is often treated disdainfully by haughty and supercilious people who are scarcely qualified to assume an attude of superiority, but she reacts pleasantly and gracefully...

...In arriving at this percentage only colleges which awarded academic degrees were included, not business colleges or commercial schools...

...Social-service workers attached to the stores look for or create furnished rooms which they know are well within the means of their employees...

...I was given dozens of remarkable cases to consider, authenticated by store records, and they all were astounding...

...Not only must a present-day salesgirl be intelligent and educated far beyond her less important prototype of some few years ago, but she must also be personable, energetic and tactful...

...That seems to have been the only unusual incident in her career, and the store executives assured me that it expedited her advancement but very little, for she was slated for eventual promotion...

...The things which make for harmonious association in Chinese pottery are not always the same things which indicate that happy situation in lesser possessions...

...We had bought many pieces of Chinese ware from her in the past...

...This seemed to be the one thing which everyone I spoke to wanted to emphasize—the possibility of advancement...

...and how to meet other unique situations which might become emergencies were it not for the training...

...Nevertheless, she is still what I had been thinking of as a shopgirl, for she regularly sells on the floor of the store...

...The preponderance of femininity was astonishing...

...If salesgirls are successful in their small part, advancement is certain...

...One case was normal...

...The promotion carried with it another bonus arrangement which brought her usual income to $60.00 weekly and there the records showed that she "marked time" for nearly five years...

...You know," she continued, "a number of students have come to believe that a number of the vases made in the early Ming dynasty . . ." and we received a pleasantly illuminating and authorative discourse on obscure and ancient China that was astounding...

...The sales in her department increased and Miss Jones was given an increase in pay by the introduction of a bonus system...

...Efforts are made to install the employees in satisfactory living quarters...

...The salesgirl, who had been unobtrusively hovering in the background, seemed to sense not only our reluctant decision not to buy the vase but the reason for it, as well...

...Several companion vases have recently been sold to a museum and this piece is probably the only Ming example which will harmonize perfectly with the things you already have...

...After our experience in buying the vase I determined to find out about these modern shopgirls...

...The present-day shopgirls seem to be exactly the type of young woman who appreciates and can enjoy the advantages of country clubs...

...That failure was the result of a complete indifference, a thorough lack of observation on my part...

...Her salary then was $13.00 a week, but it was gradually increased until it was $20.00 which was at that time a fair average of wages among women in business...

...One store I visited had a woman buyer for nearly every department except furniture and those which were essentially masculine, such as men's clothing, haberdashery, sporting goods and, as it happened, books and stationery...

...Country clubs are sometimes established for the salesgirls, so they can be assured of pleasant and beneficial week ends without much expense...

...The beauty parlor and the manicurist received as much patronage as the boot shop...

...They believed that such women either possessed, or could easily acquire, the necessary personal attributes to become eminently successful...

...All salesgirls have become very important employees...

...So was the advertising manager, the manager of the restaurants—there were three—the resident buyer and the merchandise counselor...

...While on her vacation, the buyer for Miss Jones's department was killed in a motor accident and she received the job...

...it seems to depend very largely upon the department of the store for which they buy...

...She might, and frequently does, sell trivial things which cost practically nothing...

...Miss Jones (a name that will do as well as any other, for the store executives forbid my using her real name for fear that she might be enticed away by a competitor) entered a department store as an extra girl during the Christmas rush eleven years ago...

...Vacations during the summer months are usually provided, with pay, for the older employees...

...Her new duties also included the attractive arrangement and display of her stock...

...She lived comfortably in a well-furnished apartment and was a member of a woman's club...

...Many of the young women—frequently for reasons other than economy—share small apartments...

...what to do about it when an improvident looking stranger— who may be one of the store's best customers—casually decides to take with her a $3,000 coat which she wants charged...

...It was facinatingly beautiful, but too valuable, we decided reluctantly, and were about to walk away...

...She is, indeed, an unquestionable success...

...Really, in many cases, the opinions are of no particular importance...

...A dictatorial department head, who orders changes abruptly and without discussion or without apparent consultation with her subordinates, is likely to be of relatively little value to the store...

...Before they are permitted to sell they are given a short but thorough course, in a school maintained by the store, in courtesy, tolerance, tact, agreeableness, and good taste in manner and dress and, if possible, they are taught how to be charming...

...While I noticed, of course, that they no longer adhered to the "dese, dem and dose" school of pronounciation, I failed to perceive that there was any other considerable difference...

...and she frequently buys merchandise costing tens of thousands of dollars with considerably less apprehension than she feels in showing a hopelessly stout woman a beautiful dress which was intended for a younger and much slenderer woman...

...Except for her evident capability she is not to be distinguished from any other employee in the place...

...Indeed, the inability of a salesgirl, no matter how capable she may be in other particulars, to get along pleasantly and without friction with her associates will act as a permanent bar to her advancement...

...Everyone but people who really know think it is too expensive," she said—thereby flatteringly including us among the well-informed—"but it is really quite a bargain...

...I finally asked what might be considered a typical department-store career...

...That is in all probability the highest amount on record...

...I found that buyers earn anything from $3,000 a year to $30,000...

...Many of the stores maintain a physician, frequently a woman, who treats employees at no cost...

...They frequently have some plan of group insurance and pay part of the premium...

...She came forward and smilingly asked us if it were not a perfectly gorgeous example of Ming pottery...

...My findings were amazing...

...It probably was a great success, from her viewpoint, for we ended it by buying the vase—but it was a revelation to me...

...All of the stores have a number of plans or agencies designed to be of help to the employee...

...She was then nearly thirty years old, although she did not look it...

...Fortunately few of them are like that, and those who are do not last long...

...I visited, in the course of a few weeks, the employment managers of many big stores, the personnel directors of others, the socialservice workers of all of them and talked to a lot of executives about the female employees who wait on customers who—if they are all as preoccupied as 1 usually am—never actually see them...

...Twice a year she goes abroad: buys her foreign-made merchandise, mostly in Paris...