This particular saleswoman was trained to textile salesmanship.
Consequently, although the first half of her book, which treats of the
store's methods and policies, is common to those that are being prepared
by her fellows in all the other selling departments, the second half is
the result of the special training that was given her in the department
of training along the lines of her own merchandise. Not only did she
spend long hours of the firm's time in its classroom upon the third
floor of the store and surrounded by cabinets in which were displayed
textile materials of every sort and in every stage of development, but
she was given a printed booklet which told her much about her
merchandise, its history, its production fields and the details of its
manufacture.
From it she evolved her own history of textiles, setting down with
accuracy the four fundamental cloths--cotton, linen, silk and wool--and
not alone tracing their development and manufacture, but by means of
carefully hand-made diagrams, pointing out the difference between the
different textures and weavings. "Warp" and "weft" and "twill" have come
to be more than mere words to her. They are a part of her business
capital, which she can--and does--turn to the good account of the store.
So she is to her compeer of twenty-five years ago--selling dress-goods
in the old Macy store down on Fourteenth Street--as the electric light
of today is to the old-fashioned lamps of that day and generation.
Back of this little black-bound notebook there is system--organization
if you would read it that way. Education, of a truth, has become the
handmaiden of merchandising. And the store's school has become one of
its ranking functions.
As teachers in this school there is a specially trained corps of men and
women who do nothing but instruct and then follow up their pupils to see
that they put into practice the things that they have learned. The
educational work consists of individual instruction, informal classes
and practical demonstrations. And the result of it all is not merely to
make the employee valuable to the house, but to lend interest to
merchandising, itself, and to lift the salesperson out of the mere
mechanical process of taking orders for goods.
The moment that a new employee comes into the Macy store his or her
instruction in its system, organization and salesmanship begins. We have
just seen how one typical new saleswoman began receiving her training
from the first day of her employment. She was no exception to an
inflexible rule. The training is given invariably. It does not matter
whether the applicant has had experience in other large
department-stores. Even a former Macy employee, accepting re-employment,
must go through the department of training for, like everything that
grows, the store system changes steadily from year to year and from
month to month.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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