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.
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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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