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The ghost of Christmas past.

I have made mention on message boards that I used to work in retail sales. It was both comission(Sears, Fretter, Montgomery Ward) and non commission(Wal-Mart, K-Mart). I will tell you that from that side of the cash register, I always had more fun as non commission when feeding my family wasn't as dependant on my performance.

I was full time commission when I worked for Fretter, from 1988-1992. It was also when I was introduced to prozac. Anyway as a commission salesperson the holiday season(between the week before Thanksgiving to the week after New Years Day) was supposed to be the time that we made the majority of our years income. It's also the time when people can show how really cheap they are when it comes to buying presents for the ones they love.(You all know how to make comments on this blog, and all comments are welcome)

It's also the time when most scammers are at their worst. Credit cards and merchandise are stolen at a greater rate during this period. Of course we have all heard about the current gift card scammers. Just one more thing to worry about this year.

I was working at the Rolling Acres Fretter store in 1991 during Christmas shopping season. It was, by the way my last Christmas season as a full time commission sales person. My area of responsibility in the store was the VCR display. Another salesperson was trying to sell a big screen television to this seemingly disabled person, who was in a wheelchair. This salesman had taken a credit application to the desk to try to get approval on 90 days same as cash(cash same as cash is always best). Well the salesman came back with the bad news that he was not approved. He apologized for taking the sales professional's time and left the store. I later found one of the display VCR's missing(VCR wall was next to the big screen television display). We later figured that this seemingly disabled person had taken the VCR out of the display, put it on the seat of his wheelchair, sat on it and left the store. Store personnel later found out that this same person had been stealing from other stores in the neighborhood in the same manner.

It's a shame when we can't trust each other when we are getting ready to celebrate our saviour's birth.

Comments

Anonymous said…
The stories I could tell about working at Marc's back in the day.

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