Thursday, December 18, 2008

High Ho, High Ho, It's Off to Work He Goes

That's right! Garrett is gainfully employed! He is working for a retailer who shall not be named. But their clothes look like this: Exactly!
Are they advertising clothes here? Hmmm.....
Let me just say this. The boys clothes are great - modest (my number 1), stylish, comfortable, okay quality. By modest....how immodest can boys be? Well in the pic above, the guy is immodest, but if he buttoned up his shirt and tucked it in and pulled up his pants, he'd be fine. So the clothes aren't immodest. It's the idiots who wear them.

Now, if I had a girl, I don't know that I would step foot in this store. The girls' clothes are mostly immodest because the skirts are more like sashes - 3" in length. Most "shirts" aren't really shirts, they are camis with lace made out of tissue weight cloth. And the shirts with sleeves come in "Small", Cling to your body", and "You don't have to guess what's under here" sizes. But we can discuss this all day long.
Let's get to the meat of this post:
Garrett is employed! And for this, we are grateful.
He went to orientation the first day and this is what he was oriented on:
Timeclock Operation,
Scheduling,
and Store Layout.
He came home and shared his newfound knowledge. Obvious questions arose.

Brian, "So did they train you on how to use the register?"
Garrett, "You know, I wondered about that. I asked and they said they would train me as we go."
What? They wait until you are ringing up your first customer and then they show you which buttons to push? So your first transaction is "credit" and they walk you through it; apologizing to the customer the whole time because you are new? Then the manager walks away and lets you handle the next customer because you obviously now know how to run a credit card transaction. What do you know? Your next customer wants to pay with cash. So do you say, "Hold on. I don't know how to take cash. Let me get the manager?" And then the training process begins?
I decide to go light. I'll ask something he can answer and something that everyone has to be trained on in this particular retail establishment.

Me: "So did you learn how to fold all the clothes?"

Garrett: "Yeah, I asked about that too. They are going to show me that as we go."

Me: "So what did you get trained on?????" This is a national company. I KNOW they have protocol. I know, I am soooo demanding and I ask ridiculous questions.
Garrett: "Well I learned what we can and can't wear to work. Like for shoes we can only wear flip flops or Chuck Taylors."
Me: "What? Flip flops? They WANT you to wear flip flops? It's below zero!"
Brian: "What kind of company WANTS their employees to trip around in flip flops? Isn't that a hazard?"
I think it is........it's asking for workman's comp. Those teenagers, wearing 20 layers of t-shirts, sweaters, hoodies and jeans, yelling "Dude!" to each other over the 3 million decible music, and stumbling through the poorly lit, cologne haze-filled store and WHAM........they break their toe stubbing it on a naked manaquin with a $40 sequinned camisole. I'm calling it right now. It's going to happen!
Anyway, I think my expectations are too high. He didn't need to be trained on the register or how to fold clothes or how to find product in the store or how the sizes run. This was painfully obvious when he handed me the list of all the employees. There was his name and position: Garrett Cox - model.
That's right, next time you go in the store, don't expect the people in there to DO anything. They aren't there to ring you up. They aren't there to find you a medium. They aren't there to tell you if that shirt comes in black. They are there to LOOK GOOD!

8 comments:

Patty Edwards said...

::snort:: That's TOO funny. And too true. It's all about the image.

I'm really pleased that I have boys. I wouldn't want girls exposed to the clothes these days either.

Tricia said...

helloooooo hollister! all you had to say was ten thousand decibel music and you gave it away. lol.

and that picture of that man(?) skeeves me out a little(lot) because it looks like a woman(upper body)!!!! ewwwwww!

congrats on your son's employment though....that is a beautiful thing.

Rachael said...

I'm dying laughing right now! I'm so with you on the girls' clothing and as a mother of 3 girls, I am scared. Congrats on the employed son, though.

Melissa said...

As soon as you said he was employed at a clothing store, I guessed he was a model. All your boys are so good-looking. Let's hope they let him keep his shirt on. It's really cold out there!

The Crazy Coxes said...

Thanks Melissa. Unfortuately for him and fortunately for us, the models are really just called models. They really are just plain old sales people. So he's going to eventually have to DO something. But he does do some modelling in real life - the kind where you pose and people take pictures and then the pictures are in catalogs and newspapers. Look at my facebook for his latest.

martyeaster said...

That is so funny, I told you that they would have to wear sandles!!!!

Missty said...

Way funny! Happy employment!!

Kim said...

they do keep the ugly people in the back doing shipment..hahaha