The Homemaker · Part II · Chapter 9 (2/2)

“Oh, all kinds of things, too little to mention. Just what I’ve noticed in all the years I’ve shopped⁠ ⁠… why, here’s one. The way a salesperson gets up and comes toward you when you come in. I’ve always loved to have a girl get up quickly, as if she were glad to see me, and come towards me, looking right at me with a pleasant welcoming look. It’s always made me feel cross when they drag themselves up and come sagging over to me, looking down at their blouse-fronts or over my head⁠ ⁠… or especially at their fingernails. Isn’t it queer how it rubs you the wrong way to have a salesperson look at her fingernails?”

“Yes, that’s a good point,” said Mr. Willing guardedly, baying inwardly for joy.

“And then another thing I just love to be able to do is to know just where to lay my hand on anything. I’m afraid I’m very quick-tempered and irritable by nature, and I know I’ve started up and gone right out of a store, many’s the time, because the girl who was waiting on me would look and look for something I wanted, fumbling around absentmindedly as if she weren’t really thinking about it, and then call across to another girl, ‘Say, Jen, where’d you put that inch-and-a-half binding?’ ”

The proprietor of the store repressed with difficulty a whoop of delight over the exactitude of this snapshot. He looked down neutrally at his desk.

The new saleswoman went on, “I’d always supposed that it must be ever so hard to know where things are back of a counter from the way the girls often act about it. But it’s not! Not for me anyhow! No harder than knowing where your baking-powder and salt stand on the kitchen shelf!”

“Oh, no, it’s not hard at all for any salesperson who puts her mind on it.” Mr. Willing tossed this off airily and negligently. So successful was his manner that his employee thought she was being indiscreet and had forgotten to keep her place. “I’m taking too much of your time,” she said apologetically, turning to go.

He kept her with an indulgent gesture, “Oh, no, you’ll find I’m always interested in anything that concerns the Store,” he said grandly. “And you haven’t told me yet about the sales you made in your first try.”

She looked at him earnestly now and spoke seriously, “Mr. Willing, there is something that troubled me, and I’d like to tell you about it. I’d made two or three sales all right, and then a customer, Mrs. Warner it was, perhaps you know her, came in to look at sweaters. We’re just out of the plain, one-color, conservative kind, though Miss Flynn said you had some ordered and they’d be here any day. That was the kind Mrs. Warner asked for. But she saw another one in the showcase, a bright emerald-green one with pearl-gray stripes, the conspicuous kind that young girls wear with pleated gray crepe-de-chine skirts and pearl-gray stockings and sandals, and it sort of took her eye. I knew it would look simply terrible on her⁠—she’s between forty and fifty and quite stout⁠—the kind who always runs her shoes over. And I persuaded her to wait till the plain ones came in. I thought she’d be better satisfied in the end and feel more like coming back to the store. But Miss Flynn thought it was very wrong in me to have let her get away without making a sale.”

“Why didn’t you try to sell her both sweaters?” asked the merchant testingly.

“Oh, her husband is only a clerk in Camp’s Drug Store! They haven’t much money. She’d never have felt she could afford two. If she’d taken the bright sporty one she’d have had to wear it for a year. And I know her husband and children wouldn’t have liked it.”

“Oh, you know her personally?” asked Jerome.

“No, not what you’d call personally⁠—just from what I’ve seen of her here in the store. She’s quite a person to come around ‘just looking’ you know. I guess she loves to look at pretty things as much as I do. And several times when I hadn’t any customer on hand, I’ve had a little talk with her to make friends, and I showed her some of our nicest things, letting her see that I knew they were nothing she wanted to buy. I love to show off some of the pretty young things to women like that, who have to work hard at home. It’s as good as going to a party for them. And it gives them the habit of coming to the store too when they do want something. Then she happened to mention her name. I put it down on my list to memorize. I remember how I always used to like it when a salesgirl remembered my name.”

“Well, for God’s sake!” ejaculated the young merchant inaudibly, moved to an almost solemn thankfulness. Aloud he said, clearing his throat and playing with a paper-cutter, “Don’t you find it hard to remember the names of the customers?”

“No,” she said. “I’ve got a good memory for names naturally. And it interests me. I try to find out something about the customer, too, to put together with the name. It seems to keep me from getting them mixed. This Mrs. Warner, for instance, I looked up her address in the phone book and found out that she lives near one of my friends in St. Peter’s parish, and I asked my friend about her and she told me that Mr. Warner works for Camp’s. It helps to know something personal, I think. In odd moments, when I’m walking down to the store in the morning, for instance, I have my list in my hand, and try to hitch the people to the names⁠—this way⁠—‘J. P. Warner, drugstore husband, about fifteen hundred a year. Laura J. Pelman, teacher in Washington Street School, about twelve hundred. Mother lives with her.’ Inexperienced in selling as I am, I feel as though I could tell so much more what people want in merchandise if I know a little about them.”

“Yes, that’s so,” he admitted this point without comment.

He could hardly wait to get home and report this talk to Nell. She wouldn’t believe it, that was all. Well, he wouldn’t have believed it either if he hadn’t heard it with his own ears. And such perfect unconsciousness on the woman’s part! Apparently she thought that this was the way that all salespeople took hold of their work⁠—save the mark!

“That’ll do for today, Mrs. Knapp,” he said with dignity. “I’m glad to hear you like the work. You seem to be giving very good satisfaction. We⁠ ⁠… we⁠ ⁠…” he hesitated, wondering just how to phrase it. “We have been meaning to add one more salesperson to the Cloak-and-Suits, to see if the department would carry one more. If you like, we will try you out there, beginning with next week. The pay is no higher. But of course you get a bonus on all sales after your weekly quota is reached.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Willing,” she said, with some dignity of her own, the dignity of a mature woman who knows that she is useful.

He liked her for her reserve. She turned away.

He called after her, as though it were a casual notion, just come into his head, “Are you anything of a reader? Would you be interested in looking at a manual on retail selling? I have a pretty good one here that gives most of the general principles. Though of course nothing takes the place of experience.”

Her reserve vanished in a flash. Her strongly marked, mature face glowed like a girl’s. She came swiftly back towards him, her hand outstretched, “Oh, are there books written about the business?” she cried eagerly. “Things you can study and learn?”