Retail Ramblings

If you've never worked retail, you might think it's one of those 'ho-hum, let's see how much people will spend today and watch the clock for our break' kind of jobs. In many cases, that's true. But not at Express, after a year and a half of loyalty and blood. Bruises from ladders, bruises from customers' words, and bruises from the economy are just the beginning. I'll get to that in a minute.

I realized today that I need to make more eye contact with people. Especially when they don't want to look back. If you tell someone something and you're not looking at them, it will seem like you're shifty, or not interested. It's different in the outside world, when you can sit next to someone and stare at your surroundings together. But in a close environment with a stranger, eye contact is one of the most important things to use to get a message across.

I work retail not because I want to sucker someone into buying a bunch of stuff they don't need. I'll tell you if I don't like how something looks and why. An empire waist isn't for everyone, and neither are skinny jeans. I'm not saying that weight matters. People have differing tastes, sure, but those tastes don't always make a person look or feel good. I can do that. Fashion terminology is helpful, but it doesn't say anything about why it looks good on a person unless a retail associate can explain it. And that takes practice. It takes time, energy, and determination. How?
Time: 2 hours a week trying on new items.
30 minutes per week researching words like 'empire waist' and different ways to say 'you have big boobs.'
Energy: Physically trying on all of the new merchandise in my store, and comparing it to those of others.
Determination: Figuring out what looks good and being able to explain it to your everyday 'help me pick something, I'm lost' customer. And more importantly, since retail associates don't make much money, the determination not to buy something when it looks 'okay.' This part was hard. When I started working retail, I'd spend every check almost entirely on merchandise in my workplace. When I started, I thought, sure, if the customer likes it, let them like it. They'll feel good about their choice. That's why you let them ask your opinion. Sometimes it doesn't matter, and that's fine. In the long haul, however, if a customer asks my opinion and I tell him/her I 'think we can find something that will work better,' and find it, they will come back. Those people are few and far between, and it may take a while, but they'll remember the experience. Back to determination: after figuring out that yes, your landlord WILL kick you out when you can't pay rent, and that school loans will add up, and that gas doesn't last as long as we'd like, and cigarettes and food run out too, I finally became determined enough to 'get picky.'

I think that's what helps the most. Being picky, or, a better word that now has a bad connotation, being descriminant, helps. If I'm not picky when I help a customer find an outfit, they'll be able to tell. If I say "Yeah, those look fine!" and I don't mean it, he or she will hear it from friends later. And friends are more important than some store employee. If it looks bad, they'll blame the store, and they'll blame 'that liar of a girl back at the fitting rooms.' If it looks good, someone might tell his/her mom or best friend about it. But those people, the few and far between, will return for another honest opinion.
I like customers, most of the time. I don't like everyone, but I can find a common ground in most cases. That will get me through a transaction if my open-enough-mind can't cut it.

But with this eye contact thing, I realized that nothing I've said here is effective if I don't show it. My boss won't take me seriously if I can address her without giving her the respect of looking at her when I'm speaking (she hasn't voiced that, it's kind of a no-brainer.) Nor will the customers. Maybe I've become used to looking at the outfit instead of the person, because that's what I'm comfortable with. Maybe I'm not interested in what I'm doing - and I wouldn't have worked retail for as long as I have if I weren't interested in it. There are plenty of people who do that already. ....Eye contact shows confidence and honesty.

I'm going to work on an eye contact theme for a while.

The idea jumping around in my head is a change in confidence, a change in poise. If I can't look someone in the eye when I'm saying something, it's probably not valid.

'Til later.