It's What You Make It

On Monday, it was all back to normal. The children had all gone back to school and the aisles of Toys were once again clear, leaving one lonely staff member on the floor making a start on the debris with an oversized broom; a sad look in her eyes. The knowledge of failure hung over all the three of us, Jesus, Chantelle and I, as we plodded around trying to summon up some kind of motivation. The other two found it gradually, but surely; the pace started again to quicken and the smiles became more frequent. But there was no improvement in the Soundbar ranks. I kept my eyes on the ground, worked methodically but horribly slowly, and brooded.

The logic I was using seemed sound to me at the time. The huge effort that went into Toy Sale, worrying myself sick night after night about it, I embedded that catalogue into my memory forever. And for it to fail so significantly was a blow I was not going to recover from quickly. There was so much mopping up to do after the sale, shit was everywhere; my normal self would have been in a fluster, running around like a headless chook, but the work that took me three weeks to finish would have been achieved in three days.

I was seriously considering packing it in. It would never change, it wouldn’t be the same. Some things are different. Some jobs, you can work your arse off and your returns would increase exponentially. But in this job, there is a set level one must work at in order to gain returns, and beyond that you’re working harder for the same gain. I had achieved that level before I even started. (Remember the high standards I was interviewed by? What a joke.) There was nothing left for me to achieve.

My mind switched off over the next couple of weeks, and I have no memory of what went on, suffice it to say that whatever it was went on very slowly. The first thing I recall, my ‘waking up’ to put it one way, was being in Reception one afternoon at about 4 on a Thursday.

Jesus and I were printing clearance signs for the bulky items left over. Usually this would only take the, ahem, skill of one individual, but Jesus was notoriously bad with computers and thus did not know how to use Microsoft Word properly. Jayne was in her office, and usually when this is the case, we wouldn’t be talking. But it was Thursday afternoon, and Jesus was due to go home any minute. So we talked; it was as if we knew we had to, because we wouldn’t get another chance for four days or so. I don’t remember what we were saying (though it was all said in low voices and with as many euphemisms as possible, it would never do to have Jayne listening in) but it ended with me sighing.

“I dunno what’s wrong with everything lately,” I said, sinking further into the abyss I was creating for myself.

“It’s what you make it,” he said.

A shiver overtook my whole being and my head snapped up to stare fiercely at him. Oblivious to my regard (or perhaps because of it), he turned a stony gaze upon me. Such a simple declaration, but one which hit home something chronic. I have since analysed it, and decided that because I tend to overthink, I often miss these self evident truths that are so obvious to others. And he was right, I thought as I looked at him, we create our own reality.

Only time would tell if we were doing it right.

A Wholesale Fail

It was dark and cold in the morning, the dampness hanging about Fremantle like a shroud. The inside of the store was, for once, alive, and you could almost smell the atmosphere of apprehension. Busy... busy... busy... was the whisper. At Soundbar alone there was Katy, Adam and I, all there soley to serve people. Toys was full of Toy Sale t-shirted staff armed with catalogues and portaphones, scurrying about in the pre-opening witching hour, their eyes darting nervously about. Toy Sale - more lengthily called Australia's Biggest Toy Sale by our marketing guys, was Target's biggest event of the year, and an annual ritual for all involved - the three principal involvees of course being Jesus, Chantelle and I. We were in our element.

8:30 rolled around and I cursed myself for forgetting to find some urgent errand to run at checkouts, for the sole purpose of spying on the idiot morons who, if it wasn't so socially unacceptable, would have probably camped outside in the freezing July air for the entire night beforehand, and who make it point every year to make all haste (i.e. run into the store in a terribly undignified manner) in getting to their desired items. And they wonder why we hold them in such contempt.

So the first floor burst into life; the sounds of childrenn whining mingled with their parents whining at us because we didn't have exactly what they wanted at exactly the time they wanted it (blaming us individually and personally for this, to them, deliberate slight upon their person). I was having a ball; despite my record of having terrible customer service (only because I'm so fucking BUSY all the time I don't have time to spend half an hour on an idiot who wants to know if they can transfer their casette tapes (I shit you not) onto their MP3 player!) I am actually quite good at it when I have the day set aside for such a purpose, as had happened on the 23rd of July. I was selling things left, right and centre; upselling people's Wii purchases, bullshitting about the 'designer lenses' on certain cameras (God they're idiots - CAMERAS FROM TARGET ARE ALL THE SAME, MORONS!) and co-ordinating the activities of my staff.

We slowly realised, as the first people trickled away, that we were dead. Considering we had considered crowd control mechanisms (ie me fixing the sound on the big plasma above the counter so people had something to listen to while waiting in line), we were all a little bit disappointed. But I was not to take it to heart too much - it was early days yet. Come ten o'clock and we'll be beating customers away with Wii Golf Clubs, I thought to myself.

Ten o'clock came and went and my worry levels shot up. Where were the fucking customers?! I took the time we had spare to do constant 'fixing' - moving game boxes back to their homes, moving things that weren't selling around to make room to try selling something else, anything I could to boost sales.

"Upsell, upsell, upsell," I impressed upon the staff I had working in Sounbar. "Seriously, do some seriously aggressive sales here." My tone was so grim that they did not argue.

Jesus came over.

"Phew," he said, leaning on the door of the counter. "It's a rat race down there."

I looked down at Toys. Sure, the aisle was full but people could still move with trolleys, and no one was getting trampled. This was not a good sign. Jesus caught my grim look and surveyed Katy, who was wrapping a layby, and Adam who, for lack of anything else to do, was cutting up Game Box Stickers at my instruction.

"Not looking good, is it?"

"No, it's not. And you know who will be blamed. Us. Not the changing economic circumstances, but you, and me, and Chantelle."

He frowned. "It is not our fault," he began, but I shook my head.

"Doesn't matter how illogical it is, it's how they're going to see it. Even if they don't admit it. And maybe they're right. Anyway, we'll worry about it when we get the sales figures."

"You can bet your life Janine's hitting "refresh" on the damned things every five seconds," he said, before giving me a look and sweeping away.

Later on, a ripple of panic ran through the Drone ranks. I felt it even before Jesus stalked grimly down to the counter.

"Ashley's just walked into the store," he said in a carefully measured tone.

My eyes widened. What was the district manager doing in the store, now of all times? Stupid time to have a visit... unless...

"Yep," Jesus said, following the train of my thought as it made itself obvious on my face. "We're doing so badly, the district manager had to come in and intervene." His face was stormy and mine was no better. Katy, laughing, came over.

"What's up with you two?" She was distracted by a customer and Jesus and I turned identical expressions back upon one another.

"Well, things will unfold as they will," I said, steeling myself. "Just keep my informed, okay?"

By the time I said this last, he'd already walked away. I was no longer surprised at things like this.

Worry continued mounting, and wasn't helped by the sight of Janine and Ashley, both of whom cut imposing figures on their own, striding directly towards me. Janine looked as panicked as I felt, and the look of fury on Ashley's face cowed me, but I stood tall.

They surveyed my department from the front. Critical eyes swept over my work, what I had done, what we had decided, and I for one knew they could not come up wanting. How could they? I worked my arse off in here to prepare for this sale. Suddenly, Ashley addressed me. I was uncomfortably aware of Jesus hovering around in the background, trying and failing to be unobtrusive.

"Are these games moving?"

I frowned, and thought about it. Every year the catalogue had a featured game that was cheap - this year Rayman Raving Rabids 2 on DS was going out the door for $9.95. I'd dedicated a whole front end to them and ticketed the shit out of them, but the fact was, we'd hardly sold any.

"No, they're not," I admitted, and felt it was a personal failure.

"Do you think they would sell better from downstairs?"

My eyes flashed and narrowed as I regarded him. Was the little bastard actually testing me at a time like this? Or did he genuinley want my opinion?

"These games are an add-on item," I said surely. "People aren't coming in specifically to buy them, they see the price point and make the decision in store. So yes, I think they will move much better downstairs."

It was as though Ashley blinked the distraction from his eyes and looked at me properly, and with interest. "That's right," he said gruffly. "Do it."

I gave him a sharp nod and went to move off, but he hadn't finished. "What else can we do?"

I cocked my head, so he continued. "Is there anything else you can move downstairs to push sales?"

I thought furiously, my whole catalogue flicking through my head. Finally, I shook it. "No. Not that I can think of. But I can grab a catalogue and go through it with a comb."

Ashley's face closed over again and, again, the taste of bitter failure coursed through my. He and Janine walked off, not before giving me a directive to work on the problem and see what I could come up with. I hung my head for a second, summoning up the werewithal to avoid the surmounting sense of embarrassment at my lack of ability to think of anything, and the anger that I could feel following. Despite my efforts, however, I was muttering furiously to myself as I put together a table for the games that were to be moved and shifted it down to checkouts, where hopefully, true to my word, they would start to move.

The day wore on, and was finally over. Most people left in glee, glad to be out of there for the day. But Jesus and I could not find even a wry grin for one another. For my part, I was bitterly disappointed. All that work, all that effort; all the stress and worry and extra hours spent pouring over catalogues, drawing up catalogue action-plans, trying to match up complementary items... just plain working my arse off - all for nothing. We were still blasted by the district manager, our store manager... it was the lowest criticism.

Jesus only had one bit of parting wisdom as we left for the day. "I'm not owning this," he said, his head held at an almost defiant tilt that I had never seen before. "And I don't think you should either."

And with that, he was gone. I stood for a moment, letting his words sink in. Then I sighed deeply, pulled my jacket on, and went home.

Kindred Spirits

The power of the human mind is nothing if not amazing. If we’re bored; if the capacity of an individual conscious mind is not used to its fullest, it will automatically engage itself in ways that, if we’re not careful, we will not even notice. We can convince ourselves into or out of anything, we can from nothing create rich and diverse environments for thought. Surrounded by a bunch of boring Target morons? No worries, the powerful mind says with a lopsided grin and a twinkle in its eye. I’ll make it interesting for you.

It is no secret that the default state of people in general is ‘boring’. That goes for you, me, and everyone else. We’re inherently boring. And for people who have overactive imaginations, it is easy to deliberately mistake dull signs for their polar opposites. A blank stare can become brooding silence, a conversation turns into an elaborately concocted trap, or the neutrality following an accidental brushing of hands becomes electrically tense.

Like I have said, we can talk ourselves into or out of anything, and I’d managed to somehow talk myself into the idea that Target was interesting. The people I worked with were boring, however, I’d managed to attribute these wonderful and deep characteristics to them. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I viewed them all as melancholy geniuses when really they were just blank slates. For some, I saw them as conniving. I would watch what I said around them, because I just knew they would immediately rush to the relevant authorities the minute I said anything unorthadox. Previous staff members took on an almost legendary personality as my mind created thousands of possibilities as to why they were gone (secret firings, management-wide conspiracies, Target-witness protection…)

Every conversation from then on seemed to have some kind of meaning, every glance hid a whole conversation, every odd action by a member of the Elite Three (Janine, Kellie and Kris) was the key to one of the conspiracies, every note that went missing was a plot to turn my casuals against me. It was full on, it was tiring, but it sure as hell made me get up in the morning to trek it into work. And what harm was it, I wondered at the beginning? Why did it matter? I knew somewhere deep down that it was all a farce and that these people were disappointingly boring. But if I could convince myself on the surface that there was an interesting undercurrent then it could only help, right?

The thing is, it just doesn’t work like that.

I don’t think I fully realised how deep I had gone until Toy Sale prep, a good five months after I started at the new store. Traditionally, for Toy Sale Prep (let’s give it a capital for posterity’s sakes), Toys and Soundbar are given helpers. Casuals who, under the guidance of the relevant part-timer, would scurry around like ants and smooth the process. At New Target, this seemed to be different. I was alone, completely alone, until the eve of Toy Sale where even these stingy bastards had to agree that one person was not enough. Anyway, the point was that I had to deal with bucketloads of stock on my own, not to mention the added stress of making all the decisions, decisions usually made by the entertainment manager. As we have already discovered, however, this particular ‘entertainment’ manager was a little too attached to Toys, so he spent all his effort in there. Fine by me, I didn’t want him fucking up my areas, but I was still justifiably bitter about the whole deal.

One morning, Claire from Manchester offered her assistance. I blinked in surprise before thanking her profusely and setting her to work. Shrewdly I appraised her. What did I know of her? Not much. She was a hard worker and was short with the customers, and in that we were kindred spirits. She was also, I had gradually discovered, intelligent. Now I’m sure you can understand the rarity of such an occurrence by now, and understand why I was happy to have her around.

“So, what are you in for?”

Her head snapped up from where she pressed down on one of the clear safers with the heels of her palms and she regarded me calmly.

“Because it’s easy.”

Such a simple answer, with such a ringing truth to it. She went on to describe a situation not unlike my own… she was working there as a casual when she finished school, and she couldn’t decide what to do… and there she still was, three years down the track.

Then Jesus came over.

“Ah, just the manager I want to see,” I said. I always had to try and be upbeat when he was around, because I was rather dependent on his moods for my own moods, and he was constantly morose, causing me to have to make a concerted effort to fight off the moroseness. “These games, on the Kitchenware front ends. I don’t have enough bookshelves to shelve them properly.”

He seemed to explode.

“God I am so sick of hearing about these bookshelves!”

I gave him a withering look. “And you think I’m not? Difference is, you’re being paid to deal with the problem of the bookshelves. I’m not. So deal with it.”

I was rather harsh, but it was a necessary harshness. He needed to be pushed, no shoved, to get him to do his job.

We exchanged a long look (as was our custom) and he stormed off, me staring stonily after him. Then I remembered Claire was there. She was watching me, with a look of high amusement on her face.

“God he makes me so mad!” I exclaimed, still caught in the scene.

“You guys are always arguing,” she said. “I have never seen you interact normally.”

“That’s ‘cause we’ve never interacted normally,” I answered with a wry grin. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

“Are they arguing again?” Chantelle called, coming over to the counter as I walked away. I saw her and Claire laughing and smiled lightly to myself. Doin' it all for the entertainment.

I went out to the fixtures reserves, to do one last check. Allison happened to be out there, rummaging around, so I asked her if she’d seen any of the brackets that I needed. Manchester used bookshelves for their sheets. She was helping me look when Jesus happened to walk into the fixtures reserves.

I stopped and stared at him. He was rigid, taking in what was happening instantly. I cursed inwardly when I realised what it looked like. He was insecure and paranoid at the best of times, so Allison and I looking for shelves would be like the ultimate betrayal. Ally was oblivious of our turmoil.

“Doesn’t look like there’s any here,” she said as we continued to eyeball one another. “I’ll have a look at the pallet listing and see what I can find. I have a feeling there’s some on pallet 10.”

“Just use the smaller ones, then,” Jesus decreed, before turning on his heel and walking away. I followed him hurriedly, determined not to let this fester as I knew it would. Ally was behind me.

“So do you think it will matter if some of the shelves are of different length?”

He was at the plastic doors when he stopped and turned.

“What?”

I was uncomfortably aware of Allison’s presence, but I soldiered on.

“If, like you said, I use the smaller ones for the other two front ends that I haven’t done yet, won’t it look out of place?”

He glared at me and I glared back.

“Well, why don’t you just ask Allison?”

There was a silence, oh, such a long silence! It was heavy, filled with electricity, and I went cold.

“What?” I whispered hoarsely.

He turned, pushed the plastic door open, and marched away. I was gaping after him when Allison said something.

“What was that all about?” I asked, round-eyed.

“What?” she asked distractedly. “Anyway I’ll look at the pallet listing.”

She left and I immediately ran to the counter. Claire, noticing my tension (was it the trembling? The wide eyes? The pinched-white face? The pacing?), asked me what had happened and I told her. She grinned, and I wasn’t sure whether it was at the animation of my storytelling or the story itself.

“There’s been something funny going on with the managers for quite some time now,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get it out of Ally but she won’t let on.”

I regarded her and frowned, my sense of ‘storyline’ almost going crazy at this declaration. Next thing, I ran to Chantelle and told her the whole story. She shivered along with me when I got to the end and was amazed. “Weird,” she said.

So I went back to the counter and safered some more games for about a half hour before I saw him in the Toys promo area. “OMG,” I said to Claire. “I should totally go ask him what that was all about.”

“Er…”

“No, ‘cause normally when stuff like this happens we both just ignore it and it festers and we hate each other until we eventually forget it and go back to normal. But what if I confront it?”

She shook her head, exasperated, and I grabbed a grey tote trolley (to make it look like I had a purpose) and walked past, stopping when I reached him.

“So what was all that about?”

“What?”

“The ‘ask Allison’ business?”

“Oh, I just meant because it’s in her area so she’d know if it would be okay or not.”

I could see Chantelle watching out of the corner of my eye as I said triumphantly, “HA! If it really was no big deal you wouldn’t even know what I was talking about! As it is, you know exactly what I’m referring to! Which means it IS what I thought it was! You were annoyed because you thought I was asking her about the shelves, which I wasn’t. I was simply asking if she’d seen any, because she uses them in her areas!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, but Chantelle had come closer and was now in on the conversation, so I shook my head and gripped my trolley.

“Whatever,” I said dismissively, and walked on. Chantelle then asked Jesus what was going on (I found this out later).

When I had filled up my tote, he was still there. I walked on by, nose in air, and I met his eyes. Not being able to help myself, my face broke into the biggest grin, and he grinned back, our eyes communicating something clumsy words could not. That we were both in on the joke. For the benefit of Chantelle and Claire, who had been following the domestic all morning, we’d both completely put on a massive charade. The two in question were completely baffled as we grinned stupidly at one another for not more than a second as we walked past one another, but a second that felt like an age.

My web of kindred spirits was growing.

Looks

And so it continued like this for the next few months. The more progress I made, the more barriers they put up. The ideas I had were shot down in flames. My staff weren’t doing the right thing, and every time I tried to bring it up with Jesus, or even Kellie, they did the equivalent of patting my head and telling me not to worry about it. Well yes, I was worried about it, because I spent the entire Monday cleaning up after the idiot weekend staff who wouldn’t know merchandising if it jumped up with a duster and a shelf bracket and beat them over the head a few thousand times. Various other problems arose, all of which I dealt with the best I could, using the pushy, never-back-down techniques I had learned from Lordship.

As for Jesus, I developed a rather shocking level of contempt for him. Yeah, he’s a trainee. He’s still learning. That’s what I was being told from all angles, to which I responded ‘so what?’ Lordship had never managed Soundbar before and he came into it guns blazing and was an excellent manager. All I ever saw Jesus doing was fill in Toys. Toys, toys, freaking toys. The weirdo even answered his own portaphone “Hello, Toys…” when every other manager would state their name. I mean, what was all that about? I wrinkled my retail nose at him, it was all wrong. He was like a staff member who was paid slightly better than the rest of us and had a desk. Yeah, he did rosters. Big deal. And it’s not like he managed half his areas anyway, seeing as I did it all for my own. All he had to do was worry about Toys.

It wasn’t until I had finished getting my area up to scratch that I changed my attitude somewhat. I knew that I would have trouble enough managing the area without any support or training, let alone adding the training of a manager into the mix. For that is what I thought I needed to do, train him up, as much as a staff member could anyway.

It is strange, looking back on it now, seeing how my thought process matured as I watched more closely. I realised that he was used quite badly by everyone in the store. Background checks on him revealed that he’d been working at the same store for his whole career; had started as a staff member when he was younger than I am now. That, coupled with the fact he was one of three males who worked full-time there amongst a harem of mostly retarded women saw his phone ringing every five seconds with someone who wanted something moved, or something lifted, or something fixed. I got the feeling that one of the things he appreciated about me was that I was so pig headed I would do everything myself. I would break my back pushing a cabinet, or lifting a boxed trampoline before I would ever ask for help. Need a module built? Where everyone else would just ring him, I would inspect currently built modules and learn painstakingly how to do it, and do it I would.

“You need to transfer,” I told him one day. The look he gave me was an odd one, one I couldn’t interpret.

“I’m permanent,” he said. “Can’t get transferred.”

That explained a lot.

“Do you know why they like to randomly transfer managers?” I asked condescendingly. He raised an eyebrow. I, blindly, took that as a no. “So they can learn. To improve them. So they don’t get taken advantage of like what’s happening here.”

I don’t remember his response, but knowing him, he probably just walked away. He liked to do that, walk away in the middle of a conversation if it was getting just that little bit to hard for him. Frustrating, for me, as I operate in words. I can talk rings around people if I need to, but when you’re faced with just looks, it makes all the words in the world obsolete. It was a hard lesson for me to learn, but learn I did, until I began to communicate with him better.

It wasn’t until after Chantelle made her entrance into this little tale that things started to improve in the Toys/Soundbar family. There had been three Toys staff members since I started in Soundbar (and I thought Old Target had a high turnover rate) who all left for various reasons. When Allison, the homewares manager, introduced me to Chantelle, something about her told me she was the one they’d been looking for. She smiled at me with easy confidence, and I returned the grin. Later on, I sought her out.

Doing away with all thoughts of polite small talk, I launched right into it.

“You’ve come from another Target, haven’t you?”

She eyed me with interest and I met her appraisal calmly. After a time she acknowledged that I was right.

“Midland,” she told me. “But how did you know?”

I smiled and tapped my nose. “Call it Target intuition.” She laughed. “Just so you don’t feel completely swamped in old school crap, I’ll let you know that I’m relatively new here too. I came from Perth a couple of months ago.

Her eyes lit up. “Oh, Perth! I opened that store!”

I gaped, shocked. “No way!”

I have always been a stickler for history and legend, and with a store like Target Perth legend was paramount. And for me, a staunch Target Perth devotee, to meet one of the proverbial founding fathers of the store was like meeting a celebrity. I grinned at my own silliness and proceeded to find out that she’d been to heaps of stores and had been with Target almost longer than she cared to remember.

And the main thing for me was, she was intelligent. So, a Target veteran who wasn’t a moron. Then it could be done. I felt like there was hope yet.

“What’s our manager like?” He wasn’t in that day, so she hadn’t met him yet.
I stopped in my tracks and frowned slightly. There was some pretty obvious hesitation as I weighed it all up. What should I tell her? Should I warn her? Or will I sound bitchy? Will I be bitchy? Will I be undercutting him?

I shook my head. He’s got no one to blame but himself, and I was within my rights to tell it how it was. We needed to stick together, anyway. That was how it was at Target. Each department had its little ‘family’ happening. Toys and Soundbar were connected, so the staff of those two departments were bound to be loyal to each other. Same with Manchester and Kitchenware, Mens and Kids, and Ladies and TCF. And of course you had the greater loyalties to your floor. Ground floor versus first floor staff, hardgoods versus softgoods, floor staff versus checkouts, and finally staff versus management. It seems confusing to read, but there is so much powerplay, so many hidden alliances and connections, it becomes fascinating to master them all.

There was one more alliance that I had yet to learn, and that was old school versus new school, probably the most sinister and tangible of all the alliances. Those who had been at a store for millennia stuck together, regardless of whether they were checkouts, floor, or management. They were suspicious, unwelcoming and downright dangerous. I, who had experienced none of this at Old Target due to the high turnover, was unprepared.

However, every cloud has its silver lining, and the disturbing nature of the cliques at New Target would be tempered in time, as my own little ring of alliance would grow. More about that later on.

Life plodded on for a couple of months, in which nothing of note actually happened. But, thankfully, the boring and mediocre times don’t last forever.

It was a Monday, and there was no one in the lunch room at my allocated 12 o’clock lunch hour, which was a rarity. I remember I was buttering toast when Janine walked in. We exchanged light (albeit strained) pleasantries, and she asked:

“How’s the house hunting going?”

I frowned momentarily and furiously tried to figure out what she was talking about. Then it came to me. When I was corresponding with her in the last week at Old Target over the phone, I told her I couldn’t start at 7:30 because I couldn’t get in that early, but that I was looking at moving closer to the store. As it was, I already lived on the complete opposite side of the city, and it took me an hour and a half to get in every day. Point being, she assumed I was serious about the moving thing.

“It’s not,” I answered. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to give up with the whole thing. It’s just too hard for young people to rent on their own, no one trusts you.”

She gave me a look and I suppressed the annoyance I always felt when I spoke to her. I hated talking to big managers. You always felt like you were being set up, or trapped.

“I guess it would be hard with uni and all as well.”

“I’m actually in the process of de-enrolling in uni,” I said. “It’s too hard to keep up with, with 36 hours, and I’m not ready to commit to it yet.”

The look on her face was one of shrewd opportunism. “So what are you going to do?”

I felt a thrill as I realised what she was talking about. This was it! I screamed to myself. Exactly the opportunity you’ve been waiting for! For, management was an idea that I had been coveting even before I transferred.

I knew that I had to measure what I said carefully. I shrugged my shoulders and put my hands out in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t know,” I replied.

She looked around, obviously thinking hard. “Have you ever thought about making this your career?”

I met her gaze calmly and replied, “Yes.”

She inclined her head, obviously having suspected as much. Truth being told, I never wanted management so it could be my career. I wanted management primarily because it would be SO much fun to tell people what to do, and secondarily for the significant pay rise, to fund going back to uni.

“Of course you could definitely do it,” she said. “Although there are a couple of things you’d need to look at.” She shook her head, as if not wanting to open that particular can of worms. “One comment I’ve had about you is that you tend to take criticism personally and not constructively.” She looked at me sharply, as if half expecting me to be taking this personally. The part of me that wasn’t caught up in the scenario was highly amused. If I was a manager, I’d want my staff to take criticism personally, because it would mean that they cared enough about what they were doing to warrant it.

However, caught up in the scenario I was, and I bowed my head. “That is probably true,” I said. “A vice that comes from youth, I expect.”

I should have known Janine enough by then to have known she doesn't appreciate big speeches like that. A flicker of annoyance crossed her face and I moved on.

“How would I get the ball rolling if I wanted to follow this up?” I asked. She regarded me with her impenetrable gaze.

“Think about it,” she replied. “Think hard, then come and see me.”

And she swept out of the room.

Shrinkage

When Jesus came in, the department had been taken apart. There were shelves on the floor, brackets everywhere, stock in cages… the look on his face was one I will never forget. And I don’t blame him. Where in Management for Dummies does it tell you how to deal with staff that are too keen? Well, nowhere, because it would be as useful as a whole chapter dedicated to the procedures involved when a crazed elephant rampages through your store. A highly unlikely improbability.

I ploughed through, resolutely, ripping the stock off the shelf and meticulously placing it back on, where it was supposed to go, using the correct merchandising principles. It was a cleansing process, one that took about a week to finish. I think I redefined the colloquialism “busting your gut” in that week, but my effort definitely paid off. I was relatively oblivious to this, as I wasn’t expecting accolades for what I had done. At Old Target, you could literally work your skin to the bone and your brain to frying point and they’d still fire you. Here, it seemed, all you had to do was turn up for work on a regular(ish) basis and you’d be inundated with praise.

That was something I could probably learn to handle, as odd as it was in the very beginning. I remember during my first week an older lady (checkouts, obviously) approached me.

“You’re Katherine from Perth, aren’t you?”

Notoriety, too. Sweet. I think, however, the finest moment of this burgeoning knowledge of how awesome they thought I was, was the Thursday that I showed up to work two hours late, with no explanation, the second week in a row. First time, they’ll usually understand, give you the benefit of the doubt, that kind of thing. But the second time, your arse is definitely in for a reaming.

I was given an excellence card that very day.

As with everything, it wasn’t to last long. For the upper echelons of New Target, the novelty that was a decent staff member was wearing off gradually, as I was coming to realise.

Once I had scraped browngoods together from a horribly parody of a department into a respectable sales area, I turned my attention to interactive.

Interactive, to a Soundbar staff member, is like the cherished, feature part of a front garden. It’s our major selling point, and the most volatile of all the areas. One could never know how a game was going to sell. But sell they did, most of them anyway, and they remain one of the highest shrinkage points in the store.

Ah, Shrinkage! The capital in that word is entirely deliberate. For a retail drone, Shrinkage is one of those concepts that keeps coming back to haunt you. It means, simply, theft. Theft, and having to mark items down due to damage and such. But mainly theft. Every year, after stocktake, the signs would start to go up on the backs of toilet doors and wed be inundated with suspicion. Especially if you work in Soundbar. Once, I happened to find the minutes from a regional Asset Protection meeting, and there was not a single department more focussed on than mine, to the point of making sure that the staff were of the right “age bracket”. I smiled at that, seeing as most, if not all, the Soundbar staff I knew were definitely in the wrong age bracket.

Point being, Interactive at New Target was a high shrinkage area. And again, it is due only to the incompetence of the previous staff/management. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but when you go into the DVD bit of a Target store, some of the DVDs are in hard plastic cases (called safers) to prevent people stealing them. Back before interactive was such a problem, this used to occur with the games, too. Since then, however, a ‘library system’ was developed, in which staff take each game out of its case and file it away alphabetically in the drawers, putting the empty box out on display for customers to peruse. Game shrinkage = 0.

Not at New Target, oh no. I think I nearly cried when I saw the entire department ‘safered’ (the term for stock which is in the hard plastic cases) and watched the mounds of work that I’d have ahead of me to fix it up. I didn’t, however, count on being opposed.

It happened during one of the Power Walks. Janine, the store manager, has this little routine whereby she powers around the store sparks flying out of her eyes, criticism seeming to emit from all orifices. If you got the ‘stop… hands on hips… right foot forward… squint…’ while she walked through your department you knew you were for it. Anyway, one afternoon she and Kellie, the Merchandise Manager, happened to be doing the rounds of my slowly improving department, and I brought it up.

They looked at first shocked and then suspicious. I could almost hear their thoughts… What did she say? She is opting for a huge amount of work for herself, so that we have less shrinkage? Are we hearing right? I can understand, the whole concept is unorthadox. However, if I was faced with the same situation I’d cover my shock and immediately approve the activity, giving all the support I could in the hope of encouraging further independent thought like this.

I definitely wouldn’t frown, and exchange a glance, and ask where on earth you got such an idea… and I certainly wouldn’t belittle the staff member by whipping out my portaphone and calling the sister-store to find out what they were doing.

I was fuming the next day, as they still hadn’t got back to me, so again I decided to jump the gun and just start doing what I knew needed to be done. I felt a twinge of unease. This was the second time an almost identical situation had happened, and I suddenly had a new understanding of what it must have been like for the previous staff member, who, untrained and much less pushy than I, must have felt like he was drowning in a bog.

But, I knew there was two roads I could take at this point. I could acknowledge that they were idiots, shrug, and work by the creed that they should do their own jobs and I’d do mine, keep my nose down and make it easy for myself.

Or, I could narrow my eyes, square my shoulders and allow a small tendril of indignation to snake up through my mind, giving me the required strength to fight. Fight with every ounce of false confidence, hard-won knowledge and political tactics that I had, and whip this department into shape.

Most people, not the idiots that I was, would have chosen the first option. Easier, oh, so much easier. But I simply could not do that. It has never been in my nature to go with a preordained flow. I had to make the flow, and if I couldn’t do that, I’d struggle and fight it with all my strength.

A couple of days after I decided to bull ahead with my gaming idea, I was half way through de-safering the games. Kellie happened to be walking around, and she came up to the counter.

“Katherine,” she said. “We’ve decided that you should go about transferring the games into a library system.”

A dry smile came into my eyes as she walked away, and I turned my back and continued what I was doing.

“I’m so glad,” I muttered sardonically.

Homework

I had never been more constantly frustrated in all my life.

It was a huge adjustment. To go from a store where I had 20hrs a week, a casual position, with all that I did closely monitored by Dude and His Lordship, to a store where the merchandise manager walked around, asking “how you were going”, and that was about it. I barely saw Joseph for the first two weeks or so. Nothing I did was questioned, and it appeared for a time that I could literally do no wrong in the eyes of the powers-that-were of Fremantle.

Of course, with me, no anomaly can go unanswered for very long and I resolved at once to find out what the hell was up with this place. But who to ask? Should I go and find some obscure staff member who would be candid about it? No. Something like that would only waste time. I was done with skirting around things, my newfound confidence would not allow it.

So I asked Jesus directly. Most managers, if you asked them how their department got so utterly horrific, would bristle, get offended, make excuses. All of these scenarios I was prepared for.

Dejected acceptance, however, I was not.

We were standing in browngoods, (or an awful parody of browngoods, I should say) staring at the stock which looked, I’m sorry to say, as if it had been used for a game like ring toss. Ten points if you get it on the shelf! Twenty if by some miracle it’s facing the right way!

“How could something like this happen?” I asked him. I had a copy of the consumer electronics Presentation Instruction and was staring at it helplessly. In my mind, I was panicking. I’d never even seen one of these before let alone used it. The floor plans were always, always drawn up by the managers of the area and approved by the merch manager before getting to the staff. Even then, the staff would only move things at the bidding of the BM, who would oversee the whole relay operation.

“The guy before you, Mike, was useless,” Jesus replied. “He knew his stuff, but he wasn’t prepared to do any work. He seemed to think that Soundbar was about getting a pile of Wiis in the morning and standing behind the counter selling them all day.”

I took this in. Fair enough. As a manager, you identify this problem with staff. That’s the first step. Then, you’re usually supposed to fix it.

“So what did you do?”

“In the end he told me to go fuck myself,” he replied, not really answering my question. I raised my eyebrows.

“And that’s why he got fired?”

The manager nodded.

“Well good,” I said, decisively. This conversation was going nowhere, it was only making me angry. “So what are we going to do about browngoods? It needs to be relayed.”

Jesus frowned at me. “It just needs some cleaning up, I think. I did go through and check off the points when the planogram was issued.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s all wrong, it needs a relay.”

We went on like this for a while, until he finally agreed to talk to Kellie about it. I smiled serenely as he walked away, it seemed I had won. Usually, when something goes to the MM, stuff gets done, and it was a small victory.

Little did I know.

Time went by and I did all that I thought I could do without support from the management. Every day I’d do the rounds of the department, and browngoods seemed to fester there like a wound. I grew more and more frustrated, until one day, I threw down my PI in anger.

“That’s it!” I screamed and got a couple of funny looks from customers. I gathered up my PI and some scrap paper, and made a rudimentary mud map of the department, before being relieved to go on lunch.

Sitting in the staff room, I poured over my floor plan. It was coming together slowly, but I was flying blind, I had no idea what I was doing.

“Are you doing homework?”

Checkout staff will always be checkout staff wherever you go, and by this I was comforted. I frowned at this particular specimen, weighing my answer carefully because Janine happened to be in the room. And what was all THAT about? At Old Target, the managers invariably ate in their office. You’d never see one in the staffroom.

“It’s a floor plan,” Janine said, before I could answer. I met her eyes and we exchanged a long look, with me meeting her questioning, concerned glance with cool, utterly feigned, confidence. I agreed with her, for the sake of the audience we’d attracted, before gathering up the paper and stalking out of the room.

I was a little worried. Staff were not supposed to be drawing up floor plans. It was not even one of those grey areas that are sometimes apparent. It was a definite no-go zone. We weren’t trained enough, we couldn’t be trusted to draw them up. I was expecting, for the entire remainder of the day, to be getting a visit from one of them. But I didn’t. So, to avoid waiting any longer, the very next morning at 8am, I started my relay.

Making and Breaking - At Least it Rhymes

It was an eerie kind of limbo, the one in which I lived in those last few weeks at the city store. Turning up to work half drunk most days (not that it mattered, I was in confec), sometimes not showing up at all, I shuffled around in a listless apathy. I don’t remember much from that time, just this general vibe of meaninglessness. Remember I had just given up uni for this place. I had nothing else, had not wanted anything else. And now I couldn’t even have this. It was a bitter end, but, as I learned, a necessary one.

For one day, I happened to glance up from my self induced stupor and spy on the noticeboard a Job Opportunity Bulletin (note the clever acronym – who says Target doesn’t have a sense of humour?) advertising a 36hr Soundbar position at another Target store.

Had I been in my right mind I wouldn’t even have looked twice at it. But my right mind was nowhere to be found, it had fled utterly. I had been squashed into the ground by external events that I had no control over, so it was only natural that my first instinct would be to initiate something that I could control.

And so it was that I found myself, one cold and bitingly windy morning, on the shores of Fremantle, squinting through the fog at the unmistakable red rondell, flashing and blinking like some kind of beacon, pulling my tattered spirit towards it.

Now the only problem was, while not as mystical as a beckoned spirit, was how on earth I was supposed to get in! I waited awkwardly around the corner a little out of the way, until I saw a girl stride purposefully towards the doors. She had an odd look on her face, one of rigid determination crossed with a kind of reluctant acceptance and a twinge of permanent exasperation. Not your average retail drone, I assessed. I studied her in the brief time I had and made a mental note to investigate further when my time was my own. I watched her simply pull aside the sliding doors and berated myself for not having tried this in the first place.

It is always hard, that first footstep over the threshold of something new. So many uncertainties, so much that was unknown… I took a deep breath, as I had done many a time before on occasions like this, and savoured my last moment on the outside, before putting my hands on the sliding doors and pulling them apart.

My eyes flickered all around, trying to take everything in as efficiently as possible, as I’d just worked out I had no idea where the staff area was and that I would have to follow the girl from the door. I closed the doors tentatively behind me and hurried to catch up.

She walked with the purposeful drive of someone who knew what they were doing, and I felt a large wave of sorrow inexplicably wash over me, for what I had lost. Swallowing this lump and cursing my weakness, I followed the girl into the locker room. I’d reached a conclusion, in that short walk. I was thoroughly sick of not knowing what was going on, and I refused, refused to feel that vulnerable ever again in connection with that place. It did not deserve it. So I must make myself hard, impenetrable. Immediately let a façade of knowledge and confidence fall over my uncertainty, to cover my inadequacy, until eventually the inadequacy ceased to exist at all. Steeling myself in the face of my new resolve, I let myself drop into the old Soundbar Swagger mode, and promptly threw my bag into the most convenient locker, banging it shut behind me. I was from Perth, team #51 – I wouldn’t let a measly C-grade store get the better of me. I’d show them what real retail drones were made of. They could all eat my dust. Or better still, choke on my dust.

When all else fails, it seems that I resort to wanton violent thoughts. Awesome.

I was checking out the BMs office (less than half the size of Perth’s, I noted with a hint of derision) when I ran into a short, plump woman with a crop of 90s style blonde hair. Her name appeared to be Ivy, and she was a manager. She looked momentarily confused, until she saw my badge.

“Ah, you must be our new Soundbar girl!” she said, smiling kindly at me.

“I must be,” I said, imitating her tone in what I though was an ingratiating way. As always, it probably just turned out pretentious. Speaking of, I was suddenly uncomfortably aware of the dicky Wii lanyard I had haphazardly tossed around my neck.

“Have you seen Jesus* yet?”

I shook my head. “Is he the entertainment manager?” I knew full well that he was, having thoroughly scouted out the management beforehand, but it never hurt to play dumb in regards to some matters.

She narrowed her eyes as if she’d never considered this possibility before. “Yes, he is,” she finally said. I was amused. It appeared that what I had heard about this entertainment manager was closer to the truth than I’d thought. “Come with me and I’ll go and find him, get him to show you around.”

She led me into the staff room (again, less than half the size…) and bid me wait while she found this enigmatic manager.

I immediately went to the Safety wall, where one could usually find all sorts of information. I was studiously committing to memory the names of the managers, admin, union dels and social club members, when someone walked into the room.

As soon as he did so, I immediately knew that this was my manager. I don’t know how I knew, as he wore no badge, but something about him screamed “significant”. It certainly wasn’t any physical thing. He had a boyish face surrounded by a receding hair line, and there was a hint of grey around his temples. I knew he was only in his mid-to-late twenties, so I wondered at this.

He gave me a shrewd, appraising look and I met his gaze steadily. He allowed his eyes to drop to his watch and opened his mouth.

“What time were you supposed to start?”

I gaped. No introductions, no half hour of small talk, no awkward breaking of ice. Just immediately into the nitty gritty of being five minutes late. My astonishment made my tone somewhat harsher than I intended.

“Perhaps if I hadn’t been cooling my heels in the staffroom waiting for you at someone else’s bidding, I would be right on time. I can assure you this is a one time occurrence. You only have first days once.”

Or a billion times, if you are a transient like me, but this add-on would have just confused him.

His stony expression did not change and I felt a flame of interest burst into life. Curious!

“I’m Jesus but I think you’ve already figured that out. Come with me and I’ll show you around and get you started.”

His voice was low he spoke each word as if it were carefully measured. I had yet to make up my mind whether he was clever, but a bit of a bastard, or just plain thick. I was leaning towards the latter.

I followed him out of the, er, cosy staff lounge and into the breezy, concrete walled upstairs reserve. The brownbuilt fixtures seemed to be mocking me and the window too high to see anything but clouds. I suppressed a sigh and looked up as someone called my name.

“Janine,” I replied. To one side, I saw Jesus start in surprise. I guess he’d forgotten. I almost had. For the current store manager of New Target was the old store manager of Old Target, and it appeared she remembered me. I was glad to see her, a familiar face in a sea of unfamiliarity.

“Have you lost weight?” she said, looking me up and down. I frowned slightly and shook my head.

“Not that I’m aware of but it’s not like I’m keeping track,” I replied, puzzled.

“Hmm,” she said, clearly not believing my answer (or simply not caring). We made more idle small talk before she departed with the promise to talk to me later, and Joseph continued on, beginning his guided tour. I noted, however, how disconcerted he was with my knowledge of Janine and Janine's knowledge of me. I understood, knowing Janine's style of management and knowing how it could put some people on edge. I played around with the glimmer of a grin – I could definitely make this interesting.

We went through the basic rounds, fire exits, receiving dock, my lock up reserves (an absolute joke, by the way, I remember actually believing that Jesus was joking when he showed it to me. It was literally a tenth of my reserve at Perth.)

For me, the tour really started when we visited my area. My excitement quickly turned to dust, as I came to realise exactly how bad the area was. Without boring you with the details, lets just say that my department was every merchandiser’s worst nightmare, every planner’s worst nightmare, every manager’s worst nightmare, and worse than anything I had prepared myself for. The literal mounds of work that would be required to fix the department I could see stretched out for miles in front of me, but instead of growing listless, my anger mounted and this fury etched out my cold tone as I stonily watched him show me my areas.

As we got to the very end, he turned to me, expectantly.

“So, do you have any questions?”

“No questions,” I replied evenly, meeting his eye. “Just a few statements.” I took a deep breath, because I knew that what I was about to say would be a make or break kind of thing. Little did I know at the time that it was not only a make or break for me, but for him as well. “A lot is going to change around here. There hasn’t been a PI implemented for a long time, and aside from that, the entire thing is a complete nightmare. It looks, I’m sorry to say, like a bomb has hit it. Now I don’t know why this is and I don’t care. But by the end of the day I want a copy of the current PIs for all my areas, as well as the current Music and Entertainment listings. Do you think that is a reasonable request?”

I don’t think I have ever seen anyone look as dumbfounded as he did right then before or since. He swallowed it quickly (although in my mind, the lapse had already occurred because I could see what he was thinking) and met my eyes with a very strange look on his face.

“It is good,” he said in his low, steady voice. “To finally have someone around here who knows what they are doing.” Then he abruptly turned on his heel and walked away.

Later on, Ivy sought me out.

“It is good to see him smile,” she said, nodding to where Jesus sat at his desk out of earshot. “He’s had a bad run of staff since he got into management. It’s been terrible for his confidence.” She shook her head, staring past me into the distance. She seemed to snap out of her reverie, as she looked at me indulgently. “I asked him what his new staff member was like, and at first he didn’t answer. I assumed the worst, but then he looked up at me and I saw hope in his face for the first time since he got management. He seemed kind of out of it, but answered dreamily, as if still in shock, ‘You know, she asked me for the current listings’.” Ivy chuckled and patted my arm. “Keep it up, kiddo.”

I watched her go and let my eyes flicker over to Jesus. I had been nothing but disappointed with my new manager since the day had begun, and I wasn’t sure if I was on the money or not. Only time would really tell.

And it seemed like it was going to be a much more interesting ride than I had ever given it credit for.

*Names have been changed. Oh, but if ONLY there was a manager called Jesus.