Sidenote: My dear readers, I did it. Two blog entries in one week?! Astounding, I know! But I've been holding this one back for a while, waiting for just the right time to let you take the plunge into my meager retail existence. A letter to the amazing author...August 3, 2009
Dear Catie,
I randomnly found your blog today when I did a google search on "getting credits at Lane Bryant." I currently work at the Lane Bryant in Merced, CA, and am planning to transfer down to the one in Valencia. As I was talking to the sales manager this afternoon, she explained that the amount of hours I could get as a part-time worker would depend on my sales performance. The next words out of her mouth were, "So how are you with credit?"
This is one thing my fellow part-timers and I agree on - it seems that getting people to open credit card applications are more important than your ability to keep the store looking organized or even your customer service skills. It's the one card managers can use to say who's the most valuable employee, since we don't work on commission or dollar sales. Oftentimes when the end of the day numbers come in, it's more disappointing to have not made the credit goal than the sales goal.
Why is it so important to have customers open credit cards? If anything, I think it'd be more important to have customers use the card once they opened the account. (After all, debt on a credit card would be a company's best friend, you would think.) But we aren't told to press that, only to get fresh new accounts every day.
Anyway, sorry for the tangent. I wanted to ask permission to repost your essay on my blog. I don't have a very large following, but it's something that rang true to me as I read it.
Thanks,
TOJJ
and now, on with the show!The Size Four Lane Bryant Salesgirl
... As I grew older, I was very observant of what other girls my age wore, and one thing that I consistently made note of was that, to put it bluntly, people who were overweight had no taste. They wore the same thing day after day: sweatpants, big shirts, shapeless dresses. Even up through high school, it was the same thing, day after day, sweaters and sweatpants and unflattering jeans. I shrugged it off as an odd coincidence, my size four, six-foot tall frame not getting the bigger picture until years later.
There was a tiny bit of security that I carried with me; every woman in my family was tall and thin, even after having children, and I knew that with genetics on my side I would never be one of those girls wearing sweatpants. It made me feel safe throughout my adolescence. I may not have pretty skin or hair or big boobs as I got older, but I knew that I would never be the one who walked in to the high school reunion having doubled or tripled her size after graduation.
It was something I could count on. While some of my friends worried if they would be bigger when they got older, and some jogging before and after school every day to stave off their eventual weight gain, I shrugged it off, secure in my pre-disposed genetic code, that I would never have to concern myself with that.
The opportunity to see how the plus-sized world lived came a few years later, in the form of desperately needing a summer job during college. The video store that I had worked in the previous two summers had closed down. I was devastated; that job had been the only place of work I had ever known, and I use the term “work” loosely. At Captain Video, I sat on the counter most of the time, watching whatever movie was playing, eating Rice Krispie treats, talking with my co-workers, and occasionally helping a customer if they needed it. I couldn't believe I got paid to do what I did; it seemed too good to be true.
It was. The store closed down after losing money and I was out of a job.When I came home from college the following summer, my mom suggested I work at a store in the local mall, maybe a bookstore or a clothing place. Clothes. Of course! I made the rounds at all my favorite stores, Nordstrom, Banana Republic, even the Gap, which I didn't even like that much but thought the discount would be worth it. None of those places thought I was worth it, however, as the weeks went by without a job offer.
During that time, my mother was hassling me to apply at Lane Bryant, a clothing store in the same mall that she used to shop at. “There's a 'Help Wanted' sign in their window,” she said. “You should go for it.”
Lane Bryant was once a trendy, high-end national store chain that sold to women who were extra tall like her, or, to those who needed plus-sized clothing, but in recent years had narrowed their business focus to just the plus-sized market. At first, I scoffed at the idea. That was not a place for me. Me, a size four, a six foot tall string bean, working at Lane Bryant? The sizes in that store started at size fourteen! It's not like I thought I was too good to work there, it just didn't seem like – no pun intended - a good fit.
But my mom kept bugging me, no doubt wanting to see me gainfully employed and out of the house. “Just go in and apply,” she said. “What harm could it do?”
Not only did Lane Bryant accept my application, but the store manager called me in for an interview the next day. I came into the store, asked for her, and was lead to a back office. A not at all plump woman with brown hair styled in the layered Jennifer Aniston look that was so popular at that time sat me down in a swivel chair. She held my application in her French-manicured hand, and looked me up and down. “Why do you want to work here?” was the first thing out of her mouth.
“Oh, I have great custumer service experience,” I lied, thinking back to my video store days when I'd sometimes get through an entire shift without helping anyone. “I have extensive cash register training,” I added, “and I'm a quick learner.”
“That,” the manager, whose name was Sherri, said, “is a great reason to work here. You know what we value here at Lane Bryant? Diversity. Lane Bryant celebrates all kinds of women, especially ones with positive attitudes. It's not just about the clothes. Look at me,” Sherri said, spreading her arms out and making motions toward her torso, “I can't wear the clothes here. I'm a size eight. But it's not about sizes. It's making women feel beautiful and looking great, no matter what their size. How does that sound to you?”
“Oh, it sounds fantastic,” I gushed, while thinking,
please, please give me this job. I need money BADLY. “Great,” she said. “Now... you won't be able to wear the clothes here, either. Or anything from the Venezia line.” (I wondered what 'Venezia' meant but I figured I'd find out later.) “But that's okay,” Sherri continued. “Lane Bryant is owned by The Limited, so just wear stuff from there, or what looks like is from there. Okay?”
“No problem.” Sherri told me to come into the store the next morning to begin my training. I shook her hand and left the store, taking a minute to eye the women working there, folding jeans, dressing mannequins, chatting with customers, all between the sizes of fourteen and twenty-eight, the sizes that Lane Bryant carried.
Hello, I said to them silently.
I'm your new co-worker. Nice to meet you.***The next morning I showed up for my training before the store opened. I wore pressed black slacks, a lavender shell, and dressy black shoes. Sherri and I were the only people in the store, and we sat in the back office once again. Sherri popped in video after video into a VCR and I watched their instructions on a tiny white TV while she sat in her office doing other things. Just when I thought I couldn't watch anything else that had to do with merchandising an underwear table, properly folding a pair of jeans, preventing theft, or convincing a customer to apply for a Lane Bryant credit card, Sherri appeared with one last video tape.
“This one's fun,” she said, feeding it into the VCR. “I like to save this one for last. It's not exactly... well, true, but I really like the ideas it presents. It leaves you with a positive feeling when you walk away.” The video began with soothing music, something that would be playing in the lobby area at a day spa, and featured shot after shot of old-world architecture, Renaissance paintings, and marble sculptures of human figures. A woman's voice began to narrate.
“My name is Sophie,” she said, with all the calmness of a flight attendant telling you to relax and enjoy your flight, “and many years ago, I traveled to Venice, Italy. I was amazed at what I saw.” Images of white marble sculptures faded in and out on the screen. Sophie went on to say that during her stay in Venice, she was deeply inspired by the paintings and sculptures that featured fuller-figured women. She was thrilled to see those sorts of body types celebrated, and when she came back home to the States, she decided to create a clothing line that was especially made for women with fuller figures. “I named it Venezia,” Sophie explained, “after the city that inspired it all.”
My mouth must have been hanging open a little when Sherri walked back into the room. What a load of crap. Why did they need to invent a story like this to get people to believe in what Lane Bryant was about?
“Are you taking this all in?” Sherri asked. “I know it seems like a lot. The rest of your training will be out on the floor today with Tiffani. She's the assistant manager.”
“Alright,” I said, trying to shake the hokey Sophie bunk out of my head and focus on the positive aspects of Lane Bryant as a company. They were paying me much more that what the video store ever did. And I could still get a discount on stuff here. Maybe one day I'd see a purse or a necklace that I liked. Either way, it was just for the summer, and I was going to stick it out.
A few minutes later, the women who worked the opening shift made their way into the back of the store. Sherri introduced them to me one by one, and as we said our hellos, I could see a question flicker behind their smiles.
What am I doing here, you ask? Just trying to earn a living. Please don't look at me like that. Training with Tiffani was a whole different world. She was in her mid-twenties, probably a size eighteen, with long blonde high-lighted hair. She always wore little black heels. “I'm so excited to meet you!” she exclaimed, shaking my hand. “This morning I'm going to lead you through our foundations section.”
“Foundations” was a fancy word for bras, underwear, and “body shapers,” little Lycra shorts that women wore beneath their outfits. “Don't say girdle,” Tiffani advised. I eyed the bras. Would they have my size? The smallest one I saw was a 36C. That's a definite no, I thought.
“Look at these!” Tiffani exclaimed. “We just got this shipment in yesterday.” She held up a black satin lace-up-the-back corset with wire boning. “You could work this a lot of different ways. Wouldn't it look so hot under a blazer?” I had to admit that it would. Tiffani draped it over her arm. “It's very 'Sex and the City.' I'm going to try this on during my lunch break,” she said. “Oh, and next month we're doing a lingerie promotion. Every Lane Bryant employee gets a free bra!”
Great, I thought. Maybe I could give it to my friend Jacqui, a size sixteen who laughed in my face when I told her where my new job was.
When it came to giving employees working hours, Lane Bryant had a few tricks up its sleeve. Everyone was paid by the hour and no one made commission. Each employee, however, was expected to sell at least one hundred dollars worth of clothing for each hour that they worked as well as sign up one new customer for a membership to the Lane Bryant credit card every day. At the end of the week, everyone's numbers were added up. The top third of the sellers kept their full working hours for the next week. The middle third worked for part of the week, and were also on standby. And if you were in the bottom third, you hardly worked at all, possibly being on standby for every shift, and maybe working just one day each week. Needless to say, this created a tremendous amount of pressure for the saleswomen to compete and fight for those top spots.
I hit the ground running and at the end of my first week, I was in the middle third. The week after that I was in the top third, and as the weeks went by I slowly worked my way up the chart. One week I was the number three seller for the entire store. “Way to go, Skinny,” one of my co-workers said. The next week, I was number one. No one said anything. Being number one was a coveted spot, and I knew it was somewhat of a fluke that I had claimed it. I was not some dynamo saleswoman; I had just been lucky. I was proud of myself, but I didn't brag about it. I never made the number one spot again, but I worked hard to get sales and still stayed high up in the ranks, so my hours were never jeopardized.
This was 2000, the summer of python, or in most of the fashion world's case, faux python. Python pants, jackets, belts, bags, anything that was usually leather was now also made in a python skin pattern, in every color from dark brown to teal to hot pink. Lane Bryant sported a line of python pants, mini skirts and matching jackets in purple and cherry red. These were more of their trendier pieces, and they were displayed at the front of the store. Nearby were business suits and blouses in bright, splashy summer colors, and beyond those were flirty silk summer dresses with slits up the sides. I tried to remember how long this store had been in this mall. I had no idea; I had never paid attention to it before.
Then, a new idea hit me. I had to have been the stupidest skinny girl ever to ponder over why her overweight classmates had no taste in clothes! It was not as if they wanted to wear sweatpants and saggy sweaters every day, it was the fact like there were not enough stores like this around to provide them with an opportunity to wear anything different. I couldn't believe my closed-mindedness. How could this not have occurred to me before?
I refolded a table of mint green capri pants, shaking my head and laughing at my own foolishness.Every once in a while someone would wander in to the store and not realize it was a store for plus-sized ladies until a few minutes in to their shopping experience. I think sometimes if I was working toward the front and I was the first salesperson they saw they didn't automtically think anything was different. It was fun to watch these “regular sized” women come to this realization, then find a tactful way to escape the store as quickly as possible. It was as if they would be exposed to “fat germs” if they stayed in there a minute longer and would spontaneously gain fifty pounds.
One day a small group of size zero fifteen year old girls wandered in to the front part of the store. I was working in the front and graced them a welcoming smile. They smiled back and started looking at leather jackets. About a minute later, like a flock of birds, all of them suddenly stopped what they were doing and looked around rapidly, their blonde ponytails shaking from side to side. The realization had come; they knew they were in “that” kind of a store.
Immediately, they all started giggling loudly, and quickly walked, then ran, out of the store. I glared at them as they whizzed past me.
“If you're going to laugh at fat people, then stay the f*** out of my store,” I thought.
***
On a trip to the beach later that summer, I neglected to put sunscreen on the tops of my feet. The next morning my feet were so red and swollen that I couldn't walk or even fit shoes or socks over them. After a trip to the emergency room and a diagnosis of second-degree burns, I was given a doctor's note and told to stay off my feet for the next four days.
And so began four days of rest, where I was allowed to lay on my mom's queen-sized bed, watch TV, and eat ice cream, my swollen, blistering feet wrapped in damp washcloths. After watching a marathon of "Roots" on the History Channel, and as a result feeling incredibly depressed, I decided to read to change things up a bit. The book I had was
Culture Jam by Kalle Lasen, founder and editor of the magazine
Adbusters.
Up until that point in my life, it was the most anti-corporate, anti-consumerist piece of literature I had ever read. It totally changed my perspective on how big business in America worked, and how the media perpetuated the image of an unattainable life. I was fascinated by the ideas that the book presented. Consumerism was eating away at America, it said. Modern day slavery still existed. The only solution was to not buy into the lies that were heaped upon us by mainstream media. Shopping did not lead to fulfillment, it only left you with a sad, empty feeling.
I saw that feeling present in the eyes of my neighbors. One had recently bought a Corvette, another had just gotten a boob job. I saw it in the faces of friends at school, who religiously watched “Sex and the City” every Sunday night and felt horribly incomplete, bemoaning the fact that they didn't have the amazing wardrobe or enough cash to get manicures every weekend like the characters on the show did. I also saw that feeling in the customers who came into my store, eager to try on a new purple python pantsuit.
The book fascinated me. I devoured it in three days and by the time I returned to work, bandages still on my feet, my mindset had become very cynical in regards to the consumerist lifestyle. The main ideas from the book that I took with me were that big companies, even one like Lane Bryant, were horrid institutions. They stomped on the little people at the bottom of the pecking order (people like me!) and blatantly lied to consumers to make as big a profit as possible. I was immediately suspicious of everything that Lane Bryant stood for. They didn't really want to empower larger women by making stylish clothes that fit them – they just wanted to take their money by presenting the idea that possessions brought about happiness. Well, I was not going to be part of that racket anymore.
This didn't mean that I quit. I just slowly cut down my aggressive salesperson tactics. I stopped pushing people to apply for the Lane Bryant credit card. My desire for women to not get further into debt had overridden my desire to be a good employee and make my numbers. I cut down on the times I tried adding on accessories at the cash wrap. And when a woman tried something on and asked me how it looked, I said, “I don't know. Do you really need to buy that? What do you think?” Even with this dramatic change in sales tactics, my weekly numbers stayed up and I remained in the top third.
About a week into my new anti-consumerist sales campaign, a new girl joined the Lane Bryant team. Her name was Nicole, and she was younger than me, with a sunny smile and an impossibly upbeat attitude. Tiffiani paired me up with her on her first closing night so I could show her how to fold down the underwear table.
“You girls are awesome!” Tiffani exclaimed as she strutted back to the office to count the day's earning, snapping her fingers and singing an old disco song.
More, more, more!How do you like it, how do you like it?More, more , more!When Tiffani was out of sight, I asked Nicole what she thought of Lane Bryant so far.
“I love it,” she said. “I just watched a bunch of videos this morning. The one about Sophie, and Italy... it was ...” she searched for the right words, “it was just so inspiring. It was really cool to learn where all of this,” she gestured to the clothing displayed all around us, “came from.”
“Yeah,” I began, leaning in closer to her and lowering my voice. “You know, all that 'Sophie' stuff? It's not real. They just made it up. Lane Bryant isn't being truthful with us. They're based out of Cleveland, Ohio. I looked it up. 'Sophie' doesn't even exist.”
Nicole's face fell. I could see that I had broken a little piece of her heart.
Oh well, I thought.
It's better she find out now, before the corporate machine swallows her whole.About a week later we had a store meeting. The staff was being prepped on the lingerie promotion that was about to happen throughout the store. We were each given a new bra for free as part of the promotion, to encourage conversation about it with our customers. I had requested a 36DD in sky blue to give to my friend Jacqui. Everyone sat in a circle in folding chairs, clutching their new bras and wolfing down donuts and muffins that the managers had provided.
Tiffani spoke first. “Did you ladies know that 80% of women are wearing the wrong bra size?” Several quiet gasps and ohs! rose from my co-workers. I frowned. I had heard this “fact” before. It was about a year ago in Nordstrom. Their lingerie department was having a promotion and a saleswoman had thrown a number my way, except then, it was 75%. So the number had actually gone up since then! Someone obviously wasn't doing their job.
My skepticism was at an all-time high.
This is just another trick, I thought,
a line fed to women to get them to come in and try on bras. I raised my hand and was immediately called on.
“Yes, Catie?”
“Yeah. Where did you get that number?” Everyone turned and looked at me.
“Excuse me?”
“Well, I mean, how could someone come up with that figure? Do they walk around and ask women if they're wearing the wrong bra size and eight women out of ten say yes?”
No one said anything. I lowered my hand and crossed my arms, waiting for an answer.
Ha, I thought.
I've got you now.
Tiffani jumped right in, as smooth as can be. “These facts were given to us from corporate headquarters. They did some extensive surveys, and that was the number that they came up with.” Everyone seemed satisfied with this answer. People turned and faced the front again. My little revolution had been squelched.
You guys don't get it, I thought.
I knew my days in that store were numbered after that. I just couldn't stomach the idea of playing into women's insecurities by having them buy stuff from me. I had to quit soon. I needed a way out.
In late July, I figured one out. I told the managers a half-truth, because if I told a flat-out lie, which I am horrible at doing in a believable way, I just knew that they would see right through me. I said that our family's house had been for sale, which was true, and that we were moving to California, which was also true, and that the house had sold suddenly, much sooner than was expected, and that we had to move to California much earlier than we had anticipated. This was not true at all. The house had not sold yet, but how were they to know? My managers accepted my resignation and asked if I'd come back next summer. I said probably not.
***
Even today, six years after that summer of working in a store whose merchandise I could never, and no doubt will never wear (I still weigh the same that I did in high school, still fluctuate between a size two and four), the fact that I was once an employee at Lane Bryant has not been laid to rest. It comes up in job interviews when my past employment is discussed. Potential employers, especially if they are women, look over my resume, do a double take and say, “Wait – you worked where?” It comes up in conversations about working when the subject gets to the hardest job we've ever had.
In the summer of 2004, an event was put on by Portland's queer community called Fat Girl Speaks, a fat pride event, similar to gay pride. It was advertised everywhere, and there were going to be discussion panels, speakers, fashion shows, art exhibits, burlesque shows, poetry nights, and of course, parties. I was fascinated by this idea and wanted to go to support the cause, and to see what it was like. I had recently broke up with someone special (someone who, coincidentally, was quite overweight) and I did not feel comfortable hitting the town and going alone. I could just imagine what it would look like – a tall skinny girl walking around at a fat pride event, gawking like a tourist, seeing how it was for overweight women and what they struggled with. I wanted to hang a sign around my neck that read “I am here as an ally. I used to work at Lane Bryant – don't judge me!”
But even if it was widely known that I once worked at Lane Bryant, what did it matter? Working at a store that sells clothes to a certain demographic does not mean you automatically understand their plight. I never actually walked in their shoes. Who was I to assume that I understood what they went through? I called my friend Jacqui to see if she wanted to go with me (Jacqui was now, coincidentally, working at a different Lane Bryant across town) but she was away on vacation. During the nights that Fat Girl Speaks took place, I sulked around at home, ate Twizzlers, and watched reruns of “The L Word.”
Looking back, I should have gone. What harm could have been done? It was probably a very open, positive environment, and I missed out on it because I was afraid of being marginalized. Now, every time I walk past a Lane Bryant (of which there are many) or Ashley Stewart or some other store of its kind, I feel slightly nostalgic. I think back to that particular summer when I needed a job and worked harder than I ever had before. It opened my eyes by dropping me into a world where I was the minority, the one that didn't fit in as well as the others.
It is a huge privilege to observe fat culture from the distance that I do. The fact that fat pride events even take place are definitely a positive thing, but I do not think it is a reflection of overweight people gaining acceptance in society. With constant news stories about celebrities and everyday people getting various types of surgery to deal with their weight and the soaring popularity of plastic surgery amongst the general populace, there seems to be a widening gap between those who are overweight and content and those who are overweight and miserable.
Just last year my friend Jacqui got breast reduction surgery because she was having back problems, and after that procedure she had liposuction done to the sides of her body to, as she put it, “balance” herself out. Even with myself and my whippet-thin frame, I occasionally long for more shape: larger breasts, a rounder bum, fuller hair. There are products and procedures available to me to satisfy those needs as well.
Will I eventually buy into it? That seems to be the one constant with everyone's body struggles: no matter what it is you want to change, someone is out there to sell you something to make it happen. And whether your niche market is Lane Bryant, Petite Sophisticate, or somewhere in between, there are always racks and racks of clothes to drape over yourself while you wait.
