CHAPTER 192: IMPRESSIONS OF MY LIFE: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A RECHERCHE POET CHICO'S TURNING A PAGE OF MY LIFE 2005 - 2010

 CHAPTER 192  CHICO’S TURNING A PAGE OF MY LIFE  2005 - 2010 

Something else happened in 2005 that changed my life around. When I was looking for a new employment I said, “I don’t want anymore thinking jobs. I want something more physical. Some occupation where I come in, do my job and go home, I don’t want any more jobs where I am taking work home. When I get home I don’t want to even have to think about the job.  I’ve had 45 years of thatkind of employment.  No more!’

It was a goal, but I thought it not possible, then one day I was doing what the Job Placement people told me not to do, peruse the newspaper want ads. These were a waste of time, they told me. But I saw this one opportunity, working in the stock department of a woman’s shop. I decided to inquire.

The place was called Chico’s, it was  part of a chain, and this particular store was located in Greenville, a tony area outside of Wilmington. I drove out to the little mall along  Kennett Pike called the Powder Mill Square, obviously named because it was so close to DuPont’s old gun powder mills on the Brandywine. I walked in and a woman came over to me. 

“May I help you?” she asked 

“I’ve come about your ad for a stock person.”

She threw her hands up in the air.  “Thank God,” she

exclaimed, “are we glad to see you!”

I knew at that moment I would probably get this position. Her name www Debbie Litka and she was one of the assistant store managers. 

I would have to wait until the store manager arrived, so I did. Not long after that the Store Manager, Lisa Butler, pulled into the lot and I was soon filling out paperwork and before you could sneeze, I was the new Stock Supervisor at that Chico’s.

 

I soon met the other assistant store manager, Ronda (no
H!) Casey, who then showed me about the place.

 

My domain was going to be in he stockroom, for the most part, over the next 5 and a 3rd years.

Dan the Fed Man of FedEx would deliver a number of cartons to the rear door of the stockroom in the morning. 

I would open each carton, count the items an compare
this number to the lading sheet. If there was  difference I had to play detective and find out why and get I corrected. 

I would then put most items on a hanger and place upon a rolling bar. This would then be placed in cages that rolled along one wall. Other items, such a Jeans would be folded than paced on shelves. The sale personal would then come back to the stock room and take samples off. The new shipments out to the main show floor.

Some times I would have to steam the wrinkles out of some item before thaw could b display for sale. Sales personnel would restock the main show room from the cages or shelves so there were no gaps.

When I started this job, I discovered the stockroom was a
disorganized  mess. My first priority thus became putting everything in order to make it easy for the restocking. This meant rearranging al the cages so like items were together and hung by style, size and color.  It took a bit of time ut I completely organized the stock.

 

Some things over the Chico years bothers m, mainly he waste. When we had clothes that could not be sent back to the warehouse to be sold in our discount stores, they had to be thrown in the dumpster and be destroyed. I always felt these clothes could have have been donated to the homeless, but that was a no-no. I once had a young woman begging me to let her have some of the cast-aways, but of course I couldn’t. I toss them into the compactor. I then told her I would be leaving, if she wished to climb in the dumpster and forage that was her business. I don’t know if she did or not, I didn’t hang about to witness.

This was the same fate suffered by store decor once used. Each month Lisa would receive photos of how the store should be set up. There would be displays and framed pictures to emphasize a theme. These items were tossed at the end of the month, yet they were perfectly good items. The pictures especially, often lovely photographs of nature or landscapes some would be happy to hang in their home, but never mind…they had to be trashed.

Chico’s was founded in 1983 by a couple named Marvin and Helene  Gralnick.  They originally met in Guadalajara, Mexico. The story about the store was they were a Hippie couple selling their art out of a VW bus. They dad move to the Sanibel Island, Florida where they opened q shop which Helene named Chico’s Folk Art Specialties, named for a friend’s pet parrot, Chico. They sold mostly folk art but also some sweaters. They offered Mexican Folk Art, antiques and fixtures Marvin made in his workshop. However, the sweaters began outselling everything else, so they turned their shop into a clothing boutique. To survive, they would not close the store until reaching a certain total of sales each day. They couldn’t even afford to have their bags printed, so the Chico’s name was handwritten on each bag. 

Eventually they were able to pen a second store and in 1987 vegan franchising their business, until finally today they have over 1,300 Chico’s store.  They also operate under three other brands, White House Black Market, Soma and TellTale. One of their unique practices was how they sized their clothing, 0 to 4. 

 

My new boss was very nice lady and gorgeous, well-built and had once been dance. She had the lithe and graceful body of a dancer. 

This all created problems for me as a healthy male; despite growing old, I still had an eye for women, always had, but also always respected them. I would never have touched a lady or come on to one. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t look at a beautiful woman.

 Lisa was a beautiful woman and she generally wore Chico’s dresses to work, because that is a good way to show off the product to the clientele. The difficulty for me was many of these outfits tended toward low and billowing necklines, meaning if she bend over even moderately they tended to show a bit more than modesty intended. I never told her, and I hope she can understand because we are still friends, but we males have a hard time positioning my eyes  upon a face sometimes.  I put Lisa on my list of best bosses I ever had, but where to look was never a quandary with the others bosses on my list.

Ronda Casey Clark was a long time friend of Lisa’s and
was fun to talk with. She was also a great looking woman, red haired and all Irish. She had a child during my tenure there. It is hard to believe that little baby is now in her late teens. I still am in touch with Ronda. In the beginning, when I started at Chico’s she was one of the  Assistant managers.

I really liked the job, it was exactly what I had looked for. There were some danger, I suppose to opening cartons and reaching in. Once there were some open box cutters inside, but I didn’t cut fortunately. Another time I opened a carton and found boxes of varied caliber ammunitions.  We had to have the police come and remove these bullets for disposal. I never did find out why these were in our carton of new clothes. 

Another time we had police investigating because some
one stole our petty cash box of its contents. Thi one made me nervous because the petty cash was kept  in the stockroom and only a few of us knew the location. I was one of those and I was also in the stockroom along much of the time. I figured this made me the prime target. I had my own suspicions of who did, but the was just a hunch. I don’t think they ever did find out whodunit.

After working at Chico’s for five years, thing began to unravel.  In my last few month, corporate fired Lisa. I don’t really don’t know the circumstance, perhaps a clash between her and the new district manager.I recall my first meeting of this district manager. I had spent some time taking boxes and shaping them to hold wrapped T-shirt. These were placed on shelves in the stockroom where a sale person couldn’t quickly locate a sale, color and size as needed.  This worked well. I had used supply boxes as we got them, so it took a while to have enough for the T-Shirt storage. First thing this district manager said to me on her first visit was that I had used the wrong boxes. So what, these worked just fine, but she made me use a different box and do the whole thing over. What a waste of time and energy.

When the district manager was coming for a visit, Lisa had to call in extra people to go through and clean the store, another waste of time and money. Corporate then changed our hour from 9:00 AM until 9:00 PM to open at 10:00 and close at 11.00.  I liked coming in at 8 to prepare the store for the day
and live at 1:00. Now I couldn’t start until 9 and leave until 2., which as odd as it sounds, totally disrupted me  day.  Why was this done? Because most malls in the country operated from 10:00 to 9:00. But our Mall was different, but corporate didn’t like into the benefits to us of this. We did a brisk business early in the day because many business people came early to get coffee at Einstein’s Begals across from us before they went to work. The mall itself basically shut down at 8:00 in evening, so that hour between 8 and 9 PM was fairly dead for us.m The Mall parking lot lights were turned off at eight, so the Mall was dark after that hour.

Corporate then install some kind of counters over our doors. They could then a percentage of customers who enter to sales and judge our sale people based on that.  Two problems with this. 

First, and I suppose minor, we employees could not go our to lunch or anything because we would be counted and give an inaccurate sales to entry radio. 

Secondly, was the story setup. Next to us was a restaurant called Cromwell’s American Tavern entered down a  a short hallway. We had a door in the front toward the parking lot, but a second door into that short hallway. People going to the restaurant would cut through our store from the front to the hallway door as a shortcut, again throwing the round to purchase ratio off.

Remember how I mentioned one of my duties each time I opened a new carton of clothes, was to count the items and compare this to the packing list.  If the count didn’t agree I had to reconcile the difference.  Corporate send down a memo that we were no longer to count the items and do this comparison.  Oddly, after we complied our shrinkage figures increased each month and corporate blamed this unaccounted lost of product on our sale people.  It may have been we just didn’t do due diligence anymore.

But what finally did it for me was they were doing away with the distinction Stock Person. Now everyone was suppose to become a sales person or a cashier, which I did not want. I am not a salesperson. Many of our customers were well-off and spoiled. They came in with a ‘hey you’ attitude. They would buy a dress for some affair they planned to attend, then bring it back a day later after they wore it and demand their money back. Chico’s at this time had a very liberal return policy. They would take an item back no questions asked. There was no time limit of a return. Our patrons took advantage of this. Some would return year old items. They would complain about colors bleeding, when they washed a white article in hot water, even when the label clearly stated not to do that, but we would take it back.

Anyway, a little after five years of being there, I resigned.