by Freeman Hall
For my first day in the purse department I wore a new black tie with a screaming white alien; apropos considering the circumstances. (Mom gave me that one. From one Retail Slave to another.)
While wandering around the sweltering compound sweating in my suit and checking out the purses, a strange thing happened. I found myself wishing I could carry some of them. The Big Fancy had cool purses. They had unusual locks, hooks, buckles, and weird shit on them, like charms, chains, and pom-poms. Many were covered in letters, and a few had phrases like “Juicy Girl,” “Crazy For Couture,” and “I’m As Mean as I Look.” They were made out of astonishing leathers, colorful fabrics, shiny plastics, and exotic animal skins and came in every shape imaginable — from slouchy-looking sacks to clunky-looking gym bags. I even saw one resembling a bowling-ball case. I couldn’t help but touch and play with them, feeling their textures, moving their zippers, pushing their locks.
The plethora of intricately designed purses blinded me and impressed me at the same time. It was as if each one was trying to outdo the other. I suddenly realized why women get so hooked. Already I wanted a $1,300 black leather Marc Jacobs because the heavy silver zippers and push-locks looked like my motorcycle jacket.
Perfect for the leather bar.
And I thought the $800 Isabella Fiore with a painted pirate skull was beyond cool. Perfect for Disneyland!
When I picked up a zebra-print sack with gold medallions hanging from it and saw the $4,000 price tag, I almost fainted.
Holy fuck! I could live off that for almost three months!
“Versace,” said a woman’s voice, “the It Bag for spring.”
I almost dropped the $4,000 Versace It Bag for spring.
“Hi, you must be Freeman. I’m Judy, the handbag manager,” said a skinny woman in all black with short, dark red hair. Her hardened face reminded me of a dried-up lake bed. “Tammy and Suzy have told me so much about you. I’m expecting great things. You’re the first man we’ve ever had in Handbags. We’ve been looking for a while now. All the designers have men selling handbags in their boutiques. Women love it.”
If one more person tells me how much women are going to love me, I’m going to scream. Not to mention she’s treating me like the latest breakthrough in technology.
“Umm . . . thanks . . . nice to meet you, Judy,” I said.
Judy’s black eyes sized up my screaming alien.
“Interesting tie,” she said in a monotone.
Judy wasn’t one for fun and games. As far as she was concerned, we were at war in The Big Fancy — at war to win sales and have department increases. Judy was a tense, stressed-out Retail Droid, always dressed in designer black from head to toe. She drank coffee at all hours of the day, but I’ve never seen her eat actual food. I know little about her personal life because Judy was not one to chit-chat or talk about the latest movie. I heard she was married with no kids and lived somewhere in the valley. It was all about business with Judy. Getting the sale. Having increases. Taking care of the customer. Making the department look Big Fancy perfect. She was constantly on the move. Edgy. Jittery. Terse. And at times completely unhappy. I’m not sure who came up with it, but we had given our stoic bitch of a handbag manager the nickname General Judy. Or the General. When she began barking orders, the handbag troops scrambled.
“You have had full training and I saw from your app you are retail-experienced, so I expect you won’t need any babysitting,” said General Judy. “I will give you a quick tour of the department and the handbags. Then we will go to Customer Service and get the money for the registers. I need to meet with Suzy about the Charity League fashion show, so you’ll be alone for the first hour. You should be able to handle it.”
Alone? In the purse jungle by myself. For an hour? I am fucked.
I started to timidly protest about the being alone part, but the General was on the move, not interested in what I had to say. I followed her to a long, glass, case-like island similar in shape to a place where cows are rounded up to be slaughtered. I called it the Corral. The phones and two registers were embedded inside it, and there was barely enough room for us to walk. This was our counter; the place where all the transactions occurred, the place where all the blunt-force drama went down.
Judy quickly unleashed a long list of procedures. She did it so methodically and so fast, I barely retained anything. Work the phone console like this. Answer the phone like that. Handbag repairs work this way. Handbag claims work that way. Clean handbags like this. Do handbag repairs like that. Straighten handbags this way. Display handbags that way.
After each thing she said, “Got it?”
I gave her my best shit-pleasing retail smile and said, “Got it,” back.
Then General Judy dragged me over the handbag floor with an arm-waving introduction.
“The Fendi shop is there. The Coach shop is there. The Kate Spade shop is there. Juicy Couture, Isabella Fiore, Kenneth Cole, and Betsey Johnson shops are all over there.”
Judy called everything a shop. I didn’t see any shops. I saw sections, shelves with purses. She fired off more designer names: Dooney & Bourke. Gucci. Marc Jacobs. Burberry. Monsac. DKNY. Fendi. Dolce & Gabbana. Hobo International. Furla. Botkier. Kooba. Perlina. Some I had heard of because they make men’s clothes, but most of them may as well have been names yanked out of a Swedish phone book.
How will I remember all of these? Half of them sound like drag queens. What the hell is a Kooba? A Japanese Anime monster? And what about Hobo International? Sounds like a creepy motel.
“Umm . . . Judy, I’m a little nervous about all of this. I’ve never sold purses before.”
Her pitted, worn face tightened.
“They are not purses. They are handbags. You wouldn’t call a flight attendant a stewardess and a color stylist a hairdresser, now, would you?”
“I guess not.”
“You guessed right. Always say handbag instead of purse.”
Handbag instead of purse. Sounded easy enough. But until that point I’m pretty sure the word handbag had never come from my mouth. In my world of ignorant maleness, the clunky contraptions women stuffed full of whatever were called purses. Not handbags. When I was a little boy, my Grandma had a purse; a big brown, monster of a purse with double straps and what seemed like hundreds of compartments and zippers. I believed Grandma’s Big Brown Purse had to be another door to the kingdom of Narnia and its contents nothing short of treasure. The need to know what was inside consumed me. I remember one time around the age of eight, giving in to this fantastical urge. When I thought I was alone, my hands found themselves rummaging around, deep inside the Big Brown Purse like I was on an archeological dig. Then Grandma walked in and caught me.
“LITTLE FREEMAN! GET OUT OF MY PURSE!” she yelled.
Whenever an older family member said the word little in front of my first name, it usually meant I was in some sort of trouble.
“Sorry, Grandma,” I said, feeling like a criminal, “I just wanted to see what was inside.”
Grandma laughed and then sat me down next to her.
“A woman’s purse is private. It’s not a place for boys. You never go inside a woman’s purse. The things inside are not for you to see. Do you understand, Freeman?”
“Yes, Grandma.”
She then reached into one of the many pockets in her Big Brown Purse, and gave me a piece of Bubble Yum, my favorite. I never went inside Grandma’s purse again.
My mother also echoed Stay-Out-of-My-Purse sentiments, further convincing me the inside of a woman’s purse was no place for a man, but instead a sacred vault only to be entered by those of the female persuasion. This conditioning was so embedded in my psyche that even when my Mom asked me to get something out of her purse, it felt as if I was breaking the law.
And now I was selling them.
“I’m totally on board with the handbag thing,” I said to Judy, ready to overcome my childhood purse conditioning, “I’m just curious, though. Why is it a hand
bag instead of a purse?”
The General simultaneously rolled her eyes and released a tired sigh. “A purse is a cheap, plastic discount store thing. A handbag is what contemporary, fashion-conscious women carry. And that’s what we sell. Expensive designer handbags. An assortment of the latest trends and must-have famous names. They are handbags and you need to refer to them that way. You can say bag for short, but never, ever, ever say the word purse. It’s an insult to the exclusive designers we carry. Got it?”
“Got it.”
But I didn’t really get it. The whole thing sounded kind of snooty and stupid. Say handbag instead of purse. As a writer, I’m well aware of word transformations. Some like to say hot dog instead of wiener, photo instead of picture, and adult film instead of porno. Who am I to judge? The names of things are constantly changing. If the word purse has been thrown into the dumpster of past terminology, so be it. Handbag instead of purse. Whatever.
Judy went back behind the Corral, opened a drawer by the register, and handed me a hundred-page packet titled A Guide to handbags at The Big Fancy.
The Employee Handbook is a card and the Handbag Guide is the size of a screenplay? How can this be? It’ll probably put me to sleep, but at least it will help sell the $4,000 Versace.
“You can read this in between helping customers, but it has to stay in the department.”
“Can’t I take it home and study it?”
“It’s the only copy I have. You need to read it here.”
What? How am I going to read all of this while trying to sell purses . . . I mean handbags?
Judy noted the apprehension on my face.
“Don’t worry. It’s trial and error. Even women are intimidated at first. You’ll catch on.”
You and Suzy expect GREAT sunshiny things from the Gay Guy. I’d better catch on.
“Is it okay if I take my jacket off? I’m really hot,” I said, wiping my forehead.
“I’d rather you didn’t. The dress code for men is a coat and tie. The air will kick on any second and the rally should be starting soon.”
Before Judy could explain the rally, Suzy Davis-Satan’s voice detonated from the store’s PA system like a chalkboard-fingernail-scratching bomb: “GOOOOOOOOD MORNING, BURBANK!!! TODAY’S RALLY HAS BEEN CANCELED. HAVE A ROCKIN’ DAY, EVERYBODY. HIGHLY DEDICATED AND MOTIVATED TO WIN! WIN! WIN!”
Somewhere glass must have shattered. I was glad this rally thing had been canceled.
Minutes later, the General marched me up to Customer Service, where the money bags were. We had to recount the cash in each bag. Twice. Judy said it was in case of mistakes. I didn’t quite understand why we were checking to make sure someone else hadn’t made a mistake, but The Big Fancy was all about perfection.
As soon as we were done, Judy left for her meeting. The next thing I knew, I was in the handbag department, alone in the Corral. I had managed to open the registers without a problem. Then a voice came over the PA: “The Big Fancy is now open for business. Have an awesome day, everybody!” I didn’t know whose voice it was, and I didn’t care. A short distance away a dude in a suit pulled back a curtain that blocked the mall from our store. Right next to it was The Big Fancy’s coffee bar. I salivated. An iced mocha latte would sure hit the spot. Suddenly a woman was at my counter.
“Hi. Can you help me?” she said, “I need to find a metallic silver rhinestone evening clutch.”
I had no idea what the fuck that was. Judy never mentioned this clutch word. Did Big Fancy sell designer car parts? I frantically flipped through the guide searching for the word clutch.
I saw other strange names like satchel and hobo, but no clutch.
“What are you doing?” asked the Customer.
I stopped looking for the clutch word. It was no use fooling her.
“Umm . . . I’m new. I don’t know what that is, but I could help you look around for one.”
“They really shouldn’t have men working in this department,” she said.
I thought the women were going to love me?
The next hour was complete estrogen hell. Nervous sweat seeped from my underarms and I did not move from behind the Corral. I was too afraid. The phone rang every thirty seconds. Women asking for other women I did not know and questions I did not have the answers to. I had to return three different bags, and every time I had to look at the slip of paper to enter my ID, 441064, into the register. “Why are you taking so long?” one of the women returning asked. “It shouldn’t take this long.” Then a lady wanted to buy a gift card for $84, but I could not remember how to do it. “I’m new. Maybe you should go to another counter.” She stormed off. Another woman wanted to see handbags that were in the Corral cases. I pulled out an Isabella Fiore, a Burberry, a Marc Jacobs, a Gucci, a Michael Kors, and a Kate Spade. She tore out stuffing and threw it all over the counter, asked me which ones I liked, fingered them all, and then left. Then a woman wanted to know the price of a Fendi. I couldn’t find a ticket.“ I’m new. My manager will be back soon,” I said. “Forget it,” she replied, “I’m in a hurry.” She left. This is how it went. Total craziness. The phone rang nonstop, and customers got pissed at me for not knowing shit. By the time Judy returned, I’d only sold one small wallet for $55, and it looked like a tornado had hit. Bags and stuffing were lying on the counters and floor surrounding the register. You could tell I’d decided to take up residence in the spot like some kind of sales-floor squatter.
“OH MY GOD!” she bellowed, “What happened? Was it busy? Why didn’t you page me?”
“You didn’t say I could page you.”
“Freeman, I expect you’ve had enough retail experience to know to call for help if it gets out of control. Here at The Big Fancy we pride ourselves on customer service. This is . . . unacceptable, but it’s your first hour here, so I’ll let it slide.”
“Sorry, Judy. Next time I’ll page.”
If there ever is a next time. What the hell am I doing here? What have I gotten myself into?
“Why are these bags piled up over here?” she said.
“Those purses were all returned. I didn’t know. . . .”
“Freeman, I told you. They’re handbags, not purses,” Judy said calmly while picking up the Fendi off the floor.
Like a fucking moron, I added, “Oh and that purse is missing a price tag.”
“FREEEMAN! HANDBAG! NOT PURSE,” the General yelled.
SHIT! HANDBAG, HANDBAG, HANDBAG!
“I can see you are going to need some work,” she added bringing her voice down.
Over the next few days I was babysat, and frankly, I didn’t mind. I grew more comfortable with the register and the merchandise. But no matter how hard I tried, the p-word continued to fall from my mouth. The other handbag salespeople tried to help by telling me horror stories of how they had to splurge for a department pizza party or pay $10 if they said the p-word. I hadn’t even been paid yet at The Big Fancy; no way could I afford pizza parties or coughing up $10.
Despite the warnings, one morning I stupidly used the p-word twice with a customer and General Judy came at me faster than the runaway bus from Speed.
“FREE-MAN!” she shrieked, splitting my name in half, “You PURSE your lips, but you SELL handbags! We sell HAND-BAGS here, NOT purses.”
Purse my lips? I don’t purse my lips. You purse your lips. Not me. Go fuck yourself with a purse. Whatever. Handbags vs. purses. Stupid as hell.
“Yes, okay, thank you, Judy,” I replied while my customer stared at me like I was a freak.
I should have learned my lesson there, but I didn’t. Hours later, I was reporting to the General after I had finished colorizing the clearance table. I spoke before thinking. My vow to change my pursy ways went west.
“I arranged all those purses just like you wanted.”
Judy’s black eyes seared into me.
Uh-oh. Pizza Party, here we come.
“FREE-MAN! How many times do I have to tell you! HAND-BAGS, not PURSES! Remember, purses
equal lips, handbags equal keeping your job.”
“Yes, Judy, I’m sorry. Handbags.”
For the next several days I became a total purse-aholic. I could not control myself, even after saying a handbag mantra over and over before I went to sleep at night. Every time I was around Judy, my mind turned to nervy mush, and I thought of nothing but purses. Although she never mentioned cash fees, Judy continued to yell at me every time I said the p-word:
“FREE-MAN! I’VE HAD IT! YOU’D BETTER START SAYING HANDBAG.”
“FREE-MAN! IT’S HAND-BAG. NOW, REPEAT AFTER ME FIVE TIMES!”
Finally one morning she flipped out.
“FREE-MAN, IF YOU DON’T STOP USING THE P-WORD, I’M GOING TO WASH YOUR MOUTH OUT WITH LEATHER LOTION!”
I think I’d rather pay ten dollars, thank you very much.
I distinctly remember the moment I thought I was going to get attacked with a bottle of leather lotion by the General: I was ringing up a $250 Kenneth Cole and told the customer, “Let me just wrap your purse in tissue for you, ma’am.”
Judy stood just inches away from me as I committed the verbal crime.
I winced, expecting a nuclear explosion.
Surprisingly, Judy said nothing, although I did feel her laser stare as I finished up with the customer. Trying to backtrack and save my ass, I awkwardly asked the woman if she’d like a wallet to go with her new Kenneth Cole HANDBAG? She didn’t, and left.
I waited for the outburst, but it never came. The General was thinking.
A few seconds passed and then she said softly, “Okay, Free-man. I’ll make you a deal. If you NEVER say the p-word again, I’ll let you work here without wearing the suit jacket. But only when the buyers and executives aren’t visiting. Then you won’t sweat so much either.”
What? No pizza party? No cash fees? How lucky am I? I’d better not screw this one up. You have yourself A DEAL, Judy! I’m hitting the red button and slamming down the cover. I’m taking the Banker’s offer. I’m done! The sweatsuit is coming off! Hurray!
