I was recently given a 'promotion' by the company I worked for. Did you notice the quotation marks around the word promotion? I included those because it was a really iffy promotion. I was being despatched to the hinterlands to try and turn around a store we had in a mall. A few years back it had been a going concern but recently takings had dropped significantly. It wasn't a going concern any longer and it was costing the company money. The company's answer? Send in an expendable to try and rescue the place. I was apparently the next expendable in line.
The very first day I approached the mall I knew where a large part of the problem lay. Mall maintenance had not been kept up and it showed. A tour of the place showed why the maintenance hadn't been kept up. Half the shops were empty, depriving the mall owners of their rental income. No income and no money for essentials like maintenance.
I had a bit of a chat to various shop owners and they all had the same answer. Blasted internet. The owner of the mall refused to believe that internet shopping was the future and refused to adjust rents when custom dropped significantly. Unable to pay high rents on low income various shops went out of business. The owner still wanted the old rentals for the vacant shops and was getting no takers.
I strolled along to Busts R Us (No. That's not the real name of our store.) and introduced myself to the pretty young things who were there to serve our customers -- if any.
The girls were Violet, call me Vi, and Eugina, call me Gina. (Call me Eu and die was the subtext to that last snippet.) Both girls were brunettes around nineteen, twenty. Old enough to be able to talk clothing with both older women and younger girls. (And old women who think they're young girls.)
Both girls were quite attractive and had a clean healthy glow about them, were friendly and personable, and eager to serve what customers we did get. If a customer came through the door the girls would stop what they were doing and check to see if their help was needed. If it wasn't they'd back off but make sure they were available, all smiles the entire time. Except in the case of some middle-aged women.
For some reason the girls would give service with not quite a snarl to these customers. Neither did the customers seem to buy anything, even after tying up a girl's time for quite a while. I asked what was going on.
"Those bitches," groused Vi, "are not real customers. They come in with specific requests and demand to be permitted to try things on. Other times they'll just browse about until they find just the item they want, always trying them on to make sure they're just right. Then they note down the details and go and buy the things online at a discounted price. They're just using us as a fitting service."
I could see how that might irritate the girls but what could they do? They couldn't very well refuse to serve them. They'd get the shop bad-mouthed and, in this litigious age, we might even be sued. I wondered if we could charge a fitting fee for women like that. Refundable if they bought the item. Something to think about.
Our parent company had very fixed ideas about suitable attire for any personnel who had dealing with customers. The sales staff had specific uniforms they had to wear and the girls were dressed accordingly. They looked very nice in those uniforms, too, but I did wonder about one minor detail. Their skirts had to come down to at least mid-thigh and I had a suspicion that my two girls might have skirts that were just a wee bit short. Or maybe very short, because there was no way on God's earth that I was going to ask the girls if I could measure the length of their skirts. Sexual harassment suits lay in that direction. I just smiled and enjoyed the long legs that were on display.
I was going to advice the parent company that there was bad news and a potential for good news. The bad news was that with the current mall ownership our shop was doomed. The good news was that if they could take over ownership of the mall then they could refurbish and start renting to specialty shops that need that personal touch. I was going to strongly suggest that a feasibility study of this be done.
Where the girls were concerned I gave them both high recommendations, saying that they should be transferred to another store if that was feasible. The final decision would be with Human Resources who could be quite ruthless at times. Quite frankly, if they closed the store them my job might be on the scrapheap as well. Only time would tell.
Where I was concerned the girls were mildly flirtatious. That was fine by me. I had no objection to flirting with a couple of pretty young things. I did, of course, keep it low key, what with me being the manager, no matter how temporary.
Everything was going as well as could be expected. I was waiting for head office to come to a decision, marking time as it were, and casually taking notes of the amount of walk-past trade that we were getting. I know that in our lease it guaranteed that we'd have a certain amount of walk-past trade, and by my counting we weren't getting anything near that number. This would be considered grounds for terminating the lease for cause with no penalties applicable to us.
