Don't get excited, "Stage Set" is not what it sounds like.  It's what un-named retailer calls the monthly flipping of merchandise in the store and the display windows.  The mechanics of it are that once a month the staff arrives on Sunday morning at 6:30 a.m. and begins pulling items off of the racks that need to be marked down for sales.  The store, which is arranged by color and merchandise line, is then basically flipped from one side of the room to the other.  The windows themselves are a two man job, which is a problem when you have a large, flagship boutique with only five people working.  The staff of five all live in the city except for the manager, Cleo, who lives in New Jersey.  She is notoriously late and always uses her commute as an excuse.  I guess my argument for that would be... if you know the commute takes an hour, then why do you only give yourself ten minutes from the time you leave your house in Edgewater to arrive in the Manhattan store?  And when you say you are in your car stuck in traffic make sure that we can't hear your dog barking in the background, or that we can't tell that you are brushing your teeth while you are telling us about the horrible Sunday morning 6:45 a.m. traffic on the George Washington Bridge.

Anyway, on this particular morning it was 7:30 and Cleo still had not arrived and as the second in charge I was trying to make sense of the display plans while the staff pulled items for the sale racks.  When she arrived carrying her Grande iced coffee she groaned, "I had to wait in line for 30 minutes at Starbucks."  Hmm... 30 minutes in line still puts you in 30 minutes late and what manager thinks that waiting in line for a Starbucks is a ligament excuse for being late?  She literally grabs the display plans out of my hands and starts shouting orders. Without even knowing what she is doing begins to grab rack of clothes and with he-man strength carries them from one rack to another crashing into display racks and people doing markdowns in the process.  She has no senses of personal space, or maybe she just has complete disregard for others.

I would agree that if I had applied myself more I could had a much stronger understanding of the retail business, but after two years I still had little to no interest in the business and the management structure did not promote any incentive.  As I saw it the management plan was to make sales plan, and if we did not make sales plan then the management team would slave drive and bully the employees to comply.  I guess they'd never heard the saying, "you can't beat a dead horse.". But this is where I'm at, so I try to a make the best of the morning and start to chat with Ellen,  She is an employee who has worked for the company for seven years and in retail for 30 years, but she has such a negative attitude that there is no way that she will ever be promoted into management, which only fuels her fire.  Ellen likes me, but I know that when I was hired as a sales lead she was once again passed over for the position and she takes every opportunity to let me and the management team know that she should be running the stage set instead of me and Cleo.  She starts telling me about something that her successful sister is up to and continues the conversation berating her sister.  I decide to shift the conversation and ask her about her mother.  She stops and stares at me and finally says, "My mother is a c!%$.  There is a reason I'm as bitter as I am and it starts with that b&%#^."  Remember, it's only 8:30 in the morning.

I pause surrounded by leopard print tops and purple capris and wonder exactly what I could have done in my life that landed me in this badly managed hell.  I was pulled out of my trance when Cleo shouted over the JZ music she was playing over the sound system, "I'm starving, who wants to order breakfast?"  She has only been here an hour and she is ready for breakfast.  She has already informed us that we are staying until stage set is complete (scheduled for 2:00 p.m.), but that she has to leave at 1:00 for a wedding.  Taking a breakfast break will only extend our day, although she couldn't care less since she has a hard end time. Sigh...

Another day, another dollar, another nail in my coffin.

Has anyone else ever had to pay for a company holiday dinner?

When Cleo, un-named retailers manager, suggested a Christmas dinner out for the management team I knew that nothing good would come of it.  Working with this woman is the most difficult professional relationship I have ever had.  She is bossy, rude, and a slob (maybe I'm being too generous - LOL). Weeks before the event she talked about what a generous manager she was to take us out for a holiday dinner, which negates the generosity if you have to constantly mention how "generous" you are.

A few days before the dinner she began to talk about how the company had not given her a budget for the dinner.  I think she was waiting for us to offer to pitch in.  When that didn't happen she wondered aloud if we thought it would be more fair for everyone to pitch in instead of her footing the bill.  Let me clarify, when the store "makes sales plan", the manager and the two assistant managers alone share that bonus.  So, I could see if Cleo and the two assistant managers decided to share in the cost, but asking the other sales leads to pay was ridiculous.

We decided on Carmine's which is a wonderful Italian restaurant that serves "family style", huge

portions meant to be shared at the table.  Cleo ordered three appetizers and four entrees for a group of five.  That is an excessive amount of food for five people.  She arrived at the restaurant early and had two drinks before the rest of us arrived (that's going to be $15 per cocktail). We each ordered a glass of wine at the table.  Cleo and one of the assistant manager's ordered an additional glass of wine.  As we began dinner she said, "I really wanted to pay for this dinner, but Diane and Melinda both talked me out of it."  Blatant lie! and so classic.  Just because she complained about having to cover the cost in front of me, does not mean that I engaged in the conversation and told her not to pay. Diane is so desperate to be "in" with Cleo that I wouldn't doubt that she agreed that it was a fair idea.

During the course of the dinner Cleo and Diane would make short comments to each other and break
out laughing, which were obviously private jokes about the other members of the team, including myself.  I was seething. 

Cleo did pull out little gift boxes and handed one to each of us.  She had bought Alex and Annie bracelets for each of us and I do believe that this cost came out of her own pocket.  Susan is a sales lead who is in her early 60's.  She commented on how nice the new bracelet went with her Pandora bracelet.  Cleo burst out in hysterical laughter, she has a booming voice in the first place but after four drinks her voice carried across the crowded restaurant.  "Susan, only old ladies wear Pandora bracelets.  You really have to get rid of those."  Susan turned bright red and mumbled something about not caring because her sons had given them to her as a gift and she liked them for sentimental reasons.  Now Cleo is on a roll telling Susan how she dresses like an old lady and needs new shoes as well.  Next she starts on me reflecting that when I started I had the worst style and how far I'd come under her "style expert" guidance.  What makes no sense about these personal style attacks are that she has the worst style of any of the team members.  She is quite heavy (hey, I'm forever on a diet, but I mean she is seriously overweight) and dresses a size or two too small and wears tank tops over a bra that is three sizes too small. If she is not "selling" she doesn't seem to realize that she is still representing the store and walks around the boutique like an over aged college student in sweatpants, a tank top, flip flops, and her hair pulled up into a sprout on the top of her head.

The check arrived.  Cleo took a look at it and said, "The easiest thing to do it to just split it five ways."  No comment on her additional drinks.  After tip it was $60 per person. Then to put the icing on the top of the cake she said, "Is everyone taking the subway or bus home?"  We all agreed, then she added, "Ok, I'll take the leftovers since I have my car to drive back to New Jersey.  Is that ok?"  Susan was my hero!  She chimed in, "Oh, no, Cleo, my son and husband would love to have some of this."  They split it in two.  I had no interest in taking any of it, but was glad that Susan had kept Cleo from feeding her roommates on our dime.

During the San Francisco earthquake in 1989 I was in my office where I was working as a secretary.  As the building shook and swayed I squeezed into the copy room with the rest of my group and thought, "I'm going to die with these people and I don't even like them."  I had that same feeling at the Christmas dinner with my "un-named retailer" coworkers.  Something has to give.

What's October without a good ghost story?

It wasn't long after we moved in March to our new brownstone apartment on the Upper West Side that we noticed odd things going on in the apartment.  One day in April Cameron was home from school sick.  She was sitting on the couch in the living room and a piece of objet d'art fell off of the mantel and brought a candle down with it causing the glass candle holder to shatter on the floor.  Ok, yes, the window was open, but the window is seven feet from the fireplace mantel and there wasn't enough of a breeze to even flutter the curtains.

We have had ongoing issues in the kitchen with the ceiling lights. Not a big deal, for sure, but electrical shorts that just don't make sense. 

Ok, ok, you want more that short circuits in a building that is one hundred and ten years old.

This summer my sister Elizabeth, my mom, and my niece Rebecca came to visit.  One night Cameron, Rebecca, and Cameron's boyfriends (Dan) stayed up late watching movies.  Not long after they turned off the light Rebecca, who was on an air mattress, shouted at Cameron, "Cam, leave my feet alone.  Seriously, I'm trying to get to sleep." Cameron had gotten off of the air mattress and was sleeping next to Dan on the couch and replied, "Rebecca, I'm over here with Dan.  I'm not touching your feet."  A few minutes passed and Cameron felt pressure around her ankles as if someone was pulling her."  She tucked her feet up and buried her head under the covers.  You might wonder why Cameron did not jump out of he skin, but in fact by July when the family was visiting we were very familiar with the presence of a ghost in our apartment. There is no explaining the feeling, except to say it is just an energy in the rooms, in particular the living room where they were sleeping.



Cameron and Rebecca asleep in the living room

The next night while Cameron and Rebecca were out  for a few hours Elizabeth and I got out the K-2 meter and set out to do some ghost hunting.  We started off in the living room.  We asked the spirit some questions hoping to get the light gauge on the meter to move.  Elizabeth then said something akin to, "Do you think children these days are disrespectful?" (I can't remember what the girls had done to prompt her to say that, but it did the trick).  The meter shot from green to red and back again.  I think Elizabeth jumped up off of the footstool and landed on my mom's lap on the couch. We could not believe that we had gotten such a decisive response. I guess modern day children sassing their parents doesn't sit well with our ghost.

The owner's of the brownstone have not moved in yet (they are doing an extensive renovation on the two lower floors - ghost don't like renovations), so we took advantage of having the house to ourselves and went downstairs and sat in the foyer. We continued to get some positive, yet not dramatic, responses.  Then we heard the front door to my apartment on the second floor slowly creek opened and close. It wasn't until we heard the door open and close again that Jeff, Elizabeth, and I looked at each other.  We all realized at the same moment what we had heard.  Jeff ran up the stairs to see if my mother was walking around listening down the staircase to see what we were up to.  He reported back that she was sitting on the couch putting curlers in her hair and watching the news.  What's even more mysterious is that my front door does not creek when it opens and closes, and yet both times when we heard the door it creaked loudly.

Living room

The next day we told the girls about out ghost hunting and they insisted that they wanted to do some detective work themselves.  Normally, with a group of six in a small house you can't expect much to happen due to too much talking and moving about. We were sitting on the staircase and trying to get a response on the K2 meter.  I was sitting next to Rebecca.  Out of nowhere there was a groan.  The sound happened in the space between Rebecca and I.  Our eyes locked.  We asked if anyone else had heard the voice.  Elizabeth said that she did, but that it sounded distant to her.  Rebecca and I assured her that it was not "from a distance", but in fact exactly in between the two of us.  If I had been the only one to hear it I would brush it off, but because Rebecca and I acknowledged it as it happened there was no denying it.

I have a friend who is a medium.  I had the opportunity to ask her if she felt there really was an energy in our building, or had our imaginations run away with us.  She said it was definitely a male spirit in his late 20's or early 30's dressed in working class clothing from the early 1900's.  Initially she said that she thought he was simple minded, but then she realized that he was trying to communicate to her using his hands.  She said in fact he was deaf.  His seemingly arrested development was due to his sheltered life because of his lack of hearing.  Because he never had a mature relationship with a woman in his lifetime he is still drawn to woman in his spirit life.

Elizabeth and I  have a history of living in haunted houses, or maybe we bring the ghost with us.  Either way, we think that a reality show based on our combined families ghosting hunting would be a ratings bonanza!

Television show pitch - Malcolm Family Ghost Hunters