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.