Workin' for the Man! The Mallrat Years, Part 3B

OK, here we go! Welcome back to my Workin’ for the Man! Series: The Mallrat years, Part 3B.

After gaining the ever so coveted “mall experience” from Eddie Bauer, I was very excited to start my job at The Gap. As much as I enjoyed working with an older mature group of people, I was stoked to go back to working with people more my own age. Also, as proud as I was to wear my Eddie Bauer name tag with my name engraved in it, there was something about The Gap name tag that was even better. For those of you who happen to live in a cave, have never been to a shopping mall, or both, this is what the tag looks like.

Notice how it is a small blue square with white letters that say G A P? That is all they need. This name tag was so cool, that I had a few of my cousins’ request that I get them a Gap name tag so they could stick it on their backpacks.

“But where can my name go?” You might ask yourself. Well, the simple answer is that your name is not important. No one there gives a crap what your name is! What is important is that you are wearing the latest Gap fashions, so the customers can get a good idea of how cool they would be too if they had on these clothes. But Donald, how on earth do the employees at the Gap afford all the latest clothing lines on their minimum wage salary?” The answer is simple. A killer discount of course!

The famed Gap discount was one of the main reasons that I wanted to become a part of The Gap team. Now E.B. had a 30 percent employee discount on everything in the store. That included both regular priced and sale items. One time there I had bought a jacket for 15 dollars that was 85 bucks regular price. I was happy with my discount, and on occasion, I would share it with my friends. But since this was more of an outdoor store, there weren’t too many time someone I knew would come in and want something. The Gap also had the same 30 percent discount on items. See a shirt on the sale rack for 99 cents? Take off .297 cents, and voila! You have a new shirt for .693 cents! But the comparisons ended there.

Every month, or every quarter (I can’t remember) you would get a card with special discounts on it. This is how all of those kids who work there can buy all the new things without having to resort to living off of government cheese. The card would allow you to buy 4 tops of any kind, and 4 bottoms of any kind at 50 percent off the regular price. It was like your own personal share of gold. I loved this card. I did not like to keep it on me, or in my wallet, for fear I would be help up at gun point, and have to give it up.

I loved being a Gap employee. I was getting some great clothes at some unbelievable prices. The only problem was the limited number of hours that were available to go around. On average, I would get between 10-15 hours a week if I was lucky. Why so few you may ask? It is because they had around 40 employees. Some of the employess would only have one 4 hour shift a week. Call me crazy, but it seems to me it would be a lot easier to have fewer employees, and give them more hours. It is because of this that I had to start another job. I might have still lived at my parent’s house, but I had credit card and car payments that had to be made.

I had heard that the information booth in the middle of the mall was hiring. I had a friend who worked there, and he would always tell me all of the fun he would have there. I decided to put my mall experience clout to work, and get myself the job. It ended up being a perfect fit. They were looking for someone to work around 15-20 hours a week. I was looking to work between 15-20 hours a week. It was a good match. I was hired, and after watching a video about how not to piss off customers, I was ready to rock and roll.

Working at the info booth was a lot of fun. We would have parents come up to have us page their hooligan children that had run off, and we had to check out wheelchairs to people. I also had more than one kid come to me and ask what time it was. In fact, I remember a conversation I had with one of these kids. It went something like this:

"Uh…um…I have a question”
“OK, I have an answer. How can I help you?”
“Do you know what time it is?”
“Of course I do kid. There is a big thing in the middle of the mall right there called a clock. It tells me what time it is.”
“I know that’s a clock, but do you have one anywhere that has numbers instead of hands?”
“What is wrong with a clock that has hands?”
“Uh…um…dude…I don’t know what it says. So do you have a digital clock around here or not?”
“Nope, just that one right there kid. And if you can’t read it, well, you have problems I can’t help you with.”
“Can’t you just tell me what it says?”
“Yes, I could, but then you wouldn’t learn anything. I will show you how to tell time though.”
“I don’t have time for that, I would miss my bus.”
“Too late kid, it is twenty three past five, your bus left 5 minutes ago. You will have to wait.”
“Uh, OK. Bye dude.”

Part of me felt a little bad about two things. Number one, that I didn’t just tell the kid what time it is, and number two, that it was only 5:11, and if he ran he could catch the bus. But I didn’t feel bad for long. They obviously went over clocks in school still didn’t they? It’s not my fault he didn’t pay attention in school.

Then I went home that day and told my Mom about it. She then informs me that my little sister has no clue how to read an analog clock either! I guess they stopped teaching how to read analog clocks in school. Kind of like how they stopped making kids parallel park for their drivers’ test in California.

A fun thing that I liked to do when I was in the info booth was page people. While sitting there, I would see people walk through the mall that I knew from school, or other stores in the mall. When I would see them, I would get on the P.A. system, and make an announcement along these lines: “Attention mall guests! Could (put name of friend here) please make their way to the information booth in the middle of the mall. Your Mommy and Daddy are waiting for you.”

I always got a kick out of the person’s reaction to hearing their name blared over the P.A. system. Some would think it was hilarious. Well, the guys would think it was funny. The girls would then make their way up to see who they had to slap for announcing that they were in the mall shopping.

The best/worst part of working at the info booth was Mallperks. Mallperks was a dumb program that they created to entice people to shop at the mall. How it worked was you signed up for a free account. You would then bring your receipts up to the info booth, where the sales would be added up. For every dollar you spent before taxes, you received one point. These points would build up, and you could use your points for discounts at places in the mall, or you could use them to enter contests. This was my least favorite part of the job.

You would have people who would save about 3 months worth of receipts, and bring them to you all wadded up. They would stand there watching you close, making sure that you weren’t going to short change them in any way. I could always tell if someone was a smoker, because you could see how the paper had turned all yellowish colored from being carried around for weeks. I would have people who bring up a stack of receipts from Orange Julius that they had been saving. Nothing like entering 1.79 into the computer 29 times.

But this program also brought some fun into work. My co-worker Tyler and I set up our own Mallperks accounts, and would enter in obscene amounts of points. I believe that at one point we had over a million points combined. And those came in handy after I quit there, because I would go back and redeem the points for things.

The only thing about Mallperks that I liked was a contest that we had for it. For two weeks, every person that you signed up for Mallperks, you would receive one dollar in mall gift certificate money. This was before gift debit cards, and you actually received a printed out check that you could use in the mall. I would always tell people that if you went down to Mark’s Hallmark and buy a pack of gum; they would give you the rest back in cash. I would also tell them to avoid The Bon, because they would try to give you a Bon gift certificate for change instead of cash.

To borrow a phrase from my favorite book as a kid, I set my great brain and my money loving heart to work. During that contest, I would flag down anyone who came within 10 feet of my booth, and have them fill out a Mallperks registration. When people would tell me they didn’t have time, I would ask them if I could have their name and number, and I would fill out the paperwork. Anybody from school that I even remotely knew I would get their phone number and sign them up too. In the end, I signed up 258 people. The mall gift certificate machine would only print the certificates for up to 50 dollars, so I had a stack of them. And for the next few days, I would go into Mark’s Hallmark, buy a pack of gum, and get the 49.75 back in change to spend anywhere that I wanted too. Much like when I was younger, I found a way to make an easy buck and exploited it.

Now, back to The Gap. I had been working there for about 3 months when friends and family started to make their way into the store and see that I worked there. That is when the trouble came. It started innocently enough. A cousin or friend would come in, and admire a shirt. I would proceed to tell them how I had a great discount, and if they gave me the money, I would buy it for them. I didn’t think too much of it. After all, it was just one shirt here, one pair of shorts there. Soon though, just about every day I was buying something for someone else. I liked the feeling that I was helping others get the good deals that I had. I justified it buy telling myself that the company is still making money, which they were. But my bosses didn’t quite see it that way.

One day I get to work to start my shift. I am out on the floor for about 5 minutes, when I am called to the back room. Sitting there with the store manager is the district manager. I had no idea what it was all about. Maybe it was performance review time, and it took two of them. But just like when I was working at Hubby’s, I had misjudged the situation.

They sat me down, and almost immediately the interrogation was on. About the only things missing were the two way mirror, and the bright light in my face. She started off by saying, “On May 6th, you purchased a pair of dark khaki shorts, size 42. Then, three days later, you purchased the same pair of shorts, but this time in size 34. Then, on June 2nd, you bought a size small white button up oxford shirt. Three days later, you purchased the same shirt, but this time in size XL long….

They had about 3 pages printed off of all the purchases I had made. And while about 75 percent of them were things for me, the other 25 percent were not. They tried to get me to say that I had used my discount for other people; I countered that I was a giving person, and I was buying gifts for people. I had some great excuses lined up for most of the offenses they had down, but at one point, I knew it wasn’t going to be enough.

I had to stop the madness. I told the two ladies that if the point to all of this was to fire me, then I was quiting.
My manager says to me, “You can’t quit. We are firing you.”
I replied with, “You have not mentioned anything about being fired; all you have done is try to accuse me of abusing my discount. I don’t like that you are doing that, so I quit!”
“No Don, you are fired. When you leave this back room, just leave. You don’t have to work your shift today.”
“Of course I am not working my shift lady! I just quit. Why would I work a shift at a job that I just quit?

This went back and forth a few more times. I think The Gap wrote down that I was fired, but I stood by my quitting first. The word “quit” escaped my lips before the word “fired” escaped theirs. Game. Set. Match. Donald wins. I walked out of the back room, said goodbye to my co-workers, and headed down to get a Cinabon.

Now that I had only one job, I decided to ask Simon malls for more money, and some more hours. The girl that was hired with me had just quit, and instead of hiring someone else on, they gave me her hours. And I even received a .25 cent raise. It was nice to have only one job again, and not have to juggle schedules. But there was a strange wind about to blow through the mall….and it was on a collision course with me.

Since I worked the most hours in the info booth, I had things running the way I liked them. My boss did not care in the least, as long as the customer was happy. And then my boss up and quit. I was really bummed, because I had good chemistry with her. I wish that I could say the same for the lady who took her place.

She was also LDS, and expecting her first child. Her and her husband had moved here from either Idaho or Utah. And she drove me insane. Now, I knew that working in the info booth wasn’t the most prestigious job in the mall, but it was one of the more entertaining. And other than having on my Mallperks shirt and a pair of khakis, there wasn’t really a dress code either. They didn’t even require a tucked in shirt, which appealed to me greatly. For some reason this annoyed the new lady. (I have chosen to leave her nameless. Last time I tried to name a boss I didn’t remember the name of; I chose a nice name for a mean person. I won’t make that mistake twice! ) The first thing she did was lay down a law saying that all shirts must be tucked. You had to go before her at the beginning of the shift for shirt inspection. I always looked nice for that, but as soon as I was in the booth, the shirt tails came out.

After about 2 months of working under her, I had had enough. I informed her that I was going to quit. And I was going to too, until they offered me more money. I decided for 6 bucks an hour that I could put up with her a little more. That “little more” lasted until the end of the month.

After I had threatened to quit, I knew that we could not co exist for much longer, so I went job hunting again. The mall was starting to wear on me. Not only did I work out there, but it seemed that I was out there every day off too. The allure of being a mall employee had worn off, and I wanted something different. So I went over to my Uncle Bill and my Cousin Bruce’s print shop to see if they had any use for me there. And as luck would have it, they were in need of someone to work in the bindery department. I promptly put in my two weeks at the information booth, and was getting ready to start a new job.

The last day of my job at the info booth was upon me. I went and clocked in for the last time. I had decided that since it was my last day, I was going to wear a pair of khaki shorts, and one of my nice Gap button up shirts. The day before I had gotten into an argument with my boss, and I could tell by the look on her face that she was still thinking about it.

As I approached her, she saw that not only did I have on non regulated information booth employee attire, but I also had my shirt tails out. In her most snotty tone, she told me that there was no way she was going to let me work without my Mallperks shirt on, and that I had to go home and change. I had had enough of her bull crap. I told her, “You know what lady? I am going to go home. But I am not coming back here. I am tired of you always harping on me and the other people here. Oh ya, and have fun working in the booth by yourself this morning. Good to know ya!”

I turned around to walk away, and she said something to me that just burned me up. She said, “Don, we are both Mormons, and you shouldn’t treat a fellow Mormon that way. You should be ashamed of yourself for acting this way.” WHAT??? A FELLOW MORMON??!!!?? What did that have to do with anything??? I told her, “Lady, I don’t care if you are Jewish, Catholic, Hindu, or a Devil Worshiper. Us both being Mormons has nothing to do with the situation. Don’t ever try to use our church as a means to get your way!” I then turned back around, and walked out.

The mallrat years were at a close. The print shop boy years were about to begin. Stay tuned next week to part 4 of my Workin’ for the Man! Series: The Bindery Boy Years.

Thanks for reading, and have a good weekend!






***I did forget to talk about one other mall job that I have for about 3 months(Thanks for the reminder Mom!). It was at the Sunglass Hut. I was working there at the same time I was at The Gap and the information booth. In those 3 months, I learned more about sun glass frames and lenses then I ever thought possible. At about the two month mark, our manager transferred over to a position at Broadmoor Outlet Mall. The lady who was hired in his place was the weirdest person I ever worked for. Not weird in a sense like my boss at the info booth or even Ming Won at E.B. Weird as in me and every other employee was convinced that she was either high on cocaine, or had done so many drugs earlier in life that she had Ozzyfied herself.

This job did not end well for me. We had one week where employees were entitled to 50 percent off a pair of glasses. I bought myself a great pair of Maui Jim sunglasses. They had a 7 layer lens, and were a wonder of the sunglasses world. The last day of our sale, my manager came in to work, and instructed me to sell some sunglasses to this lady that had a temporary booth set up next to us. I asked my manager if I was supposed to be doing that. She acted very annoyed that I questioned what she was telling me. Against my better judgment, I did as I was told. The lady purchased 4 pairs of Revo glasses, and 2 pairs of Maui Jims'. She ended up saving over 500 dollars.

Two days later, I came into work, and my manager was there waiting for me. She looked like she had been on a 3 day Jim Beam and LSD binge. She came running up to me, and told me that I was in big trouble with the district manager for selling the glasses to that lady. She also said that the D.M. had plans to fire me, and possibly press charges. She said that I needed to quit, and lay low for awhile.

Now I was scared. I should have listened to my gut. I did what she said, and I quit. And about a week later, I found out more of the story from one of my old co workers. It turned out that our manager had a drug problem. Didn't see that one coming did you?? She had been caught by the assistant manager taking money out of the till, and selling glasses to people, and then filing stolen item reports. The whole reason that she had me sell those glasses to the lady that week was to try and cover up her misdeeds, but make me look like I was in on the missing items. She was fired, and had charges presses against her by the company. I heard a while later that she had left town, and hadn't been heard from again.

OK, now my mall career is covered. All four jobs at the mall are explained. Some moments there I do regret, and others, I don't regret them in any way. I had lived the dream. I was a mall employee.