When I was student teaching during my senior year of college, someone gave me a necktie for Christmas, since a big boy job calls for big boy clothes. It was a tacky blue tie, with conspicuous traces of yellow and pink; and the unavoidable pattern of Sponge Bob Square Pants from top to bottom. Given, it was a nice sentiment, but it was a horrible tie. I exchanged it two days later.
No time during the year is the exchange counter of any department store busier than the days that follow Christmas. Who hasn’t received a Christmas gift that was the wrong size, wrong shape, wrong color; or just something they already have, or that they just didn’t want, like a Sponge Bob necktie? In come the people who man the exchange counter at department stores all over, like those at McLaughlin’s Department Store in Norwich. For a few hours on a snowy Saturday, I joined the ranks of the 22 employees at McLaughlin’s, taking returns and cashing out customers with the personable manner seen only in a genuine department store stock clerk.
“Usually for the first few Saturdays after Christmas, we’re very busy,” explained McLaughlin’s owner Anna McLaughlin as I reported for my shift. But the second snow storm in a week was keeping customers away from what would usually be a booming business kind of day, she said. “It’s pretty slow right now. I think it’s going to be a long day.”
After getting the customary “new employee” tour of McLaughlin’s, I took my place behind the counter on the main floor. Regardless the slower day, McLaughlin’s employees were staying busy. They’re already anticipating a wave of new springtime inventory, which will roll out on showroom floors in the coming weeks, and they’re continually moving inventory between the Norwich store and a second store in Oneonta. “We tend to keep out things that are more for the season. A lot of the mall type stores will put things out in advance,” McLaughlin said, noting that many are under agreements with clothing manufacturers to have certain items on display at a certain time. “We tend to wait a little bit longer,” she said.
It wasn’t long before I had my first customer; someone buying a hat and gloves – appropriate to burrow his way through the seemingly nine feet of snow that had already accumulated throughout the morning. I was given the rundown of the cash register, which buttons to hit, and which ones to avoid. It’s a simple system to work, McLaughlin said. “Waiting on people is the hard part. You have to really enjoy helping people out.”
Actually, several pairs of hats, mittens, boots, and snow pants were sold during my two-hour tenure at the register. I didn’t get my first return until half-an-hour after I arrived. It was a Christmas gift, the customer explained; a sweater and a pair of pants she simply didn’t want.
Megan McLaughlin, a longtime employee of the family-owned store, walked me through the step-by-step procedure of a refund – patiently as to make sure I didn’t refund too much or too little. “It’s usually one customer right after the other during the Christmas season,” she said. She recalled the incredibly busy days at the store that led up to Christmas. “Everything feels slow compared to that.”
Only a few other returns trickled in during my time behind the counter. “There’s usually a lot more returns the Saturday after Christmas,” Anna McLaughlin assured me.
Even so, slow business is still business and McLaughlin said she expects many more returns to make their way to the store within the next week. I guess someone can put up with even the tackiest necktie until the snow lets up.