It was 4 AM when I first heard the tapping on the glass. I had been working for 30 minutes trying desperately to get everything from the back store room onto the sales floor when I heard a light knocking. Peeking out from the back I saw an old woman wearing sweat pants and a Tweetie bird jacket, oxygen tank in tow, tapping a cane against one of the big front windows. "WE DON'T OPEN UNTIL 5" shouted my boss, who shook her head and resumed stacking boxes. "Black Friday is the worst" she said to nobody as we continued to pile the worthless garbage into neat piles on the store floor.
What people know now but didn't understand then was the items for sale on Black Friday weren't our normal inventory. These were TVs so poorly made they needed time to let their CRT tubes warm up before the image became recognizable. Radios with dials so brittle some came out of the box broken. Finally a mixer that when we tested it in the back let out such a stench of melted plastic we all screamed to turn it off before we burned down the building. I remember thinking as I unloaded it from the truck certainly nobody is gonna want this crap.
Well here they were and when we opened the doors they rushed in with a violence you wouldn't expect from a crowd of mostly senior citizens. One woman pushed me to get at the TVs, which was both unnecessary (I had already hidden one away for myself and put it behind the refrigerators in the back) and not helpful as she couldn't lift the thing on her own. I watched in silence as she tried to get her hands around the box with no holes cut out, presumably a cost savings on Sears part, grunting with effort as the box slowly slid while she held it. At the checkout desk a man told me he was buying the radio "as a Christmas gift for his son". "Alright but no returns ok?" I said keeping a smile on my face.
We had digital cameras the size of shoe-boxes, fire-hazard blenders and an automatic cat watering dish that I just knew was going to break a lot of hearts when Fluffy didn't survive the family trip to Florida. You knew it was quality when the dye from the box rubbed off on your hands when you picked it up. Despite my jokes about worthless junk, people couldn't purchase it fast enough. I saw arguments break out in the aisles and saw Robert, our marine veteran sales guy, whisper "forget this" and leave for a smoke by the loading dock. When I went over to ask if I could help, the man who had possession of the digital camera spun around and told me to "either find another one of these cameras or butt the fuck out". They resumed their argument and I resumed standing by the front telling newcomers that everything they wanted was already gone.
Hours later I was still doing that, informing everyone who walked in that the item they had circled in the newspaper was already sold out. "See, this is such a scam, why don't you stock more of it? It's just a trick to get us into the store". Customer after customer told me variations on the above, including one very kind looking grandfather type informing me I could "go fuck myself" when I wished him a nice holiday.
Beginnings
The store was in my small rural farming town in Ohio, nestled between the computer shop where I got my first job and a carpet store that was almost certainly a money laundering front since nobody ever went in or out. I was interviewed by the owner, a Vietnam veteran who spent probably half our interview talking about his two tours in Vietnam. "We used to throw oil drums in the water and shoot at them from our helicopter, god that was fun. Don't even get me started about all the beautiful local woman." I nodded, unsure what this had to do with me but sensing this was all part of his process. In the years to come I would learn to avoid sitting down in his office, since then you would be trapped listening to stories like these for an hour plus.
After these tales of what honestly sounded like a super fun war full of drugs and joyrides on helicopters, he asked me why I wanted to work at Sears. "It's an American institution and I've always had a lot of respect for it" I said, not sure if he would believe it. He nodded and went on to talk about how Sears build America. "Those kit houses around town, all ordered from Sears. Boy we were something back in the day. Anyway fill out your availability and we'll get you out there helping customers." I had assumed at some point I would get training on the actual products, which never happened in the years I worked there. In the back were dust covered training manuals which I was told I should look at "when I got some time". I obviously never did and still sometimes wonder about what mysteries they contained.
I was given my lanyard and put on the floor, which consisted of half appliances, one quarter electronics and then the rest being tools. Jane, one of the saleswomen told me to "direct all the leads for appliances to her" and not check one out myself, since I didn't get commission. Most of my job consisted of swapping broken Craftsmen tools since they had a lifetime warranty. You filled out a carbon paper form, dropped the broken tool into a giant metal barrel and then handed them a new one. I would also set up deliveries for rider lawnmowers and appliances, working on an ancient IBM POS terminal that required memorizing a series of strange keyboard shortcuts to navigate the calendar.
When there was downtime, I would go into the back and help Todd assemble the appliances and rider lawnmowers. Todd was a special needs student at my high school who was the entirety of our "expert assembly" service. He did a good job, carefully following the manual every time. Whatever sense of superiority as an honor role student I felt disappeared when he watched me try to assemble a rider mower myself. "You need to read the instructions and then do what they say" he would helpfully chime in as I struggled to figure out why the brakes did nothing. His mowers always started on the first try while mine were safety hazards that I felt certain was going to be on the news. "Tonight a Craftsman rider lawnmower killed a family of 4. It was assembled by this idiot." Then just my yearbook photo where I had decided to bleach my hair blonde like a chonky backstreet boy overlaid on top of live footage of blood splattered house siding.
Any feeling I had that people paying us $200 to assemble their rider mowers disappeared when I saw the first one where a customer tried to assemble it. If my mowers were death traps these were actual IEDs whose only conceivable purpose on Earth would be to trick innocent people into thinking they were rider lawnmowers until you turned the key and they blew you into the atmosphere. One guy brought his back with several ziplock bags full of screws bashfully explaining that he tried his best but "there's just no way that's right". That didn't stop me from holding my breath every time someone drove a mower I had worked on up the ramp into the back of the truck. "Please god just don't fall apart right now, wait until they get it home" was my prayer to whatever deity looked after idiots in jobs they shouldn't have.
Sometimes actual adults with real jobs would come in asking me questions about tools, conversations that both of us hated. "I'm looking for a oil filter wrench" they would say, as if this item was something I knew about and could find. "Uh sure, could you describe it?" "It's a wrench, used for changing oil filters, has a loop on it." I'd nod and then feebly offer them up random items until they finally grabbed it themselves. One mechanic when I offered a claw hammer up in response to his request for a cross-pein hammer said "you aren't exactly handy, are you?" I shook my head and went back behind the counter, attempting to establish what little authority I had left with the counter. I might not know anything about the products we sell, but only one of us is allowed back here sir.
Sears Expert
As the months dragged on I was moved from the heavier foot traffic shifts to the night shifts. This was because customers "didn't like talking to me", a piece of feedback I felt was true but still unfair. I had learned a lot, like every incorrect way to assemble a lawn mower and that refrigerators are all the same except for the external panels. Night shifts were mostly getting things ready for the delivery company, a father and son team who were always amusing.
The father was a chain-smoking tough guy who would regularly talk about his "fuck up" of a son. "That idiot dents another oven when we're bringing it in I swear to god I'm going to replace him with one of those Japanese robots I keep seeing on the news." The son was the nicest guy on Earth, really hard working, always on time for deliveries and we got like mountains of positive feedback about him. Old ladies would tear up as they told me about the son hauling their old appliances away in a blizzard on his back. He would just sit there, smile frozen on his face while his father went on and on about how much of a failure he was. "He's just like this sometimes" the son would tell me by the loading dock, even though I would never get involved. "He's actually a nice guy". This was often punctuated by the father running into a minor inconvenience and flying off the handle. "What kind of jackass would sort the paperwork alphabetically instead of by order of delivery?" he'd scream from the parking lot.
When the son went off to college he was replaced by a Hispanic man who took zero shit. His response to customer complaints was always that they were liars and I think the father was afraid of him. "Oh hey don't bother Leo with that, he's not in the mood, I'll call them and work it out" the father would tell me as Leo glared at us from the truck. Leo was incredibly handy though, able to fix almost any dent or scratch in minutes. He popped the dent out of my car door by punching the panel, which is still one of the cooler things I've seen someone do.
Other than the father and son duo, I was mostly alone with a woman named Ruth. She fascinated me because her life was unspeakably bleak. She had been born and raised in this town and had only left the county once in her life, to visit the Sears headquarters in Chicago. She'd talk about it like she had been permitted to visit heaven. "Oh it was something, just a beautiful shiny building full of the smartest people you ever met. Boy I'd love to see it again sometime." She had married her high school boyfriend, had children and now worked here in her 60s as her reward for a life of hard work. She had such bad pain in her knees she had to lean on the stocking cart as she pushed it down the aisles, often stopping to catch her breath. The store would be empty except for the sounds of a wheezing woman and squeaky wheels.
When I would mention Chicago was a 4 hour drive and she could see it again, she'd roll her eyes at me and continue stocking shelves. Ruth was a type of rural person I encountered a lot who seemed to get off on the idea that we were actually isolated from the outside world by a force field. Mention leaving the county to go perhaps to the next county and she would laugh or make a comment about how she wasn't "that kind of person". Every story she would tell had these depressing endings that left me pondering what kind of response she was looking for. "My brother, well he went off to war and when he came back was just a shell of a man. Never really came back if you ask me. Anyway let's clean the counters."
She'd talk endlessly about her grandson, a 12 year old who was "stupid but kind". His incredibly minor infractions were relayed to me like she was telling me about a dark family scandal. "Then I said, who ate all the chips? I knew he had, but he just sat there looking at me and I told him you better wipe those crumbs off your t-shirt smartass and get back to your homework". He finally visited and I was shocked to discover there was also a granddaughter who I had never heard about. He smirked when he met me and told me that Ruth had said I was "a lazy snob".
I'll admit, I was actually a little hurt. Was I a snob compared to Ruth? Absolutely. To be honest with you I'm not entirely sure she was literate. I'd sneak books under the counter to read during the long periods where nothing was happening and she'd often ask me what they were about even if the title sort of explained it. "What is Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era about? Um well the Civil War." I'd often get called over to "check" documents for her, which typically included anything more complicated than a few sentences. I still enjoyed working with her.
Our relationship never really recovered after I went to Japan when I was 16. I went by myself and wandered around Tokyo, having a great time. When I returned full of stories and pictures of the trip, I could tell she was immediately sick of me. "Who wants to see a place like Japan? Horrible people" she'd tell me as I tried to tell her that things had changed a tiny bit since WWII. "No it's really nice and clean, the food was amazing, let me tell you about these cool trains they have". She wasn't interested and it was clear my getting a passport and leaving the US had changed her opinion of me.
So when her grandson confided that she had called me lazy AND a snob my immediate reaction was to lean over and tell him that she had called him "a stupid idiot". Now she had never actually said "stupid idiot", but in the heat of the moment I went with my gut. Moments after I did that the reality of a 16 year old basically bullying a 12 year old sunk in and I decided it was time for me to go take out some garbage. Ruth of course found out what I said and mentioned it every shift after that. "Saying I called my grandson a stupid idiot, who does that, a rude person that's who, a rude snob" she'd say loud enough for me to hear as the cart very slowly inched down the aisles. I deserved it.
Trouble In Paradise
At a certain point I was allowed back in front of customers and realized with a shock that I had worked there for a few years. The job paid very little, which was fine as I had nothing in the town to actually buy, but enough to keep my lime green Ford Probe full of gas. It shook violently if you exceeded 70 MPH, which I should have asked someone about but never did. I was paired with Jane, the saleswoman who was a devout Republican and liked to make fun of me for being a Democrat. This was during the George W Bush vs Kerry election and she liked to point out how Kerry was a "flipflopper" on things. "He just flips and flops, changes his mind all the time". I'd point out we had vaporized the country of Iraq for no reason and she'd roll her eyes and tell me I'd get it when I was older.
My favorite was when we were working together during Reagan's funeral, an event which elicited no emotion from me but drove her to tears multiple times. "Now that was a man and a president" she'd exclaim to the store while the funeral procession was playing on the 30 TVs. "He won the Cold War you know?" she'd shout at a woman looking for replacement vacuum cleaner bags. Afterwards she asked me what my favorite Reagan memory was. All I could remember was that he had invaded the small nation of Grenada for some reason, so I said that. "Really showed those people not to mess with the US" she responded. I don't think either one of us knew that Grenada is a tiny island nation with a population less than 200,000.
Jane liked to dispense country wisdom, witty one-liners that only sometimes were relevant to the situation at hand. When confronted with an angry customer she would often say afterwards that you "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" which still means nothing to me. Whatever rural knowledge I was supposed to obtain through osmosis my brain clearly rejected. Jane would send me over to sell televisions since I understood what an HDMI cord was and the difference between SD and HD television.
Selling TVs was perhaps the only thing I did well, that and the fun vacuum demonstration where we would dump a bunch of dirt on a carpet tile and suck it up. Some poor customer would tell me she didn't have the budget for the Dyson and I'd put my hand up to silence her. "You don't have to buy it, just watch it suck up a bunch of pebbles. I don't make commission anyway so who cares." Then we'd both watch as the Dyson would make a horrible screeching noise and suck in a cups worth of small rocks. "That's pretty cool huh?" and the customer would nod, probably terrified of what I would do if she said no.
Graduation
When I graduated high school and prepared to go off to college, I had the chance to say goodbye to everyone before I left. They had obviously already replaced me with another high school student, one that knew things about tools and was better looking. You like to imagine that people will miss you when you leave a job, but everyone knew that wasn't true here. I had been a normal employee who didn't steal and mostly showed up on time.
My last parting piece of wisdom from Ruth was not to let college "make me forget where I came from". Sadly for her I was desperate to do just that, entirely willing to adopt whatever new personality that was presented to me. I'd hated rural life and still do, the spooky dark roads surrounded by corn. Yelling at Amish teens to stop shoplifting during their Rumspringa where they would get dropped off in the middle of town and left to their own devices.
Still I'm grateful that I at least know how to assemble a rider lawnmower, even if it did take a lot of practice runs on customers mowers.