Corporate greed inside your panties: the last place you want anything corporate

It was about the third day that I'd been working at Victoria's Secret when I first came face to face with our daily performance report.

(It's a handy little spreadsheet that every associate can access through the register, and it gives the run-down of every sales goal for the day, divided by segment, and shows results for all the completed segments. For example, if you read a line of the spreadsheet you might gather that for the segment from 10 a.m. to noon, the goal in total sales was $X, the amount we actually did was $X, our percent above or below the goal was X% and the breakdown of the sales into beauty and bras were X and Y.)

On this day, I remember going downstairs to the bathroom about halfway through my shift and staring at my blank, washed out face (god damn you, fluorescent lighting) in the mirror for a good few minutes, a little bewildered. Though physically, I felt fine, mentally I felt as though I should be vomiting up my lunch. You see, the sales plan for one day -- one eleven-hour period from open til close -- was $100,000.

$100 grand? Now, I'm no mathmetist, but there aren't all that many people walking through the doors of Victoria's Secret in a given day. It gets crowded, sure. But $100,000? Of course, the matter of how in the world we'd ever get to $100,000 isn't the point. The point is that our nation is in a recession. People are losing their homes. People are losing their jobs. There are kids who are going hungry and people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on god damned bras and panties.

And let me make one thing clear -- this is nothing at all like the completely illogical "there-are-starving-kids-in-China-so-let's-all-gorge-ourselves" mentality. This is not about some people having and others having not. This is about the fact that I know, without a shred of doubt, that many of the people who pass through those pearly doors on Lexington Avenue every day and spend hundreds of hard-earned dollars on frilly underwear and push-up bras ARE the people who have not. If you have a trillion dollars and you want to spend half of it on underwear, that's your right. Will I judge you? Of course, but I have judged people for a hell of a lot less in the past. But if you, just like the rest of us, are struggling to make ends meet and concerned about your job security? You should not be walking out with a shopping bag full of lace thong bikinis that cost $14 each.

But on top of this big old sundae of economic responsibility comes a tempting and dangerous cherry -- the Angels Credit Card. The Angel Card, we're told in training, is designed to promote brand loyalty. If she opens an Angel Credit Card, she'll surely come back and shop with us again because she can earn points! and rewards! and lots and lots more PANTIES! This is not entirely untrue. A credit card with a given company will build brand loyalty. But the disturbing thing to me is that even Victoria's Secret associates are not apprised of the real situation, and many of them (please see previous Panty Land Diaries post) are not intelligent enough to deduce it themselves.

This card comes with a whopping 22% interest rate.

So while Rita Recessionista is so excited about getting those panties on sale for 20 percent off and putting them on her Angel Card (so she doesn't even have to spend a dime today! who thought this shit up!?), she will eventually pay three or four times the initial cost of those panties because, guess what? Shocking -- she doesn't actually have the money to buy those panties right now. She actually has to pay rent and her grocery bill and for gas and water. So now Victoria's Secret gets to circumvent its own sale price by raking in three times the ticket price for Rita's underoos because she isn't fiscally responsible enough to say "no, thank you" to a credit card offer.

And Rita Recessionista is everywhere. She is every woman. Every American woman who has been taught that she should be able to have whatever she wants right this instant, and that credit is easy. (Hello, that's why it's called easy credit, right?) And every associate in a Victoria's Secret store is expected to open one or two or thirty seven Angel Credit Cards every single day. Every day in a given store, that's 30 or 40 more women carrying a fresh piece of plastic, 75% of whom will inevitably go into minor debt because of it. The pressure that is placed on Victoria's Secret associates to open these cards is undoubtedly more disturbing to me than the $100,000 daily sales plan. Mostly because I refuse to be partially responsible for someone else's lapse in financial judgment. I refuse to try to persuade a woman who does NOT need another credit card building up her debt that in fact she really does neeeeeed an Angel Card and it only takes 30 seconds so come on, let's sign you up today. I simply refuse.

Because behind that 'brand loyalty' and those offers and discounts and 'great deals' lurks the ill of our society that has left us in the place where we currently lie, breathless and in need of economic resuscitation. Quick and easy credit.

And here's the thing -- I'm all about honesty, so let me assure you that I have not always been the world's most responsible user of credit. I have spent carelessly, I have spent needlessly and when I had no money, because I wanted something and the credit card was there. But now, I find myself living on a very modest income (and my credit card bill run high with things like groceries, metrocards, rent payments and a $40 bedframe from IKEA so I didn't have to sleep on the floor), and I know that I have to be responsible because frankly, there is only so much money before it's all gone. Credit makes people forget that.

You can now clearly imagine that my new place of employment, which phones up people who have more money than they know what to do with and asks them to throw some of it at people who are poor and play instruments, makes me feel like much less of a disgusting, despicable human being.


cheers,
e. cawein