Writing about Random Displaced Anger from Pippa’s Wrath
I want one of these:
Walk into any Gap store and
there is inevitably someone with a plastic board (a folder’s one and
only tool) folding shirts, pants, or sweaters.
Source: Everyone in Leather: Work and Play in the Corporate Culture of The Gap
One
of my worst nightmares when shopping is facing a big pile of folded
clothes – because you need to unfold to check what the item is like but
I know that I can never get them back the way they were.
So I end up scurrying way shamefaced before the assistant comes and perfectly refolds my abortive attempt…
4 Comments
March 29, 2006 at 1:23 pm
I
have not worked for the Gap, but have in a previous life worked for a
department store: Sales Assistants who work with ’soft goods’ are
taught the proper technique and must practice/review accordingly – or
get into trouble with managers.
Pretty soon, if one does
this enough, one will go on automatic pilot when folding, and to this
day, my clothes and linens (i.e. towels and bed sheets) are all still
folded in a manner befitting of a shop floor.
It’s incredibly sad, I know.
March 29, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Aaaaah, nice little article there- shows the way GAP is meant to be run, although reality is a little more lazy.
The
used to do Greet and it sucked big time (managers put people on it they
didn’t like as a form of punishment really whilst the favourites were
till trained or stuck on fitting rooms). They don’t do greet anymore
though and I am glad, so very glad.
As for the folding
boards (that are the plasitc thingys name)- not used anymore really,
unless we have a store visit and even then! Takes far too long for the
clothes to get folded (but then again, the big London stores might use
them more, I dunno). I do spend my life frigging folding though, I am
now an expert on the art of folding (good for me).
The idea
of a folding party amuses me though, we could get coke and crisps while
we fold, but till 1am, bit excessive perhaps! We do talk while we fold
too, perhaps too much!
March 30, 2006 at 9:50 am
Gap
is one of the least ‘usable’ shops as far as I’m concerned. Lots of the
clothes are folded, which I hate because you can’t see them properly.
The size 16s (which I am and which, incidentally, is the average size
in the UK) are always ‘filed’ at the bottom of the pile or at the back
of the rail (if the garments are hanging up) with the impossibly teeny
tiny sizes are at the front. This means you have to grovel on the floor
or dive head first to the back of a rail to find the size. They never
seem to stock many 16s either. Result = unhappy, annoyed shopper.
March 30, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Well,
the idea is that they are in size order so that people know where to
look as oppossed to randomly being thrown on the rail- but I can ask my
managers to do that if you like? Just dismantle the pile anyway, its
what most people do- gives me something to do on a monday morning when
there are more sales associates than customers and I stand there
willing something interesting to happen.
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