During the Christmas season of 1975, I was hired as a part time seasonal worker at the
2nd busiest Toys R US in the tri state area. Built on the end of a sandbar TRU bordered “The Rockaways” section of Queens NY. At that time, the only form of public transportation to the store was the green line bus (the mode of transport for beachcombers without cars), which ran infrequently. A half mile walk to the bus stop and then a 20-minute bus ride didn’t stop me from the excitement of getting a real part time job.
The 3 months leading up to the Christmas holiday was our Super Bowl, 12 registers with lines down the aisles, shopping carts filled to the brim with the hottest toys for well deserving and over indulged children translated into cash revenues of over $100,000 per night and that didn’t include the personal checks and credit card receipts.
This job required people who could adapt to a fast-paced environment. The service desk was the command station for the store and we each had a part to play which required teamwork. It was the first line of defense between out-of-stock merchandise, broken toys which were no longer in stock and handling people with insufficient ID that were trying to pay by check. But I learned how to navigate with aplomb and in time it became a well-oiled machine.
I knew I was good at my job, but I was still a seasonal hire with no promise of further employment once the holiday rush was over. Maybe I could squeeze out another month to deal with the returns that piled up the day after Christmas, and then it was the end of my short tenure at the toy supermarket; but I discovered that working hard would net a positive effect. I managed to secure a permanent slot post-Christmas season. Within a year I was running the front end of the store part time.
My new role came with many responsibilities including counting the nightly cash intake to ensure it balanced out with the final tally of the registers. I also prepared the timecards for payroll, but it would be my first experience managing people, 12 cashiers, another 3 at the service desk. This taught me that I needed to assess the skills of individuals and then train where those skills fell short. It consisted of placing the strongest cashiers at the farthest registers, the ones that needed more assistance closest to the service desk. It’s where I learned the importance of ensuring I had back-up; someone who could slide into my role if necessary. While to many this might seem trite, I was in-training mode for future management roles.
At that time, I did not possess the work experience to realize that Corporate America was filled with what I would learn much later on was “dead wood” and that sometimes those people get to keep their jobs. That was especially true at very large firms. I would later learn that many factors are at play in the workplace. All I knew is that I did not want to work at a place where people were comfortable hiding in the corner. I was addicted to hard work with the hope that rewards would follow. It helped me to realize that I liked the idea of learning many aspects of a job, I didn’t want to learn just one skill.
As I look back on my stint there it prepared me for my career in the fast-paced client facing service industry, where I learned the skills it took to manage a team. I certainly did not realize that I had learned how to deal with the most difficult segment of the population; “the public” until much later which would prepare me for all “types” of difficult individuals.
