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Is this waterproof? (mp3)
Journey into retail's heart of darkness.

When I was seventeen I worked for about six months at Gap. It hadn’t been my intention, but the girl I was seeing at the time applied and in the way these things happen I applied as well. She ended up taking a job at a much cooler music store and I ended up folding sweaters with a plastic board all summer.
I don’t know how Gap works now, but back then you were given one hour stints in each of the store’s sections. By far the worst position was “greeter”, where you stood unmoving at the front of the store and welcomed people coming in, and then thanked them as they left whether they had bought anything or not. (In contrast the best was all the way at the back in the change room, where all you had to do was fold clothes and open doors.) When there were a lot of people both coming and going the routine bordered on farce as you made split second decisions on which was more important, greeting or thanking.
One day we arrived at work to find a new system was in place where they would track the sales we made. There was no commission, and the system was never explained although I guess it was pretty self-explanatory. The problem was that on an average shift you would move around the store seven or eight times, and if luck wasn’t on your side you could end up being in an empty section all day.
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"I’m going on a trip to Australia," the man told me. I smiled at him like you would a small child who had just informed you of his intention to travel to the moon. I couldn’t put together what his trip to Australia and our standing next to oxford button-downs had to do with each other. He walked over to a windbreaker that looked to be made of wax paper. “Is this waterproof?” he asked. I told him that it was water-resistant, and he nodded at my wise choice of words. I didn’t bother pointing out that by that broad definition, the cotton t-shirts were also water-resistant. The jacket went over his arm. Next he walked over to the khakis. “Do you think it will be hot there? I’m going in November.” He seemed to have me confused with one those hale and hearty types who know how to do useful things like start a fire and tie knots.
Even in 1993 Vancouver had several large outdoor retailers, including the now gargantuan Mountain Equipment Coop. I could imagine any number of jackets--and pants, and boots, and multi-coloured straps--that could help this man in his pursuit to confront, and then conquer, nature. But I guess he didn’t know about those places and had wandered into the first store he recognized. Gap, I could hear him thinking, they sell clothes. I’ll find what I need there. I wanted to set him straight, but I also wanted to meet my arbitrary sales quota. I could see Rob out of the corner of my eye, selling up a storm to some teenage girls. “Perhaps you need a day bag?” I found myself saying. “Hey,” he said, “now there’s an idea.”
All of this was about a year before Reality Bites and Saturday Night Live would make Gap a running gag. As for “just cinch it”, I can tell you unequivocally that many a pant was sold with the assurance that a belt would improve the fit. (I once sold a pair of 38x36 jeans to a beanpole of a guy fully two inches shorter than me. You can cut the legs and fray them in the wash, I told him. That’s exactly what I was thinking, he said.)
I started work at Gap style-impaired, and I finished not much better. Even adjusting for the tastes of the time, that leaned towards Mondetta sweatshirts and Reebok Pumps, my outfits were a disaster. Still a ways off from the grunge style that would sustain me for the next three years, I dressed mainly in Eddie Bauer, middle America banality - rugby shirts, denim shirts over jeans, t-shirts with random faded dates printed on the front. I dressed like someone who had only heard about outfits from people in a foreign language and then tried to duplicate them with different clothes.
The end came rather suddenly. One day the assistant manager, a blond woman probably the same age I am now, asked if she could speak to me. Sitting in a makeshift office, tucked behind boxes of v-neck sweaters and plain front khakis, she asked me if I liked working at Gap. Oh yes, I assured her. Because, she said, leaning back in her chair, some people have heard you make disparaging remarks about it while customers were around. I was shocked. Not because of the accusation that I made disparaging remarks, which was 100% true and probably an hourly occurrence, but that there were “some people” who had ratted me out. Who was it? Rob? Miko? The mouth breather whose name I could never remember? Was he the one? Thomas, she said, please tell us if there’s something bothering you about working here. We want all our employees to be happy. She said this as if there was something I could say that would lead to a significant change, like I would come to work tomorrow and we’d be selling Nintendos or gathered around a giant swimming pool that had materialized in the centre of the store. Instead I said no, there’s nothing. I must have been having a bad day, I said, parroting a line I’d heard on TV that seemed to fit the occasion.
The next day when I quit they didn’t seem surprised.
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Words by Thom Wong
Illustrations by Sharon Mah

Not me.