Each issue of Galaxy Brain will contain one chapter of Kathryn McLeod’s fantastic book, ” THAT LOOKS GOOD ON YOU–YOU SHOULD BUY IT! This is the sixth chapter. You can read the other chapters here:

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five

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Chapter Six

Real Live Sales Associate

“Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalized.” G.K. Chesterton

“Happiness is expensive as phuck.” Rihanna

And then, with just one support shift under my narrow red leather belt with a silver buckle that matched the earrings my mother gave me on my twenty first birthday – a promotion!

(I was looking for a pair of black dress socks which I did not own when I found the belt, eventually just borrowing a pair of Steverino’s black dress socks, which I did for the next two years, no one the wiser that the heel was halfway up my calf.)

“Katie, I’m taking you off support and putting you on sales. Black Friday’s coming up. You’ve got a goal of $800 to start. Short story shorter, you’re good at tidying the sales rack, which is important, but I need you to be a lot more pro-active with sales. Remember “Welcome to Chestertons”? And part two “The Art of the Sale”? I want you to shadow Eva today. She’s our go to for HER, hospitality plus engagement equals reward.”

“Oh, okay. Gosh Gwen, just, you now, in fairness to me I wasn’t being pro-active about sales at all. I thought I was just supposed to be support while I learned-”

“Katie, I can’t afford to not have everybody doing sales. Black Friday is coming. This isn’t a training school for sales associates. Support is over. Nobody is support anymore. Look, you have to be able to adapt quickly in retail. Chestertons is a business. It isn’t the government.”

“Actually, you’d be surprised by how quickly people have to adapt in government. One day you’re at a meeting with your team to discuss the need for version control on the shared drive for the form your team is in the process of updating, the form that records the approvals process in the development of a regulation, the next day your team has been laid off. Yikes, Eva? Isn’t she kind of territorial about sales? NOT that anyone said-”

“No, Katie, there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’ at Chestertons. Oh good, here’s Eva now to start her shift. Eva? I’ve promoted Katie to sales associate. There’s no more support. HQ needs every wage cost to be a sales generator. I’ve given her a goal of $800 and you a goal of $1600 because you made your goal of $1500 yesterday.”

“Gwen you can’t keep increasing my goal like that. I’m telling you as a former head of HR in a department overseeing 50 human resources that it’s stressful on personnel when instead of rewarding her for meeting a challenge with an actual reward, management punishes her for meeting a challenge with a new but impossible to meet challenge.”

“Eva, it’s just one tee-shirt. One. Tee-shirt. You can sell one more tee-shirt, can’t you?”

“Well maybe I can and maybe I can’t. Are the tee-shirts on promotion? Because if the tee-shirts are on promotion, I have to sell two tee-shirts to make that extra $100. You’re killing me here, Gwen. I’m already possibly borderline diabetic. Yesterday I didn’t even get a chance to pee, let alone take a break.  And Anna stole two of my sales. You have to talk to her, Gwen. Or fire her. Yes, fire the customer-stealing little troll. Miss Portugal my ass. Were the other contestants men? So now I’m supposed to make my goal of $1600 AND sell another $800 for Katie. I’m so glad I came in on my day off because Lindsay is hungover and called in sick. Again. Oh, do I have to make her goals, too? Honestly, Gwen, I don’t know why you hired her. Her resume is bullshit. I saw it. You really should be locking up our resumes. That’s a lot of personal information to leave lying around for anybody to walk into your office and read. As a former head of HR I’m just telling you, one word – lawsuit. Okay, Katie. Let’s get this shit show on the road.”

And so for the next hour I followed Eva around Chestertons, looking back wistfully on my lone shift as support, while Eva poached customers from a terrified Ashley #1 and an even more terrified Ashley #3.

“I don’t know why Gwen hired you. No offense, Katie, but have you ever even shopped at Chestertons? I’ve never seen you in here before and I work a lot of shifts, not that I have to. I do this for fun money, not grocery money.”

“Well no, but I’m guessing the Ashleys didn’t, either, so-”

“Those little bitches are useless lazy hungover sales stealers and don’t turn your back on them. And make sure you lock your locker. Look, you seem like a decent person but you’re obviously not a sales person. You’re here because you couldn’t find anything else and got desperate and saw a sign or whatever, right?”

“Well-”

“You don’t fool me. I know how it is. Look, I’m on long term disability from my previous job where I was an HR manager. Fifty people I managed – fifty. They keep trying to make me assistant manager here but I’m not going to take a shit retail job, eight hour shifts, five days a week, crap pay, assholes at HQ spending every waking hour trying to figure out how to squeeze more work out of fewer people. I’m just here for fun money and to make up for a bad loan to my asshole son from my first marriage. I married a guy who thought he was too good for me. Rookie mistake, right? A man thinks he’s better looking than you? Run for the hills, baby. But we all make those mistakes, don’t we. I bet you’ve made a few of them. Kids? I’ve got four, all boys. One asshole ex, one asshole son. Same mom, different dad. Do the math, kiddo.”

“Three, I’ve got three kids. I would’ve had four, but our car only had room for three car seats, and my ex was devoted to it, a 1983 Toyota Tercel he got used for about four thousand dollars. God I was mad when he blew all his money on that car. Plus I had no idea he had four thousand dollars. Here I am paying all our rent because he never has it and suddenly one day the reason why is parked out in front of our apartment. But it worked out, I guess. I was eight months pregnant and my co-workers hated me riding my Raleigh Grand Prix ten speed to work every day. I bought it when I was seventeen to go on Cycle Canada ’76, but, well, it’s a long story. My mother made me do a French immersion at Lakehead university instead.”

“Hm’kay. I think I’ve got you pegged now. I was a bit off, but just a bit. I’m sensing something Lindsay Lohan thirty years on now. I’m pretty good at sussing a person out from her resume but I couldn’t tell from yours quite what your deal is. Most people have a more personalized resume. Yours is generic government, all those bureaucrat-inspired buzzwords provided to you by half a dozen agencies, no doubt. There’s an oxymoron for you – bureaucrat-inspired.”

“Jesus. Well I guess I had one or two too many Friday nights at the disco but Lindsay Lohan thirty years on makes it sound more sex, drugs, and rock and roll than it was. I think. Although I guess Lindsay Lohan converted to Islam which is a lot like quitting drinking. Hah! I wonder if she’ll rope a standby boyfriend off from the herd and have three kids with him now. And I guess I did have a late night with a guy I thought for a long time was Bob Geldof. But then one day I was watching Spice World with my kids, you know, The Spice Girls’ Hard Day’s Night, and I said, “Hey Bob Geldof!” because the manager in Spice World looks exactly like Bob Geldof. And they were like, “Uh mom, that’s Richard E. Grant.” You know that eye rolling way kids have, they don’t know how to spell but I’m supposed to be able to tell Bob Geldof from Richard E. Grant. Ever since then I figured I might have just spent a late night with some funny looking British guy. Hah! Redundant much, Katie? Funny looking British guy – what other kind of British guy is there?”

“The current love of my life and father of my three good sons is British, a Deputy Minister, too. And instead of spending the ‘80s in discos, I was married and working and paying bills, like an adult. Why? Because I was hoodwinked, that’s why. When my asshole ex asked me to the prom I was so flattered, oh my, what a sucker I was, this is it, I thought. He had that pretty boy look, you know, the type that I should have known goes to fat. Elvis, right? Christ, I could practically see him relax into obesity during the honeymoon. When he came to pick me up, without a car, I might add, he was in jeans. White, but they were still jeans! I was wearing my mother’s wedding dress. I mean it wasn’t white or anything crazy like that, it was ivory, but that’s how big a deal it was to me, going to the prom with him. Our son’s a chip off, too, a real piece of work. But it’s not a big deal, the loan, so don’t go thinking I have to be here. Do you have to be here? Because I’m telling you as a former head of HR, if you haven’t burned all your bridges, sent a department-wide email calling the Deputy Minister an idiot, go back to the government.”

“Hey, I would but it’s been a while and so far no bites. I’m with six agencies and nothing. And how did you know- never mind. Even if there was something it’s all minimum wage. Work in the government for minimum wage? No thanks. I’d rather work here. I mean, why not?”

“Because you working here means fewer hours for me, that’s why not. Look, when I say fun money I mean for my lifestyle. No offense, but you don’t look like somebody who needs to sustain a lifestyle.

“Hey, no offense taken, but you’d be surprised at my needs.”

She wouldn’t have been, of course, except maybe for the shade-grown fair-trade organic coffee and grilled artichokes holding high at $8.99 a jar. But praise be to the gods of workplaces, she ditched me an hour into our shift so I could poach my own customers from the Ashleys.

I was good at it, too, poaching customers from the Ashleys, even selling a shirt that Gwen rang in for me when it turned out I still didn’t have an employee number.

When Esther came in later she asked who Gwen had paired me with for my first sales shift.

“Eva.”

“Eva?! Gwen must think you’re better than you are if she put you with Eva on your second shift. You’re much too timid about sales to be paired with Eva. Clipboard folding sweaters won’t make your goals but neither will following Eva around while she poaches sales from the Ashleys. We need sales associates to cultivate their own customers. New ones. That’s why you were hired, to engage customers who work in government. And who in her right mind wears a wedding dress to a prom? Whenever Eva tries to talk to me now I just pretend my hearing aids are on the fritz. I’ve heard it all before. She doesn’t need the money but she needs the hours. Increase her goal it’s stressful, don’t increase her goal why didn’t you notice that she made her goal yesterday. And why she thinks it’s a secret that she’s on long term disability from her HR manager job I don’t know since it’s on her resume and she tells everyone who comes into the store. And she’ll never have to turn us down to be an assistant manager because we’ll never ask her. She’s ridiculously jealous of Lindsay, who Gwen never should have hired, but I’m not the boss. Gwen’s the boss and she has one hundred and one blind spots. One of them is Eva.  Another one is Lindsay. I wouldn’t get too attached to her if I were you. That girl is in way over her head. By the way, I’m retiring.”

“What?! You’re retiring?! But I just got here?!”

“Well I’m not retiring because of you. My goodness, you’re going to have to step back and learn that nothing, absolutely nothing, is about you if you’re going to survive for any length of time at all in retail. Think sales. Sales, sales, sales. It’s all about sales. Sales. Nothing else matters. Sales. Anybody who walks through that door can be your customer, unless they’re Anna’s, Ruth’s or Eva’s. And the girls have their customers, too. But Edgar and I have been planning this move for five years. We live on a five-year plan. And I am sixty-five.”

“You’re sixty-five?!”

“Yes, I know, I don’t look it. I lead a very active lifestyle and eat plenty of vegetables, chicken, fish. Poached, of course. And once a week a medium rare steak. You need a medium rare steak once a week. You looked more substantial in all the gear you were wearing when I first saw you but now I wonder if you can even wear the clothes here. You’re too tall for petites but you need more meat on your bones for regular. Gwen’s not going to want you wearing clothes that look like they belong to someone else. You can be too thin, you know. I don’t care what that duchess says. Oh my, this place is going to go to heck when I leave. Gwen will be starting interviews soon for a new co-manager. Although, and not to toot my own horn, she’s going to have a devilled egg of a time replacing me. The quality of candidates just isn’t there. We’re hiring any old raggamuffin who walks in off the street.”

“So Lindsay won’t be promoted?”

“Oh my glorious stars, Katie, you did just fall off the turnip truck. Eva was right. Gwen’s desperate, not stupid. Well, and she does have her blind spots, as I’ve said. Lindsay’s resume is poppycock from start to finish. That girl’s got a lot to learn about life. And math. Her dates don’t add up. That’s the trouble with young people today. They don’t take enough care. Everything they do is sloppy slapdash. And I hope I’m mistaken but I believe she’s carrying on with one of the cleaners. Goodness gravy, I hope it’s just one. I probably shouldn’t say carrying on, but I don’t know a less graphic way to put it. What these young ladies need is a little thing called military service. I know I sound old-fashioned but the army works wonders for discipline, not that I’ve ever had a problem in that regard. I had to take over so many projects in 4H that I barely had time to edit the school newspaper and organize agricultural fairs. Oh, and win Dairy Princess every year for the county.”

And that was pretty much it for Esther and Chestertons.

We had a dinner for her on a Sunday night so everybody could attend. It was in The Market and we all pitched in $20, so half a shift, to buy her a day at a super duper spa across the bridge in exotic Gatineau, formerly known as Hull, the ugliest place on earth.

I hear she’s running an after school boot camp for overweight kids in southeastern Ontario.

Fortunately, in one of those all-too-rare Even Steveners, Eva wasn’t far behind Esther. Because even though she didn’t want to be assistant manager, she’d be damned if she was going to stand by making her sales goals for Chestertons while nobody asked her to be. And even more damned if she was going to stand by making her sales goals for Chestertons while Lindsay stayed on as assistant manager and someone new was hired to be Gwen’s co-manager.

And so when Arlene came on board to be Gwen’s co-manager, although not really, because Gwen never did let her co-manage, keeping her pretty much at Lindsay’s level so that when Lindsay stopped showing up to work she wasn’t replaced, Eva left for bigger and better things – the department store across the street.

I almost joined her, too, because apparently she liked my people-pleasing ways enough to tell Anna, who was almost her friend, which was as much of a friend as Eva could abide, that if I was interested, she’d make up a good word about me to pass along to her manager, who was looking to hire.

When Anna told me this, I couldn’t help but express surprise.

“Wow. Thanks. I didn’t exactly think I was one of Eva’s favourite people. Okay, but good to know. Oh what the hell. I will, I’ll apply. Sure, why not?”

And I did, I did apply, and I had an interview, too, during which I mentioned Ralph Lauren as my favourite designer because I knew Eva worked in the Ralph Lauren section. Also, Ralph Lauren was the only name I could think of when I was asked who my favourite designer was.

But I didn’t hear anything back, a slight that I mentioned to Anna.

“It’s weird. I thought the interview across the street went even better than my interview for Chestertons. And my competitors were at least forty years younger and cited what I’m pretty sure are rappers as their favourite designers. But I haven’t heard a peep.”

“Yeah but I don’t know why did you apply for that Eva job anyway?”

“What?”

“Yeah you remember because of that thing you said that I told Eva after.”

“Uh, what thing was that?”

“Yeah you remember how you said you were surprised she wanted you over there because she’s not exactly your favourite person in the world and maybe your least favourite person at Chestertons.”

Believe it or not, that misunderstanding would not have been deliberate.

Even walking over on her lunch break to report to Eva what I’d not said, moments after I’d not said it, would not have been deliberate.

Not in the way you’d think, anyway.

It was like this: In the brief period between Esther leaving and Eva leaving, Anna’s keyholder status was taken away from her and given to Eva, as part of Chestertons’ ongoing campaign to humiliate Anna into quitting. Except that for Anna, losing her keyholder status just meant not having to worry about making it over to Ottawa from Gatineau, which is across the river in an entirely different province, at 3:00 a.m. because the store alarm had gone off for whatever reason that never had anything to do with break-ins, which Anna couldn’t do much about anyway.

I guess it would normally be the store manager’s problem, but one of the perks of being Gwen was that she lived even further away from Chestertons than Anna did, and so had been able to get away with delegating that responsibility to Anna, on account of Lindsay didn’t accept it.

Sure, there was the keyholder status associated with being in charge of opening and closing the store, which was always done with at least one other person – no one was ever supposed to be alone in Chestertons, not for safety but for theft reasons – but for Anna, losing the 3:00 a.m. tripped alarm responsibility more than made up for losing the status of opening and closing.

None of which meant that Anna didn’t resent Eva for taking away her keyholder status.

Oh, and why was Chestertons trying to humiliate Anna into quitting, you ask?

Because she’d built up a lot of holidays in her 25 years of telling Chestertons customers, “That looks good on you, you should buy it.” And Chestertons didn’t like paying a wage cost who was on holiday instead of at work generating sales.

Hilariously, according to Eva, Chestertons had been at the “Humiliate Anna into Quitting” campaign for five years by the time I arrived. But Anna, like Gwen, went back to the beginning of Chestertons at the mall, and wasn’t about to quit the only job she’d known since her arrival to Canada from Portugal, some twenty-five years ago.

Meanwhile, Eva, who was in a running competition with Anna over sales goals, felt it her duty “as a former head of HR” to point out to Anna on every shift they worked together that Chestertons was trying to humiliate her into quitting. And she meant well(ish), she just under-estimated Anna’s ability to work around humiliations, like Gwen deliberately scheduling her to work on Sundays, which she did because she knew Anna’s world outside of work revolved around church.

So Anna went to mass on Saturday night, because unlike a lot of malls, ours closed early on Saturdays, at six o’clock (later seven), and Gwen couldn’t schedule Anna to work Saturday nights even if she wanted to – which she did – because until Arlene came along, Gwen was doing double duty as manager of Chestertons and chair of the “Humiliate Anna into Quitting” campaign. And after Arlene came along, she was doing triple duty as manager of Chestertons, chair of the “Humiliate Anna into Quitting” campaign, AND chair of the “Constructive Dismissal of Arlene” campaign.

Also, to be fair to Eva, it wasn’t until I closed with her one night that I even understood what I was double-checking and initialing on the daily sales report and cash deposit. Because Eva was right. I was not a salesperson. Nor was I a thief because even after going over it a thousand times with Tj, a hundred times with Emily, and once with Arlene, I still don’t understand the phony returns scam that saw Lindsay make off with several thousand dollars.

Oops, spoiler alert. Again.

“Has anybody explained to you what you’re signing off on as a double-checker?”

“No-”

“I knew it! As a former head of HR, it is unbelievable – unbelievable! – to me that we would have new hires signing off on paperwork they don’t even understand BECAUSE NO ONE HAS TAKEN FIVE BLOODY MINUTES TO EXPLAIN IT TO THEM!”

And so she explained the numbers to me, the cash float has a steady $350, with the cash from the day’s cash transactions, so not debit or credit, counted and then recorded on a deposit slip, which is double-checked and initialed, before both are put in a bag, which is then sealed, and put into the safe for pickup by Brinks. Then a copy of the deposit slip and a tear-off number from the sealed deposit bag get stapled to the daily sales receipt recording the day’s transactions, which then gets stapled to the daily sales report, also initialed.

“So I’m a double-checker adding my initials to yours to verify that the cash amount in the till, above the float, matches the cash amount on the deposit slip and cash in the sealed bag.”

“Yup, which is just the tip of the theft possibilities iceberg but that’s not your problem. Look at the daily cash deposit. It’s nothing. None of our customers pay with cash. Chestertons is an absolute sieve for theft and it has nothing to do with cash. And I don’t know why Gwen trusts Lindsay – do NOT repeat that – but she does. Or maybe she doesn’t, she’s that desperate. Or stupid. I honestly don’t know anymore. We used to be almost friends but not now. Or… never mind. I don’t want to get sued so don’t repeat any of this but Lindsay probably isn’t stupid enough to steal cash. Although, ever since Gwen hired her we’ve been twenty bucks off here, fifty bucks off there. We don’t have enough cash transactions for even that amount of cash to go missing and everybody not notice it. Somebody’s scooping the odd bill. But at the rate staff is coming and going, who knows who it is? Probably not Lindsay.”

“How-”

“Every time a customer pays cash is an opportunity to slip a bill aside instead of putting it in the drawer. And the till opens anyway with every transaction. It’s crazy that the till opens when a customer isn’t even using cash.”

“I don’t understand why it’s so hard to fi-”

“Because the pay is shit. Look, the only person making any money here is Gwen. And they have to pay her a lot because there aren’t any theft controls, no effective loss prevention practices, and she’s really good at her job and corporate to the max. They tell her to start kissing our customers’ feet when they walk in the door and she stops wearing lipstick so she doesn’t get any on their shoes. Everybody caught stealing is an assistant manager, not a manager. So don’t kid yourself, Gwen will do whatever it takes to keep this job. She’s never worked anywhere else, Katie. Rita has written her up at least three times since I’ve worked here. The write-ups were bullshit, too. I tried to tell her but she’s terrified of losing this job, so she bows and scrapes and takes it. Whatever they dish out, she gobbles it down. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger or just more compromised. Regional managers write up store managers about something, anything, to terrify them into toeing the corporate line. As a former head of HR I know all the tricks, Katie. You were just hired to work the Christmas season but they’ll keep you on because you’re available. So good for you, I’ll give you that. Market yourself as filler. Also, Gwen told me that she trusts you to report anything amiss. But she never explained to you what you’re signing off on, right? That’s so typical. Totally irresponsible. If people don’t know what they’re signing off on how do they know they’re not signing off on fraud? My advice as a former head of HR? Watch your back around Lindsay.”

It was true, I’d been signing off on something I didn’t understand until Eva took the time to explain it to me, which makes me think she probably was a pretty good head of HR.

“You know why we have that humiliating bag check at the end of every shift, right?”

“No-”

“It’s Chestertons pretending to customers that there isn’t any employee theft going on because look! – no sweaters stuffed in purses! Security theatre. Meanwhile, it’s money employees steal. An assistant manager down east was just caught after embezzling three hundred grand in phony returns. Three hundred grand! Mind you, that was over three years because it was down east. It’s happening everywhere, the phony returns scam. Customers steal merchandise, assistant managers steal money.”

Ah, right. The bag check. I forgot to tell you about that. Okay, well, I’ll leave off my conversation with Eva now because, yes, you’re absolutely right – what the hell, Katie? A bag check? I know, I should have told you sooner. I forgot. Okay, I didn’t forget. I put it off because the bag check was so humiliating that I figured you’d wonder why I didn’t just tell Gwen right then and there to take my job at Chestertons and shove it up Anna’s ass.

I wonder myself, actually. I really do. It’s one of the great mysteries of my latest life, this one I’m in now writing this book, that I didn’t do exactly that. But I didn’t.

And yet I’ve quit jobs over far less humiliating experiences than the bag check at Chestertons. Although, I guess some employers might say I was fired more than I quit. Still, I’m not sure there’s much of a difference, except that nowadays you can’t get employment insurance if you quit, which makes humiliation and/or constructive dismissal campaigns particularly shitty, in my opinion.

Back in the day, though, before Andy, anyway, I could quit a job just because the uniform was a baggy gold with brown trim one piece mid-calf length crotch at mid-knee skort (combination skirt/shorts) – before the skateboard style had been invented.

It was the summer of ’78, and I’d gone out to Banff, Alberta for jobs, jobs, jobs and a higher minimum wage than what was on offer in Ontario. My mother, as per usual, was dubious, my plan sounding not so much like a plan, and more like I was going out west with no job and no place to live once I got there.

Historical Note: Many years later I would find out that my doubting mother had herself gone from Peterborough Normal School, which is what teacher’s college was called in her day, all the way out to Halifax to join the air force, and then up to Sault Ste. Marie, with neither a job nor a place to live. Why? Because she made a friend in the air force who told my mother that the Sault was the place to go for jobs, jobs, jobs. Although perhaps my mother’s youthful sense of adventure was inspired by the principal’s address to the Peterborough Normal School class of ’42, which I have reproduced for you here in teeny tiny print:

“Fortunate indeed have you been during this year of worldwide strife, in that you have been permitted to pursue the even tenor of your ways and to devote yourselves amid peaceful surroundings, to the task of preparation for your chosen work. What will that work involve? No longer can the teacher take a coldly academic view of the world, or feel that his service is bounded by the four walls of the class room. When our righteous cause prevails, as, please God, it must, and shall, to you will fall the task of helping to rebuild, upon the wreck our folly wrought, a better and a brighter world. For this, all the buoyancy and optimism of youth, all the skill and knowledge you have acquired, all the serious outlook we have sought to develop, all the sense of responsibility we have tried to instil, will be needed.

We send you forth, not merely as teachers, great as is that undertaking, but as pathfinders of a happier way of life, as heralds of an era of peace and brotherhood, as builders of a social order that will rest upon the foundation of everlasting Truth.

Happy shall we be if you succeed in the work of teaching, but far happier if you are able to play your part effectively in the greater and more magnificent work which it will be your proud privilege to share. That these successes may be yours is the sincere wish of the Staff.

J.A. Bannister, Principal

Anyway, my mother was dubious, but then my friend Judith, who was already out in Banff, called (collect) to say hurray! she’d found me a job and a place to stay. That would turn out to be a bit of a falsehood, of course, but no matter, my mother dropped me off at the Sault bus station, where “Dust in the Wind” was playing on the radio, and I headed out of town to catch a train in Thunder Bay.

Fun fact: Despite Sault Ste. Marie having a grabillion train tracks running through it, none of them are for passenger trains, and you have to take Greyhound, the worst company in the history of the world, to get in and out of it.

I can say that about Greyhound being the worst company in the history of the world because on no less than three separate occasions and locations, I have waited along with several other ticket holding citizens for a bus that never came, which is why I was sorely aggrieved when Pope John II informed the world that there was no such place as hell, having looked forward to Greyhound executives spending all of eternity in it.

I still remember disembarking the train in Banff, having not eaten anything for the entire trip from Thunder Bay because I was saving money by starving myself, and there, miraculously, was Judith to meet my train. Imagine, pre-internet, pre-cellphone, and there she was, confessing right away that she’d fibbed about the job and place to stay, but reassuring me that, as long as we were super careful, like, SUPER careful, I could share her cot in the staff annex of the Banff Springs Hotel until I found a job and a staff annex of my own.

We had to be SUPER careful, though, because if I got caught staying in the annex without actually working at the Banff Springs, Judith would be fired. And Judith didn’t want to be fired because this was her third summer with the Banff Springs and she had finally landed a much coveted job in laundry, having been a chambermaid the two previous summers.

(Laundry was actually lower in the Banff jobs hierarchy than chambermaid, but Judith was very weird, and all the very weird people wanted to be in laundry. And it’s not relevant here, I guess, but dining room waiter/waitress – in the Rob Roy Room – was at the top, and about as easy to get then as a job in government is now.)

Being SUPER careful also meant having to bribe Judith’s roommates with the bag of dope I’d brought with me to last the summer (courtesy a modern day Olympian’s mom with whom I’d gone to elementary school, but that’s for her book, not mine) so my plan to drink less and smoke more got a little derailed by circumstances beyond my control when I ran out of dope in a couple of days.

By the way, the first thing I ate after disembarking from the train? A box of pop tarts after sharing a joint with Judith, who didn’t actually smoke pot, or drink, but who liked to have a joint passed to her before passing it back.

Do NOT tell my kids about the above because I’ve always been very straight with them about preparing a decent meal before smoking pot, the likelihood of preparing a decent meal after being slim to none.

But it all worked out because two days later I got hired on as a chambermaid at the Banff Park Lodge and went to live in its annex. And at first it was fun because the hotel wasn’t finished yet and we who were hired to be chambermaids got to be construction worker helpers instead. That is until the union’s chief steward complained that we were in the way and likely to cause an accident. After that we became coffee fetchers, or, at least, I did. I found out later that a few girls had gone freelance, so to speak, making all their summer money in just a couple of weeks giving hand jobs in a finished suite on the second floor.

Opportunities missed? Why yes, I have definitely missed a few. I don’t know what they were charging but I’m going to guess it was more than the quarter tips I was getting fetching coffee.

Alas, all too soon (for us, not the Japanese tourists holidaying in a construction zone/brothel/cafe) the Banff Park Lodge was finished, and those of us who hadn’t gone home already, rich in bonuses, were obliged to be actual chambermaids. So affixing paper sashes over toilet seats, turning vacuum cleaners on and off, and straightening beds (already made by Japanese tourists) after lying on them to watch General Hospital and Another World.

Japanese tourists were the best tourists if you were a chambermaid because they’d leave the room early in the morning, no indication that it had even been occupied it was so neat and tidy, and then not return until mid-evening. They left lovely gifts behind for us chambermaids, too, lovely gifts that were confiscated by the Banff Park Lodge. And in spite of assurances that they’d send them along to us once they were certain that the sweatshirts folded neatly atop made up beds weren’t left behind by mistake, they did nothing of the sort.

It was mostly okay, being a chambermaid, until a month or so in when management decided on a new protocol whereby we were to do nightly rounds of the hotel asking businessman guests (the Japanese tourists having mostly petered out by then) if they would like us to turn down their beds.

The one and only time I performed the new protocol, it went down pretty much like you’d expect.

<Knock, knock>

Businessman guest opens door a crack.

“Hi, would you like me to turn down your bed for this evening?”

Businessman guest opens door wider.

“Is this a joke?”

“No. Management has a new protocol and we’re supposed to ask businessman guests if they want us to turn down their beds. ”

Businessman guest opens door even wider.

“Do you get in the bed first?”

“No.”

“Because your uniform isn’t very sexy. You should tell management that if they want this new protocol to work you’re going to need sexier uniforms. How do you even get in and out of that thing? The brown trim with the gold isn’t helping. And those big patch pockets. Is that a toilet brush? Hey, your uniform just reminded me of a joke I heard at the conference today. Wanna hear it?”

“Yeah, okay, but I’m just paid to ask if you want me to turn down your bed for the night so make it quick.”

“Why do women wear make-up and perfume?”

“I don’t know. Why DO women wear make-up and perfume?”

“Because they’re ugly and they smell.”

Ba da boom.

I quit the next day. Or maybe I was fired when I said I wouldn’t knock on doors and ask businessman guests if I could turn down their beds anymore. Also, I was a pretty sloppy slapdash chambermaid, as Esther might say, and management was probably wondering why I never needed any cleaning supplies.

As Banff luck would have it, though, just two days after that I had another job, a job that came with a red and white checkered hat. Alas, I got fired from that one for handing out foot high ice cream cones when the soft ice cream machine got the better of me – every. single. time. – and jerks in the know started lining up at the start of my shift to score a gallon of ice cream for whatever a soft ice cream cone cost in Banff, summer of ’78.

Anyway, I could go on because I had scads – scads – of humiliating work experiences, but you get the point, I’m sure, which is that none of them were as humiliating as the bag check at Chestertons.

Right then. Deep breath. The bag check coming up.