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Show I I I W W f W f T -t-fc f For all you do, this column's for you When a friend of mine mentioned she wanted to go back east for the holidays, but needed someone to fill in at her ski shop job, I volunteered. Having spent a great deal of time in the retail world in a another life, I knew Christmas in a busy shop could be fun. But I had forgotten how much work it could be, too. During my retail stint I became aware of all the people who keep Park City going, 24 hours a day, seven days , a week, 365 days a year: bartenders, doctors, waitresses, gas station attendants, atten-dants, 7-11 employees, hotel clerks... and even ski shop employees. They work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. They miss watching football games, sleeping in and celebrating without a care. To quote a commercial cliche "For all you do, this one's for you! " Being a good salesperson this time of year in a ski resort at a pricey ski shop requires a very, very, long fuse. My new job brought to mind the excellent ex-cellent behind-the-scenes book on retailing by Stanley Marcus (of the pricey retail chain, Neiman-Marcus), entitled "Who's Minding the Store?" (The title comes from an old story among retailers. As the patriarch of a family retail business lies on his deathbed, his children come to pay . their last respects. The father looks around the room and says, "I'm delighted you're all here, but who's minding the store?") In his book Marcus goes to extremes to show that you must never for a second forget the customer is ALWAYS right. Occasionally this week I had to force myself to remember that rule. A few examples... The Texan who came in with a belly that, had it been on a woman, I might have guessed was about eight months pregnant. He tried on a $500 one-piece European designer ski suit, strutted around the dressing room area, looking with his eyes wide open in the three-way mirror, and asked, in all in-noncence, in-noncence, "Well, how do you think it looks?" Struck with a desire to be honest and to make the sale, I searched quickly for the appropriate response. "I think it's a terrific, urn, COLOR, on you!" I said honestly with enthusiasm. en-thusiasm. The Texan puffed up larger still, whipped out his gold American Express Ex-press card and floated out of the store ready to tear up the slopes Payday, say, or the Nastar runs. Then there was the pushy, snotty, arrogant, spoiled, twelve-year-old New York ManChild. As I searched in the display case for the sunglasses I believed he had pointed out he spat at me, "Not those! The Porche sunglasses, right there!" Inadvertently, my hand had landed on what was probably the Volkswagon of shades. I was tempted to tell this rude ManChild the glasses would look best on him worn internally and why didn't he place them there. Instead, I said, "I'm so sorry. Thank you for pointing out the right ones. I'm new here." The kid snorted in response, "I'll take 'em," and whipped out two fifties and a twenty. Some children have such endearing charm about them... Working in the retail world I became alerted to other aspects of the lives of workers who are directly affected by the influx of visitors. Danny Parker of the Snow Hut (located at the bottom of Prospector run) told me last Friday he has gone through a record-setting 900 pounds of potatoes so far this season. The thought immediately came to me that a Texan in a fancy European designer ski suit probably accounted for a good 300 pounds worth. Doctors at the Holy Cross clinic had no time Friday to put down their stethoscopes. They saw no scheduled patients, yet ended up with their busiest day ever. (Perhaps they had to surgically remove a Texan from his European designer ski suit.) And on New Year's Eve Sneakers owner Mark Stedman didn't get to sit down with his wife and eat the fancy dinner instead was serving. The wild , crowd nearly wore a hole in the sole of Sneakers. Some women even packed their own microphones in their purses, the better to sing along with the band. And just before midnight a group of men came dancing out of the dining room onto the dance floor to join the three-piece combo as its "horn section." sec-tion." They only had paper horns, but never mind, they ran their fingers up and down their instruments and rolled their eyes and took turns tooting little "solos." Trust me. It was pretty funny stuff. The point of all this is that this week it struck a vein with me that there are a lot of people who make a lot of hard occupational choices to live here. And mostly they go unnoticed. Nearly always, they go unthanked. So here it is: For all of you who work while everyone else, it seems, is playing, thanks, thanks, thanks. And hang in there. May is a just a few scant months away... |