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Show Christmas Rush Raises Problem For Big Stores Preparations for Handling Shoppers Begun in January. Christmas is a headache for managers man-agers of big department stores. Not only must the demand for presents be anticipated months in advance, but more help must be hired, and the entire store reorganized. A big store faces a monumental task when it prepares for Christmas. Christ-mas. It is a task that begins right after New Year's and ends on Christmas eve the following year. Every department store has similar sim-ilar problems to meet, but the larger larg-er stores have to make plans on a scale that will accommodate - an enormous expansion of business. One large New York department store, for example, has as much floor space as a fair sized farm 45 acres. During the Christmas rush it has sold almost a million dollars' worth of goods. Actual planning gets under way immediately after Christmas when executives study errors that were made and draw up plans to avoid the same mistakes next year. Sales volumes of various departments are examined, and "bottlenecks" are removed re-moved as far as possible by enlarging enlarg-ing some departments and rearranging rearrang-ing others. Spring finds the store placing orders or-ders for the following year. Christmas Christ-mas cards are bought in April. Contracts Con-tracts for 2,000,000 Christmas boxes which are let in July are followed shortly by orders for many tons of holiday wrappings. Extremely important is the job of forecasting sales of goods. Certain staple lines can be predicted with considerable efficiency, but novelty goods have to wait almost until the following December. August finds employment beginning begin-ning its upward trend. The store is normally staffed with 11,000 people, peo-ple, but 10,000 more are needed to handle the holiday rush. Thousands Thou-sands of applicants must be interviewed inter-viewed for these jobs that range from the man who cleans gum off the floor to red-cheeked Santa Clauses. Each employee must first pass a rigid physical examination before he is finally accepted and given instruction in his special tasks. The greatest problem of all is presented by the toy department, which expands from a staff of about 50 people to more than 1.500 workers. work-ers. Display cases and tables' holding hold-ing 12,000 different toys must be arranged and organized, to permit customers to buy their gifts with a minimum of confusion and effort. The 10,000 additional workers not only have to be trained, but they also have to be fed. Cafeteria schedules sched-ules are rearranged and set with clockwork precision to provide for the heavy seasonal load. Ordinarily 14 doctors, 18 nurses and four dentists are sufficient to take care of any accidents occurring occur-ring in the store. This staff is assisted as-sisted by eight additional doctors during the holiday , rush. Wheel chairs strategically placed throughout through-out the store are ready to give instant in-stant service for any customer or clerk who is overcome by the work or crush of the crowd. No detail can be overlooked to make the entire store function smoothly as a unit. For every clerk there are two other workers handling stock, wrapping presents, taking orders or-ders and doing some of the multitudinous multi-tudinous tasks that are needed to run a big store. For example, can you speak only French, or Spanish, or Italian? The store has 700 interpreters capable of speaking at least one foreign language lan-guage who stand ready to accommodate accom-modate you. Of course the planning is not perfect. per-fect. Problems will arise and inconvenient in-convenient situations will exist. But you can be sure that every effort will be made to straighten them out before a single showcase is moved into position for next year's Christmas shopping season. |