Change seems all around us now as the coronavirus has affected so many aspects of our lives. Sometimes it seems as if the world is being turned upside down. But for those of us of a certain age, while change is nothing new, we certainly recognize how hard it is.
One of the changes seems to be the effect that the virus is having on business, with many familiar store names either declaring bankruptcy or in great financial difficulties. But from my perspective the shopping world that is crumbling today has changed beyond recognition from the shopping world of my childhood.
I grew up in a world without malls. When one went shopping, one put on one’s best clothes and went ‘downtown.’ In my case downtown was Washington, D.C. where one would go to one of two stores that anchored F Street: Woodward and Lothrop (fondly known as Woodies) and Garfinkels (an elegant store with an ugly name.) Inside each store was an orderly collection of boxed areas, each with a particular purpose. In one square would be gloves, another handkerchiefs, and another purses, with the merchandise displayed in counters around the square. Inside each square would be a woman of a certain age who would help with your purchase. It was possible then to make a career out of sales, and these ladies knew their merchandise inside and out. As a child I found them somewhat forbidding as they were usually severely dressed and very exacting as they pulled various items out of the showcases to show to the purchaser. But then I was always with an adult who would do all the navigating. The one noticeable male in this sea of women was the floorwalker, usually dressed in a dark colored suit with a flower in his lapel. He would circulate around his kingdom keeping an eye on customers as well as sales personnel to see that all went well.
Credit cards were just beginning to make an appearance, but most of the purchases were done with cash. There was no cash register in any of those squares, but a system of pneumatic tubes which fascinated me. The sales lady would put your money in a cylinder and place it in a plastic tube where it would be whooshed up to a glassed in area high above us. There the cashiers, who sat behind that glass, would make the correct change and with another whoosh it would be returned to the purchaser below.
The clothing sections were on other floors and one would reach them in an elevator which was manned by an actual person who manipulated a brass lever that would level the elevator at each floor. The elevator doors would open with a ding, and the operator would announce what was to be found on that floor.
I was always with my grandmother when we shopped here, and the treasured destination when I was a teen was the clothing department. Here my grandmother and I would be greeted by name by a particular sales lady, who was a fixture in the clothing department eventually becoming its head. But when we arrived she always put everything else aside to wait on her long-time customer, my grandmother.
All of that is gone now. The floor walker with the jaunty red carnation in his buttonhole, the knowledgeable middle aged ladies behind their counters, the elevator operators, the orderly squares of merchandise, and even the buildings themselves which have become office space. Yet, I had one last glimpse into this world and what change can bring. Years later I would see the face of our dedicated sales lady staring out at me from the front page of the The Washington Post. Garfinkels had been taken over by a cooperate raider, grabbing all of its profits including its retirement accounts. This woman, a memory from my youth, had worked for the company for 40 years and now had no retirement. Her aged, but still recognizable face, stared out at me from the paper. She had been dealt a blow by change and I, who she had served so well, could not even remember her name.