[Sound-off Sunday] Confessions of a Former Retail Manager

I've spent more hours working retail than I care to admit.

My wife and I went shopping at the mall yesterday, and it was a pretty horrifying experience. Our local mall has somehow managed to banish every bookstore, toy store and nature store from its premises, leaving us with a pet store (that will probably be out of business soon), a “Club Libby Lu” (which is going out of business), a GameStop and a slew of clothing stores, gift shops and cell phone kiosks. Blech.

Now, for those who don’t know, I have a fairly successful background in the retail industry — when I was working for EB Games (which is now GameStop), I was the top-ranked manager in the entire Midwest for 2 years in a row, and when I left the company to go back to school, I was ranked #2 behind the regional manager’s home store. From what I’ve been told, I was the only manager in the history of the company to ever do that. (To be fair, my employees were a big part of the effort, and they deserve credit too!) But it wasn’t just because I was really, really into video games — even when I worked in an Eddie Bauer, which was way out of my element, I was the top sales associate in the store fairly consistently.

So, yeah, I know a thing or two about retail. And what I want to say right now to anyone else who is in the retail business is to stop asking me if there’s anything I’m looking for when I walk into your store. This helpful-sounding question actually kills more sales than you’d think.

“Huh?” you might ask. But trust me, I have a good reason for saying this.

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