Shopkeeping

“ But to descend more into detail, there are still among its at any rate a limited number of shopkeepers who like to do their business on good, safe, and steady lines, and keep together a nice respectable connection by upholding the dependable quality of their wares. Some of these shopkeepers do not make much of an outward show, but I have reason to know that many of them in a quiet undemonstrative manner do a snug and prosperous trade without fuss or display. ”

“ Guide for Shoppers.—A department store in New York recently made a census of its customers, and from the count kept for a single week it was estimated that 3,125,000 persons passed through its doors every year. This for a single store. But there are thousands of stores. Vast numbers of these people are from the country, and do not know where they can trade to the best advantage. What a field is here for a shoppers’ guide! Ascertain what stores make a specialty of certain goods, what ones sell the cheapest in certain lines, and what days they make bargains in certain wares. ”

“ In the modern methods of shop management, all these things are changed. The specialization of workmanship, the division of duties, the limiting of responsibilities—each restricted within narrow limits by sharply defined regulations—have reduced the variety of operations of the workman, and of responsibilities and duties of the men who direct manufacturing work.
We find the purchasing of material and supplies in charge of a Purchasing Agent. We find these purchases checked by a Receiving Clerk, turned over to a Storekeeper, and subject to examination by a regular Inspector. ”

“ When our local committee determined, in the words of the minutes book, to open a shop and offices in the local main street, "for the dissemination of suffrage literature," we made up our minds that we would not be amateur shopkeepers. The success of our venture, we argued solemnly, depended on convincing the neighbourhood that we meant to be taken as seriously as any other tradesman in the street. Unfortunately, in saying this, we reckoned without our customer; for, if you attempt to be taken seriously as a shopkeeper, the one error to be avoided is that of taking the customer seriously. ”

“ The shopkeeper sits on the floor of his shop, surrounded by his various goods. He never rises to customers, for everything is within reach of his hand. [402] Women never meddle with trade, which is solely in the hands of the men. ”

“ Everything you sell, whatever its price, will be the genuine thing—straight from the East. We associate shop-keeping with the huckstering ideas of a servile class. I’ve often wanted to prove that shop-keeping, all trade, can be ennobled. ”

“ It was observed that upon entering a shop here the customer invariably removes his hat out of respect to the store-keeper, whether man or woman, and remains thus uncovered while perfecting his purchase. ”

“ The child is sometimes sent to the shop three times a-day, to obtain the supplies for each meal as it is wanted. Of course, the shopkeeper cannot give so much time, paper, and string without being paid for them. ”

“ There are shops for the sale of second-hand clothes on either side of all the narrow thoroughfares, but the bulk of the business is done by those dealers who bear their goods about with them, slung over their shoulders or hugged in their arms, and who push and drive through the mob with the rest, screeching out with all the strength of their lungs what it is they have got to dispose of, and what the price of it is. ”

“ The skilled artisan who worked at home and either made goods for a master or sold to the trade verged into the shop keeping class. On the other hand, the lowest type of shopkeeper, the chandler, the dealer in old iron, the tripe shop, the milk retailer, the keeper of a cook shop or a green cellar belonged to the class of casual and unskilled labor. ”

“ Her principal work is to trot around in other stores and learn all she can about their 'specials' and prices, and get all the information possible in order to keep her employers posted on what their rivals are doing, and besides that she is expected to prowl around this store at irregular intervals, and we are not supposed to know that she isn't a legitimate customer. ”

“ The little shops pull at one's heart, so simple is their merchandise. A little window beckons us through which we peer with misted eyes. For narrow shops are often kind to tiny folk scarce counter-high. Above a shop, behind a blind, I've heard a little baby cry. Above a shop, I've often seen a mother's anxious face appear. How many customers have been? The closing hour is drawing near. Great shops, like temples dedicate to merchandise from every mart, are over-lords of their own fate—but little shops tug at the heart! ”

“ The country storekeeper has the experience of his customer’s wants, and he has a knowledge of the best goods, knows what is a fair price for an article. He is in a position to advise his customer as to his needs, and if he were not handicapped by lack of capital and cost of transportation for parcels, he could, in nine times out of ten, supply the wants of the customer. ”

“ Yet it is an interesting fact that in several of the largest and most important classes of industries in this country shop practice is still twenty to thirty years behind what might be called modern management. Not only is no attempt made by them to do tonnage or piece work, but the oldest of old-fashioned day work is still in vogue under which one overworked foreman manages the men. The workmen in these shops are still herded in classes, all of those in a class being paid the same wages, regardless of their respective efficiency. ”

“ Nobody is in a hurry. He who hastes is viewed with suspicion. Even punctuality in the payment of dues is decried; and no shopkeeper, worthy of a booth in the bazaar, will permit a customer to depart until after bewildering his sight with the most gorgeous properties upon the shelves. ”

“ Villagers beginning to read do not care for this class of work; like children, they look for something more amusing, and want something to wonder at for their money.
At the post-office there is often an assortment of cheap stationery on sale, for where one cottager wrote a letter a few years ago ten write them now. But the shopkeeper—most likely a grocer or storekeeper of some kind—knows nothing of books, and will tell you, if you ask him, that he never sells any or has any orders. How should he sell any, pray, when he does not put the right sort into his window? ”

“ In fact, the shops seem to be convenient places opened to enable their owners to causer with the greatest possible number of their neighbours and other people, rather than places for the receipt of custom and serious making of money. I doubt if any man is a worse hand at shopping than I, and yet I can go boldly into any shop here, and turn over the articles, and chaffer over them, and then go out without buying, and yet feel that I have conferred a benefit rather than otherwise on the proprietor of the establishment. ”

“ This shopkeeper finds some dreary consolation for the present state of things in standing at his deserted shop-door and watching the doors of his brethren. He finds them equally deserted. In his own he has had to dismiss a number of his attendants. “When a man finds he is taking in ten shillings a day, and laying out three pounds ten, what can he do but pull up pretty short?” As with the shopkeepers, so it is with the mechanics. “They are losing custom all the time. You see the tenants are expecting to come into the properties, so they spend nothing now on painting or improvements. ”

“ The old counter, shelves, and other fixtures of the little shop remained just as he had left them. It used to be affirmed, that the dead shop-keeper, in a white wig, a faded velvet coat, an apron at his waist, and his ruffles carefully turned back from his wrists, might be seen through the chinks of the shutters, any night of the year, ransacking his till, or poring over the dingy pages of his day-book. ”

“ Much of the work in the clothing trade is now done in shops, especially fitted for the purpose. These shops are more amenable to inspection under our factory laws, and a great deal has been done by state inspectors in this direction. ”

“ The current of our daily life, the springs of our activity or fortitude, may be supplied as well from hope as fear, from ‘cheerful and confident thoughts’ as the apparition of famine stalking just behind us. The merchant attends to his business, settles his accounts, and answers his correspondents as diligently and punctually as the shop-keeper. The shop-keeper minds his customers, and puffs off his goods, tells more lies, is a greater drudge, and gets less for his pains than the merchant. ”

“ Next time she passes that way she calls in the shop, visits the refreshment department, where refreshments are dispensed free of charge, lolls awhile on a sofa in the reading-room, where the newspapers are kept for the use of customers, retires to the writing-room, conducts her day's correspondence on stationery provided by the establishment, and finally, as she is passing out, informs the cashier that she has bought something which she desires to return. ”

“ An unwritten law of trade makes it a breach of professional etiquette for a shopkeeper to tell the names of purchasers of goods, but many a proprietor, as a matter of business pride, is glad to recount the names of his patrons on Lakeside Drive and their splendid orders just given. ”

“ For there are shopmen, store-keepers, and errand-boys, who unbar and fasten doors, take down and put up shutters, and sit behind counters and desks, with just as much regularity as though the premises were district branches of the Bank of England, set up in out-of-the-way places for the convenience of stray populations. It is suggested by their manner and appearance, that they always labour under the delusion that business is to commence on the day following: and they are simply there for twelve, fifteen, or twenty years, getting things into shape to begin fairly the next morning. ”

“ Then one of the company cheapens something or other, making many words with the shopkeeper about the price, thereby giving an opportunity to some of his companions to hand things of value from one to another till they were insensibly vanished, the honest shopkeeper being left to deplore the misfortune of having such light-fingered customers find the way to his shop. ”

“ We sell 10 per cent. off to our employees. Here's the key of your locker. Here's your check book. When you've got your dress, ask for the schoolroom. Take fifteen minutes' lesson on the blackboard for making out your checks, and the rest's up to you. But look sharp. We've been open to customers for half an hour now. At ten-thirty a two-hours' bargain sale of blouses, sashes, and ladies' fancy neckwear opens on the first floor. That's yours. You must be in the square more than half an hour before the sale begins, to see stock and learn your job. ”

“ Shop assistants are so invariably prepared to give advice on matters of dress and domestic management that I suppose there are people who go to shops not to buy but to have a heart-to-heart talk about what they shall buy. ”

“ For myself, however, I am glad that there are still some shopkeeper specialists left who limit themselves to dealing in such things as they understand, and know what they buy, and sell that they know. ”

“ In the writer's experience, almost all shops are under-officered. Invariably the number of leading men employed is not sufficient to do the work economically. Under the military type of organization, the foreman is held responsible for the successful running of the entire shop, and when we measure his duties by the standard of the four leading principles of management above referred to, it becomes apparent that in his case these conditions are as far as possible from being fulfilled. ”

“ It is painful to observe with what recklessness our young ladies will sit at a counter and call for one piece of goods after another, until the shelves before them are almost entirely stripped,—tossing one article here and another there, throwing heavy goods upon delicate articles, while the perplexed clerk endeavors to hide his anxiety, and shield his wares from harm, in the most gentlemanly and unobtrusive manner; but his politeness and delicacy are wasted, for this class of shoppers care little for the discomfort of a clerk. ”

“ The objection that social England has against the shopkeeper is, no doubt, based upon many sad experiences that the shopkeeper brings his shop with him to dinner, and will not, or cannot, pose to the extent of forgetting his material concerns in the presence of the frivolous. ”

“ Gentlemen consider it a very irksome task to go on shopping expeditions, and their ill-concealed impatience becomes equally irksome to you.
If you have given the salesman or saleswoman unusual trouble in showing you articles which you find not to suit, make some compensation, by at least one or two small purchases before leaving the store; for instance, linen to lay by as a body-lining for a future dress, gloves, mits, a neck ribbon, cotton spools, pins, needles, tape, black sewing-silk, &c.,—things that will always come into use. ”

“ The opportunity to test out and appreciate the standards will occur in the shop experience, and the chance to achieve or experiment with other standards will be reserved, as I shall show presently, for the school hours. This will be the case with methods of work and with shop organization. During the hours in the shop the workers will be occupied wholly with their special tasks as they would be in any other shop, that is in any shop which had due consideration for the labor force ”