It was a risky hire on their part. I had no prior experience as a ticket writer. Remember, this was my first job. When the hiring manager requested my resume, I handed her a blank sheet of paper. But she brought me onboard anyway. I will always be grateful that she took a chance on a green Persian teenager from Long Island.
That was nearly 20 years ago, but I've been thinking about it ever since Toys "R" Us closed its stores last week. My experience was a mixed bag — there are some good memories (I really do miss wearing a blue Geoffrey the Giraffe vest to work every day) and there are some bad memories (pretty much every interaction I ever had with a customer).
They're all fresh in my mind at the moment, and they're all pretty entertaining to me in their own way, so I thought I'd jot down a few of my favorites.
"Can you please show me how this stroller works?"
If you'd never been to a Toys "R" Us, you may be wondering what it is, exactly, that a ticket writer did. Well, in my case, it wasn't writing tickets. I didn't write one ticket the entire summer I worked in the store.
I did keep inventory of tickets — tickets that customers would remove from a display and bring to the cashier if they wanted to purchase a larger item. I mainly worked in the baby gear department. That's right — my employer put an 18-year-old in charge of baby gear.
I wouldn't know what to do in a baby gear department now as a 37-year-old. All baby gear is foreign to me. When I watch parents collapse a stroller on a jet bridge before boarding an airplane, I just stand there in awe. They make it look so effortless.
Needless to say, I didn't know how to collapse a stroller in my late teens. Or how to put together a crib. Or do anything that had anything to do with babies. But as luck would have it, Toys "R" Us carried strollers and cribs in the baby gear department.
Several times per week a customer would ask, "Can you please show me how this stroller works?" And several times per week I would answer, "No. I can't. I have no idea how it works."
I could have learned how it worked; I was a ticket writer in that department for three months. But that wasn't part of the managers' plan, apparently. Not once did they offer baby gear training to their 18-year-old baby gear employee. They told me if a customer needed a question answered, I should track one of them down. So that's what I did — many, many times.
It was a teachable moment for me. I learned that summer that I was not cut out to be in the baby gear business. I've been upfront about that in every job interview I've had since. I've looked every HR manager in the eye and said, "You should know that if the responsibilities for this role include collapsing a stroller, I'm probably not the right candidate for you."
"You should try Walmart"
Obviously, I was miscast in the baby gear department. Had Toys "R" Us recognized my strengths, it would have placed me in another department. Like, for example, the action figure department.
I knew action figures. I'd collected action figures my entire life up to that point. Ten years earlier, I'd owned pretty much every He-Man figure ever made, including Stinkor, the only character in action figure history (to the best of my knowledge) whose sole claim to fame was that he stank.
I eventually moved on to Starting Lineup baseball figures and then wrestling figures. I was still collecting wrestling figures by the time I worked at Toys "R" Us and kept up with the new releases.
Occasionally at Toys "R" Us I would answer customers' phone calls. One time I fielded a call from a young boy who asked if the store had the latest series of wrestling figures in stock. It didn't, and that's what I told him.
I also said, "You should try Walmart down the road. They have it. I was there yesterday. I saw it."
You may be thinking that it was not such a smart move to drive a potential customer to a competitor. I saw it differently at the time. I saw it as building equity with a potential customer, earning his respect for both me and my store by giving him an honest and helpful answer.
But then, Toys "R" Us is now out of business and Walmart is very much still in business, so my theory may have had holes in it.
"Put those lightsabers down and get back to work!"
I was drawn to the lightsaber. It may have lit up or made sounds, I can't remember. All I know is that it was a lot of fun to hold in my hand, and it opened up a world of possibilities. I was a powerful Jedi who could fight the dark side or slice a stroller in half.
Or stage a duel with a co-worker in the middle of the store. That one actually did happen. It was an impressive battle that drew a crowd of at least seven people. They really enjoyed it and cheered us on. We didn't choreograph any of the moves beforehand, either. It was all spontaneous.
After 30 seconds, I sensed a disturbance in The Force. It was the head manager marching in our direction.
"What are you doing?! Put those lightsabers down and get back to work!" he barked.
I don't use the verb "bark" often when it comes to human beings, but I'm making an exception here. He did bark, and unnecessarily so, in my opinion. I didn't understand why he was so upset. Get back to work? Toys were my work. And customers were paying much more attention to the lightsaber when I was putting on a demonstration than they had when it was sitting on a shelf. I knew what I was doing.
I found his lack of faith disturbing.
"Shane! Shane!"
The managers didn't post the employees' schedules for a given week until the Friday beforehand. I thought it was an odd system, but it usually didn't present a problem for me, at least not for the first several weeks I was there.
It did present a problem in mid-July, when the managers scheduled me to work a 9-to-7 shift on a Saturday. I was supposed to be at the Mets game that day. First pitch: 7:10 p.m.
I realize that, less than a month ago, I wrote a blog post on how much disappointment the Mets have brought me through the years. But 1999 was a rare exception; the team made the playoffs that fall for the first time in over a decade. I had reason to be excited to go to a game that season.
When I told one of the managers I had a conflict that Saturday evening, she didn't budge. She said, "You wrote you were 'flexible' with your availability on your application."
That was true. I was flexible...until it became apparent that the Mets were legitimately good. I already had tickets, and I refused to let a summer job stand in my way of taking myself out to the ball game.
So, at exactly 5 o'clock, I walked out of the store. Actually, that's not quite true. First, I grabbed a wrestling figure I wanted from the shelf and brought it to the cashier to pay for it, using my employee discount.
Why I chose that moment to buy it, I have no idea. It was a brazen move, especially because two managers saw the whole thing. As I began to walk out, figure in hand, one of them called out, "Shane! Shane!" I felt like Alan Ladd at the end of the movie "Shane."
I didn't look back. I walked toward the exit, out the exit and into my car.
I went to the game that night with my dad. I don't even remember if the Mets won. I just remember it was an electric crowd and a great time.
The next morning, I showed up to work at 9 a.m. and clocked in. No one said a word about what happened the afternoon before. It didn't come up once the rest of the summer. I pulled a George Costanza better than George Costanza himself.
I did not make a lasting impression with my managers during my brief time at Toys "R" Us. That was made especially clear to me when, two months into my role, one of them walked up to a co-worker and me and asked, "Which one of you is Shane?" And this was the manager who'd hired me.
Toys "R" Us may have forgotten me, but I will never forget Toys "R" Us. Thanks for the memories, Geoffrey.
