They are sick of "choice." It's not feminist to say so, but "choice" in many realms, is overrated. Choice just means more time wasted making pointless decisions. Choice means more scouring the grocery store in a daze and scanning the menu trying to figure out what it is exactly that you "want," when a lot of times what you really want is to spend more time doing what you really want and less time being annoyed your friend can't decide what pair of jeans to buy. And when it comes to health care, "choice" for most people has only ever led to more cash for more paperwork and more advertising.

They want a day off. I want a day off. In fact, I want ten. If I were in a union, I would totally authorize a strike, just so I could get a vacation from which I could return knowing no one else has swooped in to render me completely irrelevant, which they always seem to do just when you think you've made yourself indispensable.

Because they can. There are more than 15 million retail workers in America. And how many members does the national Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union that represents the Bloomie's cashiers and stock managers have? One hundred thousand. I'm sure there are other retail unions, but the fact is that I am not going to bother looking them up because I can tell you in full confidence that they have barely any members either, because department stores have been themselves rendered largely irrelevant by dollar stores and strip centers and suburban Best Buys and exurban Wal-Marts and ubiquitous Starbucks and all the other big companies that knew better than to let their workers unionize, lest they actually be forced to follow laws requiring them to provide uniforms and pay overtime and the like.

Because they're sick of Europeans. New York is being inundated with them right now, and although they're mostly attractive and friendly it's gotta be getting old, all those attractive, friendly people with their enviable education systems and universal health care and criminally high levels of life satisfaction and wads and wads of currency unweakened by the excesses of bankers and military industrial complex dwellers run amok and they're using it to buy out all the pretty dresses retail workers were hoping to get the chance to mark down. Fuck you, Euroca$h!

Because your store is making money hand over fist, but your 401(k) is going nowhere because the company keeps pissing it away buying celebrities who are RICH ENOUGH ALREADY. Macy's 1.17 billion ad budget of last year might have kept my old friends in the newspaper business on career life support for a little while, but it also lined the pockets of Jessica Simpson and Martha Stewart, and Jessica Simpson should have never been born.

Strike Possible This Week At Bloomingdale's Main Store [NY Times]

So, how did you finally get rid of your cystic acne?

Cystic acne is the gift that keeps on giving. I have basically come to the conclusion that I will never be entirely rid of all of it. It's the hundred years war. It's the Mongols in Imperial China. You can stave it off, usually temporarily and by employing some really extreme measures, but it's not just going to go away forever and never bother you again, especially if it's the adult-onset hormonal variety.

But your face looks fine. I saw you in Sephora, under bright lights, and I would have thought you'd have some sort of miracle formula for dealing with this judging from how your skin looked.

Are you serious? Because you don't have to be nice to me about this. It's something I am realistic about. I'm breaking out right now and the cysts are so bad that I wake up in the middle of the night in pain because they rubbed on the pillow the wrong way. They're not gone or anything. If my skin looked even partially okay, it is because I have gotten good at doing makeup, which is necessary when you have acne. Actually, I think one of the best ways to help acne heal is to wear nothing except your skin care products — if you can hack it. Obviously, I can't. I am not Mother Teresa. I just want my skin to look good. But for anyone who can hack no makeup, that's probably the best way.

Meanwhile, this is how I feel about makeup. I want to look flawless, with light, gorgeous coverage... no Hollywood Post-Nine-PM drag, no crusty MAC tranny face situation, none of that. So with acne, to avoid getting crusty faced, you need something that gives heavy coverage without giving the appearance of being heavy-coverage makeup. So a smooth formula becomes all-important. Make Up Forever makes good full-coverage foundations that I use sometimes, with Clinique's All About Eyes concealer for spots. I don't love Clinique, but I like their concealer. It doesn't crack or get crusty as much as other concealers, maybe because it's meant to be for the under eye area. Lancome Photogenic Ultra Comfort foundation is a miracle. I think it must have some sort of dimethicone in it, because it goes on really smoothly. Napoleon China Doll foundation is like $50 a tube, but it's another miracle worker for me. These things are what is getting me through my Sephora shifts under those lights right now. I'm glad you think my skin looks good— I try really hard to get it to a state of general passability.

Okay, but for us mere mortals, weapons need to be deployed, attack strategies need to be perfected. What is the most radical thing you tried?

Well, the time I stole all those cortisone syringes from the dermatologist's office, which was the most risky thing I did from an ethical standpoint. But I think I know what you're getting at: cruel and unusual punishments, and I will tell you that nothing really compared to the 30% glycolic peel I had once. I went through maybe four weeks of intense, intense peeling. And when I say peeling, I looked like I was like... a burn victim who was never going to be better again. I had a prescription for silver sulfadiazine cream to use afterwards, which is literally the same thing that is prescribed for burn victims. The whole thing was pretty horrible. But when I got through to the other side, it looked like Jesus Christ came down and touched my face. My cheeks felt like the stomach of a six year-old child. I looked really good. The results lasted for maybe three months.

What did you try next?
At some point I started visiting an acupuncturist who got me into Chinese homeopathic face reading, which basically dictates that the area in which your acne appears corresponds to larger health problems. If you have acne from the nose down, like in the chin area, your lower cheeks, around your lips— it's hormonal. If it's in the temple area [-Ha! -Moe] it's toxicity... so you should worry about your liver and your kidneys, stock up on supplements to help those things out, maybe do a cleanse. On the forehead, it's usually an issue of sebum, hair that hasn't been washed enough, that kind of thing. There are a lot of websites that can offer rough guides. (Like here.) And this is if you believe in this stuff, which I do. The face reader I saw is pretty convinced that most adult onset acne is of the hormonal variety. Chinese homeopaths will give you teas, tinctures, things to balance your hormones, herbs, acupuncture, acupressure... did the acne come back? Yeah. But here's the thing: it always does.

If most acne is hormonal, does that mean I should just go on the pill already?
Well, that's what I did next. I went on Ortho Tri-Cyclen, the birth control pill. I took it for purely cosmetic reasons. If I hadn't had acne, I'd have just told guys to fuck me in the ear or the armpit or whatever, I don't give a fuck. But it cleared up my skin for awhile. It does, of course, lower your sex drive and it makes some people crazy, although acne made me way crazier, so it's a trade-off.

Is there anything too radical you've been too scared to use?
Part of me thinks using antiandrogens to treat hormonal acne is really where it's at. You want something that blocks testosterone from being received by your skin. I think that's what gives women acne. Also, a sex drive. These drugs are no joke, though. Antiandrogens are what they give male-to-female transsexuals. Spironolactone is one of the antiandrogens some doctors use to treat acne hormonally now. It's for high blood pressure and has supposedly "feminizing" side effects so men are only supposed to take it in extreme cases. Anyway, when women take it, their acne sometimes disappears. My gut feeling is that hormone therapy is probably the best bet for getting rid of the hormonal kind of acne, but I'm sketchy about using it. That's saying a lot because I'd harvest goat piss during a full moon and bathe in it while chanting hymns to Satan to get rid of my acne. But I do sort of feel that if I need hormone therapy this intense to get rid of my acne, maybe I'm just meant to have it and that's that.

Another thing I've noticed is that no one thing works for me forever, but short-term, a lot of things work. Maybe the answer lies in just rotating treatments, mixing it up so that your skin doesn't have a chance to figure out a way to thwart your treatment. I'm planning on seeing an endocrinologist next. I'll report back on what they say about it.

What are some of the more moderate treatments sold in stores — say, Sephora — that you've seen work for other people?
DERMAdoctor is a really good line. Don't let the queer-ass names stop you from buying this shit, this is a company that is not afraid to use chemicals, which I like. Ain't Misbehavin' is their acne serum. Supposedly, it contains two ingredients that specifically fight hormonal breakouts, so if you believe the packaging you're applying some sort of hormonal inhibitor to your skin. Picture Porefect is another serum in the line that helps with what people like to call "enlarged pores." Basically, you can't shrink the actual size of your pores. But if you're aging and losing collagen and sagging, the shape of the pores will kind of stretch out. This stuff will help with that, and you'll temporarily look better. Blockhead—specifically for a patch of blackheads. It comes in a container that looks like an eyedropper. It's a really intense exfoliating serum that just goes on one patch of skin. It'll make you dry, but it'll work on the blackheads. Expect a dry, red patch for a week. In order to get rid of this stuff, a few layers of skin are going to come off and you're going to look like shit for awhile.

Kinerase's acne line is a gentler approach to healing acne... more about healing than exfoliating, which is good especially for older clients who don't feel like abrading the fuck out of their face. They all contain this topical antioxidant that's very soothing and good for people who are dry, sensitive, and flaky, but still breaking out. Clear Skin Moisture Light is nice and gentle. Clear Skin Treatment Serum smells like sphincter, but if that's what it takes to nurse your skin back to health, I know I'd walk around with the whole sphincter in my pocket.

What about acne scarring? Is there anything I can do to minimize this?
Two different concerns here. The first one being that people with darker complexions are going to deal with hyper-pigmentation, or dark spots where their zits used to be. Hydroquinone, which has recently been linked to liver cancer, is something that helps with that. You can get a 2% solution over the counter and a dermatologist will prescribe a 4%. A lot of companies are coming up with hydroquinone free products that lighten up dark spots a bit... kojic acid, licorice, naturally occurring melanin inhibitors from plants. Do they work as well? Ehhh.

Then we have our lovely pits. Microdermabrasion or a chemical peel will help with those. I think microdermabrasion will be a course of six treatments, which will run you about a thousand bucks. Peels are about $250, and that's just one. Cosmetic fillers that you'd get from a plastic surgeon. Oh, side note: I would never recommend microdermabrasion or a peel on a live crusty zit situation. It's abrading the skin, tearing it. When you do that, the tears become channels that the bacteria can swim up and infect other parts of your face. You're making an open wound situation on your skin. I don't believe in doing microderm until you're finished with your acne treatment, kind of like icing on the cake.

At what point do you just embrace your sad, homeless-looking face and say "Fuck it, I'm done?"
This is, believe it or not, something I've done a lot of thinking about. I know I'm out of control. Nice, clear skin is my obsession the way some people are into shoes, clothes, hair, sports cars, big screen TVs, whatever else they're obsessed with. I don't give a shit about any of that. I'll leave my house in a nipple ring and a diaper, but when you see me walking down the street you'll be like, "Oh! Your face looks radiant!" That's my goal. I will spend all of pennies and go into debt looking for the answer to this. When I bought my house, one of the things I liked best about it was the third floor bathroom. It's gigantic. I have a whole skin care station set up in it, with basically theater lights to make sure that I am not missing anything. I do firmly believe that all of the things I have done to stay on top of my skin situation have improved my face. It looks better than it would if I were not doing anything.

Which brings me to the homeless. You ever see a kid who's probably from Darien, Connecticut with rich parents sitting on the street with their dog and their dreadlocks and their heroin addiction and a little sign and a face full of pimples? That's what I'm talking about. They have made a choice to not take care of their skin: hence, they are pimply. The choice they made was to jump from boxcar to boxcar and re-name themselves Avocado and become a crust-punk junkie or whatever else it is that they believe in. I'm not knocking their lifestyle. I just do not personally want to look like a member of it when I am not. We all have our priorities, including the homeless, but I think it's somewhat dishonest to pretend that they are the same ones in a column about what is basically a gigantic beauty product franchise.

Anyway, getting intensely into skincare basically comes down to a lifestyle choice, too. A lot of the things you can do to yourself to help with your acne are the kinds of thing a sane person would not willfully elect to do to themselves if they were not in a desperate situation. When you fuck with this stuff, you are almost always going to look hideously fug before you look better. Once you kind of stabilize, your skin will look better. But if you have cystic acne, this is like a quest. I think a person really needs to evaluate how much their acne bothers them and make a decision, because none of the treatments are fun or anything. I mean, how bad is your acne? If you have one zit and go on Accutane, I guess that's your choice, but... even I think that's insane. But it's all about what it's worth to you. And if you can honestly evaluate whether all the peeling and flaking and burning and not wanting to leave your house is worth it to eradicate that one zit from existence, then there is no shortage of things for you to try that will more or less, temporarily, accomplish that goal.

Earlier: I Work Here To Feed My Sick Fancy Product Addiction The Least I Can Do Is Help You
Meet Jasmine, Our New Sephora Undercover Agent

How gross are the testers? Which ones are safe to try?

Well, testers in general are always sort of borderline gross. This is why you should get a sample from a Sephora cast member whenever possible. We have drawers and drawers full of them, and every client is supposed to leave the store with three samples. Lately we've all been living in fear of being "shopped," which is when someone working for the company poses as a client and then reports back to corporate about how the cast member did. If someone won't give you samples, that's really fucked up of them first of all, but it's also a big company no-no. This gets tricky with Color World. Makeup samples are harder to give out, but we have a few, so you should always ask. But the testers are always going to be the testers and people are always going to do what they do with them no matter where you are. I've seen people do some really gnarly things with the testers. The best is when they stick their dirty fingers right into the pots of face cream and rub it all over their faces in huge amounts in the middle of the store. Sometimes the jar is getting kind of empty and they're all in there trying to dig it out. People who are sort of possibly homeless-ish play with all the testers. I've seen tons of people pick lipsticks up off the displays and put them directly on their lips. When we see this, we're supposed to discreetly get rid of the sample and put out a fresh one, but you can't be everywhere at once so we miss things. We're also supposed to direct everyone to one of the hygiene stations with all the disposable applicators, but they don't always listen. That's also sort of why the hygiene station is there—so you can personally do something to avoid getting in on other people's nasty shit.

When will Fort Wayne, Indiana get a Sephora store?

How the fuck am I supposed to know? I am extremely busy working a register and stocking shelves and putting Prevage in my mouth. I have no idea. Call 1-877-SEPHORA. It'll get you somewhere, although I don't know where that somewhere would be.

What's the best way to get the cast members to actually help you instead of standing around talking to each other?

Ooh, they call that a "black cloud." Because we all wear black, you know, and if too many of us are standing around together, it's like we're going to rain on people's shopping experience. You shouldn't be having a hard time getting a cast member's attention or getting them to help you, and there aren't supposed to be black clouds out on the stage. Obviously black clouds happen, customer service is not perfect, blah blah blah. If you call a store and ask for Leadership, someone will very patiently listen to you complain, be really nice about it, and then probably hang up the phone and talk shit on you. Also, you're complaining about someone who is probably going to leave the company within six months anyway. This job is for children who like eye shadow. You might be able to kind of get some of them in trouble by doing this, but probably not.

What do you think about the Sephora brand eye shadows?

I like them. I use them. They have really pretty colors, and I like the texture of the creamier ones a lot. I think that sometimes, people expect them to be more highly pigmented than they are. They look like they're going to be these really bold colors, but then they go on a little more sheerly. If you want a more pigmented eye shadow, look for companies that are making those. MAC is sort of the gold standard for highly pigmented eye shadows... but I mean, MAC is no joke. Drag queens and movie sets use it. Highly pigmented is what they do. Definitely try stuff out on your hand before you buy it if you're not sure what it does. Or just return it. Sephora brand everything is kind of "meh." The brushes and stuff are cool, but the products are all really middle-of-the-line and not that exciting, especially compared to the other lines we carry.

Why are you so eager to stay at this job, get the training, and learn more? Are you an esthetician or just between jobs, or what?

Okay, what you don't understand is this: I got home from work a few hours ago and I feel like I just mainlined $3000 worth of the best drug imaginable straight into my brain. You would have to love products as much as I do to be able to stand working here. I give myself a facial every night. Ask me about my Kinerase collection. It's sick. No, I'm not an esthetician, yes, I am perfectly capable of holding down a better job. I just like my kind of crack. It's my shit. I'm working here to fuel my fancy skin care addiction. I just realized everyone who works here is eighteen. I asked them, "how can you afford to work here?" And they said, "I live with my parents." Even this woman who works here who is forty and divorced — she lives with her mom. We are all here for the same reason.

Have you always been addicted to beauty products?

Ever since I came down with adult-onset cystic acne about ten years ago. I am a very vain person, the type of person who will stay inside my house and not go into work and refuse to see my closest friends if I have a bad breakout. It is sick. But there is something so sad and homeless about acne. It just looks like something is wrong. That's why I love helping someone who comes in and looks like shit. There is a feminine joy I get from being able to say, here, I know a lot about this and I can help you. Because I can. I have dabbled in everything. I am hardcore. I will try your homeopathic aspirin-raw honey mask. I will take your supplements; I will spend hundreds of dollars on credit on fancy products and I will let you stick your acupuncture needles in me. I also don't pussyfoot around; I believe it's gonna look worse before it looks better. And I do not let obstacles stand in my way: at my lowest point — I can't believe I did this but at my lowest point I would routinely go to a dermatologist and get cortisone shots in my cystic acne. And I would watch where he stuck the needles and when he left the room I would steal a bunch of syringes and do it on myself at night.

Why does corporate Sephora call insults "gifts?" How do they get away with it?

Most of the people who work here are teenagers and they are happy to not be working at McDonald's. This is how they get away with it. As to the why of this issue, my best guess is that it's called a "gift" in an attempt to put a positive spin on what could be construed—let's face it, by anyone functioning normally as a human being—as negative feedback. They mask it with this new-agey shit like, "this is a gift for you to take to the future." Like we should be very glad that now we know our makeup looks like shit or that our shoes are fug, so that we can correct the situation and do a better job. Oh, also, Sephora is what we call a "values-based" company, which to my understanding means that we are not allowed to even say words like steal, shoplift, took, take, thief, what have you. Instead of loss prevention, we have "excellent client servicing." This means that we follow clients around, talking to them, helping them, basically watching them like hawks under the guise of customer service to ensure that the bad thing we're not supposed to say does not happen. So there isn't a security guard, no tags, nothing like that. Instead it's us, and I mean... our costumes don't have pockets for a reason, too. But yeah, we don't use negative terms at Sephora and "gift" is another example of that.

How quickly does stock move at your store? Do any of the items sit around on the shelves for a long time?

People are not feeling the Decleor skincare line. They don't buy the Bliss home waxing kit ever, either. We sell a lot of Perricone, but people seem to be kind of confused about the other cosmeceuticals unless I am here to enable them. Those are my favorite things to sell, but the names have gotten so technical for some of these products that people literally do not understand that oh, this is face cream. The department store brands don't sell... Clinique, Lancome, Shiseido, all of those. People can get those in other places so they tend not to care so much about them. Sometimes someone will come in and request a certain Lancome product or something, but for the most part, people are interested in the fun, new stuff. These products all have preservatives enough so that we can keep them on the shelf for years if they don't sell. Also, I'm not there all the time so it's hard for me to know exactly how much is moving in terms of a gross net. This isn't the kind of thing staff members are routinely consulted about, we're just told how much the store made and how much we are expected to sell for the day.

What's up with your fearless Leader, Cunty Claus? Did she do anything cunty this week?

She does some kind of cunty something every week, pretty much. This week I was at the store on a Sunday before it opened, and I mean, cast members use the front door just like everyone else so if that's locked, you're shit out of luck until someone opens it for you. So we're waiting outside in the cold, and by the time anyone remembered to open the door for us, we were all a grand total of three minutes late. I was the last one to clock in, and I was only three minutes late. Anyway, Cunty Claus took this opportunity to give all of us this terrible lecture at Touch Base, which is our opening meeting, and it's all about how she doesn't understand why we didn't call the store if we were going to be late, what are our excuses, we're late all the time, just a bunch of bullshit like that. I explained to her that we were only three minutes late according to the time clock and she launches into this whole big thing about how the time clock and the clock on the stage are different or something bullshitty. Basically she was just pissed we didn't hop to it in a big hurry freaking out over our jobs even though it wasn't even our faults in the first place that no one opened the doors sooner. She's on this extremely creepy power trip. Once she found me leaning against a display for what, a second, and she says, "We don't lean here. We stand at Sephora." What the fuck? Who says that? She's really into intimidating the cast members so that she seems more authoritative. I think she lives in a world where she has no power and any time she's not at Sephora, working, people like take their dicks out and wipe them on her face. But I guess Sephora is the place where she can avoid the Dirty Sanchez and so we're all three minutes late on Cunty Claus' beat.

How did you finally get rid of your acne?

Oh, that is a long story I will save for next time. But I literally know everything about anything having to do with your skin, so bring on the skin care queries. I am fired up and ready to fight your glands with you.

The first thing that happens upon walking into a Sephora store is a feeling of profound disorientation. While you're busy steeling your self-esteem against the incredibly bright lighting and omnipresent mirrors, display after display of beauty products are working their subliminal coercion on the rest of you, saying, "we can fix you. It'll be fun!" Before you even have a chance to pull out your fuck finger at such a blatant attempt at consumer manipulation, you realize that Sephora is probably right. With over 250 different brands of beauty products under one roof, if you can't find something fun to fix you at Sephora, it might be time to consider quiet resignation as your last remaining option.

It is difficult to overstate how sickeningly profitable that quiet resignation is for Sephora and the multibillion dollar multinational conglomerate that has owned it since 1997, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey. For one thing, makeup is a pretty profitable racket to begin with. Then there's the fact that the average lipstick at Sephora costs $25, and that most of Sephora's brands were virtual unknowns before Sephora picked them up, so with 766 stores in 21 countries, they have Wal-Mart-esque buying power. Then you've gotta remember how small everything is. It's hard to find a store where a $100 item takes up less shelf space that doesn't involve a "Genius Bar"; the average store is estimated to generate $1,200 in sales per square foot every year.

But what really helps Sephora stay profitable is its workforce. Unlike the overeager artistes that lord over department store makeup counters, with their business cards and bags of drag queen-lite makeup tricks, the black lab coat-clad ladies of Sephora are mostly invisible until you ask them to appear. They make $10 an hour. Perhaps to compensate for their meager wages they are taught to speak in a mysterious code language, abide by strange rules and fill their brains with limitless quantities of beauty trivia all in the hopes of attaining eligibility for "Science Of Sephora," the chain's own month-long beauty school. And this is where "Jasmine" comes in. Below, the anonymous insider talks to me about life on "stage" at Sephora... and why she puts up with managers like Cunty Claus. Got questions for her? Email her directly at SephoraSpy@gmail.com.

What made you do it?
I really, really want to do their training. It's called S.O.S, or Science of Sephora. You go for a month, just beauty training every day like it's your job. The reps from all the different companies show up and give you demos of all their products and give you stuff. You learn fragrance notes, skincare ingredients, makeup techniques... just everything. And the gratis is out of control. They give you everything, DDS Mesojections, Prevage, crazy samples of everything, all this makeup that's like specifically picked out for you, a whole skincare regimen, just really great gratis. The gratis is amazing even without having been to S.O.S. yet, just what you get to keep from working at the store. There's always a brand rep coming by with more shit for you to take home. But I was thinking that I'd get to S.O.S., grab my mother lode, and quit after that if I can't stand it anymore. They can probably smell my S.O.S ambition all over me at this point, too. I am no joke. I'm always talking about skin care, sticking my fingers in everything, trying things out when I'm on stage, which is a no-no... we're not supposed to be trying anything during our shift.

Wait... "on stage"?
The "stage" is the sales floor. Then "backstage" is anywhere that isn't the sales floor. I'm not an employee, I'm a "cast member." It's never called a uniform, it's called a "costume." And I mean... that's just like, wearing black. Your bosses are "leadership." The best part is that you wear those little headphones so people are having entire conversations using this lingo over the headsets and it's all I can do not to crack up when I hear things like, "Hi, this is Cast Member X, I'm on stage right now, I'd like to pop backstage, I have coverage in my zone." And it's astonishing to me that people will have full conversations using these words and no one is flinching. Whole conversations of... "pushback." "Pushback" is like, comments or a reply to the "gift" I gave you or whatever else I just told you.

Which brings me to another term, "the gift." If they're going to give you extra work or say something horrible to you about yourself, it's called a "gift." Like, "Your makeup looks like shit today, I just wanted to let you know, if you want to go in the back and re-do the whole thing..." That is a "gift" employees are often on the receiving end of at Sephora. Or, "I need to you to go in the back with all this stuff, and put it away. Here. This is my gift for you."

Are you supposed to say "thank you" when you get a gift?
I always do. Here's the thing: I think a lot of the company lingo is meant to hide the fact that it's work. Because I think any adult actually doing this for the income or like, for their actual career would probably kill themselves. We don't work on commission. I make eleven bucks an hour, and I think that I'm actually one of the higher-paid cast members at my store. The average is probably nine or ten dollars an hour. But, a lot of people are... two of my co-workers are what, eighteen, nineteen? And their first jobs before Sephora were in fast food. So this job is paying them a lot more. It's also a job with a certain kind of clout, a certain kind of clientele, and they're learning something. One of them is like, exceptionally good-looking with the best skin ever, so I wouldn't be surprised if they just have her there to like, walk around and make the store look good. Plus, we get all the training we need from the company. The only other retail job I've ever worked was when I was sixteen, at a GAP out in the suburbs. When Sephora came to town—I mean, at one point, I know I said I'd never work a retail job again. Horrifying. I just wanted to get out and never go back. However, when Sephora came to town, it kind of re-wrote the script for me and I was willing to work on their "stage." The information I think I can get if I can make myself stay long enough is basically a free education. I like going to work in high-glamour mode every day, thinking about these things. Left to my own devices, I don't want to say I don't care about beauty, but I'm less inclined to... you know, obsess and I've definitely never paid this level of attention before. So it's interesting to me on that level.

Which products are you into right now?
Well, today I'm wearing the BeneFit line. There are a bunch of things on my face. I really think they do a good job with little trick products, iridescence products, color correction, highlighting stuff. There's a BeneFit product for every different part of your face, and if you use them together, they really do make your skin look flawless. I also just bought a bottle of Christian Dior J'Adore. It's this Old Hollywood kind of floral scent, and the bottle is really glamorous. I liked the idea of finishing off my Old Hollywood look with this aura of perfume mystique. But I don't know if this is really the fragrance for me. I'm still somewhat dissatisfied with it. I'm really into face serums, too. kojic acid is big for me. It brightens your skin, and it's a gentler alternative to hydroquinone, which basically gives you cancer. People use it all the time anyway, but I prefer the kojic acid products. It's funny, because everyone who works at Sephora always wants to work in Color World, which is where all the makeup is... and we all have to take our turns in every World, just to keep everything kind of fluid... but I like Beauty World. I think skin care is my thing. I also really like working with the clients. Not customers, customers are one-time-only visitors. Clients are people who keep coming back, and they're what we want to make every customer. But it always makes me feel really good when people come in with these skin problems that are completely valid and just making them feel horrible about themselves... like a twenty-four year old girl with really bad acne who walks in never having really used anything except like ProActiv... and I can hook her up. And be really reassuring at the same time because it's horrible to have to walk into a store and be like, "help my face, please!" But if I'm working Beauty World that day, I know that girl will leave feeling good. Another thing that I like is that people can return anything they want, even if it's half-empty, and we give out samples of everything. The Sephora people call that "confidence." Sephora is huge on "confidence."

What's the worst part about working there?
Routinely being spoken to like I'm an autistic third grader. There's this whole chain of command in retail where people feel really entitled to speak down to you. If a client isn't doing it, "leadership" is doing it, and it's always worse when it's someone you have to see every day, like one of my managers, who I like to call Cunty Claus. It's a good thing we don't work on commission, because it would be like "Pretty Woman" in there. There are days when I'm like, 'this is ridiculous,' but I try not to let that out so much. I just keep thinking Science of Sephora... Science of Sephora... Science of Sephora.

Painfully well-reported — and seemingly corroborated by numerous anonymous comments on the magazine website — the story nevertheless tries to muster a bit of empathy for Luciano, a "broken man", who claims the allegations were part of a conspiracy by New York & Company — which had acquired his company and wanted to get rid of him — to undermine his authority. Other female employees defend Manganella, claiming generalized pervyness was just sort of part of his "avuncular" style and that New York & Company ran the boutique into the ground.

None of this, of course, is shocking. This shit happens throughout the world of retail, and I will tell you why: bad behavior runs rampant in the world of fashion, and a lot of people in the retail business see themselves as being in the fashion business — since, you know, they sell clothes. But the money in retail is even shittier than it is in fashion, and the chances of fame or glory or glamour are immeasurably lower. Meanwhile, the talent required to run a good chain store is more of a tangible "hustle" type talent, whereas in fashion it is more amorphous "creative" talent. I am not going to stereotype here, but one of these talents tends to be more gay and the other tends to be more straight. Meanwhile, the people doing the selling — whether models or cute sales clerks — are basically paid to be pretty. So anyway, like I said: problems. It's a vicious cycle. And to that end, here's the last line of the story:

Through it, he's seeking to void a noncompete agreement he'd signed with New York & Company. Because if all else fails, Luciano Manganella has a vision for a new business.
He says he would like to open a lingerie store.

Luciano Manganella's Final Sale [Boston Magazine]

And holy itshay is it long! Just downloading the documents would probably cost ten grand. Think of the billable hours! And think of the money Dov could've saved just slipping this chick the $200K or whatever she wanted in the first place. But it isn't about the money, with American Apparel; it never was. It's about DEMOCRACY.

Check this space for our final tally on the cost of downloading the American Apparel sexual harrassment case. In fact, if you've got some free time to spare, do it yourself at the court website.

My calculator isn't strong enough for all those numbers.

UPDATE: SORRY ARGH MISTAKES WERE MADE REBOOT REBOOT.

Dirty Clothes "Suit" [NY Post]

As we gawked, a saleswoman sailed past, one corner of her mouth slightly turned up. Two upturned mouth corners make a smile, of course, but a single upturned corner amounts to the way the homecoming queen regards the president of the math club, according to Mr. Hill, who whispered, "She just gave us a contempt expression."

The best part here is that our favorite fashion blogger Lauren Goldstein Crowe weighs in on Portfolio to wonder why it is that sales clerks at fancy stores remain so snooty "in this day of mass luxury."

I'm not sure it will ever be eradicated. Because when your livelihood depends on selling expensive things to people who have much more money than you, it must feel nice to be able to look down on somebody else once and a while.

On Style [Wall Street Journal]

When last we chronicled our adventures working retail, a boring high school job at an Indiana Hollister store culminated in a stockroom orgy. So you can imagine what it's like working at American Apparel. Or maybe you can't! Anyway, because the chain has once again been in the news for, once again, objectifying young women and crap, I decided to finally come forth with my tale of how I, like so many other embittered twentysomethings, worked at American Apparel once. And lived to tell the tale.

I thought cocaine was kind of scandalous when I started working at American Apparel. And so I naturally found it kind of scandalous that a major coke dealer actually served as a kind of informal HR chief for many of the American Apparel stores in New York. He happened to be this guy I knew from a completely different set of circumstances in a completely different city, and he had gotten into the business at, like, 13, so unlike your coke dealer or your best cokehead friend's coke dealer this was a guy who actually knew, like, how to use weapons.

The dealer had what I thought at the time was an ingenious setup: he lived down the street from the American Apparel store in the Lower East Side and would find hipster cokehead girls jobs at the chain's various outlets and then, in turn, find clients among the other employees, which worked really well until everyone got so coked-out they had to blow it up their asses and a girl stole $14,000 from the till and everyone sort of left town after that.

Anyway, during those months I liked to think of American Apparel as just another front organization for this guy's cocaine business, even though that was almost the opposite of the truth. American Apparel owned the largest remaining clothing factory in the United States, and it had proven it could make a profitable business model selling clothes made by workers who were earning a living wage in the United States.

I had never had anything against globalization, but it's different in low-tech businesses like textiles and clothing. The garments are made so cheaply, and the possible profit is so vast if you can command a Polo Ralph Lauren/Abercrombie type markup, that the whole system just perpetuates appalling waste, corner-cutting, exploitation, setting up shop in dictatorships where dissent/unionizing is discouraged and the kids manning the sewing machines are herded out before the corporate responsibility department goes on its annual tours, all so a few really rich guys who aren't smart enough to compete in software or biotech or what have you, can get richer. American Apparel wasn't like that; you knew where your clothes were coming from and that the people sewing them were pretty stoked to be working there. They made an average of $13 an hour, $4 more than the starting salary for a retail worker. Wage-wise, the retail workers were at the bottom of the totem pole, the real sweatshop workers of the organization. But they seemed like they were the most excited to be there. For which I always credited coke.

You have probably heard all sorts of stories about how Dov Charney, the insane Canadian who founded American Apparel, masturbated in front of a reporter, berated girls for not finding him hot enough "pussy" with which to staff his stores, took certain female retail employees as glorified concubines whom he would house in special American Apparel apartments and whose shitty retail wages he would subsidize with special allowances. Also sometimes these retail employees would give him blow jobs, and also sometimes other employees would be invited to watch.

All these stories were true, but it was hard, after awhile, to find them scandalous, namely because everyone was so complicit in the whole thing, starting with one of the women who had sued him for sexual harassment. The recruiter that hired the woman — who sued him on the basis that he had fostered a sexually hostile environment — told me, somewhat embarrassed, that he had hired her because after the interview, she had stuck her finger in her vagina, put it in his mouth and promised if he got her the job, she'd become his "personal dirty whore." It was hard, given what I knew of her and the company, not to believe him; it certainly seemed like an appropriate tactic to get hired there. But it was gossip like that that turned most people who worked for the company off the gossip altogether. When you'd bring up the notion that Dov fucked his employees or photographed fifteen-year-old girls or really had actually masturbated on eight separate occasions in front of a reporter, or that he wanted to impregnate one of his concubines with an "American Apparel baby" or whatever, a lot of times people would just pretend not to believe it. Denial, as Larry Craig's wife and generations of citizens of brutal mind-controlling dictatorships have shown, is a very effective way to cope with shit. Add drugs to denial, and the job could sometimes even be fun.

The one thing that was neither fun nor repressible was Dov's voice. It was shrill and weird and babyish and he loved to hear himself talk almost as much as everyone else hated to hear him talk, because he would repeat himself over and over so incessantly that fucking Terry Schaivo herself could have risen from her bed to tell you the major tenet of Dov Charney management: "It is imperative that the people who wear our clothes are really attractive, vain hipsters, and any priority they exhibit that runs counter to looking really awesome should be a warning sign that maybe they should not work here."

To this end, he would defend himself against accusations that not putting sensors on the clothing was attracting shoplifters by defending the practice of shoplifting as a sort of pureness of intent: if someone was particularly good at it, that meant they prioritized "looking hot in a coveted item" over "possible legal ramifications" and thus deserved to be wearing American Apparel. (No really, he said this on a conference call.)

Conversely, if employees exhibited any interest in the notion that the company was "ethical" or "sweatshop-free" or whatever, Dov's nerd-radar went up. When I went to work for the company he was in the last stage of purging all the employees who had been attracted to the company for its social agenda; he referred to them as the "WTO" kids, who were "so '99," and instructed all his managers to keep a strict "10% rule," whereby the ugliest/most "WTO" 10% of all retail employees were constantly eased off the schedule. "He says it's something they do at IBM," my manager had told me, at which point I informed her that it was actually Intel, because my basic understanding of management philosophies and corporate cultures was about the only way I could feel detached enough from the rest of my co-workers not to feel totally fat/old/haggard/uncool all the time.

This shouldn't have been so hard; I worked at American Apparel specifically because I was trying to glean some insight into this basic theory I had. I don't remember its specifics anymore, but essentially it revolved around the idea that certain sectors of the American economy had lost so many of their old functions and necessary skills to outsourcing and automation that the workplace was basically reverting people wholesale back to high school, where all that mattered was how hot you were, whether you had such and such pair of cool shoes first, and whether you knew where to get illicit substances.

I'm pretty sure American Apparel proved my theory. At any rate, the shallow, coked-up electroclash-listening kids who replaced the sullen WTO kids were certainly more effective at showcasing American Apparel's leotards and lame leggings and neon thermal-lined hoodies to society, and they were a bargain at $9 an hour plus the value of the merchandise they would inevitably end up stealing. But it was still kind of depressing to think that a company that should serve as an inspiring beacon of possibility in our superficial high school economy had to couch all its good and promise in the mindless trappings of Generation Myspace.

It was even more depressing when the coke dealer got out of the business and left town. After that, coke never quite felt the same again; it could be psychosomatic or the result of important changes in the supply chain, but the sensation of blowing a line went from "exuberance!" to "Well, this is a relatively painless way to prolong this relatively pointless experience." There might be something symbolic in that, but you know, whatever.

It's Fashion Week, and we know how much that means to you all, but we thought we'd throw a bone to Jezebel readers who'd trade their newfound understanding of Vena Cava for a decent glass of vino. This is the story of Hollister, a powerful branch of the Abercrombie & Fitch youth retail empire and the sort of work environment and probably middle America's closest approximation to working in fashion. All through the country, thanks to retailers like Hollister, average heartland American teenagers are trading wages for status, obsessively attuning themselves to tiny aesthetic tics, throwing themselves into the insecurity-superiority spirals and learning to hate bread. And the tiny crop of straight dudes smart enough to plant themselves in the middle of it is getting unjustly and prodigiously laid. Meet The Douche. His name might have been Scott. Reader Christine has blocked it out. He was her first retail boss, and he was verrrry good at preparing his charges to meet Joe Francis. Welcome back to "I Work Retail," the Jezebel column about the only industry more depressing than women's magazines.

Photo via Slagheap [Flickr]

My memory seems to have permanently replaced the name of my first retail boss with the title "King Of All Douches," but it will never forget his hair. Long and straight with professional golden highlights and a distinct flip at the end, it was an endless source of fascination to me: did he achieve the look with a hairdryer alone? Or did he use an actual straightening iron? Douche King had been dispatched by a retail empire to open one of the first in a new chain of stores that desired to impart a "cool, young, beachy surfer vibe through clothing." Apparently, the Douche had once been a surfer. Now in his mid-thirties, his pastimes seemed to be limited to patronizing tanning beds and teenage girls' beds. He was a longtime employee of Abercrombie & Fitch, and he had come to our local mall in Southern Indiana to open one of the nation's first Hollister stores, a mammoth effort on the part of an Ohio corporation to spread California style to heartland mallgoers. Probably because we were highly susceptible to pretty much anything in Southern Indiana, we had been deemed an ideal "test market" for the Hollister .

I had never, obviously, seen a Hollister before. Perhaps I might have been bothered by the communal dressing rooms, the deafening meathead-rock, the fact that it was darker than most nightclubs. But it was 2001, before Orange County mania swept the nation and Hollister grew to be a mall powerhouse on the backs of skintight sheer "Team LC" and "Team Kristin" T-shirts. I just thought it might be fun to earn a discount at a national mall retailers that wasn't one of the five I had been browsing for my entire consumptive career. It was the summer before my senior year of high school, and I wanted new clothes to accompany my epic senior year.

The interview process was extremely brief. An Abercrombie representative asked about my extra-curricular activities (sports, luckily) and whether I liked the Abercrombie brand ("uh, sure?"). The Douche did not appear until our orientation: "Look around you," he said from behind his long mane and strategic stubble. "These are the coolest people in the area. Your lifestyles and looks set you apart from your peers. You won't find any band geeks here!" Um, were you really allowed to say that? He went on to explain that we were "fresher, better, and better-looking than our counterparts over at the mall's Abercrombie. (The Abercrombie representatives would seem to agree; wandering over to our store during breaks and lobbying for $5.50 positions.)

I stuck around, because at the very beginning, the store actually did seem cool. It was laid-back and we had fun receiving boxes of never-before-seen clothes. I bonded with classmates who had never acknowledged my existence. It wasn't until the days before we opened to the public that everything changed: The Douche informed us he would have to approve the outfits we wore on the job. We had to pay for all our clothes, but in order to qualify for the discount, he had to approve our purchases first. The approval process consisted of parading in front of him and subjecting ourselves to his critiques and suggestions as to how to make our clothes 'hotter" — like cutting the necklines to make our V-necks lower, or buying jeans in a size or two smaller.

Somehow, this process only served to ingratiate the Douche to my sixteen year old colleagues. Unsurprisingly, he was not offended. I began to wonder if he invented the "outfit approval" process just so he could ogle all of us, but I was wrong; Douches played out the same process at Abercrombie outposts in malls across America, something that would eventually become one of the numerous things they'd settle major lawsuits over. Personally, I hated him. I shot him evil glares during the fashion shows and he left me alone, probably because I was, at a Hollister size 5, one of the biggest girls at the store.

I stayed, of course, because it was sort of an honor not to be fired. That I somehow passed the Douche's militaristic standards was a sick form of affirmation, as was the fact I was getting waved at in the hallways and invited to more exclusive keggers. Working at Hollister, in southern Indiana, was a huge deal.

But if I was attractive enough for King Douche, he quickly began to suspect I was not "cool" enough to uphold the "cool" standards of Hollister. One memorable time, I was at the cash register when a normal, unassuming girl asked to fill out an application, and I let him know she was there and wanted to talk to him. "Is she hot?" he asked. "She's normal, not ugly or anything," I said. He rolled his eyes, and lifted himself out of his seat to go take a look. For approximately 5 seconds, they chatted. No sooner had she turned away, the Douche made a dramatic gesture of crumpling up her application and throwing it in the garbage. (This is, not that it mattered, against the law.) "SHE is good looking? Wow. You have awful taste in women. Good thing you aren't a boy." He then laid out the type of person we did not hire at Hollister: "weird" (not white), "ugly" (not skinny), "losers." (It was always hard to say.)

At first I felt sorry for the merely average-looking high schoolers who flocked to our store to ask for jobs; over time it became a kind of pity for their cluelessness in thinking they could work here in the first place, and my real empathy went out to the shift managers; college graduates who coped with Hollister's preteen sizing standards and meager wages by not eating food. One in particular seemed barely able to function. She was always shivering cold, wrapped in a huge sweater, and was permanently attached to a huge cup of diet soda. Of course, the Douche would only tell her how good she was looking and that she would be up for a promotion soon.

Rumors began to fly that the Douche had taken some "chosen" girls, two high school juniors from another school, into his office, where they had stripped for him and made out with one another. None of these girls ever denied the rumors, but I was truly horrifided during the shift during which a friend of mine confirmed them for me. (It helps to remember, Britney and Justin were still together at the time.)

Not long afterward, the Douche informed me that for the Spring/Summer season, we would be required to buy at least 1 bikini and wear the top with a hoodie — unzipped — on top for all our shifts. All the girls with navel piercings were instructed to show them by tying up their shirts (these points were discussed in detail during a special meeting about employee hotness, and anyone who would go against these suggestions would not see their names on the schedule). I quit. Six years later, I am still working retail, and that is still a happy ending.

Welcome to our second installment of "I Work Retail," in which we investigate the very peculiar torture of selling designer goods. The anonymous author, C, worked at the Soho Prada flagship store, the site of a five-alarm fire last year. She saw symbolism in that, and shared with us this cautionary tale.

She arrived at 8 a.m. and bought a wool sweater, some socks, and ordered twenty white T-shirts and maybe a skirt. And by "bought," of course, I mean she did no such thing; all her clothes were always free — Sarah Jessica Parker, meanwhile, justified merely a 30% discount — which may have been why she did not treat anyone too horribly. It was difficult to see her as the devil, when the real satanic force in the room was standing right next to her, ushering her through the store while managing to avoid making eye contact with any of the people who worked there. It was Connie Darrow, the CEO of Prada USA and the most miserable person I have ever had the displeasure of knowing. Next to her, Anna was snooty and overprivileged but essentially harmless, like a poodle somehow captured in human form.

So anyway: Connie. A Barney's veteran who had been kissing rich bitch ass since the eighties, she'd been at Prada since the mid-nineties and was not exactly humble about this fact. The first time I met her was on my third interview with the company, an adventure which took me to their odd lab-like US headquarters in a desolate part of Midtown next to the Hustler strip club. I had lied on the requisite personality test in which they determine whether you are masochistic enough to handle high-end retail, and passed the credit check they used to sort out where my finances stood on the trust fund to junkie-likely-to-steal spectrum. I was almost in.

Connie stood about 4'11 in Prada jazz shoes. She was dressed in a full Prada skirt embroidered with glass beads, Prada knee socks, a Prada blouse, a black mink cape and a diamond-encrusted Fred Leighton tiara. Fred Leighton was allegedly a friend of Connie's, and that shit had to be worth a hundred grand, which is tasteful attire, when you are interviewing someone you're planning to pay $18 an hour — though it makes more sense when you remember the company had sunk some $30 or $40 million into building the temple to consumerism I was about to call work.

The interview was filled with little gasps and "ohhhh's." Connie tried her best not to look at me directly. "I see you have tattoos, do you plan on getting more?" she wanted to know. (I had a small one on my wrist.) "No," I replied. "Do you speak Italian?" (Errrr, they didn't teach that at my high school?)

High-end retail is always somewhat soul-killing and ruinous of your ability to do anything else. I had moved to New York at eighteen to go to college for creative writing, but I was broke and met a girl at a hostel in Queens I briefly lived in who got me a job at the boho-chic shop Calypso, and from there I worked at another high-end Italian designer store, where my assistant manager then quit for Prada, so I had been around enough to recognize a few critical problems. For one, there are so many rich assholes you are required to be excessively, absurdly nice to, that you treat normal people — your significant other, say — like total shit, just because it's so much easier that way.

All day long, you smile at the grayed sixtysomething rich guys as they escort their dewy faced young girlfriends into the high-tech dressing rooms for a little pre-splurge BJ action. You smile at fourteen year olds carrying handbags that could pay your rent for a semester. You smile at tourists who mistake Prada for a cultural attraction — it did, after all, used to be the Guggenheim — and the other tourists who mistook their fake Prada bags for real ones they could bring in for repair. And you smile as Kimora Lee Simmons DEMANDS that you furnish her with a skirt two sizes too small for he and throws a tantrum when it doesn't fit.

And then: you go throw up, or do a line (coke? heroin? whatever works, hon!), or go into the backroom and jerk off to gay porn (like my bisexual assistant manager, who was, incidentally, sleeping with too many of our co-workers to really justify needing porn.) Two other salesgirls in women's ready-to-wear had teeth that were brown from all the puking. I personally turned into a cokehead.

But Prada was worse than most high-end retail jobs because the company was in trouble. It had pissed away millions on fixtures like automatically fogging-up dressing room doors and a huge, pointless ramp that looked like a skateboard half-pipe, just as all the cash the company made off those damn mini-backpacks was starting to subside, when September 11 happened and slowed down shopping even more. The rumor was that the store's extravagance was a product of an illicit affair Miuccia Prada was having with its architect Rem Koolhaas, but it was also a symbol of dotcom era hubris. Connie seemed to deal with these facts with a combination of tactics: denial and self-destruction. She set my department's goals around $75,000 a day — impossible at the time — and then proceed, in a fit of mad "inspiration," to shut down the section while she ordered in tea and scones and ruminated about how best to rearrange the place. Nothing ever worked, of course; no one downtown felt like coughing up five figures on a beautifully made dress that didn't really fit that well. The shoe department fared slightly better, but was hugely territorial about their sales. We were told to skip lunch — not that anyone really felt like eating, what with the coke and the crystal meth and the eating disorders.

On the best day of work at Prada, some hipster skater kid came in and slid down the half-pipe. Someone called the cops. My assistant manager was fired over the porn, and I quit shortly afterwards. Connie was ousted in 2005; her "personality" was cited in the trades. Then in 2006, the store burned down. No, really. I cannot say I was sad about it.

Working retail sucks; this is a given. You make $9 an hour hanging up clothes made by people who make 90 cents a day so that people like Dick Hayne of Urban Outfitters and Mike Jeffries of Abercrombie & Fitch have not just millions but billions of dollars to throw around on Rick Santorum and plastic surgery. But working retail wouldn't be the worst job in America if not for the unreal ratio of reality TV-esque attitude: The high school cliqueyness; the insane pressure to blow your whole paycheck on clothes; the district managers who determine you have "the look"; the airhead clotheshorses who get promoted... all are burdens endured by retail employees so that we, as customers, can feel sufficiently fat and insecure while shopping. Welcome to "I Work Retail," a column about the stupid shit many people deal with in the name of acting out some insane person's idealized "lifestyle." We invite your submissions, and will pay $200 to those we post. Today, Intern Maria, a former employee of everyone's favorite feminine boho-chic retailer Anthropologie, tackles the issue of racism. Hey, it's not just for Abercrombie!

You know that really annoying suburban white kid from your freshman year Poli Sci class who was always declaring that racism didn't exist anymore? Yeah, that kid never worked retail. That kid especially did not work for an overpriced corporate lifestyle brand purveyor like "bohemian chic" retailer Anthropologie. Because one thing that you learn within one week of working at Anthropologie (or "Anthro" as the drones that work there prefer to call it) is that the only "real way" you can tell if a customer is planning to shoplift is if they are black. Is that well-dressed woman browsing through duvet covers black? She should be followed. Is that elderly gentleman waiting for his wife to try on cardigans black? Follow him too, but at a distance; he might have a gun.

No, seriously. I once got a call from a store in Connecticut trying to "alert us" to a possible shoplifting situation. Usually we would get these calls from stores in our area (i.e. not Connecticut) and usually they were after someone had come and stolen a massive amount of merchandise and gotten away with it (usually sweeping clothes off of tables in gym bags and bolting) or after someone tried to pull a receipt scam. I asked the girl what the situation was and she told me that three "blac—er, African-American people" had come into the store wearing matching army fatigues and were "looking around the store."

"Oh," I said, "and they stole something?"

"No, but they just looked really shady."

For clarification, "really shady" was Anthrospeak for any black person that came into any store who wasn't Beyonce or some other incredibly recognizable and wealthy black person. This term could also be applied to anyone who came in with a vaguely dark skin tone who didn't immediately start throwing hundred dollar bills around the store. Michelle Obama. Kerry Washington. Whatever.

There were, of course, as is common throughout the minimum wage workforce, people of color working for Anthro. There was a gaggle of Hispanic-y girls who were willing to hide the accents in their names, and one or two black sales associates (out of a team that ranged from thirty to fifty during the holidays). There were also a few hipster Asian girls on the visuals team whom we rarely saw. Almost any man who worked the store and was not white was assigned to the stockroom or put on the "loss prevention" team which meant that he stood at the front of the store, looking nonwhite (and therefore extra-aware of the shoplifting prowess of fellow nonwhites) for eight hours straight.

Minorities are not, of course, the only disenfranchised class at Anthropologie. Any girl who wore pants a little too often and might have given off the impression that they were just a smidge lezzie was also put into working the stock room or given "stock hours" when she was supposed to be working the floor. God forbid you let those lesbians work the fitting rooms! There was a very strict "Anthro image" managers had to follow when doling out the more prominent positions for employees, and that image was straight, white (or at the very least, white-washed), and always light and pretty.

There was one male manager who had gotten hired (despite his Hispanic heritage — an Anthro breakthough!) that was always getting shit from the other managers. (Managers have to go through a long training process where they are basically treated like slaves by all the other higher up managers: They're given insane hours and expected to clock out falsely when they "go over" the allotted 40 hours and continue to work, and pretty much just have to bear the brunt of the over-inflated egos of the "aspiring" actors and actresses that make up the main managerial team.) The sales team loved him but all of the other managers always had it in for him, for reasons unknown to everyone. Usually when the managers had a problem with someone (and they couldn't come out and say "they aren't white!") they would say that they "just aren't Anthro enough." "Anthro" was the adjective of choice for all things white, boring, and safely 'bohemian.' Eventually the Hispanic manager got transferred to Urban Outfitters, where all of the hires who mysteriously make it through the hiring process despite thei difficult-to-pronounce names seem to end up. He relayed his tale back to everyone at our store, where no one was really all that surprised.

For all the bitchy, racist, corporate-agenda-pushing people who worked at the store there were also a few good and decent people who were there because they needed jobs. Usually they would stick it out as long as they could until all of the "lifestyle marketing" got to them and they quit, encountering other former-employees at bars with the same "Oh god, aren't you glad you go out of there?" smalltalk.

But really, for anyone who's glanced at a few of Anthropologie's catalogs it is obvious what the company is trying to shoot for: almost-middle-aged white women whose escapist fantasizing might be interrupted by the sight of a token Asian or black model gracing the pages, but never converted to full-fledged liberal guilt over the idiocy of it all. When I was there, anyone of color who shopped at Anthro was seen as a suspected shoplifter and "shadowed" by a tiny blonde associate who would take everything they picked up to "hold behind the register" (which as any good retail slave knows, is code for "I think you are a shoplifter"). [This happened to me! At the Rockefeller Center store! Ugh. -Ed.] Anyway, the big lesson is that corporations like Anthropologie don't want to trust minorities who shop from them or work for them, or really, anyone who steps out of the lifestyle mold that they have fabricated. Which is a shame, since, hello, those lifestyles don't fucking exist.