When I was student teaching during my senior year of college, someone gave me a necktie for Christmas, since a big boy job calls for big boy clothes. It was a tacky blue tie, with conspicuous traces of yellow and pink; and the unavoidable pattern of Sponge Bob Square Pants from top to bottom. Given, it was a nice sentiment, but it was a horrible tie. I exchanged it two days later.
No time during the year is the exchange counter of any department store busier than the days that follow Christmas. Who hasn’t received a Christmas gift that was the wrong size, wrong shape, wrong color; or just something they already have, or that they just didn’t want, like a Sponge Bob necktie? In come the people who man the exchange counter at department stores all over, like those at McLaughlin’s Department Store in Norwich. For a few hours on a snowy Saturday, I joined the ranks of the 22 employees at McLaughlin’s, taking returns and cashing out customers with the personable manner seen only in a genuine department store stock clerk.
“Usually for the first few Saturdays after Christmas, we’re very busy,” explained McLaughlin’s owner Anna McLaughlin as I reported for my shift. But the second snow storm in a week was keeping customers away from what would usually be a booming business kind of day, she said. “It’s pretty slow right now. I think it’s going to be a long day.”
After getting the customary “new employee” tour of McLaughlin’s, I took my place behind the counter on the main floor. Regardless the slower day, McLaughlin’s employees were staying busy. They’re already anticipating a wave of new springtime inventory, which will roll out on showroom floors in the coming weeks, and they’re continually moving inventory between the Norwich store and a second store in Oneonta. “We tend to keep out things that are more for the season. A lot of the mall type stores will put things out in advance,” McLaughlin said, noting that many are under agreements with clothing manufacturers to have certain items on display at a certain time. “We tend to wait a little bit longer,” she said.
