Break, Quit, Stop, Free

When held in captivity, circus elephants begin to sway. They bob their heads from left to right while their legs, tethered to chains, often remain motionless. This is common activity for circus elephants, most of which get their only exercise while performing or training. These activities are usually wrought with abuse, the elephants whipped with hooked sticks to initiate the proper, amusing response. When confronted with the calm of neither of these two tasks, circus elephants sway their heads from left to right. Sometimes they just pull helplessly at their chains.

At Banana Republic, I didn’t really sway my head to and fro. I did, however, tap my foot aimlessly on the floor during those long days when people didn’t feel like buying things. It turns out that it is entirely possible to fold, and refold, an entire men’s section of a clothing store and still find yourself without anything to do, five hours of your shift remaining. For some delusional reason I believed that my job at Banana would be, dare I say it, glamorous? This may have been due to my previous stock shift at Hollister with my alcoholic manager, Trisha. My first day on the job she ran in shaking a Dasani bottle filled with lime green liquid as though it were a maraca, singing a song with no consistent melody and only one lyric, “Margarita time!” Thirty minutes later and Trisha was passed out under the stock desk. With all due respect Banana had a little more class, but I had ulterior motives for taking a job in such a dense industry.

Determined to have employment that would transfer me to New York City, I began what would become a year and a half of Banana Time - a self-induced and seemingly endless sentence to the prison of Gap Inc. It didn’t come with standardized jumpsuits or leg shackles, the latter a great disappointment, but it did involve a 40% discount to stock up on chinos and argyle. “Stock up mother fuckers!” Okay, that was never said, but it was defiantly implied. Our employee numbers knocked off a buck or two, but sometimes they did nothing. It was still required that employees “must use their number on every purchase,” even if we didn’t receive a discount. This leaves me quite positive that Banana has a big chart somewhere – titled “$UCKER MONEY!OMGLOL” - tracking how many dollars were transferred to the employee’s paycheck and then back into the company’s pocket. Of all the numbers and percentages thrown at me, this was one I was never given.

My manager was Jane Sunflower and let me assure you, that woman was a trip. She was your usual corporate carbon copy of what the perfect woman should be. What set her aside was that she actually was that woman. Nothing about her public work demeanor stayed exclusively at the job. She showed it all and let me tell you, it wasn’t much. Jane always had a smile on her face, even when she was yelling at you. She’d never raise her voice above the decibel of office appropriate, but her eyes would open just wide enough to compensate both her smile and her tone.

In the corporate world you can’t have your Jane without your Dick, and what a dick he was. Smarmy and about as narcissistic as they come, Dick was so far up his own ass that he’d managed to still push bullshit out of his own mouth. He was very lingual in the corporate talk but when it came to his personal nature he was merely a sad, lonesome and entirely jaded gay male. “Look at this one!” he screeched on my first day. “Your name must be Ken!” “No, it’s not. I’m Andy.” “No… KEN, silly! I like him already.” “I’m sorry I don’t get it.” “Oh come now! Didn’t you ever play with Barbies?” I did, but that was a whole separate issue. “No, sorry. Never did.” That morning I got a whole lot of Dick as he insisted on informing me of the Barbie family tree.

Dick and Jane had a way of sneaking up behind you as you worked to “observe.” Despite having strong sales I was always getting corrected on the information I presented to customers. I’d made a point of informing a woman that several of the sweaters she was looking at for her husband were woven with angora. The lady wasn’t happy to hear that, nor did I blame her, but of course I’d fucked up. “Andy, you can’t give information like that and fail to follow up,” Jane Sunflower yelled in her placid, wide-eyed demure. “All I told her was that there’s rabbit hair in the sweater,” I responded, “She was wearing a PETA sweater.” “Yes, of course, but you failed to give her the full information on Banana Republic’s angora! It’s a high quality fiber and we carefully comb each rabbit and use the hairs that fall out.” BULL SHIT! She continued, “Besides, we would never condone the slaughter of a cute fuzzy rabbit to wear as a sweater!” “Why not? We kill cows and turn them into coats. Or do we just lightly shave the skin off until they grow some more?” “Oh Andy, you’re such a joker,” she lied, visibly struggling to giggle. “Anyways, that’s different! We eat those cows.”

So how does a person survive making just above minimum wage while Dick and Jane push Banana up your ass? Never fear! The ever-attainable Banana Card is here. I was always told that there was a possible Banana Card with every customer who walked into the store. It was all about knowing what, how and when to ask. The Banana Card, which touted a light 20% interest rate, was easily the most tracked and essential point of my existence at Banana Republic. We would be reminded that company statistics proved that it took up to three or four attempts at offering the card before a customer would say yes. Where these statistics came from and how the numbers crunched together in any scientific manner (be it asking a select pool of customers how many times they were offered the card before their acceptance maybe?), it was all tailored perfectly to pushing us to ask. And ask again. And ask some more after that, and never stop asking until somebody, one out of who gives a fuck, finally said yes.

We were pushed hard to open these cards every shift. We’d goal ourselves for the day and each application processed was a $1.50 “spiff” on our paycheck. It was just enough money to not add up to much at all yet make you believe that maybe it could. Some people were intense about that card and everything it meant. Watching our cashier Raekay open a card was all the proof I ever needed to prove that Banana Republic was brainwashing associates to sales perfection. It would always start with the greeting, then she’d say, “Would you be interested in opening a Banana Card today and save yourself 15% on your purchase?” While most people would see through her glossy white smile of straight teeth, shimmering lipstick and big bright eyes that absolutely never blinked during transaction, some people, mostly lonely single men, would pause for that one single instant before they could say no, and with that they had already fallen into the trap that was Raekay’s relentless Banana Card sales pitch.

“You’ll also receive 10% off at Banana Republic, Gap and Old Navy again after purchase, as well as another 15% off in the mail when you receive your card. You can also use your card online at BananaRepublic.com and receive 15% off, as well as free shipping on orders over $50...”

“Umm, I’m not sure that...”

“…Plus,” smile, and daddy’s girl voice in the fullest swing yet. No blinks. “…For every $200 you spend in store, you’ll receive $10 back in the mail as well as various coupons for special offers in store. On the month of your birthday we’ll give you $15 off your purchase, and if you spend $800 dollars in a calendar year, you’ll become a member of our Lux Membership…” here we go, the Lux card … “…and with that you’ll receive free shipping from online, free alterations on all your Banana Republic clothing, and $25 back on every $500 dollars you spend in our store!”

“Well…”

Her smile was in full detail and finally, without any energy or dignity left to try and blink if she wanted to, she’d close it with “so let’s get you started on that today!” And in her hand would appear a pen and an application shimmering in bright yellow, covered in coupons and fine print. That customer, 99% of the time, would crumble in her hands and open up a line of credit, putting themselves into the debt of Banana Republic. Raekay, after taxes, would make just about one dollar. But more disturbing were those times, about 1% of them, when the customer would still say no. Sometimes the intensity of Raekay’s performance stopped the transaction altogether. The sentences flowing from deep in her throat, brain and soul could turn the air sour. I once watched silently as a lady merely walked from the counter. Suddenly, at least for this customer, the idea of buying clothes just didn’t seem enjoyable anymore. The pain in Raekay’s voice was audible, but for some reason she just kept throwing the sales pitch at the retreating customer.

While political discussions were essentially forbidden in Banana Republic, Friday’s weekly Iraq protest in Portland’s Pioneer Square always seemed to bring a voice or two to the discussion table. One Friday I’d offended Jane by saying that I thought conservatives were just angry people who had bad sex (For the record folks, that statement is a proven fact). She told me that I was being inappropriate. I asked if she was conservative. “Yes, I’m a conservative,” Jane proclaimed in the most candid discussion we ever had. “People destroy people, it’s true. But mostly people destroy themselves. I refuse to live in a world where I must pay for other people’s mistakes. Yes, there are tremendous problems in the world, but it’s not my fault.” I didn’t respond. At the time I had nothing to say, but I knew that nothing I could say really had any place in the walls of “the Banana Republic.”

Had I really thought hard I would have asked in response, “What replaces the cynicism of the conservative?” The problem remains that even when we discount all the misfortune of the world as self-induced hardship, where is the solution? When everyone deserves to suffer for the crime of remaining uninspired in a world where virtuous success stories are outnumbered, there is no solution. The only solution discounts the entire argument to begin with. If we could possibly admit that people’s unsuccessful attempts at life are a product of something our society could fix, or maybe just improve, then it seems the whole idea of finding relentless success to the relentless employee is merely a shackle. In this worldview every failed citizen’s hopelessness is not justified, it’s validated. For Jane, this was not just the point of her job; it was the purpose of her life. She was seeking relentless success. Ever more disturbing was that she was trying to find it at Banana Republic.

I don’t know what exactly it was that inspired me to fall to the ground one summer afternoon, but I did. The sun was glaring through the massive, windowed walls, yet none of the heat could reach my skin. The perfectly conditioned and entirely vapid room was absorbing any notion of sun, turning invigorating rays of light into stagnant pools of cool; faux shade at its worst. I could do nothing but stand all day behind the cash registers processing one customer after another, each one with a desired dollar amount statistically traced from their entrance into the store. They could feel the heat no more than I, but I kept warming with each passing moment. I was standing aimlessly behind the register, pretending with ease to be doing something while finding that doing nothing produced no more or less result. The sun was beating down on me from behind the glass, begging for something more authentic than a perfect temperature.

I couldn’t get Jane’s words of wisdom out of my head. Sitting in the break area, a dense corner filled with retired display furniture and pamphlets on Banana personal success called “behind the seams,” I couldn’t help but overhear Jane’s smile explain that the success of Banana Republic lay in our ability to be 100% all the time.

“If we were doing one hundred percent at all moments, our goals would be attainable. It’s always an act of being so many different people in one day. You have to read your customer cues and relate to them at all times. By listening, you can become the person that they themselves will relate to.”

“You know, I’ve never really thought of it that way!” chimed Dick, enough flavor and honesty in his voice to make the peach crepe I was consuming taste like unsanitary asshole. I was still confused by the philosophy of Jane’s argument. All my time at Banana I was told to be myself. That I was hired because of who I was, not because of my ability to self adjust to please the perceptions of others.

“I find myself exhausted when I leave work,” I said, not realizing I was even speaking out loud. “I find myself losing track of myself with all these personalities. It takes so much of my energy switching between people, and at the end of the day I just forget who I was when I walked in the door that morning.” I could feel my words vibrate deep in my throat, slipping out in some desperate attempt for compassion. I couldn’t help but traverse the large stencil painting of a palm tree plastered of the break corner’s wall. There were thin branches climbing up the tall wall, each one with a carefully placed palm leaf to provide a canopy against the opaque orange, a color that seemed to do little to brighten or darken the walls.

“I think for someone with an acting background like yourself, you would have an advantage. Think of this store like the theater. When the doors open, the curtain goes up. Our customers are the audience and we help them through the show. You don’t see the stagehands. We don’t keep building the set after the curtain goes up. When you think of it that way, you can see how giving one hundred percent is attainable.”

My focus was still plastered to the ironic palm tree. One branch in particular crept off to the left in the most peculiar fashion, lower than the rest and almost perpendicular. The large leafy end landed in a corner, the stenciled palm shared by two walls of different direction. As she spoke, I could feel that my emotions had slipped away from Jane’s increasingly opaque smile. They were clinging like the obscure palm leaf to two walls in the hopes of finding an impossible third dimension.

I stood at the cash registers, never having realized that sunlight could be so two dimensional in the conditioned rays. My brain had lost all dimension of reality, asking every customer a script of questions that seemed so short of my own reality that I eventually became more a liar than an actor. What had we become? Between the customers and the company, I was the pawn; the one who got to sugarcoat the sun with a smile and make it all seem real in the eyes of the venturing skeptic.

So I fell. I stood staring at my register, no longer willing or able to move. I wouldn’t do it, and with no immediate way out in sight I took the fall with the full hope and intention that it would hurt me. I leaned slowly to my back right and let gravity pull me as far away from the stage as possible. The iconic glare of the bright register screen etched into my retinas, I slipped into the air, falling backwards by neither choice nor force. Rather I had given up. I had decided that I wouldn’t do this today, and probably not tomorrow. Maybe the day after by sheer lack of reasonable choice, but for now I was done, flying backwards through the air until my head and body landed firmly on the wood floor with a blunt force hard enough to stop the show.

The post-circus head sway continues. It only takes a single day to experience the monotonous lifestyle of Corporate America. A year to push some like myself over the edge. It never changes. You aren’t rewarded for innovation of thought unless it’s profitable, maybe if it’s inspirational since inspiration can be turned into profit. The only art in Corporate America is the theater it creates. Standing aimlessly on a sales floor, associates tap their feet or chew their nails when the show takes a break. They bob their heads from left to right, like circus elephants. Sometimes they just pull at their chains.

Corporate America thinks it has found the golden key to success. Smiles are dotted on friendly faces and colorful political correctness fills every exchange. In this world we’ve created a diversity that’s merely a form of translation. We may all say things differently but we’re all reading the same script. The conservatism is born in our ability to hold ourselves back in fear of making the wrong decision. We don’t want to say or do the wrong thing. We just don’t want to offend anybody. We look at 100% and see it as attainable purity in any given moment.

In reality we can only make the decisions that we do, and the world doesn’t punish us for making the right or the wrong ones. Only we can do that. Life can’t be censored or silenced. People can’t transcend their own humanity, denying their instincts in search of some idealistic propriety. Furthermore, what does our society have to say for itself when this bullshit infects something as seemingly simple as buying some chinos and argyle? If we could stop second guessing life as it walks toward us then maybe we could break the shackles at our feet, quit this silly performance, stop the private torture, and free ourselves from this captivity.