Last time...

This was October 2012 to August 2013, at the Macy’s on State Street in Chicago. I was a sales associate, mostly in men’s apparel, often somewhere around Nautica. I was still in high school, working part-time shifts, and probably wore a full suit to the interview, which says a lot.

^{I was serious, but green.}

On paper, the role sounds clean enough.

• Impact the customer shopping experience through in-store connections

• Maintain the assigned floor area

• Meet the daily personal sales goal

In practice, I was learning that being in a sales role and knowing how to sell are not the same thing.

The more tenured associates already had their own reality. Some had regulars. Some knew how to make a sale. Some understood the floor, the rhythm, the customers, and the quiet ways people move through a department store when they are deciding whether to buy something.

I didn’t have that yet.

A lot of my shifts were closer to standing in my assigned section, checking out customers who came by with merchandise, helping someone get into a fitting room, pointing them toward the right area, or offering advice when I had enough context to be useful.

That was still customer-facing work.

It just was not always the same as driving the sale.

Looking back through the buyer’s journey, Macy’s was different from O’Brien’s because the buyer was still deciding. They were browsing. They were checking sizes, comparing price tags, walking in and out of fitting rooms, asking where something was, or carrying items from another section because they just needed a register.

Some customers were in consideration.

Some were already at decision.

Most of the time, I was meeting them wherever they happened to be, without fully understanding how to move them from one stage to the next.

That is the honest version.

I was not building demand. I was not working a book of regular customers. I was not shaping vendor decisions or merchandise strategy. I was mostly reacting to buyer intent that was already in motion.

If somebody came to the register, I could process the sale.

If somebody needed a fitting room, I could help with that.

If somebody asked where something was, I could try to guide them.

If somebody needed a price checked, I could try to solve it without making the interaction harder than it needed to be.

That last part is where the access lesson gets interesting.

At Macy’s, every associate had an ID to unlock the POS system. So I had access to the register. I had access to the building through the Randolph Street employee entrance. I had access to multiple floors of merchandise. In certain sections, I could access fitting rooms. I had enough system access to help a customer move through the purchase.

But access is not the same as authority.

I remember learning that the hard way with price adjustments. The way it was explained to me, if a customer said an item was discounted, you could walk over, verify it, and if the scan did not reflect the correct price, adjust it to accommodate the customer. Functionally, the system allowed it.

So I did that.

Then it became a problem.

The assumption was that I may have been adjusting a price for someone I knew, when in reality this was a stranger. From my side, I thought I was doing what I had been told was part of helping the customer. From the business side, the action carried risk.

That is the gap.

A system can let you do something before the organization fully trusts your judgment doing it.

At the time, I would not have called that identity access management. I would have just called it getting in trouble for some bullshit.

But with more distance, I can see the lesson better.

Permissions, judgment, training, and trust all have to line up. If they don’t, the person closest to the customer can end up holding the confusion.

There was another layer too. My supervisor tried to walk the floor with me and practice basic engagement. “Pretend I’m a customer,” that kind of thing.

At that age, mock anything felt painful.

I was more socially acclimated than I had been at 15, but I was still introverted. I was not naturally open or outgoing enough at that time to be successful in the role at a base personality level. So the sales training felt misplaced, and honestly, me wanting a sales role at that time may have been misplaced too.

^{Needed $$$}

That does not mean the job taught me nothing.

It taught me the difference between being near a transaction and understanding a sale.

It taught me that a buyer can be physically in front of you and still be in different stages mentally. One person needs help deciding. Another person only needs speed. Another person wants reassurance. Another person wants to be left alone until they are ready.

It also taught me that retail access is layered. You can enter the building, unlock the register, touch the merchandise, support the fitting room, and still have very little authority inside the actual business.

Macy’s made me visible to the customer before it made me powerful inside the operation.

That is probably the part I understand better now.

I was close enough to see the buyer deciding, but not developed enough yet to consistently influence the decision.

Most days, I was processing the sale.

I was still learning what it meant to make one.