Please make me feel better about humanity.

http://consumerist.com/5112787/go-to-the-black-macys-if-you-want-plus+sized-formal-dresses

The story is appalling enough, but after reading the comments, my hands were shaking I was so upset. Honestly, close to tears!

Marketing and market research person here.

The sales clerk wasn't very good at public relations, and could have worded it differently, but she was giving a sort of mangled version of the truth.

Shops do sell based on target demographics, and clothing in higher end shops tend to run smaller than clothing in lower end shops.

Race and social class are also demographics that are used in marketing.

This is all based on statistics/generalisations, so there will be many people who don't fit into the definition of what a black person, plus-size person, etc. is like, but targeting is really the only way that businesses can stay in business and make a profit. In other words, they can only afford a limited amount of inventory, so they have to make sure that the majority of people who come into their shops are going to buy the majority of clothing that they sell.  This means that unfortunately, if you don't fit their definitions, then you will have to go somewhere else.

I don't know anything about the quality of Macy's market research - they could be basing their marketing on statistics that are out of date, or their researchers may just not be very good at analysing statistics properly.

As one of the commenters said, the sales clerk should have just apologised for the shop not having anything in her size, told her which Macy's had a wider selection of sizes, and then kept her mouth shut.

ETA: I didn't realise that there were so many pages of comments before; I only read the first page. Mort, I don't understand what is upsetting you about the comments.

I dunno.. I kinda call shenanigans on this.  The dialogue between the two people just doesn't read right, even if it was partially paraphrased. 

I can see how something like that would have happened but i'm taking it with a pinch of salt.

Wish I could offer you that hope...but as a white woman married to a black man and having lived in both Southern California and London...I can only say some things die hard. I have been told by my peers in a parenting class that there was not room at the table for me and my daughter. These same upper-middle class women who were perfectly nice to us in class would never invite us or either of the two mums with mixed race children to eat with them afterwards. Of course, they would never admit it either.

And having a daughter with weight issues, that is equally as discrimatory. It isn't just finding nice clothes...there are shops specifically for that. What about judgments about on job interviews? And remember all the ruckus about having to purchase 2 seats on planes? The assumption is always that weight issues mean you are a weaker/bad person...if you had self-control you wouldn't be fat. You don't see the reverse though...skinny girls are just now getting flack about it.

I dunno.. I kinda call shenanigans on this.  The dialogue between the two people just doesn't read right, even if it was partially paraphrased. 

I can see how something like that would have happened but i'm taking it with a pinch of salt.

Agree.

Agree.

If I had any doubts to the truth, or at least possibility, of this story before I read the comments, I didn't afterwords.

There are plenty on there who thought the woman didn't say anything wrong and it was the OP who was "too sensitive."  You know, mixed in between the advice to her to lose some weight.

I'm not sure why people feel it's perfectly fine to be cruel (and yeah, the saleslady was def cruel..might not have been intentionally so, but I'm not sure how much of an excuse that is.) to overweight people in a way that they wouldn't be to anyone else. I mean, would the comments be equally bad if the woman who wrote in had been, for example, looking for the sales section and been told to go to the black poorer store cause the clientelle of this store were richer whiter people?

When the company went through all the trouble to do market research and then brief its employees on it, is it really the result it was looking for: to make a previously-loyal customer so upset that she couldn't even think of what the store could do for her to keep her?

I agree that the saleslady should have just told the customer where to find a bigger selection of sizes, and left it at that.  If the convo really happened the way the writer explained it, that is pretty racist and sizest, or whatever you want to say.  I am a short, curvy white girl, and once went into the Gap in a Dallas mall, and asked if they had any jeans in a size 10 which would accentuate my body (in other words, not skinny jeans, which don't seem to look right on someone who is short with a curvy build) and he directed me to the nearest Lane Bryant plus-size store.  A 10 isn't even a plus-size!  It made me feel a bit embarrassed and not good about myself in any way.  Sometimes people can be very insensitive. 

The thing that struck me about that story is that if two larger ladies went looking for clothes there in the space of five minutes then obviously there is a demand and Macy's are losing money.


Vicky

The thing that struck me about that story is that if two larger ladies went looking for clothes there in the space of five minutes then obviously there is a demand and Macy's are losing money.


Vicky

That depends. Two larger ladies in one interval of five minutes does not equate to  two larger ladies every five minutes.

It also isn't only about how many people shop, but how much money each person spends and how many repeat visits they make.

I mean, would the comments be equally bad if the woman who wrote in had been, for example, looking for the sales section and been told to go to the black poorer store cause the clientelle of this store were richer whiter people?

I'm sure I'm not the only person on this board who has been totally ignored in a shop when she walked in wearing a pair of jeans, then treated like a queen in the same shop when she was dressed better. (Despite the fact that I might have had more money to spend when I was wearing the jeans.)


As I said before, Macy's may have got this totally wrong and Vicky, I agree they may be throwing away money.

ETA: Now that I think of it, there have been loads of times when I've walked into shops to find that they didn't carry anything in my size - either because they didn't carry petite sizes or the smallest size was too large for me.  When that happens, I just leave. I would never have even considered asking why they didn't carry my size. I don't know what I would have been told if I did.

sweetpeach,

I have absolutely no problems with a store designing its stock around its clientele. If there's not much call for plus sizes there then by all means, the store shouldn't carry it. Real estate is expensive so stocking it with stuff that doesn't move is a stupid way to run a business.

As was pointed out both in this thread, and the consumerist comments, she should have began and ended with "I'm so sorry, we don't carry it but I know a store so-and-so has a better selection." She isn't paid to editorialize.

I don't know if it was my mood or what, but when I read it last night I thought the saleslady was just being intentionally cruel. Rereading it now, I think she was just being seriously stupid. Pretty much a living example of the truism that for some people a little knowledge is a very dangerous thing.

I hope the OP does end up writing a letter to the management. I've never been in retail and never ran a business, but I think I'd like to know if one of my employees needlessly drove away a long-term customer, especially now.

Hiya

Very very sensitive issue and very very difficult for management to get right or attempt to get right by educating their employees as a result of market/demographics research. In this case the delivery was 'off' for the person who had that information given to them - Being 'nice' and using a certain amount of 'empathy' the delivery by the sales person could've been much better. The management in this case have come up with a very 'straight laced' response and told sales staff to use it. I think Mort's suggestion is a good way of putting it to the customer - i.e doesnt immediatley appear to stigmatize the customer, offers an alternative for them to chek out be it at another branch or a competitor clothes store. However, sometimes on the shop floor it can go further, a customer may then respond and say 'well why does this branch/store not carry it?' at which point the more 'direct' and more 'riskier' wording may need to be used. So with Retail sales assistants historically not at the forefront of staff training and getting good dealing with customers training - delivery and interaction like this I suspect is commonplace in clothing and probably other personal product(s) retailers.

There are also Demand triggers - which basically means things will only change once a (usually) profitable level of interest is presented/researched to management. If they've done the research to find out the sizing thing, they'll have done (probably!) the same research into trigger levels etc as well.

I suspect the only way the bigger stores like this can change is to invest more in their shop floor staff for proper training courses and more in depth sales training techniques including how to deal with sensitive and potentially offendable scenarios.

I've been in a few potentially very difficult situations involving elements such as Race, Size, Origins, legal, Criminal situations as well as the more 'under the carpet' situations involving derogatory elements of the above (I hasten to add not created by me!)

I've found a quick mention of a sentence, a stepping aside to explain, putting the person first and acknowledging how they may be interpreting it 'generally' can diffuse a potential bad or negative situation.

Lastly - not trying to inflame, I do see things like this from a customers perspective and more (nowadays) from a management perspective, it IS all about money and profits, it IS about using data to find out selling the most and quickly enough - the final delivery in this case and others like it needs work.

Cheers DtM! West London & Slough UK!

The story is appalling enough, but after reading the comments, my hands were shaking I was so upset. Honestly, close to tears!

Um most plus sized people probably wouldn't want to wear what the Macy's buyer find anyways? Every Macy's I've been in has either suffered tent syndrome or colour wheel explosion in gig-huge-ic paisleys that I wouldn't for the life of me wear. Don't I love having PCOS and the damned weight issues that go with it.

(but seeing that this took place in Austin, I bet you anything that it's also a divide between the two "branches" of Macy's. In Pasadena we have Macy's East and Macy's West and they carry very different clothes)

Um most plus sized people probably wouldn't want to wear what the Macy's buyer find anyways? Every Macy's I've been in has either suffered tent syndrome or colour wheel explosion in gig-huge-ic paisleys that I wouldn't for the life of me wear. Don't I love having PCOS and the damned weight issues that go with it.

(but seeing that this took place in Austin, I bet you anything that it's also a divide between the two "branches" of Macy's. In Pasadena we have Macy's East and Macy's West and they carry very different clothes)

I guess they do vary their stock between stores. I used to shop at Macy's Women almost exclusively. They carried plus size version of Inc and very nice business wear. The one I went to had half a floor dedicated to the Women's section. It's about the only place I could get clothes that weren't frightful. I never liked clothes at either Lane Bryant or Avenue. Not sure why but they just weren't my style.

On the other hand, the huge flagship store on 34th St is maybe five times the size, spacewise, but hardly has any plus sizes at all. It does have a McD's though.

Still, even if the saleslady didn't think the customer belonged there, there are better ways to communicate that.

And the comments along the line of "Well, you fat pig, how do you expect people to treat you? Lose some weight!" aren't really germaine to the story either and those were the ones that made me upset the most.

And the comments along the line of "Well, you fat pig, how do you expect people to treat you? Lose some weight!" aren't really germaine to the story either and those were the ones that made me upset the most.

Yeah, but it makes me feel better to know people who would be sick enough to say things like that usually aren't attractive themselves, in my experience.  Just a bunch of jerks!  I see comments like that on YouTube all the time, it could be a nice, pretty girl singing, and sounding really good, and some jerks will come along and say she's fat, or ugly, or can't sing, or whatever.  There are a lot of shallow a-holes out there.  But I have to think those are just the scummy losers who don't know how to treat people because they have no friends and wouldn't know what to do if a woman was interested in them, anyway. 

As was pointed out both in this thread, and the consumerist comments, she should have began and ended with "I'm so sorry, we don't carry it but I know a store so-and-so has a better selection." She isn't paid to editorialize.

That's pretty much exactly what I said