Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/49

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

Study the buyer for your department. He has his little peculiarities and his fads. It is only tactful to respect the first and cater to the last. If he wants a special brand pushed, push it. It is the buyer who will decide, when dull days come, just which girls should be retained. He is the man who stands between you and the superintendent or manager. He can suggest your name for promotion, and when you feel that you deserve a raise of salary, he is the man who can get it for you.

There are women to-day in the retail or department stores earning twenty-five dollars a week as saleswomen. Most of them started at five, six or seven a week—and studied their stocks, their trade and their buyer.

There are women buying for millinery departments at seventy-five dollars a week who never learned to trim a hat, but they did learn what their customers wanted and what they refused to buy.

There are women buying laces and underwear and buttons and trimmings for New York stores at five thousand dollars ayear. They started as clerks. And they did not belong to the class who said that clerking is nothing but drudgery. They looked at their customers and not at their mirrors. They were respectful to the buyer or man in authority.

You expect to be trained for nursing, for