revenge is sweet

[redxdollxshoes]

I went to buy expensive water with electrolytes from the teeny organic food mart on Rockwell today (such a commie-pinko-liberal I am!) when I saw the headline on the Chicago Tribune...Marshall Fields is turning into Macy's. I immediately bought a copy. It was filled with hand-wringing over what a huge mistake this is, how appalled Chicagoans are, how the State St. building pre-dates the Chicago Fire. A beloved landmark has passed. Let us all mourn.

I am absolutely giddy with joy!

For those of you who don't know me personally, I worked very briefly for Fields. I was a counter girl for Calvin Klein cosmetics, which I think doesn't exist anymore. The job in and of itself wasn't terrible, and I really liked my coworkers (I have a habit of staying at crappy jobs just because I like my coworkers), but Fields management was atrocious. They lowballed me in the final interview and started me at less than I should have been making (I had prior cosmetic experience) and then when I got my first check they were paying me a dollar less than that. I got that fixed, but every single check after that was missing my commission. They kept fixing it, putting it on my next check, and then the check after that wouldn't have commission either. This wasn't just me either...they did this constantly to almost everyone. They even told me I'd be making a higher percentage for commission than I actually got. Grr! And then to top it off, they fired me for stealing money! I'll never know exactly what happened, but seeing how I couldn't pay my rent that month, I definitely didn't have any extra money from them. I honestly think they were trying to get me to rat out someone else...they kept asking me who I worked with that night, even though before that they went into this whole thing about how they have cameras everywhere and see everything all the time (yet, they didn't know who I closed with that night). I was so shocked I couldn't even remember who it was...it had just been a normal night. So I got fired. Personally I hope whoever did it went on to steal thousands. It was the most awful experience I ever had to deal with.

It all worked out in the end. I got the job at the Apothecary after that, and even though I had some problems there too, at least every paycheck came out right.

I am a proud Chicagoan. When I hear that a beautiful historic building is being torn down for more ugly condos, it makes me shake in anger. If I had never worked for Fields, I would be raising hell over how terrible it is that a Chicago institution is being thrown away like yesterday's newspaper. But fuck that. The Marshall Fields that everyone is mourning right now died years ago. They've been bouncing around from corporate owner to corporate owner. My paychecks from them were from Target, not Fields. The last thing Chicago needs is a landmark that fucks over it's employees. Macy's probably won't be any better, but at least that's New York's landmark and not ours.

Comments

[star-spark.livejournal.com]

they recently changed all of the "dayton's" to "marshall fields" in minneapolis, and i still can't deal with the name cahnge. for us, downtown has the "dayton's displays" b/c they're the same friggin company, it just so happens that the daytons live in minnesota and practically bought all of the art in the Minneapolis Institute of Art. but whatever, you can always call it the old name.