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I wrote recently about a Ukranian woman (manager) at my job at Laura's who was wearing what looked like a Celtic cross, but who told me that it was "for fashion." I thought she was Orthodox, and told her we have a similar tradition of Orthodox Christianity. She made it clear that she doesn't believe in God, which shocked me a little. Funnily enough, she's been treating me "nicely" since.
But, what is strange, odd and unsettling about the sales girls at the store is that the majority are Iranian women. They have limited English, or if they do speak English reasonably well, they have strong accents which makes it hard to understand them. They also pass customers over to each other, despite a kind of honorary "next sales girl in line" type of system. I already complained about this to managers, and it has gotten a little better (our daily sales are recorded, so I had to be aggressive about getting this sorted).
I wonder, though, why the store at Eaton's has stacked its sales girls with Iranian women (these are not "girls" but mostly middle-aged women)? I think it is because they will put up with "anything." They will agree to being shuffled around the store, have their hours cut or increased according to the "whim" of the managers (although the managers assure us that it is a computerized prediction of customer volume), and they accept the "bad tempers" or rude interactions from their bosses. Most Canadians will not put up with this.
I think that sales are pretty low at the Eaton store. I think these low sales have to do with the low quality of service these sales women provide, especially their lack of English. Also the majority of customers who browse through the store are those who wouldn't be able to afford Laura's merchandize, and go to the cheaper stores to actually buy items. They are mostly non-white immigrants. The customers who buy anything are mostly white women who come in knowing exactly what they want, and they don't require much sales assistance.
I think the Laura store at Eaton's is maintained on the good sales of the other Laura stores (there are three or four of them in the city). And closing a Laura store in a busy and popular mall like Eaton's wouldn't do Laura's image much good.
Ironically, I've been repeatedly making high sales, hitting a record high one day which gave me a weird "high five" from one of the managers.
A few days ago, a male customer told me he was looking for something for his wife's birthday. Something about him didn't look right (to discriminate, he didn't look like he could afford the $500 coat and $300 evening gown he was "planning" to buy). He was also carrying a large backpack (somewhere to put the goods?). I kept an eye on him and would surprise him around some corner (so he knew I was behind him). Finally, he dropped everything and just left the store (and I had to clear up after him). I think he was a shoplifter (shoplifting is about $75/day, apparently). I mentioned this to another sales girl, and her descriptions of a customer and his mannerisms a day or so earlier were very similar to mine. I reported all this to a manager.
But none of this seems to register with the managers. Like I said, I think the managers are simply used to treating the "Third World" sales girls badly - there are no white women working there, except for a new Australian immigrant sales girl, a woman who mostly comes in to design the window displays, and an older woman in her sixties who is there for the "senior" customers. The other sales women are a smorgasbord of multicultural Toronto: Chinese, Nicaraguan, Mexican, Indian and of course Iranian. The managers are: a black woman, a Tibetan/Indian with a strong Indian accent, and the Ukrainian woman with a strong "Russian" accent. The general manager is a Mexican woman (also with a strong accent).
These lowered sales put everyone on edge. Customer "grabbing" is high, especially from neophytes like me (by the seasoned Iranians), and managers have short tempers out of frustration to maintain the higher sales expectations from head office. Customers are also short-tempered and irritated by the pushy sales tactics the sales girls have to pursue (under orders), although I think it is also the general demeanor of Canadian women, who are hard to please but quick to anger when not being served.
Perhaps this is a glimpse of Toronto's future. Immigrants of different ethnicities will stick with their own kind. Fewer of them will feel compelled to learn good, or even perfect, English since they live, work and socialize in segregated environments (even within a more multicultural environment like Laura's). They will discriminate against others, other immigrants and Canadians alike, partly due to their own isolated, self-sufficient communities, and partly because they really are different (and some will think better) than these others. Simple cohesive efforts like selling clothes will suffer, since there is no joint community (or group) that will work together for the better of the community at large, such as the business in Laura's. Wealth will suffer, and Canada and its citizens will progressively get poorer. Cultural and other societal gains will suffer and diminish. White Canadians who can afford to will leave for the outer suburbs while poorer whites will have to wade through all these cultural and societal upheavals (paradoxically, inner-city Toronto is largely white, but I think that is guided by expensive real estate. Here is a more comprehensive map showing this trend in 2006). But at some point, there will have to be some kind of decisive retaliation (war, splintering-off of Canada?) by whites, and some non-whites who genuinely understand what is going on, to restore what is lost or has changed.
