No hell at this party! Only laughter, fun, and awesome fans of Retail Hell!
On January 23rd, Melinda Filardo (a former Nordy department manager) hosted a retailicious luncheon in my honor at the Embassy Suites Mandalay Beach and Restort in Ventura California. In attendance were members of The BookWorms Book Club and longtime circle of friends, The Dollies .
This was my first book club event and will be the most memorable for me! Surrounded by old friends, new friends, great food, hilarious decor, and so much fun, I don't think it will ever be topped.
Melinda and the ladies did a spectacular job setting the table!
Running down the center were replicas of old returned handbags with tickets and receipts and all those things I mention in the book that get left behind.
Many of them have worked in retail and it brought back return nightmares!
With The Dolly friends: Virginia Weibacher is next to me and on the bottom left to right are Bodine Elias, Devra Hodge, and Tony David. Dolly not pictured is Melinda because she took the pic!
Tag with a sticker....not my employee number! Thank god.
With Virginia Weibacher and Jennifer L McDonell.
Here is the speech she gave before passing it me:
Since at that point in my life I felt that Retail was hell, especially in Santa Barbara, I took the book. I flipped it over and looked at the picture of the author and said, "It's Freeman Hall! I remember him, he managed the handbag department for The Big Fancy and won all kinds of awards for having great business!" But I also remember that he was this very cute blonde fellow who was very quiet. I took the book and began reading and laughing. There was comic genius hiding in that quiet demeanor.
I remembered climbing the 8 flights of stairs at the employee entrance and the blaring music before a rally, not to mention the blaring announcements led by different managers at the store. I decided that we needed to have an author's lunch for Freeman with The BookWorms after connecting on Facebook several emails and phone calls, we have Freeman with us today, but before I let Freeman talk to you, I have a surprise for him.
We both know over the years, the prizes we received for winning awards at The Big Fancy got smaller and smaller, but after you left The Big Fancy realized that winning Manager of the Month was a very prestigious honor. That the gift reflects exactly how important the thought we were to the company. A gift that we would treasure forever. Since you never received one of these I decided to share mine with you. I hope you treasure this as much as I did.
...and with that Melinda pulled out a toy truck from underneath the table. The very one she had been awarded as Manager of the Month. I'm thinking of bronzing it.
It plays "We will rock you." Probably cost a buck fifty.
Now how did she know I like skulls?
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