Some years back, and by that I mean in the 80s, there was a department store called Hoschild Kohn in the Harundale Mall in Glen Burnie, Maryland. The mall was a nightmare. I mean, old and creepy. At one end there was a tall fountain surrounded by smoothed boulders and plants. Floor had a pea gravel finish. Every sound echoed. The water stunk. Aviaries with wire mesh extended from the floor to the ceiling. They stank as well. Over the fountain went a stair, and up top was a Horn and Horn cafeteria. Never once ate there. Back in the 60s when shoes were made in America, I’d get hauled along with my brothers and sisters to Plotkin’s shoes. Creepy store. Had fun house mirrors on the wall with a clown painted as if holding each one up. There was a Lane Bryant in the mall. Another shoe store in the middle that was sunken and yet open, and a Kresge five-and-dime. The rest is a blank to me because I really fucking hated that place.
No matter. When I was a teenager the place was thankfully falling apart. Not structurally; it was built of strong stuff. But the bank and overpriced jewelry stores were losing bucks. At first I was sorry. The place did have a Walden Books…
Shortly before the mall’s slow demise, Hoschild Kohn tried something I still consider laughable but creepy.
They were hemorrhaging cash. Of course, when you don’t turn inventory over fast enough, you’re a goner. Costs of operation, utilities, leases, payroll…can’t be met without bank loans. And by then ever larger interest on loans used to purchase inventory are your death-knell. By the time you get to start paying the principal on one loan, you have to take out another one just for seasonal inventory like coats, hats, gloves, and so on. I’ll point out that ten years into the future, the mighty Montgomery Ward would follow close behind.
Well, you gotta hand it to Hoschild’s. They thought (or someone in some boardroom said) that the real problem was shoplifting. And there’s some truth in that; back before electronic surveillance and security scanners at doors, there wasn’t much else but store security guards to discourage women from shoving curtains up their skirts. No shit, that really happened. Really. Got caught, but it was widespread, and you couldn’t catch them all.
So Hoschild’s decided it was a problem worthy of a drastic response. And the Anne Arundel County Police rose to the challenge. But they did it in such a way as to practically say to management, “You can’t run your store? Well we can’t fix that.”
They had a couple of female officers work the store undercover. And I don’t mean as roving detectives, patrolling incognito, either. Oh, I know, I know. You’re wondering well, if they didn’t do that, what did they do?
They dressed up in store clothing, complete with wigs, thick makeup and accessories, tags with string still dangling from sleeves, stood on a pedestal, and pretended to be mannequins!
And the coppers leaked this to the media! And even described one “decoy” as a black woman. And that store, in Redneckville-of-the-Mid-Atlantic, wasn’t in possession of very many black mannequins. It all went wrong from the start. Parents would point her out to their kids. The older kids made fun, wadded up gum wrappers, and threw them at her. The younger kids cried and clung to mummy and on subsequent trips into town, they’d sob in their child safety seats and beg her not to take them to the place where the scary living statue was.
Once, as I stared, I saw her change poses, I’m sure to rest an arm or whatever. I’d say, “Aha! You ain’t no mannequin”, and sure enough, someone who didn’t know about her would be nearby, and I swear, you could hear the hairs rising on the backs of their necks! Some drained completely of color. Others were pissed because they didn’t like being scared.
Finally the store moved out of the mall to the former Hutzlers building. The end was near. Because studies prove most store theft is done by employees, it usually isn’t a serious problem, at least when management catches on, and arrests and terminations are the evidence. A mismanaged store trying to stay 60s and 70s was doomed, and women pretending to be dummies weren’t going to change that simple fact.
Just a slice of history from one small ‘burb in the Land of the Free. After Montgomery Ward followed in the nineties, Hecht Company also vanished.
You can’t expect to save a business with a couple of dummies.
Why then would people expect to save a country with a couple of dummies?
Oh wait. You voted for Trump/Pence?
You’re a dummy, too.
Memoirs of an American Asshole 