Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/48

 It was her business to know the name of every sort of lace on her shelves. She belongs in the class of girls who declare there is nothing in clerking.

The superintendent of a great department store told me that the reason he never received applicants until 9:30 in the morning was because he wanted to spend the time between 8:15 and 9:30 o'clock roaming through the store to find out which girls were arranging and becoming familiar with their stock, and which were telling about the play or the party they had attended the night before. Yet there are girls who say that you get no credit for being painstaking in a store!

Study your trade. Take an interest in your customers. Do not act as if the woman who wants to buy a new tie were a nuisance, and had no right to interrupt your conversation with your fellow-clerks.

A friend recently approached the notion counter of a very nice store, and asked for white elastic. The girl addressed was busy adjusting her puffs by the aid of a pocket-mirror.

"Kate," she murmured with her mouth filled with, "come see to this woman, will you?"

"This woman" did not wait to be "seen to." And there is another girl who says clerking is a drudgery!