Macy's Sucks

July 4, 2009
Thanks to Macy's moving their firework display to the west side, our view (seen above) was a crap-stravaganza. The best we could muster were glimpses of Jersey City pyrotechnics peeking over the Columbia Street salt pile.

The department store felt it was more appropriate to celebrate the Hudson's 400th by giving away the best vantages to our neighboring state, blocking 5 million borough schlubs dumb enough to live east of Manhattan.

Tonight I came across some funny references to the world's largest store, including this advertisement (right) found within a 1940s wartime guide to the city. Several decades later Henry Alford applied for one of those positions, writing about the experience in the 1993 book Municipal Bondage. In the process he confronted the world's most useless HR department (though that term may be redundant).

After checking off 40 idiotic multiple choice and true-false questions sussing out his personality, Henry discovered that such applications expired after thirty days (meaning you had to answer "If there is no one else around to notice what you are doing, do you always pick up the paper and trash other leave around?" all over again a month later). Deemed unqualified at first pass--perhaps no one told HR that soda jerks had gone out of fashion--Henry marched back to personnel headquarters and filled it out once more.

This time however he claimed he had prior experience overseeing staff and organizing events as a "Primate Center Manager." In response to what the worst aspect of the job was, he wrote: "Seeing chimps die."

Clearly one of the chimps went on to coordinate the fireworks this year. Nice work Henry!
--Peter Miller