Home >> About Me>> My Resume >> F. W. Woolworth

Department Store Manager at F. W. Woolworth

Woolworth's Management Trainee Program

Woolworth's in Germany was founded in the late 1920. It changed Germany's department store landscape by implementing processes from the USA. Goods were bought in bulk, the counters disappeared and in general a fast paced environment was implemented. Managers at Woolworth start at the bottom (in the warehouse) at shipping and receiving, move through all 44 departments and get trained on the back office as well (A/R, A/P, HR, etc.).

At the end of the training period, which lasts between 4 and 5 years, depending on the openings at that time, the manager will have full responsibility over purchases and sales, profit and loss, hiring and firing - as if he owned the department store himself.

Trainees are quickly promoted to assistant managers and take over parts of the manager's responsibility, thus they can become familiar with the workload and learn by trial and error. There is little formal guidance by the corporate office. Trainees learn on their own, mostly by the example of their manager. Every now and then, but not more than once or twice a year, all trainees are invited to the corporate office in Frankfurt. They mingle among each other and meet with some of the corporate buyers, district managers and specialists.

The concept of "acting as if you own the place" is also reflected in the working hours. Assistant managers are expecting to be the first in the morning and the last in the evening, 6 days a week. This adds up to an average working week of 68 hours.

The compensation of managers is tied to their performance. Different from the contracts in the USA, however, all contracts are capped. This became very disadvantageous in 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when virtually sales of all stores next to the border with East Germany skyrocketed.

05/1987 - 01/1988 Hamburg Bergedorf

After starting in the warehouse at shipping and receiving, I spent four months in the basement of the store. I learned how to receive, how to check if they goods received were what actually ordered, and where everything had to go in the warehouse. Different personalities of other employees and the positive and negative effects of a diverse group of people.

The warehouse supervisor was an older man, his backup an older lady with a hairdo from the fifties. The third in line was a Belgian from Waterloo, who had studied at the École Polytechnique in Paris, then went to the Congo as general manager on a coffee plantation and eventually ended up in Germany at Woolworth's to get a little bit of retirement money. He was a very bright person, completely over-qualified for this position, and very personable.

After four months I moved up into the office to get an introduction into accounts payables, accounts receivables, human resources and the merchandise planning and control system. Woolworth had recently switched to an IBM AS 400 POS-sales and inventory system, and I quickly became an expert on troubleshooting the computers and cash registers. The office manager was not very well like, but I got along well with her.

The Duel

I once pursued a shop lifter, who had stolen a pair of sneakers for more than 1 hour on foot. I was in pretty decent shape and he could not outrun me. Similar to the situation in the movie Duel by Steven Spielberg, I stayed close enough to him so he couldn't get away, but remained far enough to avoid a physical confrontation. I flagged down a passing police car and he got arrested. Later I learned that this person had killed his father with a cast iron frying pan when he was 16 and had been released from jail 10 years later. I met him when he was not yet 30. In early 1987 I was transferred to Lampertheim. While Bergedorf was a suburb of Hamburg, Lampertheim was a very small city with less than 10,000 inhabitants about 10 miles from Mannheim.

02/1988 - 01/1989 Lampertheim

I took the train to Lampertheim and rented an apartment on the third floor of a private home. I did not like the little town and was bored to death. There was nothing to do, and I only owned a little motorcycle, which I used for trips to the neighboring cities Mannheim, Heidelberg, Ludwigshafen and Frankfurt. The store was relatively large and carried a lot of everything to enable the locals to get everything in one place.

What's your last name?

Only a few days after I had rented my apartment the store's detective caught the underage daughter of my landlord. By poor chance I recognized her and released her from the custody of the detective and send her home. I always wondered, what her parents though when I paid my rent, and their daughter tried to hide under the table.

In August of 1988 I was called to assist the store in Frankfurt, which was moving from one location to another one, a few hundred feet away.

07-08 1988 Frankfurt Zeil

Since I was one of the junior assistant manager I was sent again into the basement to box and ship all merchandise. In theory I had a handful of employees to direct, but they were all good for nothing, so I decided to everything myself. This had the effect that I earned the respect of all people, since I got the job done. My boss, however, thought that I should work less myself and make the lazy bunch work. When I told him that they were too dumb and too lazy to do anything, he asked me if we should fire them. I replied "yes, absolutely", but nothing happened.

After two months the assignment was over and I returned to Lampertheim. But soon the most boring year of my life was over and I won the lottery as far as I was concerned: I was sent to Berlin.

02/1989 - 01/1990 Berlin

Since West-Berlin in early 1989 was still embraced by the wall, I flew to Berlin. Co-incidentally a friend of mine had just moved to Berlin and lived only a few blocks away from the store. The store itself was close to the wall and thus protected from many of the usual problems of theft.

I loved Berlin. The German government paid an 8 % income tax benefit to everybody and goods and services were heavily subsidized. My apartment above another Woolworth store in Reinikendorf was at the border of the three allied sectors (British, French and American) and close to the airport in Tegel. In the forest next to the airport was a lake, where I enjoyed swimming in the summer. I didn't own a car, but the Berlin subway system is excellent and the famous Berlin Doppeldecker busses are very neat to ride.

The year developed nicely, and I could concentrate on my vocational training. The manager was the best boss I ever had had and he left me a lot of freedom. I loved the people I worked with and got along well with virtually everybody. And then one of the most ridiculous incidents of my life happened.

On the night of 9/7/1989 I was sent to Bogen, a very small village in Upper Bavaria, to assist in the building of a new shop. Woolworth had at that time adapted a "one-mother-store, many little shops"-system, which proved to be very profitable.

09/1989 Bogen

I built several miniature departments and stayed in a very remote hotel, without rental car or TV, just by myself. My plans were to go hiking in the surrounding forest on the weekend, but then something remarkable happened: A subaltern minister in the East German government was handed a handwritten note that the borders to West-Germany would be opened up, and read it publicly in front of the TV cameras. The result was a mass movement of East German citizens to the border.

I was summoned back to Berlin immediately, where organized chaos pushed sales per square feet to an exorbitant height. The store's location switched from the outskirts of West-Berlin to the bulls-eye of one of Berlin's biggest working suburbs. Thousands of East-Berliners replenished their needs and everything went through the roof.

But all good things have to come to an end and so did my time in Berlin. I was transferred to Frankfurt in January 1990.

Woolworth had bought the BILKA department store chain, and I was sent to assist in the conversion of a new acquisition in Frankfurt. The store was in general larger than a typical Woolworth store, but the merchandise was essentially the same. Prices were higher though.

01-02 1990 Frankfurt Leipziger Straße

Since I was again the junior assistant manager, I was sent again into the basement, to organize the warehouse. My manager gave me a free hand, and since I knew meanwhile a lot about it, I implemented an excellent warehouse. I had noticed that often managers succumb to the architecture and built less than optimal warehouse. I drew plans that allowed the storage of those departments that had the highest turnaround to stay close to the elevators, and others that were re-filled less often to move to the back. This may seem like a no-brainer, however, it was so revolutionary that it received attention on the corporate level.

Typically all Woolworth warehouses had a similar layout and e.g. cosmetics were in the very back, since they needed a lot of space. I moved it to the front, and thus enabled a faster and more efficient workflow.

The assignment lasted only 2 months and I was sent to Munich to meet another interesting challenge.

02/1990 - 01/1991 Munich

The store in Munich, Stachus is located 50 ft. under ground, in the center of a huge subway station in the heart of Munich. Generally people receive a higher salary, if they work all day below ground, but since once  German court found that the conditions at Stachus are close enough to the outside world, the salary was adjusted to the regular amount.

There were weeks where I saw sunshine only on weekends.

The store, however, was very unique. It was small, but held the record of sales per square feet. The manager was very remarkable. Another manager told me about him that "he has in his rear, what others have to learn with their brain", meaning that he had an incredible feeling for merchandise. He know what sold, and he sold it by the thousand.

Munich is close to the border with Austria, and Yugoslavia was only a hundred miles away. Woolworth became a favorite of Yugoslavian resellers. Bus companies organized trips from Belgrade, capital of Yugoslavia, to Woolworth in Munich, and my boss sold to them anything conceivable.

Unfortunately he made one mistake. He had bought $20k worth of women's bustiers that were sold for 99 Cents each. Without a doubt, somebody would by them by the box and re-sell them in Yugoslavia. Well, he was wrong, and since he annoyed many of the corporate buyers, he was reprimanded and sent to a different store.

The manager gave me free hand to hire and fire people, and allowed me to make my mistakes. I learned that there are very few things that determine if anybody will be successful in a job. I once hired a fully trained salesperson, who failed miserably, and then hired a milker (yup, a lady who had milked cows for years) out of mercy, who outperformed everybody else.

I still have fond memories of the delightful Saturday morning breakfasts with the manager and his deputy.

After a year in Munich I was sent to Freising, a suburb of Munich, for one month to act as manager in charge during the absence of the local manager.

Freising

Freising is famous for Germany's beer academy and the proximity to the international airport in Munich. I minimized the warehouse, and rebuilt the animal food department.

Then I received my transfer to Erfurt in former Eastern Germany.

Erfurt

After the wall came down in November 1989 most of West-Germany's top management was caught by surprise. I don't know of any company that had strategic plans to cope with the situation. Even though I had talked to a regular Berliner in the summer of 89, who told me that everything in the East will fall apart within the next few months, because they had nothing to eat in the stores anymore, the whole German elite was unaware.

After the wall came down, sales of many companies grew by leaps and bounds and no matter how stupid you were, you made a truck load of money.

Woolworth realized that as an American owned company, many of the German legalities did not apply to them (due to allied law), and thus they could easily restore property. They had owned roughly a dozen stores in Germany before 1945 and the titles to the properties were simply restored, with the exception of one or two. One of them had become the location of a Russian memorial.

The warehouse was 20 miles away, and since I didn't own a car, I rode the tram.

The East Germans were very kind, and I learned that in fact we were one people. Her behavior as customers was entirely different from West-German's behavior. We had to get different, East-German products. Over all it was a very nice experience.

Since this was the first US-owned trade unit that re-opened after the fall of the iron curtain, the US ambassador, Mr. Vernon Walters, came to visit. I was deeply impressed by the demeanor of his body guards. He bought shaving cream and left with his entourage.

And in August 1991 I was promoted to manager in Bielefeld Brackwede.

Bielefeld-Brackwede

I had spent 7 months in Bielefeld when I was accepted at the Technical University in Berlin to pursue a degree in economic engineering.