Wedgewood fine bone china teacup, and matching saucer were wrapped in plastic and set on the Last…read moreAct table of the kitchenware section. There was no barcode and no price on either item, nor was there any Last Act label.
The African-American saleslady in her late 40s who helped me initially was pleasant and professional, and attempted to find out what the sale price should be; but not being able to, she ended up having to call her manager. Said section manager of course turned out to be Spanish and much younger, as Macy's has made sure is the case in pretty much every store, from The Falls all the way up to Melbourne, in this instance likely of Cubanoid / CentAm extraction. She immediately gave me the curt greeting and short treatment that I've come to expect from two decades of working with that species in Miami. The worksheet performed consisted in effectively googling a photograph of the set I wanted to purchase, which anyone under 99 can do in about 60 seconds. She was not interested in my showing her that the Kate Spade saucer, placed right next to the Wedgewood set, had been marked down on that same Last Act table to six dollars and change per it's label. She was insistent that in this case I needed to pay 50% of the full price, in other words $45. She stuttered through a ten-second lecture amounting to the item I wanted being in a different category, and that the Last Act items marked down to the level of the Kate Spade saucer, are those that are not selling. This type of blatant racism coupled with the insulting dictum that all gringos are weak, frightened, helpless monolingual idiots, which is pervasive in South Florida (roughly Ocala to Key West) and rapidly making it its way up north, is going to come back and bite yet another brand when Americans take their business online and in some cases to stores where we are still treated somewhat respectfully (depending on where the employee hails from).
I left silently because there is zero protection for my demographic in the 2020s, just as there hasn't been for the last 50 years. An hour later, I returned to find that Cubanita-Hispana had re-ticketed the item to be at 50% off of $90, and placed it AGAIN on the Last Act table. All of this is on film, you don't have to take my word for it. This is their way of letting us know, every single day and everywhere we may be, that they've taken over and that we need to go. It's extremely important to understand that what began as a business decision on the part of a then venerable brand, first fueled by the housing bubble and subsequent recession, then followed by the pandemic and its attendant commitment to dollars and diversity, has turned into a full-fledged war against the host nation. As a result of "bilingual" preferences, what very few North American salespeople are generally well into middle-age and often nearing retirement and far beyond, and having to carry the burden of this takeover (for example when there are customers who happen not to speak Spanish, or if FaceTiming with el marido is more important than the customer in question). I can't tell you how many nice, professional, knowledgeable, and hard-working, older, often Jewish American sales women from New York, have told me over the last 15 years that they were being pushed out because they're not "bilingual"; these women, who have now all but disappeared, were not stupid: they understood perfectly well that "bilingual" has nothing to do with fluency or native speaking ability. By the way, this is in parallel with the fact that Fort Lauderdale, and now Boca and West Palm Beach have already been deserted by folks who have decided they've had enough and gone back to points North of the St. Mary River. Palm Beach Gardens, Jupiter, and Vero are well on their way out. Same thing in Naples, Fort Myers, and Tampa.
Meantime, take a walk past any cosmetic or perfume counter at any store in El Estado del Sol, and you'll hear what sounds like the birdhouse at Zoo Miami.
War it is!
