Blog #161  I talked about our Valley Fair support team. In this blog I want to talk about when Joe came back to Nordstrom

Joe called me quite frequently at Nordstrom when I was in Palo Alto and kept in touch when he went to work for Macy’s. He was a smart merchant so I always enjoyed our conversations.  Plus he was this good looking single guy who worked out and dated a lot of different people. He always had interesting stories. I found a way to make him laugh a lot so we had a good relationship there.

Coming back to Nordstrom

He called me one day and said he was trying to come back to Nordstrom. Of course I thought Oh Oh I wonder if I’ll get transferred? Never good when your RMM has a hair up his ass for you, anything could happen. Remember the saying “You’re only as good as your last flash.” Truth was not many people would want to go through a remodel like this so I felt assured of that.

He told me he talked to Jack and The RMM and the only opening was in the Hillsdale store. Joe was much more talented than running a small store but he wanted to get back in so he took it. The conversations we had were comical. “You wouldn’t believe how this store has been run…” It was good to have him back, he made me laugh a lot too.

SF Shoe Show

Somewhere in the conversation we started talking about the SF Shoe Show. Usually it was pretty small so we didn’t attend but a day trip might be worth a look. I called Daryl to see if he’d be interested in going to and he said he would, Great two guys I like  we could go in, walk the show and have lunch and catch up. Uhhhh, Joe started to say…The RMM wants to come too. Great…

We walk the show as  we expected it was pretty quiet. They combined the Gift show so that was interesting. We left for lunch and just grabbed a quick bite. Didn’t catch up as I would have liked with Daryl or Joe but we all had good conversation with each other. Our RMM wasn’t really that bad of a guy but he had a power trip that was tough to deal with sometimes. He could be personable when he wanted to be. All in all we all had a good time together. 

The Assault

We head back and start walking through a sketchy area of SF but we were all used to it I guess. We end up standing on a corner waiting for the light to turn. Out of nowhere this huge guy on a bike suddenly appears and smacks our RMM backhanded so hard you couldn’t help but hear it. We all stood shocked on what had just happen. As much as he would piss me off, this wasn’t funny. He basically just got assaulted…

“Do you want us to go get him? “ I said. He’s big but there’s three of us…I was imagining the three of us going after this guy in our suits. What a sight that would have been. No let’s just get back to the store, he said rubbing his face. This taught me a lesson I’ve taken with me in all my travel abroad. Be aware of your surroundings…