Before they were called “sandwich artists” and wore tasteful green polos, Subway Sandwich workers wore mustard yellow and brown uniforms and were just called “employees.”
“It was not very flattering,” Wendy DeMore remembers. It was the early 1980s, her first high school job, and the then-16-year-old donned the uniform to make an honest buck. While some of the job has changed since then, Subway em-ployees are still trained, as DeMore was, to mete out exact amounts of toppings on their sandwiches.
Subway dictated precisely how many pickle slices or olives employees put on every sandwich, she said, a practice that, as any regular Subway customer can tell, continues today.
Subway was accounting for its inventory to ensure profitability, DeMore said, the same way she considers expenses and income in her job today. DeMore is first vice president of product management for Avon-based COCC, a company that sells information technology services to banks. She assesses the profitability of products for the company, same as the higher-ups of her first job.
DeMore didn’t ponder the market principles behind her sandwich training, but she knew she was happy to move onto the next job as a cashier at Hechinger’s, a housewares store.
It felt like moving up in the world: she didn’t have to wear the uniform, didn’t have to work amid the smell of food and could happily flirt with the good-looking warehouse boys.
Also, DeMore liked working the cash register. Cashiers these days can scan barcodes, but DeMore was of the era when all barcode numbers were typed in by hand. But DeMore was quick on the draw and liked the challenge, especially on packed weekend days.
“I could move so quickly. I loved it when the customers changed lines to get in my line,” she said.
DeMore’s Hechinger’s job put her on the retail path that would lead — in roundabout fashion — to her job at COCC. Midway through school at the University of Connecticut, she had joined the management program at Ann Taylor, a women’s clothing chain, where she was a manager. She’d switched jobs at age 30 to manage Williams Sonoma, but by then retail was leaving her cold.
It was always the same, DeMore said: hiring personnel, stocking, inventory. But some contacts at Westfarms Mall spread the news about an opening in People’s Bank: Branch managers were looking for people with retail experience to manage bank locations. Looking for a change, she applied to manage a Stop and Shop People’s Bank location in Simsbury.
It seemed like an odd switch for someone who had graduated with a degree in English. But DeMore can see how her formal education prepared her for her career in retail and eventually banking. English majors require critical thinking, analysis, good communications skills — things that are needed in a huge variety of jobs, she said.
DeMore expanded her banking work, eventually managing multiple branches, but found her next job through work with the Avon Chamber of Commerce. DeMore, who served as chamber president from 2001 to 2003, developed contacts with COCC and eventually got a job there.
“If I could make a law, I’d say that everyone, either before college or during college … should work a service job. Because it’s a lot harder than people think.”
