My first “real” job in my life was retail. I worked for Lord & Taylor in the late 70’s in New York. In fact, that is how I landed in Washington, DC in 1979, transferred to ‘the branches’ from the flagship NY store. That was a necessary step for all “executive trainees”. The idea was, you would serve time in the suburbs and return to NY as an assistant buyer who now understood the critical remote tentacles of the business.