It was during the Christmas season of 1976 that I got my first “adult” job: At the tender age of 17 I was hired as a holiday associate at the Jordan Marsh store at the old Sunrise Shopping Center. In those long-gone days stores were closed evenings and Sundays during the year but the exception to this was during the Christmas season when they would stay open until 9:00 on weeknights and for several hours on Sunday. 
To staff these holiday positions Jordan Marsh hired dozens of kids from Cardinal Gibbons and Fort Lauderdale High Schools to work the extended holiday hours. I applied for the job with my best friend, Colleen, who I loved mainly because she had thicker eyeglasses and a worse complexion than me. We were both hired on the spot because, as the Personnel Manager, cruelly, told us, they needed people to work Friday and Saturday nights and, “You don’t look like the kind of kids who do much dating on weekends.”
I regarded my holiday job as an entry into a new world. I never quite fit in to the culture at Gibbons where my classmates’ main priorities in life were to drink as much as possible and sleep with whoever they could, and I thought that a world populated by responsible adults would be a better fit than a world populated by drunken, oversexed high school students. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Jordan Marsh was populated by drunken, oversexed adults.
The highly charged atmosphere at Jordan Marsh was due mainly to its General Manager, Andrew Forney. When I was 17 I regarded him as a creepy old lecher but looking back, I am certain he was not as old as I am now. Mr. Forney (it rhymed with – well, use your imagination) was not picky: his target demographic was anyone from 17 to 65 who wore a skirt. Due to his lofty position, if store legend was to be believed, his success rate was pretty high. We called it “Forney-cation.”
Mr. Forney’s habit was to invite the object of his affection for drinks after work, and as a creepy side note, since his daughter went to Cardinal Gibbons he was often chasing his daughter’s high school classmates. He had no qualms using his position to entice women to join him and, given his reputation, they had to have known what he was up to– and he was up to it all over the place: the Executive Office, assorted stockrooms, even the restroom behind the Gulfstream Restaurant.
But Mr. Forney was not alone. The married Assistant Manager was having a torrid affair with the Sportswear Manager whose husband taught at Lauderdale High. The Manager of Men’s Furnishings (we called her “Stockroom Mary”) loved to invite high school boys to (ahem) help her take inventory. The Dockmaster, who always reeked of Kentucky bourbon, would carry on in the trucking bay with the Cosmetics Manager, even though his wife worked in the Personnel office. The manager of Notions was the supervisor of the young woman who was sleeping with the manager of Men’s Sportswear, who happened to be married to the Notions Manager.
As shy, socially awkward teenagers, observing this middle-aged frat party was both enlightening and horribly depressing, and Colleen and I would discuss it on break. It was right before Christmas that I told her, “Did you hear that Randy Andy met the Handbag Manager on the mezzanine?” I said. “God, he’s disgusting.” When you’re 17, the idea of a 40 year having sex is both incredible and revolting.
But now Colleen had a weird look on her face. “He’s not so bad when you get to know him,” she said.