R.I.P. Marshall Field's

An open letter to Terry J. Lundgren, chairman, president and CEO of Federated Department Stores Inc.

Dear Mr. Lundgren,

You possum fucker. You should be dunked in raw sewage and gasoline, locked in a steel cage on the corner of State and Randolph and set on fire.

You and your executive team should be flogged, not praised, for your decision to sacrifice yet another piece of Chicago’s history to the almighty Gods of the Share Price. Dropping the Marshall Field’s name from the sad collection of mall stores scattered throughout the Midwest might be forgivable. But stripping the Chicago flagship store of that proud name has earned you a city full of enemies, no matter what your twisted research told you.

It was wise of you to announce the change in a cowardly news release from the safety of Cincinnati and to brief the Chicago media in their buildings, above the streets. Once you leave town you’d better not show your face in Chicago ever again, you soft turd.

How dare you profess “great respect for the legacy and traditions of Marshall Field’s.” Bullshit. And fuck you for saying so. You don’t show respect of any sort for legacy and traditions by throwing them in the trash. The legacy and tradition aren’t solely in the building or the merchandise, you flunky. They’re in the name, too. I heard you talking about how Marshall Field’s wasn’t “moving forward.” But later you said the merchandise, which was selling well, and the sales associates, who sell the well-selling merchandise well, will remain. So what’s the problem? You want to increase your profit margin by cutting marketing costs? Fine. Keep a skeleton staff to market the State Street Store as “The Original Marshall Field’s Store” or something. How much could that cost? Then you can get your precious economy of scale and still give a little nod of respect to Chicago.

What are we supposed to do, meet under the Macy’s clock? Ain’t gonna happen. And you can’t go to the Walnut Room at Macy’s. The Walnut Room isn’t Macy’s. It’s Marshall Field’s. Or maybe you’re planning on converting the Walnut Room to a McDonald’s; you know, to “better serve [your] customers in this highly competitive retailing environment.”

And exactly how do you plan to, as you stated in your press release, “do everything we can to honor the Marshall Field’s heritage, particularly in its Chicago birthplace” as part of the name change process? Honor it how? By dropping the very name you say you plan to honor? What kind of corporate doublespeak babble is that? Look, this isn’t Cincinnati or Ohio for that matter. Most people here are sophisticated enough to easily see through your empty homage. When you rip the brass Field’s nameplate off the State Street store and replace it with a cheap plastic Macy’s sign, people will notice. And they’re going to be pissed.

Already the immediate reaction has been swift. Although you claimed your “research” showed two-thirds of the respondents felt “neutral to positive—largely neutral—about the name change,” according to your quote in the Tribune, an unscientific poll conducted by the same Tribune showed DISapproval in the high 90-percent range after the news hit the streets.

Alas, we are a people with a short attention span. By the time the Field’s name is stripped from the State Street store, many folks will likely have lost their rage. People will continue to shop there, as they should, because the employees shouldn’t be punished with losing their jobs just because Federated is focused on competing with Wal-Mart.

But in the interim, some of those pissed off people might get in their cars and drive to your corporate headquarters at 7 West Seventh Street in Cincinnati. Others may call your company switchboard at 513.579.7000, or inundate your troglodyte manager of community and public relations, Jean Coggan, at 513.579.7315. Coggan, by the way, should be stripped of that title. Instead, she should be Manager of Community and Public Violations. Because that’s what her employer has done to Chicago.

We’re supposed to be grateful, I guess, that Federated won’t lay anyone off at the State Street store, or shut it altogether. More than six thousand other employees, of course, won’t be so lucky. That’s consolidation for you, eh? Companies like Federated can buy a store, strip it of its name and then imply we should thank them for saving some jobs. Even Chicago Mayor Richard Daley got into the spirit Thursday, calling the name change a business reality and saying, in effect, that at least we get to keep the jobs.

Well fuck that. That’s like being robbed and beaten and then having to thank the perpetrator for not killing you. It’s worth remembering here that neither Dayton Hudson nor May felt the need to change the Field’s name when they bought the retail chain.

Next time you come to Chicago, Mr. Lundgren, if you ever manage to screw up the courage again, you’d better wear a haz-mat suit, because when word of your incursion leaks out—and it will—Chicagoans will line the route from the airport to the Loop and hurl all manner of foul, toxic and smelly objects at you. And you’ll deserve to swallow every one of them.

You are the worst kind of slime. You should be stripped naked and forced to run a gauntlet of hoots and jeers from the ghosts of Potter Palmer, Montgomery Ward, Richard Sears and, of course, Marshall Field—Chicago’s captains of industry, men who understood what it meant to BUILD, to create things of value.

If there is any justice in this world, you will be exposed soon as another in the growing line of corrupt chief executives. You will be convicted, stripped of your $1.2 million salary and your $3 million bonus and sent to the prison at Joliet where you’ll bunk with a large, sexually frustrated man with an image of a “Thriller”-era Michael Jackson tattooed on one arm and “Fuck You” tattooed on the other. There, your screams will fade until eventually they are silent, lodged in your throat. The everlasting pain will cause you to
forget your own name and when you are released someday you will stumble blindly through the streets, eventually falling into a canal full of raw sewage where you drift in and out of consciousness before washing up next to a scraggly homeless man living in a shit-smeared Macy’s mattress box, a man you will recognize as H. Lee Scott Jr.

Best wishes in your new “venture,” you Sam Walton supplicant.

Sincerely,
The Indignant Citizen