Making A Tote Bag

Local lawyer takes on LL Bean firings

AUBURN — A local lawyer said Thursday she is representing several fired L.L. Bean workers who lost their jobs earlier this week after buying a leather tote bag that was discounted due to an online pricing error.

Rebecca Webber said she was still investigating the terminations, but believed the number of fired workers likely is a much larger group than "less than a handful," as characterized by a company spokeswoman earlier in the week.

Webber said she was concerned the company may have defamed the fired workers.

Although the people Webber has talked to are all women, older than 40 and longtime employees, she said she hadn't yet learned the demographics of all of the fired workers.

"My understanding is that everybody who made an order of this product who was an L.L. Bean employee was terminated," she said.

A spokeswoman at L.L. Bean could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The product in question, a woven leather tote bag, originally priced at $169, was marked down to $19 for roughly two days earlier this month. Customers started calling customer service representatives to order the item. Some of the workers who fielded the incoming calls and placed the outside customers' orders, in turn, called the company's online service to place orders of their own because the price was so attractive.

"It just was a snowball effect," one of the fired workers said.

Word got out about the apparent-sale item and others put in orders until the item was flagged and the price corrected.

About a week after placing their orders for the bag, they were investigated for fraud within the company, fired workers told the Sun Journal.

"We were never trained to question the price," said one of the fired workers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We were always told to trust the system, trust the system."

An item on the company's website Thursday showed a sale price of one item 70 percent off, she said.

"How are employees supposed to judge if this is right?" she said. "It wasn't the fact that we were being conniving or we were stealing or whatever, it was the fact that something was on sale and we said, 'Hey, this is a good deal. Let's get it.'"

Another of the fired workers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said significant markdowns on merchandise that's being liquidated or is outdated are nothing new. "It happens all the time," she said. "We have no idea what's going to be put on clearance.

Simply Fabulous: Summer Tote Bag

Once the top is hemmed, you can "kill two birds with one stone" with the next step.  Instead of sewing the remaining hems and then pinning it onto your lining fabric, I pinned the pocket on the lining fabric first - this way, you can sew the hem and the pocket onto the fabric all at the same time.  The downside is you have to dodge and remove all the pins while sewing.  Now to attach the eyelets...  I have never used an eyelet kit before this project, and let me tell you I struggled a bit.  I did some research before taking this on and found some helpful advice.  When using the kit, it tells you to hammer the pieces together, creating one of the pieces to bend and hold it in place...this did not happen for me.  Fortunately, I found a tutorial for a bag with similar straps that explained an alternative route in case of this problem - I was glad to know it was a common mishap. Now that the eyelets are all in place, take your rope and cut two pieces to thread through the sides of your bag.  Thread one piece through the two eyelets on the same side of the bag and secure with knots.  For some reason I was thinking I needed 4 pieces of rope, not 2, so I accidentally cut 4 even pieces...brain freeze!  I ended up tying 1 piece through  each of the eyelets and then tying a knot between the two pieces of rope that laid on the same side of the bag at the top to form 1 handle per side.

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