Both Teresa Giudice and Ramona Singer were Macy’s buyers in NYC

On Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip, Ramona Singer made it clear that she thought Teresa Giudice had low intelligence and didn’t want to associate with her because of this opinion of her. At the very beginning, she compared her to the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, insinuating that she didn’t have a brain. What Ramona didn’t seem to realize about her reference is that the Scarecrow was smart the whole time, he just suffered from low self-confidence. Still, she learned the lesson just the same by talking to Teresa and realizing that she not only is a New York Times bestselling author, but she used to have the same job Ramona used to have (and speaks about often:) a buyer for Macy’s in NYC.

While relaxing on a yacht in the show’s second episode, Ramona asked Teresa what her first job was. After Teresa studied fashion marketing at New York’s Berkley College she landed a job in NYC’s Herald Square as a buyer for Macy’s. This is the same job that Ramona had before she started her own business, RMS Fashions, a company that buys company overstock and resells it to discount stores.

Both Teresa and Ramona worked as reps for Calvin Klein at Macy’s as well.

“You have to be really smart to be a buyer,” Ramona says in her talking head interview. “There’s a lot of math involved there.”

In the first episode, Ramona apologized to Teresa about the Scarecrow comment by saying that she only surrounds herself with “smart women,” but she wasn’t sure how bright Teresa was because of things her fellow castmembers on Real Housewives of New Jersey have said about her not being smart.

Ramona told Teresa that her opinion of her changed the day before when she realized on the plane over that “holy moly, you have your stuff so together. You are unbelievable. You have overcome so much. And on that plane ride here, I learned about who Teresa is. And Teresa is a strong woman, caring, and smart.”

What does a Macy’s buyer do? How much do they make?

A buyer at Macy’s has a lot of responsibility and has to be good at calculation and business strategy. As the title suggests, they are involved in the purchase of merchandise for the retail brand Macy’s. This includes a lot of activities like forecasting sales trends for the future, negotiating with vendors for the best price, tracking how well items are doing, and make sure merchandise is received in a timely manner.

According to Glassdoor.com Macy’s buyers make a base pay between $58k-$174k a year with the possibility for bonuses of around $13k.