6 Months In

I'm finally really back at work. 

I definitely eased off bereavement leave slowly. Really slowly. 
My first week back I worked only 1 day. 
Second week- 2 days of work followed by 3 days off again. 
Normally that snail's pace of a schedule would have driven me to idle madness. Surprisingly not the case here. After only a short 6 hour shift I felt unnaturally drained and weary. I had/still have a lot of difficultly focusing and remembering details. It's like bereavement leave knocked me full of dumb. 

My alertness has picked up, but my mindset towards work has changed. I'm not sure how to articulate it and I want to avoid sampling cliches like 'colors seem brighter' or declaring I'm a whole new person from having death touch my family. 

My thoughts are just dwelling a lot on the future, and the people in my life and my career. Right now where I'm working I would not call that a 'career' per say. I'm entering the 6th month of working sporting goods retail and by now I thought I'd have some clarity on what I want. 

But I don't. 

I don't know if I would have mental resolution at this point if Papa had not died. There's no way to tell. The only thing I know right now is that I don't know anything. 

Bereavement Leave

I'm in the middle of what I know will be one of the most difficult times of my life. I've never looked grief like this in it's dark face and known it's come to reside in the hearts of all my family.

It seems unnecessary to state there is no easy way to deal with a death in the family. 

So far in this horrible experience I have not progressed to the "dealing" part of the timeline. Right now my family is watching death slowly leech away the patriarchal head of our extended family. 

The death of my beloved grandfather hasn't occurred yet, it's currently happening. 

It was difficult for me to approach my managers about this. I can't say there's been a death in my family- death hasn't closed its cold fist completely yet and I refuse to give death credit before credit is due. 

Death doesn't come with a schedule. I had to tell my managers, "I will need time off. Soon. Suddenly and soon and I don't know when." And my lead manager gave me a hug and said "Do what you need to do, whatever you need."

To their great credit, my work family has been very kind. They've given me shorter and easier shifts up till I'll need my time off. My co-workers have been picking up the slack I leave when I stand at the customer service counter zoned out for hours at a time. 

I don't know what is going to happen next with my family. But it is inexpressibly relieving to know my work supports me and my job is not only flexible, but secure. 

Prayers are appreciated. Pray not for the dying, he is at peace. Pray for the living who will miss him. 

I Do What I Can

Friday and Saturday nights are MY nights at the store.

I’ve discussed before how my work week is skewed from the norm and while the calendar says ‘Friday’ to me it is really full-on nose to the grindstone Monday.

I am the closing CSS for the store both Friday and Saturday nights, which means I’m in charge of all the cashiers (more technical term is ‘front-end’) for the evening.

This past Friday night was fairly typical. I was down at the front registers of the store, which is far and away the busiest area in the whole store. I was fortunate to have another CSS with me, as it was only 6pm. I didn’t have to be on my own till 8pm.

Myself, the other CSS and two cashiers were ringing our little hearts out at the registers when I see a tired looking middle-aged man approach the counters from the side area- near footwear. My first thought is he is looking to cut the line. He doesn’t try to jump in however; he taps one of my co-workers on the shoulder and says wearily, “We can’t find anyone to help us in footwear. Is there anything you can do?”

Let me explain about the footwear department. There are several large glaring problems.

1.      The footwear department operates under the hopelessly outdated ‘Solo Service’ method instead of the more practical, ‘Self Service.’ Think about when you walk into DFW Shoes, or Payless. A customer can walk around and see the shoes, and then there are stacks of that shoe in different sizes all around. You pull out different sizes from the stack and try them on, make a selection and go on your way. That is ‘Self Service.’ At DSG with ‘Solo Service,’ the customer can see the selection of shoes displayed all over the department, but has no access to the shoes without the help of a sales associate. The sales associate must find out from the customer what type of shoe, color and size they want, then go into the back stock, find that shoe and bring it back, then put any shoes not selected back away in the back stock. This is a HORRIBLY SLOW process.

2.      Footwear is always understaffed. Especially with the Solo Service method, if there is not a sales associate for every customer, those customers quickly become irritated with being ignored or having to wait a long time for their shoes.

3.      WE SELL TOO MANY KINDS OF SHOES. I have been into the footwear back stock and it is not a place I’d like to go to again. It’s a two story hell filled with 1000s of shoes. There is no organizational system that I have been able to glean and there are ladders haphazardly stuck everywhere. Finding the right shoe in less than 10 minutes is near impossible.

Add into the mix it is Friday night on a holiday weekend as school is just starting back up. The footwear department is inundated with 30 to 50 customers milling around… all to be assisted by a whopping 4 footwear employees. This poor middle-aged man’s situation is dismal and doomed right from the start.

As he stood there in front of the registers I’m not sure what came over me. Maybe because he had his grey-brown hair cut like my dad’s, or I connected with the expression on his face that he really, really didn’t want to be spending his Friday evening out shoe shopping in my store. People are so rude to me all the time that when a human being actually reached out for help in a feeble sort of way my heart just broke over the whole situation.

“I’ll come help you, sir.”

I wasn’t even aware those words were coming out of my mouth until I had already said them. My fellow cashiers turned to look at me over their piles of clothes they were ringing out with raised eyebrows. I know what they were thinking. I can see the long line of people standing in front the counter. But I also see this man standing there too, looking quite forlorn. And darn it, I’m in charge of the store tonight and there’s another CSS here so I say I get to go do some of the lost art of customer service.

“You guys can hold down the fort, I’ll be back as soon as I help out,” I said, nodding my head over to the customers in front of me to redirect them to other lines.

“You’ll never make it out of that department. Don’t stay there all night,” the other CSS warned me under his breath. He folded a pink Under Armour shirt crisply and shoved it into a bag. “You have to be back here before I have to leave.”

I nod.

Duh.

“I know,” I said in reply. And I left my register and went around the counter to the customer.

“Thank you,” he said, running a hand over his eyes. “We’ve been trying to find new cleats from my daughter but we can’t get anyone’s attention to help us. We’ve been over there quite a while.”

I follow him into the chaos.

At least at the registers, the craziness is organized. People wait in line, then they come to a counter, and the cashier rings them out. There may be 30 people in line, but they are all waiting there, single file. It is manageable. Footwear on the other hand gives me the beginnings of an ulcer just from the sight of it.

Kids are laying all over the floor with one shoe off and another on. Socks are strewn about and throw across every surface. Parents and kids pull sample shoes from shelves and carry them about, yelling out to anyone in a green polo. The footwear employees dash back and forth and all around carrying boxes and disappearing into the back stock. Kids chase each other around the displays to the blaring backdrop of the massive big screen TV tuned to ESPN.

I want to run away. Far, far away.

The family I’ve accidentally made my pet project is camped out in the girl’s cleat section. There’s a middle aged woman to go with the middle aged man and two girls- one looks to be a sophomore in high school, the other no more than 12. They actually seem normal. The mom and dad seem to be about the same age and they both appear to have all their original body parts they were born with. Neither one of the girls have those stupid neon feathers in their hair.

The older girl is sitting on the ground with a green Nike cleat on one foot and a black one on the other. The mother is crouched beside her squeezing the toes of the shoes. She looks up at our arrival.

“Oh thank God,” the mom mutters. “We’re trying on sample shoes because we can’t get anyone’s attention to get us anything.”

I try to let out some sort of apology for the busyness but before I can the father gestures to the highest cleat on the display wall.

“We want that shoe, in eight and a half, in black with silver stripes,” he says. I sidle to the wall around a barefoot two year old holding a hiking boot and look up.

I reach up. Immediate fail.

“Sir, can you help me reach?” I have to ask. The shoe is a good foot above my outstretched fingertips. The father obliges and now I’m holding the cleat in my hand.

Time for back stock.

The entrance to the footwear back stock is hidden behind a gracefully sloping blue wall that curves out docilely like it doesn’t conceal all high levels of shoe related terror. To get to the back stock you walk behind the arch and turn the corner to see footwear’s particular brand of hell.

The back stock is two stories tall and runs along the entire north side of the store. It is illuminated by sparse dim florescent tubes about sixty feet above what you actually need to see. The floor of the second level/ceiling of the first is a mesh metal grate accessed by metal ladders. The poor employee needs only to only to glance up to feel incredibly dwarfed by the stacks upon stacks of shoe boxes towering above.

I have no idea where to begin.

A stroke of good luck- one of the footwear guys jogs past with his own sample shoe.

“Hey! Where are the Elite Air cleats?” I holler at his retreating back.

“Upstairs, far left!” he replies without breaking stride.

“For girls?!” I clutch my cleat tight.

He doesn’t reply, he is too far gone, lost in the dimly lit depths.

I go with the only reference I have. I jog (there’s no walking in footwear back stock, you’ll never get anywhere) down the row till I find a ladder. The ladder is tilted to where it falls more into the ‘rickety steps’ category than a full on ladder. Either way, it is panicking to climb. I grasp the arm rails firmly. “I’m a cashier I have no business back here,” I half laughed half sighed.

I scramble to the second level. I can hear echoing hustling footsteps ringing off the metal grate floor from my co-workers somewhere around me. I whirl left.

I’m scanning the tags on the multitude of boxes looking for anything remotely like cleats. Ah-ha! I see the word ‘elite’ and zoom in. Jackpot.

“Eight and a half, eight and a half, black and silver…” I mutter like a crazy person (look what being in the back stock has done to me!) and run my fingers across the labels.

I can’t make sense of the color abbreviations. “Rd… must be red. What’s “Gr”? Is that ‘grey’ or ‘green’? Is “bl” ‘blue’ or ‘black’? Wouldn’t ‘blk” be black? I don’t see that one...” I know I don’t have the time to open every single box.

I quickly adopt a new strategy.

Forget color.

I start pulling out every 8 ½ I can get my hands on. In a few seconds I have a stack of four boxes. Shoeboxes are large and bulky to begin with and cleat boxes are even more massive. I gather them awkwardly in my arms and descend the ladder praying I don’t fall.

My prayers were answered. I peered around my armload to see a chink of yellow light through the gloom to my right. Outside world!

I stagger to it and exit… into a side stock room.

Darn!

A footwear employee is on his hands and knees digging through a pile of enormous orange Nike boxes.

He glances up at me. “How is it my fault this woman birthed a ginourmous son who wants size 14 cleats? Those are specialty cleats and she flat out said if I can’t find some she’s writing a note to my manager that I’m incompetent!” Without waiting for my answer (I don’t even know what I would say) he practically crawled into the deep shelving unit and pawed more boxes aside.

I backed out of the room.

Where’s the exit in here? I squint through the gloom. Why isn’t there decent lighting? It’s like a bad Cold War movie in this place.

I walk as fast as I can without dropping my boxes till I find another gap in the wall. I dash through and pop out about fifty feet from my original entrance. Oh well. I can see my little pet project family is still right where I left them. I also realize my original sample cleat is right where I left it… on the grate floor next to the stacks. Oops.

I deem the lost sample cleat as a casualty to the process. I weave my way through the crowded department floor back to the girl’s cleat section.

“I pulled every eight and a half I could find in the Elite Airs,” I stated as I unceremoniously dumped all the boxes at the teenage girl’s bare feet.

Without a word of thank you, the girl and her parents commenced opening all the boxes. There was no black and silver combo, but I had managed to obtain an all-black pair, an all-red pair, black ones with blue and green stripes, and royal blue with white stripes.

The girl took an immediate liking to the all-black pair and laced them up on her feet. She stood and bounced around on the balls of her feet and jogged a few steps.

“Do they pinch your toes? Rub the backs of your heels?” the girl’s mother fussed as her daughter kicked at a pretend soccer ball. “Do you want to try on the blue ones?”

The teenager plunked herself down on the floor and tapped the cleat’s toes together. “Nah, these are good. I like the all-black.” She yanked the cleats off and dropped them in their box.

“Thanks for your help,” the father said briskly, giving me a little wave. His daughter tucked her box under her arm, the mother gathered up the little girl and they all turned on their heels to join the throng at the front registers.

I was left standing there in the cleat section with three open boxes and all the cleats had been dumped out. I crouched down and pair up the cleats with their boxes. I look up to the front registers to see my fellow CSS giving me a loathing look over the Igloo cooler he was inspecting.

I put my hard obtained Elite Airs in a little stack under the wall display. With the sample cleat lost to humanity in the back stock there was no chance of that cleat being requested for the remainder of the night.

My venture into footwear had lasted 20 minutes.

I started walking back to my register post where I had to serve out a handful more of hours. Part of me wanted to find the family waiting in line and request they fill out a nice comment card for my manager about how helpful I was. Employees do that all the time and usually the customer doesn’t mind.

I didn’t feel like doing that this time. I guess I did a good deed, ‘above and beyond’ my job description if you will. But I didn’t feel great about anything. I was disappointed in the whole situation; the fact that so many people were here shopping and we had so few staff, the footwear ‘Solo Service’ system everyone hates, everyone knows it doesn’t work and yet it still remains. All these things add up to the detriment of the customer experience.

I know I am a ‘fixer.’ When I see a problem, I like to identify and implement a solution. Friday and Saturday nights at DSG are full of problems, and I don’t like the fact that there’s nothing I can do. Nothing except what I can.

  

Sir. I don't know how else to explain this.

I think it is a side effect of our self-indulgent, instant gratification society that everyone thinks they are special.

I am completely unique unto myself; I matter more than anyone else simply because I am me. Rules don't apply to special me, you'll see as soon as I explain to you who I am. You'll understand I'm special and I'll get my way.

I deal with people suffering under this illusion every day. I remember dealing with a very severe case of "I'm Special."

The foundation of this memory is the fact that DSG has a lot of policies that are either obviously common sense, or are explained plainly and frequently.

We have some policies I have deemed full on "Idiot Traps." If you have below average intelligence, you will become hopeless trapped in the iron strong thralls of these policies that I assure you will not yield simply because you are an idiot. Policies such as, you can’t return cleats after you’ve played ten games in them. A tent you tore a hole in isn’t ‘broken.’ If we sell you a candy bar, you can’t get your money back with just the wrapper because it “didn’t taste good.”

 Normally I don't mind the Idiot Traps. It is not my fault people fall into sticky predicaments because they don't pay attention or have any common sense. But more often than not I am the CSS who has the misfortune to have to explain to the idiots in question about the dilemma. And I don't like that. Though it does make for amusing story fodder afterwards...

We sell a lot of very expensive baseball bats. At least they seem costly to me, running on average between $200 and $500. I'm sure that's not professional grade but I'm getting away from the point.

These expensive bats are sold with a plastic 'skin' sealed all around them. This is a manufacturer's security measure to ensure the integrity of the bat. It is really obviously done; the plastic is covered in stickers and sealed tight along the entire length. Whenever a customer buys a bat, every cashier does the same thing.

We take the bat in hand and look right into the eyes of the customer and say, "Once the plastic wrapping comes off the bat, it is not returnable under any circumstances. This is a policy agreement between DSG and the bat manufacturer. For safety reasons, if the plastic is removed, even five minutes after purchase- this bat cannot be returned."

The customer then usually nods or gives me an eye roll like I've said something unbelievably obvious and I am a great insult to their intelligence. But we have to issue the verbal warning (even though the rule is stated all over the plastic wrap in bold black and yellow stickers) because people are so dumb.

One weekend morning when the store was actually calm, a man walked in the front holding an orange and blue aluminum bat. An orange and blue naked bat; it had no plastic covering.
The sight of that bat filled me with annoyance. I knew what the customer was about to try and pull.

The man heads for my register and drops the bat with a clang on my counter.

"I need to return this," he says bluntly.

I pick up the bat and roll it between my palms. It doesn't appear used or damaged, and it doesn't matter anyway. I set the bat down gently.

"Sir, the plastic encasement around the bat has been removed. This bat is not returnable."

He stared at me like I'd just sprouted antlers and started babbling in Greek. I know what he is thinking. He's about to try and tell me how special he is and why the rule shouldn't apply to him.

"I'm a coach for Frisco, its okay."

No sir.

You being a coach for Frisco does not render you exempt from this policy. He stands there all smug and smirky and I'm immediately much more irritated than I was just a minute ago.
I give my head a small shake.

"But the plastic on the bat has been removed. I can't take this bat back."

The coach from Frisco frowns at me. Clearly I didn't understand him when he tried to tell me how special he was. He'll try again.

"Me and my coach buddies are in here all the time and we spend a lot of money here, especially on bats. You can honor my business and take this bat back."

He folds his arms and glares at me, daring me to counter his foolproof argument.

The 'I spend a lot of money here' argument is not new to me.

It gets whipped out and tossed in my face every now and then by the most egotistical customers who think their occasionally $500 transactions truly matter to this massive corporation spread out across the country.

I lean forward and put my hands on the counter and look full into his fat face. I’m sure he had a great many muscles at some point, but he had the telltale shape of a man gone to seed. I took personal disgust in his large round belly resting on my register counter.

"You took the plastic wrapping off. This bat is not returnable." I nudged the bat with one finger and it rolled pitifully towards the coach.

Oh, he is mad now. His fat overly tan face has a distinct tinge of red to it.

He's going to pull what he thinks is the ultimate trump card...

"I want to speak to a manager."

Inside, I am laughing. Customers seem to think we lowly cashiers must live in dread fear of managers. Cashiers are renegades who do whatever they want and the poor customer who can't reason with them must call in the manager in shining armor to save the day. I know the truth. Managers are our friends, our back-up. Trust me mister silly customer. Your ‘trump card’ isn’t going to say anything different.

My manager is wearing a bright blue polo and he comes ambling over as soon as I radio him.

He gets to the counter and before he can even utter a greeting the grumpy coach launches into a tirade about how he absolutely needs to return this bat, and he just bought it last week -though he can't seem to find the receipt, hmm- and this ignorant cashier won't help him.

My manager listens to the rant (that's why they get paid the big bucks) then glances casually down at the source of this whole predicament.

"Sir. You took the plastic off. We can't take this bat back."

I think that was the point where the coach's brain seemed to lock up. He didn't appear to comprehend that he was not special enough to get his way.

"But I need to return it," he muttered as he begrudgingly picked the bat up.

My manager sighed. "There is absolutely nothing we can do if the plastic has been taken off. That is an ironclad policy."

"I come in all the time..." the coach grumbled as he began to slouch away. My manager gives me a little pat on the shoulder and we both shake our heads. 


Some people just don’t listen.

It Feels Like a.... Monday?

It is difficult to have your “Monday” be everyone else's Friday.

I work five days and have two days off, like a typical work-week. However my weekend happens to be Wednesday-Thursday. Which means yesterday when I walked (more like trudged) into work, I had a case of the ‘Mondays.’

I work the closing shift on Fridays and Saturdays which is 2pm-10pm. The idea of ‘10pm’ is more fancifully than accurate; on a good day I clock out at around 10:30, on a night that makes my very bones weary- 11:30 to midnight.

For all the busyness (DSG does 40-50% of the week’s business on Friday/Saturday) I like closing the store on weekends. The near continuous stream of customers, managing more cashiers on the floor than any other day of the week, it all makes the hours pass bye much quicker than a sleepy paced weekday shift.

 None of the other CSSs want to shoulder the shift because they want to go out and do all the social things they expect to get out of a Friday or Saturday night. I figured out a long time ago the way to avoid becoming extremely frustrated with this job’s scheduling (that it is sucking all your social life time away) is to readjust one’s perspective and expectations for the days of the week.

The term “Friday night” cues up images of various forms of release pent up by a five day work week. Going to the movies, meeting up with friends for dinner/drinks, staying in and watching all the shows built up on your DVR- in general, Friday night is viewed as one’s ‘reward’ for completing 40 hours of drudgery. Friday night is owed to the worker.

“Saturday night” conjures similar visions of self-indulgence and freedom from the time clock; albeit with a more ‘party’ angled skew. Friday is to reclaim your soul from The Man, Saturday is to let loose and prove you’re still alive.

My co-workers glare at the schedule begrudgingly when they see they have been scheduled for Friday and/or Saturday. They feel the nights meant to be dedicated solely to them have been stripped away to be replaced with work.

I don’t mind at all because to me, Friday is Monday and Saturday is Tuesday. My schedule I have been keeping for the past few months is as such:

Friday -> Monday

Saturday -> Tuesday

Sunday-> Wednesday

Monday -> Thursday

Tuesday -> Friday

Wednesday -> Saturday

Thursday -> Sunday

It did take me time to adjust to the new alignment of days. And there are drawbacks. No one really wants to go out for drinks till 1 in the morning on a Tuesday night. When I sleep in on my ‘Saturday’ I awake to find my family all gone, off to work, because to the rest of the world it is only unglamorous Wednesday.

One oddity resulting from new schedule was wholly unexpected: my loss of the sense of what the day should “feel like.”

Everyone has said the sentence “It feels like such a __INSERT DAY OF THE WEEK__.” 

Monday has the connotation of negative vibes- the return to work after the weekend, the four more days stretching out tediously before you obtain another break.

Tuesday has the great benefit of not being Monday.

Wednesday is the middle of the week, the middle child who doesn’t belong anywhere. Does poor Hump Day mean the week is halfway done… or half is still to go?

Thursday, like Tuesday, gets its definition of feeling from its nearness to another day- in this case, Friday.

Friday. We have discussed Friday and it’s weekend buddy Saturday.

Sunday, the day of rest. A peaceful day for church, bike rides and being sad Monday is looming on the horizon.

I feel disconnected from the “normal” people who work a typical schedule because I can no longer ‘sense’ what day it is. It seems a silly thing to care about; my co-workers talk of feeling like it’s definitely Friday, and I stand at my register, confused, because I truly feel it is Monday.

When I was teaching I most certainly had a grasp of what day it was. I kept the standard work week and claimed my Friday and Saturday nights fiercely.

Now I sit here preparing for my Tuesday night. The rest of the world will fill my store on their way to the movies, or to go shop, or just a brief stop-over in the celebration of their Saturday night festivities.

I don’t look at them with any sense of envy. It’s okay, it’s only Tuesday.

Pseudo-Therapist Pt. 1

There are certain professions that carry a ‘pseudo-therapist’ stigma.

Bartenders, manicurists, hair-stylist; these are the people that listen to complete strangers gush out any amount of personal information on a daily basis. And they can’t do anything about it. The verbal onslaught cannot be ceased. The bartender must remain at their bar, the stylist their chair and so on. It's not even that the pseudo-therapists are allowed to just listen- there is an unspoken expectation to render advice.

I’d like for the ‘cashier’ profession to be included into the stereotype of pseudo-therapists.

We are trapped behind our registers/counters and believe me many a customer takes full unbridled advantage of the opportunity to converse with a captive human.

The frequency and duration of my involuntary chat sessions greatly increase during weekday shifts. Friday/Saturday/Sundays, while in general are a semi-chaotic madhouse from the store’s open to close, leave no extra minutes for customers to ramble away.

Get in. Get out. There’s a fifteen person deep line behind you. Have a nice day. Next!

Monday through Thursday is a different case, especially if you happen to be cashiering at one of the back-of-the-store mall registers. And especially, especially if you drew the ultimate short straw and you’re serving a mini banishment shift at the 2^nd floor back mall register.

At this isolated register known only as “Mall2” you’re lucky if you ring out more than 20 people in an 8 hour shift. It’s the prime venue to get latched into by an old man for a long one-sided conversation about fishing lures or various types of mosquito repellent. (Mall2 has the added benefit of being right next to the camping, fishing and gun departments- primary senior citizens zone).

I’m thinking back now on different captive convos/advice sessions I’ve had...

Men are the most hopeless shoppers. I’m sure they mean well, but I can see what’s coming before the conversation even gets its first syllable uttered.

The men drift into the women’s clothing section, their foreheads creased with concern. They came into the store (a place that has never failed them for running shoes or gun cleaner) for a new type of purchase: one for a woman.

They amble about the colorful racks, picking up a shirt here and there. The eyebrows furrow downwards and together. They hold a garment up for inspection and glimpse me trying to be invisible behind my subtle register from the early ‘90s; a hulking back beast of a thing continually humming like a hoard of hornets. It’s a siren’s call to a bewildered male shopper.

I can practically hear the poor man’s mental sigh of relief. He walks briskly towards me in his shiny ‘I’m a grown up corporate man’ shoes and I know his thoughts. “Yesssss I’ve found a woman. I’ll tell her what I’m looking for and make the task of obtaining it her responsibility.”

Right.

Because of course women know exactly what to purchase for other women they’ve never met and know nothing about. It’s like men think our boobs are some sort of interconnected constant communication device so we all know each other.

Around noon one weekday, a man came to my register with all the tell-tale signs of ‘I Have No Idea What I’m Doing’ Syndrome. 

Furrowed brow. Check. 

Lowered eyebrows in confusion from trying to discern how sports bras work. Check. 

He is here during the window of corporate lunch hours (11am-1pm) the apex of solo man shopping endeavors. Check.

Sure enough, the man approaches my counter and lays across the fake granite surface a pair of light springy orange mesh basketball shorts and a tight compression-level tropical orange weight lifting shirt.

Me (obligatorily): “Hello sir, how can I help you?”

Man: “This is for my daughter.”

He looks down at the clothes for a few seconds, then back at me and raises one worried eyebrow just a fraction.

I survey the fruity hues before me. I know what has to be done and I know once I say what I know I have to say I’m definitely in for at least a 15 minute personal shopping excursion.

Me *sigh*: “Are these clothes supposed to be worn together as an outfit?”

I watch the gears of the man’s brain whirl. I’m sure he’s very good at banking or being corporate or whatever else he does at the job where he goes in the expensive navy suit he’s standing before me in. At this point I’m almost certain someone else picked out the suit and the gold tie for him.

He voices his thoughts slowly…

Man: “Yes… Don’t they go together?”

This is one of the great afflictions all man seem to be burdened with from birth: the belief that if you wear all the same color- VIOLA you are now MATCHING.

No. No. No.

You are definitely not matching. I don’t care if the clothes are just within the same color family, different shades or the exact same color- you. are. not. matching.

Now this ill informed man wants to afflict his daughter with an all orange outfit he assembled while fully in the grasp of ‘same color equals matching’ ideals.

I must intervene.

Carefully, like a puppet master, intervene and save this girl I don’t even know from wearing an all Hi-C hued outfit to please her daddy.

I reach out and move the shorts up against the shirt to give the appearance my judgment on the outfit is still developing.

*pause*

Me: “Sir. No. No these clothes do not go together.”

He looks genuinely taken aback. For a second I question my honesty. Should I have simply nodded my head and sold him the outfit?

Man: “Oh. Why doesn’t this go together?”

No turning back now. To be fair- he did ask.

Me: “You can’t wear orange on orange and call it matching. Usually when making an outfit you pick a dark color and a bright color. Black shorts, pink top, navy shirt, green pants.”

I purposely stayed away from suggesting the color combo of ‘orange/black’ because certain color combos align with holidays and such and therefore cannot be worn into a locker room. I’m not going to be responsible for taking this girl’s outfit from fruit themed to Halloween.

The man adjusts his gold tie nervously. I’m sure that tie costs more than I’ll earn from my entire 8 hour shift.

Man: “She likes orange.”

Me: “You can have orange in an outfit. The whole outfit’s selling point just can’t be that it is orange.”

My middle-aged fashion student nods very slowly, and I wonder if he actually understands or if that is a practiced move from board meetings to look like he understands. Without another word, he turns on a polished heel and heads back to the racks. He browses with a new found fervor, I can tell. I decide not to leave my post at the counter to assist. I’ll let this one fly on his own right from the start.

I also decide the orange outfit has been correctly abandoned. I gather it up off the counter and tuck it out of sight; hopefully those two garments never have to endure the shame of the suggestion they be combined again.

I’m pleased to report my pupil appeared at my counter within a five minute window (anything beyond that time frame and I would have had to go on a reconnaissance mission after him- probably to the women’s shoes) holding what I could already tell was a much improved selection.

He draped his choices over my counter which much more pride than hesitation. I survey the results.

I see a black basic heatgear running shirt, and a pair of orange and white trimmed Nike running shorts. The choices aren’t a homerun (black and orange still entered the same outfit) but I am satisfied. There’s no shame in putting a teenage girl in this. I’ve seen them wear weirder things. (Like the fly fishing feathers we sell in the Hunting department- they end up in their hair. That’s another story).

Me: “Sir, this is a great outfit.”

He doesn’t say much more, just gives me an ambiguous head bob- probably another move from the corporate world. I check out the outfit to him and he leaves.

Maybe me helping him with the outfit did nothing in the long run. Perhaps his daughter would have loved to wear an orange on orange outfit. Or she’s in the thick of the picky-picky teenager years where absolutely nothing will please her, particularly anything from her dorky dad.

But I like to think I enlightened another man with some extremely basic styling tips for women. His wife and daughter and who knows how many other females in his life could benefit from a cashier telling him to go with ‘one dark color and one bright color per outfit.’He could purchase satisfactory outfits for birthdays, anniversaries, or an ‘I’m sorry I did something dumb’ occasion. 

All because I, a cashier, took an extra few minutes to engage in some retail therapy with him.