retail un-therapy

"She's mean," my manager Dennis mouthed. He pointed to the fitting room door full of size fourteen shorts. I furrowed my brow as he raised his eyebrows and ran away, running past a woman with an aggressive squint and cankles. To think a 40-year-old, smart-mouth gay man was frightened by an agitated housewife past menopause surprised me, since he usually had something awful to say about everyone.

"My God, she was so mean to me, and all I did was try to help her!" he shouted.

The rest of us rolled our eyes. This was the nature of retail. No day was a good day in retail, since there was someone in a bad mood at all times. Some days, working in a clothing store felt like the world dumped all of the contents of a port-a-John onto me, feeling nothing but the metaphorical sludge of someone else's shit. I greeted customers on the way in, receiving no acknowledgement by the other party, and I had my sentences cut short by aggressive shoppers, just like Dennis' mean lady.

"It just happens," I said. That woman would be back again soon to harass one of us, like they all did. Maybe it wouldn't be her, maybe it will be a woman who has her same bad attitude, a woman with her same figure, her same glasses. But someone would eventually come into our store, and we would sit in the break room to exchange bad customer stories all over again.
August 8th, 2012 at 11:18pm