I. Store Hours
In my area of my hometown, there are lots of little boutiques that sell nice clothing suitable for conducting. They're tucked away in little shopping centers, dotted along the town square or set up in lovely repurposed historical homes.
Which means they don't have those customizable marquees that display such information to drivers as store hours or neon "Open" signs.
It also means that, in pursuit of a classy ambience, they often have soft lighting that, when looking in the windows from outside, is difficult to distinguish from no lighting at all.
They do have hours posted, however! On a nice cream-colored piece of printer paper taped to the front door with "Monday-Saturday, 10 AM - 5 PM" in Times New Roman, 12pt.
The worst was walking around the square. There were several people sitting outside a pizza restaurant just down the way from a line of clothing stores. I walked down the sidewalk, squinting into the windows, trying to see whether they were open or not. A couple had lights on inside, but no nice piece of printer paper on the door, meaning I had to suffer the awkwardness of trying to open the door and finding it locked in front of all those pizza place customers.
What they were actually thinking: "This Vine I made is funny, but I'm not sure if it's Jennette McCurdy funny."
What I envisioned them thinking: "Wow, that girl is a total loser. Let's laugh at her when she's out of earshot."
II. Which way from my car?
The square has a little park in the center with a series of sidewalks that cross the park like a big X, with a statue at the intersection. I parked in a spot along the side of this square, about halfway between two of the corners. The place I wanted to go was right directly across the park square. There are no "Keep Off The Grass" signs. But I couldn't bring myself to cross the park in a straight line - I walked to the corner, got to the statue, walked to the other corner...pretty much made the most ridiculous zigzag pattern on the planet Earth. My brain envisioned the pizza customers calling the cops to report a stoned woman in the square.
III. Waiting to get at a rack that someone else is already at.
"COULD YOU BE ANY SLOWER. Fine detail analysis is what the fitting room is for."*
IV. Having someone else start picking through the same small rack or same section of a rack that you are browsing.
"I was here first. Didn't your mama teach you patience? Or personal space?"*
V. Fitting rooms with curtains instead of doors.
The only thing keeping an undraped me from somebody's eyes (and/or somebody's Instagram) is everyone else's understanding of closed curtains as a sign that the room is occupied. Understanding which, I might add, is not aided by a cream-colored printed up sign.
VI. Not destroying clothes in the process of trying them on.
It's always the same story when I try on dresses. Over the head or over the hips?
Over the head - Potentially smearing makeup and/or deodorant on the garment which the nice employees then have to clean or conceal, or turning my hair into a beastly mane that will make it look like I used the dressing room as a choreography rehearsal site.
Over the hips - Clenching your thighs and hiney, holding your breath and thinking skinny thoughts and STILL you hear the bone-chilling, ego-destroying pop of a stitch snapping as you pull the dress up over your hips. "Oh no, I broke it. They're going to force me to pay for it because I broke it." But then, once you've taken the garment back off and examined it, you can't find a single loose stitch. WHAT WAS THAT POP?
VII. The line.
The line is where another behavior judgment paradox takes place, just like the rack waiting versus rack possessing scenario I described earlier. If you're in an establishment that puts all customers in one line, rather than letting them pick a checkout line on their own, everything you believe about personal space and karma comes to bear on this waiting time. Specifically, if I stand rather close to the person ahead of me, it will make the Gods of Checkout see my urgency and make the line go faster. But if the person behind me stands too close to me, that person is a jerk and makes me uncomfortable.
VIII. The checkout.
I had some cash on me, so I wanted to pay partially in cash and partially with my credit card. So I handed the lady my cash and watched the little credit/debit/PIN thingy with the screen to see my updated total.
And waited.
And waited.
Finally, the cashier said, "It's not doing anything - did you swipe it?"
I replied, "No, I was waiting for it to update my total."
She gave me the strangest look and said, "It doesn't do that."
So I swiped my card, at which point it finally did tell me my updated total...the updated total I had, at that point, just paid.
Folks, this is one point on which I know I'm not crazy. I used to work a retail job and for the first year I worked there, we didn't even have a point-of-sale system. We had an old register on which we could only enter "[Department] Item." The credit/debit machine was a relic of the 80s that wasn't at all connected to the register - we had to enter the total manually. We'd have to run reports at the end of the day and it would zip off miles of register tape telling us how many dollars' worth of various departmental merch we had sold that day.
But you know what that antique setup could do? RECEIVE ONE METHOD OF PAYMENT AND THEN UPDATE THE TOTAL BEFORE TAKING THE SECOND METHOD. And when we finally did get a point-of-sale system that could scan barcodes, create custom reports based on specific items, take credit/debit cards, place orders for us, and even enable us to send messages to each other?
Yep, it updated the total too.
Of course, it's not Checkout Lady's fault that that store's system doesn't do that, but it just bugged me that she thought it was strange of me to expect it. Just wanted to know how much I was putting on my card before I put it on my card.
And before you ask - no I did not want to do the math in my head because I did not wish to be there past store closing.
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I'll cap off my super awkward mission with a photo of the acquisition made more awkward by the fact that I'm standing on a toilet (we have no full-length mirrors in my house).JPG)
*Thought it. Didn't say it.
