me: oh this is a really cute top?

customer 1: um…..whatever.

me: this is one of my favorite pieces in the store right now. did you try it on?

customer 2: look, i don’t need some fake act from you ok? i know you don’t care.

me: i like your top you have on. is that from here?

customer 3: oh puh-lease…

it eventually leads to this at the end of the day:

me: that will be $327.96 .

customer: it wouldn’t kill you to acknowledge me you know?

why do i try?

“Can you please let me use the bathroom, I just got my period and I need to insert a tampon.”

Ok. Who says “insert” a tampon? I gave her a look of “Sorry your undies are kinda bloody right now” and then told her that she should hurry over to the other public restrooms, which would take her less than 2 minutes to get to.

This was not enough for her, she would not be defeated.

“I really just want to insert a tampon! Please please please please!”

I stress again that I can’t let her into the back for security reasons (or whatever I’m supposed to say) and then she gives me that look, that you-are-a-woman-you-should-understand-what-i’m-going-through kind of look. But now that she had been begging for a full minute now I had no sympathy for her.

If I was in her situation I would have bolted out of the store right after I told her where the other restrooms were, not stand around wasting my precious tampon time by begging some sales associate to let me use their bathroom. I hate it when people stress the emergency situation of something and then just show how un-urgent their problem is by wasting time.

At this point a nearby customer, trying to be helpful, says:

“Maybe she could use one of the dressing rooms to put in a tampon.”

I try to hide the disgust on my face and pray that the women didn’t hear this suggestion. The thought of bloody gross tampons rotting in our dressing rooms that never get cleaned did not sound appealing.

Anyways, she asked to see a manager. Like that ever, ever solves anything.

I went up to the manager nearest me (who happened to be the manager with no soul) and told her a woman wanted to talk to her about the bathroom. She quickly told the woman a again that she could not use the restroom, and the woman left, but not after I made sure she wasn’t walking towards the fitting rooms. Yuck.

Let this be a lesson to all you tourists a-travelin’ to New York: If a place says they don’t have restrooms, they don’t. So take your tampons and children to Starbucks or whatever.

I realize that this Easter you came to New York and had one thing on your mind: I need some blindingly white, extra-wide legged sailor pants that are completely inappropriate for my age. Without a care in the world you swaggered into the store where I worked and selected the perfect pair–making sure, of course, that the girl in the fitting room went downstairs to get you a “fresh” pair first.

Anyways, you came up to me and draped the pants over the order form that I was filling out, who cares if I was writing at that moment! You needed to buy pants so you could rush off to shop and eat at all of those other places that aren’t open because it is FUCKING EASTER. Nevertheless, I rang you up normally and mindlessly, which is really the only thing I could do. I began to fold your pants and wrap them up but apparently this wouldn’t do, and you were forced to stop me.

Apparently my folding wasn’t up to snuff. Your standards must be extremely high since you made me refold the pants three, THREE times for you. I don’t know if you knew this but the way that I fold your ugly pants that probably aren’t going to be worn until May (wait: shouldn’t, shouldn’t be worn until May) isn’t going to affect anything. My fold-job is meaningless in the future of these pants getting wrinkly. They will get wrinkled, no matter how crisply I define the crotch and seams.

That really, is beside the point here. You wanted yours pants re-folded. Ok, I get it. Pants. I handed you your bag and perhaps my expression didn’t express the sea of endless love and respect for you that I hold, a sea that stretches for miles and has rainbows cresting over snow-capped mountains in the background. Perhaps my expression was something more like “Wow. This woman made me re-fold her pants three times and now there are twenty people lined up after her. I better pick things up a bit.” There was no love in my expression for you, but there wasn’t any love to begin with. You are a faceless blur of over-mascera’d eyelashes and over-dyed hair that I help probably 50 times a work day. You don’t matter to me. You are just another customer.

So, instead of accepting this as the way of the world you sneer at me: “You can smile you know.”

No bitch, I can’t smile. I spend my time being underpaid at a retail shop where my time is pretty much regulated to saying overused questions to customers (“did you find everything ok?” “how are you doing in there?”) and folding and re-folding clothing. Not only that but I am forced to interact with older women everyday who seem to think that the only reason I was put on this earth was to fetch them sweaters and doorknobs and pretend to be interested in their stories about whatever. A lot of these women are also really big bitches, like yourself. They can’t deal with the fact that they can boss me around physically–which whatever, is my job–they feel the need to control my every emotion because their purchase somehow equates to being God in the eyes of the store they are shopping at.

This isn’t the case for most of retail workers. We have lives and usually other jobs as well but we have to work so much because we need to make rent on our overpriced New York City apartment. We aren’t concerned with you and your opinions. I noticed you are French and I have actually spent some time there and I know how the retail workers there are: they are fucking bitches. So please don’t complain that the girl you were being obnoxious to at that-store-you-bought-white-pants-at didn’t smile during every moment that the two of you shared.

Fuck off,

Retail Robot

dumb old woman: “oh ‘upholstered furniture’ huh? so what does that mean, exactly?”

me: “we are currently having a special discount on all upholstered furniture in the store.”

dumb old woman: “oh so like, sheets and stuff?”

me (forcing politeness): “actually it is on UPHOLSTERED FURNITURE, not sheets, which we do not actually sell in our store at all.”

dumb old woman: “so I saw a shower curtian on sale, is that an extra discount in the upholstered furniture sale?”

seriously? if you are spending well over six hundred dollars on fancy organic cotton t-shirts and “lounge pants” you should know what upholstered furniture is. i don’t care how old you are.

This is my introduction entry.

This is the last sentence of my introductory entry.