Color Stories

Day two back in retail has come and gone, and it has helped me recover some long repressed memories. Cheaper than therapy, even if I do use my discount to spend more than I earn most days.

"All I know is I'll never go back into retail," was what I had said, way back in April, and not just to myself. To several people, actually, friends who just think me too fragile to hear I told you so. At least I'm happy I can remember something. My short term memory is still a disaster; yesterday, each time I pulled an item off a rack, I had the darnedest time, no more than three and a half minutes later, trying to figure out where I had found it. Which doesn't seem to make much sense, given that the store I now work in is organized by "color stories."

"Oh, that goes in purple my young colleague told me, clearly amazed at my ineptitude. I did a spin, trying to keep up with my head. Everywhere I looked there was purple. Sure, there was a section earmarked for purple and green and brown (I think that was the combo) but that was for garments where the purple and green and brown were dominant and also for very particular shades of purple and green and brown although I couldn't really tell you what shades those were. To make matters worse, there's a nasty trick called a onesie -- and item that, due to popular demand, has become, in the store, one of a kind.  But there's no marker in the purple and green and brown section, say, to let you know that no matter how dominantly purple and green and brown that item is you will not find it here. So you keep looking until somebody young enough to be your grandchild grabs it from you and looks at you as if you're the biggest idiot on the planet and how dare you call yourself a hot anything and places it, with an emphatic clang of the hanger, with all the other forlorn onesies at the front of the rack. Not at the very front, mind you, because that's reserved for something else (which escapes me right now), but somewhere near the front. As if.

Color stories abound these days. White Girls' Problems. Ya got that right sister. Why the hell would anyone waste time on the big important shit when you can pretty much get through life sweating the small stuff? Fifty Shades of Grey. You'd think everyone was reading War and Peace, so fierce is the look of concentration on the faces behind the Kindles. Kindles, bibliophiles' answer to the brown paper bag. White Skinny Jeans. Okay, well that's not a blog or a Twitter or even a story. Well, maybe a horror story. My horror story on day two of my briefly interrupted retail career, much of which I spent -- when I wasn't trying to learn my color wheels -- squeezing my saggy ass into tight white jeans. If I wanted everyone to see that my legs look like sausage links I'd just go naked, for goodness sake. Why would I spend two hundred dollars on a pair of white jeans. Excuse me, that's "premium denim" to those of us in the biz.

On day three, I think I'll be learning how to make "connections" with customers. I already have a leg up; most of them are white, so at least I can kind of guess what their problems are. And, I think I've learned that being able to squeeze your ass into white skinny jeans is power, so I envision myself carrying armloads of "premium denim" into fitting rooms and coming out with just as many armloads of new best friends. Frankly, based on my observations yesterday, the best way to make a connection with a customer is to leave her alone until she clearly wants your input. But, then again, I also tried to put a fire engine red top back in the orange section, so what the heck do I know?

Maybe I'll stick it out in retail a little while longer, figure out the color stories. Who knows, there could really be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.