Reeling 'Em In. Really?

There are many things I love about my "fun" part time job in retail. Most of them just happen to be hanging in my closet.

Granted, I generally like doing things as efficiently -- and with as little effort -- as possible, which is why I had thought my four hours in the shop yesterday had been quite successful. With very little forced conversation, I managed to sell the entire outfit I was wearing (boots and all) to two customers, and half of it to a third. All I had to do was get dressed in the morning -- something I try to do on a regular basis so my children don't have to fear the news reports of a middle aged woman wandering naked through the wilds of deep dark suburbia.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I didn't have to talk to the women who ended up buying my outfit. We chatted and laughed plenty; I even joined them occasionally in the fitting room, allowing one of them to actually try on my own dress so she could decide on size. (It worked out well; she bought the other size and I ended up with the dress she didn't want which I just had to put on so my children wouldn't hear reports of the middle aged saleswoman wandering naked through the mall.) We bonded, these women and I. We shared stories of our kids, our own childhoods, our favorite restaurants. We commiserated about the flab in our stomachs and the size of our calves. We swore we would shop together one day (promising not to wear "the outfit") and we hugged.

I left work with a spring in one step and a drag in the other. My effortless successes were overshadowed by my continued refusal to engage in scripted "conversation starters" with folks who clearly have no interest in having a conversation with me. Don't get me wrong; I have three children and I taught for years. I am accustomed to being ignored, even being given the occasional "stink eye" by someone who holds me in complete disdain. But I am usually genetically related to those people, and have some plausible reason -- in my mind, at least -- for continuing to bug the shit out of them.

Here's how it went after I backed off of customer number one, who responded to my offer of assistance by turning her head away from me and muttering "I'm just looking around." Actually, she may have said "go fuck yourself;" it's tough to hear someone who's not facing you when the music is blaring.

Young, perky manager arrives by my side. "What's she looking for?" Hmm. Maybe she said she was looking for a round. A round of what? I was stumped. I admitted I did not know, since the woman had been quite clear about wanting me to disappear.

"Did you try a relationship conversation?" Seriously, I am not making this up.

"No." I was hoping my discount would still apply until the end of business on the day of my termination.

"Do you want me to try?"

I thought about that. As much as I felt horrible for doing this to the woman around my age who wanted me to disappear, I'm always up for some entertainment. "Sure. Go for it."

I watched and listened from afar. (That's how you learn.) If the woman could have turned her head more than one hundred eighty degrees, she would have. When the axis of her neck failed her, she just began the slow shuffle down the wall rack in a feeble effort to escape. She had to stop when she got to the front end of the store. She didn't seem like the type who would be willing to stand in the window and pretend to be a mannequin. She left, her head still turned at an odd angle. Actually I think it was spinning.

Young, perky manager arrives again by my side. "See how I got her talking?" Talking, walking. Practically the same word. I could see how she got confused.

That was my first of many lessons in "conversation starting" and "relationship conversations" for the day. I didn't have a pen, but I took a lot of mental notes. During one particularly difficult pop quiz on how I could have gotten an especially unfriendly browser to become my new best friend, I suggested a leash. She thought I was joking. "You just can't force the fish to bite," I said, feeling a bit maternal. "You need to wait for them to start to nibble a bit."

It was worse than trying to explain to a blind dog that if we took an umbrella we could go out in the rain and not get pelted. (Yes, Manny and I had that conversation at four o'clock this morning, and his puzzled head cock seemed vaguely familiar; now I remember where I had seen a similar look.)

Note to my children: if you hear about a middle aged woman running around naked downtown, it's because I looked so good on the unemployment line I sold the clothes off my back. Sorry.