Oh Stewie, we’ve been apart for such a long time. I just haven’t loved what you’ve been doing lately and I’ve got several pairs of you sitting in my shoe room who’ve never seen the light of day. Yet these?
These are ringing my bell in a very big way.
So much so that I just might forgive you for having that incident a few months ago when, after I asked one of your questionably dressed shopgirls about a shoe coming in wide widths (which, btw, it does) she told me “Maybe you should try Sears for that sort of thing.”
Sears? SEARS? I’m wearing Lanvin for God’s sake! Are you prepared for the cosmic disruption that could come from someone in archival Lanvin walking into SEARS? It’d make 2012 look like the teddy bears’ freakin’ picnic. Are you willing to do that to the universe, Mr Weitzman? Because I’m not.
It is only my excruciatingly good breeding (and the fact that I think she had a rollicking case of the face herp) that stopped me from slapping her across her filth-spewing mouth.
But still, for these mocassins on sale and in wide widths at Endless, I’ll forgive you.
That “try it at Sears” wench needs a serious talking-to. I enjoy reporting such offensive minions to their managers and demanding an apology. I had a similar experience at a foo-foo boutique in Jackson, MS, wherein I was condescendingly referred to JC Penney’s, and that little shopgirl really, REALLY regretted her nasty attitude by the time I left there.
Comment by Jezebella — June 8, 2010 @ 12:15 pm
Whoa! I like Stewie, but….um, you gotta have people in your store who know your freaking stock!
This reminds me of when I went to a friend’s BIL’s shoe shop to have a cheap pair of Victoria Secret sandals cut open with elastic so that I could a summer’s wear out out them and then toss them. The shoe repair guy didn’t measure properly, and so when I still couldn’t get them on after he was done, he looked at my figure snidely and said “Your feet much be swollen” and I turned around and said “That, or you didn’t measure competently.”
Those are cute!
Comment by Lisa — June 8, 2010 @ 12:58 pm
I don’t usually comment, but have you ever worked retail? No one gives a gently goddamn what you’re wearing, you self-important ninny. Don’t be rude to retail workers! Our lives are fucking terrible!
Comment by pata — June 8, 2010 @ 3:46 pm
Pata, when a retail worker in a high-end shop looks at a customer and tells her to shop low-end, that’s bloody rude, condescending and un-called for. Working retail is brutal, but that does not give a shopgirl license to be assy to fat shoppers.
Comment by Jezebella — June 8, 2010 @ 5:35 pm
I have worked retail, pata. I’ve waited tables, I’ve tended bar, I’ve even wiped elderly people’s behinds and given them baths in a nursing home. I’ve done the whole she-bang, toots–nobody has more poor-working-girl street cred than me, honeybunch.
So if a retail worker is unnecessarily rude to me–such as acting like I have just walked into an clothing store and asked for a battleship when all I’ve really asked if whether something comes in particular size, they’re going to get rude back. Nobody is entitled to treat me like a punching bag just because they are unhappy with their job. Go to a gym, a therapist, or roast a bowl for all I care–but I am not there to meet the salesperson’s emotional needs. I’m there because I wish to buy something.
Moreover, if you don’t notice what your customers are wearing, you should be.
Plumcake’s case illustrates the point nicely. She’s not being paid to educate the salesperson on Weitzman’s prodo; that salesperson is being paid to know the line, and convey that information to potential customers. By missing that Plumcake was wearing a designer label, this person missed the fact that in front of her was a women who does, in fact, blow $500 on shoes—a potentially easier sale than a person who does not regularly do so. Her job is to try to get Plummy to spend $500 in *her* store–not Sears, not Lanvin, not the Gap–*her* store, *her* sale. And it doesn’t matter even if the potential customer is wearing K-Mart: you don’t know what that person can and can not afford. This salesperson didn’t the know her own product line, she was too damn lazy to look it, and she was obviously uninterested and unknowledgeable about high-end shoes more generally.
IOW, Weitzman’s people didn’t hire well and they didn’t train well. And you can’t do that if you want somebody to spend $200 and more on shoes.
Comment by Lisa — June 8, 2010 @ 6:07 pm
I, too, have worked retail. And waited tables. And cleaned the bathrooms at the pool when I was a lifeguard, including getting the poop off the floor of the men’s room the summer the boys thought it would be funny to skip the toilet. There’s my street cred.
In none of these jobs was rudeness part of the job description. The purpose of a retail clerk is to make money for her employer by solving the customer’s problem. Not by ticking the customer off. Even if the customer was rude first, my job was to say, “Yes ma’am” and solve the darn problem.
Comment by The gold digger — June 9, 2010 @ 9:50 am
Exactly. The shopgirl can be forgiven for not knowing off the bat if the shoe came in wide widths. She may have been new. But the proper response would then have been, “I’m not sure, but I’ll be happy to find out for you, if you don’t mind waiting a moment.”
The proper response is not “try Sears for that sort of thing. ” Her response was incredibly lazy, dismissive, unhelpful and rude.
Comment by La Petite Acadienne — June 9, 2010 @ 2:09 pm