“Sure,” I
gushed, “that would be awesome.” I may
no longer be the appropriate age of the J.Crew desired demographic, but I am at
least within a decade (or three). I knew
that “awesome” was still the right word to use.
Johnny Crew
walked me back to the dressing room area, which was surrounded by full-length
mirrors. I immediately noticed that I
looked about six feet tall and a size 2 in these mirrors.
“Johnny?” I
said, noticing how he did not flinch when I called him that even though his
nametag read Wyatt, “Johnny, what is the deal with these mirrors?”
“So glad you
noticed!” Johnny-Wyatt enthused. “The new
slimming mirrors have, like, tripled our sales since they were installed.”
I stood
there gazing adoringly at myself in my attractive black sweatpants and faded Target
t-shirt, red flip-flops, fraying baseball hat, and still-wet hair. I looked good. These sweatpants did not even have a hole in
them (that I could see from the front anyway).
Johnny had
hung up all the Fall essentials on the narrow metal rods lining my dressing
room. Just this morning when I was back
at home, I had looked at my pathetic wardrobe and decided something needed to
be done. With that in mind, I now glanced at
my (typed) list to make sure I had not forgotten anything: · Khaki pants
· Jeans
· Black pants
· Basic black skirt
· Leather belt
· Tan skirt
· White blouse
· Tweed jacket
· Silk top
· Black sweater (pull-over)
· Red cardigan sweater
· Striped t-shirt
· Black ballet flats
· Gray tights
· New socks
I had
mentioned to The Husband that I would be going to J.Crew to stock up. He replied predictably, “Well, now that you
finally have a job, I really don’t care what you waste your own money on.” That meant I could buy whatever I
wanted!
Luckily,
everything I tried on fit and looked great (thanks to the new mirrors, which I
was internally vowing to have installed all over my house the minute I got home). I went to the cash register to pay for all my
goodies.
“Wow,” said
a different clerk (I had named her Jane Crew in my head), “you are being so
smart to buy everything mix and match so it will all coordinate. These are perfect neutral basics.”
I smiled at
Jane. She was right about me and my
smart shopping skills.
She totaled
up the prices of the clothes and started to get out some tissue paper so the delicate
sweaters could safely make the difficult trek home in my car to my house a full
five miles away.
Then she
turned to me and said something really, really mean. Something I could not believe a salesperson
would be allowed to say to a shopper without getting fired.
“That will
be $3497.65, please.”
“Wait, how
much?” I was shocked. This is apparently what I get for not looking
at the price tags when I shop, a somewhat new habit I had adopted half an hour
ago.
She cleared
her throat, like a stage actress. “I
said, $3497.65.”
I looked in
my walled at the four crisp twenty dollar bills I had just taken out of the ATM
for this specific shopping excursion.
“Umm, well,
I think I went a tad over budget,” I mumbled.
“Please remove, uh, can you take the socks off?”
Jane re-scanned
the socks and set them behind her on a shelf.
There, I knew that would make all the difference!
“Okay, ma’am,
then your new total is $3411.42.”
Whew, that
had helped, but not as much as I needed.
“Please subtract
the black sweater, I think I might have one already that would work.”
Beep!
“Your new total
is $3218.09.”
This went on
for quite some time until the people in line behind me were shuffling around
impatiently and whispering to each other.
Yeah, like they had never gone over budget by $3000!
Finally, we
were left with just the khaki pants.
Jane
squinted at the register total. “This
can’t be right,” she said. “I have a
negative $266. That means I owe YOU $266
plus the khaki pants.”
I was not
about to argue with her, as she clearly knew what she was doing.
“Okay, Jane,
that sounds good. And I would prefer my
refund all in fifties if it is not too much trouble.”
MOV
