Coach says my posing has really improved. “I get the sense you’ve had some kind of breakthrough.”
The store owner has smoothed over my relationship with my coworkers too. They say I should enter a bodybuilding competition, but I don’t know yet whether I will or not. They say that if I do, they’ll form a fan club and get me a fancy banner. At lunch break today, someone said, “I guess we should take your wishes into account. What would you like for it to say?”
I said, “How about: You can now fling any roller coaster with your bare hands!”
I want to increase my barbell lifts by another thirty pounds before spring. And I want to get a dog, an adorable Yorkie.
Fitting Room
She’d gone in, so there was no way she wasn’t coming out again. The only things in there were a rug and a mirror. But the customer had already been in the fitting room for three hours.
What was she doing in there? Trying on our clothes, of course. Nonstop, since midafternoon. Whenever I asked her, “How are you doing in there, madam?” she’d reply, “I’m just getting changed.” When a customer says this, you really have to wait a while before asking again—because if you do and they have to say “I’m just getting changed” again, that would feel really awkward, as if you’d been trying to rush them; plus, they’d probably be insinuating that they were doing things at their own pace and wanted you to leave them alone.
In terms of reasons a customer might not come out of the fitting room, one possibility is that they’ve actually finished changing but the clothes are hopelessly unsuitable. It’s happened to me too: there are some clothes in the world that, the moment you put them on, make you feel so miserable you just want to smash the mirror in front of you as your reflection looks on in surprise. The kind of clothes that make you think, You’ve got to be kidding, and wonder if perhaps you’ve always looked like a clown, whether your entire life up until that point has been an embarrassing mistake.
At first, I thought that must be it. The shop where I work mainly sells slightly quirky pieces from high-fashion labels that the owner purchases overseas, so it’s not uncommon for a customer to try something on but then feel hesitant about coming out of the booth to look at herself in the large mirror. Our clothes are by no means inexpensive either, so when that happens, we tend to leave the customer be and give her plenty of time to make up her mind in private. So I was ringing up other customers, and organizing the stock room, and generally trying to fill some time before checking up on the customer again.
When I couldn’t wait any longer, I called through the curtain, “Is there anything I can help you with at all?”
“There’s nothing. I’m fine,” said the customer, sounding a little annoyed. “But haven’t you got a dress that’s more casual than this one? This one is too much of a party dress. I couldn’t just wear it anywhere.”
“In that case,” I said, and brought her a light silk dress with a subtle, almost translucent print. “This one’s from a Paris label. They do a lot of printed styles—lovely, sophisticated colors.”
The customer reached a hand out from behind the curtain and grabbed the clothes hanger, pulling the dress into the fitting room. There was lengthy rustling as she got changed. I wondered whether I should go do something else, but I decided to wait. Store policy is that the same member of staff stays with a customer for the duration of their visit. Many of our clothes can be somewhat challenging to work into a look, so we pride ourselves on helping customers find the style that works best for them.
To do this, you really have to start by knowing what your customer is like. What age are they? How tall? What about their personality? As it was, this customer had come in just as I was serving one of our regulars a cup of English tea, so all I’d seen was her hand as she pulled the curtain closed, saying, “I’m trying this on.”
“What sort of size would you normally take in a dress, madam?”
“I forget. Hard to keep track.”
Perhaps she was extremely shy, and it had taken all her courage to come in to our boutique after seeing us featured in some magazine. And then maybe she still couldn’t bear for us to see her, because of her insecurities about her height or her weight, and had missed her opportunity to safely leave the booth.
“Do you tend to choose a trouser look, madam, or would you more often wear a skirt?”
“Sometimes I more often wear a skirt, and sometimes I tend toward a trouser.”
Another possibility was that she’d recently had plastic surgery, and her face had collapsed while she was getting changed. She might be desperately adjusting silicone at this very moment. When I was younger, I heard about a woman who’d disappeared from a fitting room while on vacation overseas. There was a trapdoor in the floor of the booth, and she’d been sold straight to people smugglers. Maybe I could scare my customer into leaving the fitting room by telling her that story. That might actually be good customer service—less likely to cause offense than saying, “Please do feel free to step out and look in this larger mirror here!”
“Are you on your way home from work today?”
“Does that have anything to do with finding something to wear?”
Or what if it was a woman who’d once been humiliated in a fitting room, trying to take revenge on retail staff by haunting us? I nearly freeze whenever I’m walking down a street at night and hear the sound of high heels behind me. It must be the guilt from constantly telling customers, “Lovely!” or, “Oh, that suits you so well,” regardless of what they try on.
She was still in there at 8:00 p.m.—closing time. I checked in with her several times, to no avail. I could hardly draw the curtains myself, so I had no choice but to say, “There’s no rush, madam,” and settle in. The customer kept making rustling sounds inside the booth, and once in a while I’d hear her murmur, “Oh, my!” or “Hrm-mm.” She requested each piece in every size and color, one after the other. Barreling around our storeroom to gather all the items she asked for, I wondered what her story was, what important occasion she might be shopping for with such thoroughness. I asked my manager for the keys to the store. I’d made up my mind to stay after everyone else went home, to help my customer find what she was looking for. Our regulars could count on their favorite member of staff to be at their service at any time with just a phone call, so we often stayed open after hours for a single customer.
By the time the clock rounded midnight, my customer had finished trying on every piece of clothing in the shop. Which would she choose? I made a cup of tea and set it by the sofas for when she finally emerged. But it wasn’t to be—she didn’t come out of the fitting room, dressed in the clothes she’d arrived in. Instead, she called out that she wanted to go back to the very first thing she’d tried on. Then, she wanted to do the same with every single piece in the shop. My stamina finally gave out around 3:00 a.m.
In the morning, when I woke up on the shop sofa, the customer was still in the fitting room. She’d been trying to find something to wear all night. Poor, awkward lamb! I was starting to have a soft spot for her. I decided to run out to a local bakery that opened at six, and placed the bagel and the café au lait I’d bought just outside the curtain, saying, “Please, help yourself.” She didn’t respond, but the paper bag was gone when I next looked.