Retail Hell (26 page)

I jerked up from my keyboard pillow like it was on fire.

My skull alarm clock displayed 10:00 a.m.

For a moment I panicked, but then I remembered I was working the closing shift.

Close call.

What a long-ass, hideous nightmare.

Bavaro’s bloodsucking face was left burning my mind’s eye.

I stumbled to the kitchen, trying to shake it off.

Must wake up. Need coffee. Must make coffee.

I spilled water and coffee grounds, and knocked over mugs, blinded by flashes of Cammie’s Chanel logo. What a way to end my three days off from The Big Fancy. Practically no writing done.

Total disaster.

Hundreds of dream experts contend that images occurring during sleep should be viewed symbolically, rather than literally.

They don’t know shit.

Some seven hours after waking from this Big Nightmare, I rounded a fixture in the Marc Jacobs Shop and ran smack into the real Vampire Bavaro.

Her pockmarked face was pale, her black-widow hair pinned up on her head in a bun, and she had on a white oversized T-shirt, black leggings, and Keds. She looked too comfortable for my own good.

“JEFFERSON! There you are. I require your assistance,” Marguerite proclaimed in her most dramatic voice. “I have a coupon from another store for a Marc Jacobs; Debbie has one on hold, but it’s scratched, and the blond girl I dislike immensely never called me back. Everything is a God-awful mess.”

I almost passed out.

No garlic or crosses at my immediate disposal. The Bloodsucking bitch had me right where she wanted me.

Ready your pitchforks.
You are now entering the third floor of hell.

“No, everything is not on sale,” I said through grated teeth. “Only the things with sale signs are on sale. All of the tables are on sale and those fixtures. That’s it. Nothing else!”

The customer looked around, then pointed to the Marc Jacobs shop and asked, “What about those? Are those on sale over there?”

I wanted to hit her.

Instead I turned around and walked away.

We were under Discount Rat attack.

It was The Big Fancy’s biggest sale of the year: the Once a Year Sale.

The Ultimate Retail Hell.

We had replaced our regular fixtures and glass tables with big wooden bins and filled them with a combination of new handbags on sale for a limited time and permanent markdowns. Hordes of hungry sale shoppers surrounded the tables, pawing and pilfering, throwing bags everywhere. When the tables got completely surrounded, I couldn’t help but compare the menagerie to a bunch of pigs at their troughs. From open to close, the place was trashed, looking like a nuclear hand-bag explosion. Bags on the floor. Bags missing stuffing and crumpled up on the counter. Bags hanging off shelves by their straps. At one point, a woman bumped into me and said, “It’s a zoo in here!”

I looked over at the sale troughs, and replied, “I could not agree with you more.”

Besides General Judy, there were ten of us staffed for the Once aYear Sale. The Big Fancy was all about overstaffing — believing it created a “survival of the fittest” environment and got the store more sales. However, by noon, we all thought ten was too many, as we constantly bumped into each other and approached customers who had already been approached. My Handbag Angels looked out for me, and I for them; we handed off customers to each other and protected the ones we had. We made sure the Demon Squad stayed in check, but it was impossible to stop Douche and Tiffany. They were like great white sale sharks, gobbling up customers in packs. The extra salespeople hired for the event never stood a chance. They sold nothing. Using their amazing fashion prowess, Jules and Cammie raked in the sales, beating Tiffany, but not Douche. Marsha held her own because she’d been there so long and had a lot of regulars, while Marci pretty much drowned because her talking slowed down each transaction.

As for me? I survived. Almost.

Despite The Big Fancy’s overstaffing, I had done really well with sales during the morning hours. But it wasn’t long before the parade of Big Fancy Serpents and Bloodsuckers had taken their toll on me. Patty harangued me for at least a half-hour, wanting deescounts on everything. I finally snapped and said, “Patty, I’m cutting you off. No more deescounts for you. You’ve reached your deescount limit and you don’t have a designated driver.” She had no clue what I meant, just as I had no clue what the fuck Teddy Bear Lady was doing charging down the main aisle wearing dirty Lion King slippers. Did they have secret pockets? And there was her nemesis, the other Virginia, whom I tried to avoid, but she cornered me by the DKNY sale bags and gave me details about her gall bladder attack the night before. Of course, my Shoposaurus Carnotaurus came in and devoured half the store. It was fun parading Lorraine around as always, but also stressful and tiring — as always. She did drop ten grand though, so I was one Retail Slave who had nothing to complain about. That is, until the Vampire Bavaro and Mrs. Beaumont showed up within minutes of each other. After waiting on them, my head got a little fuzzier, my clothes a little sweatier, and my vision blurrier.

What’s
my name? Where am I? I sell handbags at The Big Fancy? You
got to be
fuckin’
kidding me!

As lunchtime arrived, the department resembled a retail Vietnam War. All the chaotic shit that happens during sales happened. The registers went offline at least twice, making us wait ten minutes for an approval. The phone rang every ten seconds. Judy screamed at us because our sales were down from last year and we were missing the department goal. Cammie and Marci fought over sales. Tiffany and Jules fought over sales. Douche and everyone fought over sales.

Every time I turned around, something was missing a ticket.

“There’s no price on this wallet?” a customer said.

I bent down and picked up a tag from its spot on the floor next to her feet.

“Well what about these five others?” she demanded.

“They’re missing because people are eating them,” I said.

For a minute she looked like she believed me.

By late afternoon, The Big Fancy was in the throes of Once a Year Sale mania.

I had to tell a lady there were no overnight holds on sale bags. She snapped at me and said, “Listen here, young man. I am the customer. You put no conditions on me. I do as I wish. If I want you to hold these bags till my funeral, you’ll hold them. Got it?” I took the bags, thinking
if only.

I then spent ten minutes explaining to a woman that 25% off an original price does not mean an additional 25% off. The woman kept arguing saying “But that would mean it’s an additional 25% off!” Finally I went all Sale Hell Bitch on her: “Does it say ‘additional’ on the sign? NO! They are NOT an additional percentage off. THEY ARE 25 PERCENT OFF ORIGINAL! THAT’S IT!”

Then, for the millionth time, a woman came up to me and asked, “Why isn’t everything on sale?”

I bitched back at her, “Because life isn’t fair.”

The sale questions continued to pummel me:

“I found it on the sale table; shouldn’t it be on sale even if the price is not marked?”

“It’s not my fault someone dropped it on the sale table even though it’s not on sale. Shouldn’t I get it on sale anyway!”

“Can’t you just put it on sale?”

“Will you give me an extra discount?”

“How much is it with tax?”

“There’s a mark on the bottom of this bag, can you clean it off?”

“Is this the right sale price?”

“Can you call another store and get me one in black?”

“Is that the final sale price?”

“Is there an additional amount off?”

“Is this all you have on sale?”

“Why isn’t everything on sale? I thought the whole store was on sale!”

I couldn’t take any more. Queer-Eye Handbag Guy was going to kill a Discount Rat!

Let me just squeeze these leather handbag straps tighter around your neck
and you can go to a place where everything is on sale and get an additional
20% no matter what!

I ran for the stockroom as if my life depended on it.

I needed to energize myself, so I hid there for twenty minutes talking to Judy, who looked like she had laid down in front of a lawnmower. She drank Coke and ate Funyuns while I downed Diet Rockstar and devoured chocolate and potato chips. It was the most relaxed I’d ever seen the General. I wasn’t the only one the sale had beaten down. Unfortunately, my temporary reprieve and refueling didn’t help much.

I’d become a sales zombie.

My movements were slow. Eyes glazed over. I reached out toward potential spenders only for them to give me the cold shoulder. They’d look at me funny and say Douche was helping them.

Queer-Eye Handbag Guy couldn’t have sold porno to a gay man.

At that point the only thing I could do without exerting too many brain cells was to straighten. The handbag sale tables reminded me of my closet after I hadn’t done laundry for a month. Piles of bags lay in mounds that looked like tangled kelp. Paper stuffing was everywhere. Handbag zippers were left open. Handbag flaps were left open. Hand-bag straps twisted with other straps. The wallets were even worse, dumped in heaps like old magazines. Bags and wallets were scattered haphazardly all over the floor. The place was a fucking mess.

My ability to service and sell had died and I felt like
I’d
been marked down to 75% off. All I could handle was entering my employee number into the register and putting things in shopping bags. Retail Droid mode took over. I prayed a circuit in my broken-down body wouldn’t overheat.

Finally, around 7:00, the General realized she was getting nothing else out of me and said I could go home. I was too dazed to even feel excited.

As I attempted to run for my gay life, I ran smack into Fashion Disaster.

I’m calling her Fashion Disaster because when I first met her by the sale tables earlier in the day and saw how she was dressed, I thought she had to be either blind or on drugs. This girl had on a white fedora with multicolored feathers sticking out from it, gaudy pink plastic dangly earrings, and an atrocious halter dress that had blue checkerboard print around her boobs with abstract palm trees in white, yellow, and purple for the lower half. On her feet were short purple boots with fringe. Heidi Klum would have screamed and reached for her shotgun!

After choking down laughter, I spent a good half-hour trying to help Fashion Disaster. She either hated everything, had everything, or couldn’t afford anything. The only item she showed any interest in was a cheap, $50 green suede hobo we had gotten in for the sale. She wanted it in black, but the bag had been hot and was gone within several hours of opening.

“You told me there weren’t any more of those suede bags in black!” Fashion Disaster yelled into my discount-worn face.

It had been such a long, hideous Big Fancy sale day. I had to think back for a minute. Black suede? What the fuck was she talking about? Then like any bloodsucking nightmare it all came screaming back.

“There aren’t any left! I told you the truth,” I replied, agitated she was throwing this at me now.

“How come that woman has one?”

I looked over to see Douche helping a girl with huge gold hoop earrings and a leopard print scarf wrapped around her head. She wore a camouflage army jacket with jeans rolled up like pedal pushers, and orange pumps. On her arm was a huge raffia straw satchel with a blue flower.

She was Fashion Disaster’s alter ego, Fashion Meltdown.

Sure enough, Fashion Meltdown was playing with the black hobo while Douche talked, probably telling her not to buy because it was cheap.

“I just saw her pick it up off the sale table,” said Disaster, “I was going over there, but I couldn’t get there fast enough.”

“I don’t know,” I said with a big, exhausted, I’ve-had-it sigh, “Maybe it was on hold or something.”

Fashion Disaster went ballistic: “I’m really pissed! I WANT THAT SUEDE BAG. You have to get it for me. NOW! Or I’m going to the store manager to complain and tell her how you lied to me and Completely ruined my day
and
the outfit I was trying to put together.”

Give me a
fuckin’
break.
I’m
going to barf all over your fringe boots.

Fashion Disaster’s soap opera tirade was the last thing I wanted to deal with. My feet felt like bloody stumps, my eyes were watering, and I was starting to limp.

“I WANT THAT BAG AND I’M NOT LEAVING UNTIL I GET IT!”

“Okay,” I sighed, “I’ll see if she’s going to buy it.”

I maneuvered closer to Douche and Fashion Meltdown, pretending to straighten sale bags, all the while feeling Disaster’s hungry-for-suede eyes boring into the back of my head.

After eavesdropping, I discovered that Meltdown wanted Douche to help her decide between several bags — DKNY, Coach, Kenneth Cole, and the Allure hobo suede bag. All were on sale except for the Coach. Of course Douche could have cared less about what Melt-down wanted and she was pushing her into the Coach, which wasn’t on sale and cost nearly $500. After what seemed like a month to me, Meltdown finally said, “You are right! The Coach is a better investment, and I’m sure they will be sold out next week!”