Recently, I’ve been working a seasonal job at a clothing store. Nothing big, just folding clothes at tables and making them look nice, but there were two weird incidents this holiday season. They were so… different than anything I expected that I needed to recount them.
The first incident found me organizing men’s underwear and undershirts. Don’t ask. I was rearranging the packages, when an older couple showed up and asked what kind of underwear the man should get. Speechless, I quickly got a hold of myself and preceded to name a few of the brands the store kept. Satisfied, the two started to search the section, while I went back to what I was doing. About ten minutes later, they approached me again and asked if there were any test underwear for him to try on, to see if he liked it. If I was speechless before, I was struck dumb by this request. Test underwear? Stammering, I tried to explain that I had never heard of such a thing. If they noticed my confusion, they chose not to react and soon wandered off, much to my relief. Later, I saw them head for the changing rooms. I think they were going to open a package and he was going to try one of those on. They don’t pay me enough to deal with that.
The second incident happened less than a week ago. I got to work and started folding in the store’s athletic section. It was almost Christmas and the store was running out of clothes. Everything the store had was on the floor. The manager on duty even told me that they were receiving a shipment of spring clothes that day. I hadn’t even been there an hour, when a woman asked if we had a sweatshirt in the size she wanted. I answered that if she couldn’t find it on the floor, it wasn’t in stock. She then pointed to a mannequin on a high shelf. There was a sweatshirt on it. “Could you check that size?” she asked. “I want to know if it’s a medium.” I didn’t even know where the ladders were kept, so I approached a cashier and explained the situation. The poor cashier was coughing and looked like he had a cold, but he accompanied me back to the woman, heard the problem, and showed me where the ladder was. He climbed up and managed to get the mannequin down, with me holding the ladder steady. Checking the size, it was indeed a medium. He managed to pull it off the shelf, while I tried my best to keep him from falling, and he showed me how to disassemble and then reassemble the mannequin. The woman got her sweatshirt and the mannequin, now with a new sweatshirt, was replaced on the shelf.
I worked the eight days leading up to Christmas, the last day being on Christmas Eve. I got some weird requests and inquiries during that time, but nothing was stranger than the underwear and mannequin adventures. You got to love the public. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and an even happier Happy New Year!