Knew I'd get a blog out of it...

So I have had a brief encounter with the world of retail. I worked a shift as a shop floor assistant and, perhaps not all that surprisingly, I'm getting a blog out of it.

Those of you who know me or who have walked past me in the street and paid the slightest bit of attention to what I'm wearing will know that fashion is not my forte. Though it saddens me to say it, I have to confess that I do not know the first thing about clothes, fashion, or as it turns out, folding.

I was pretty nervous about the experience actually. Being thrust into the world of retail, surrounded by members of the general public who might...ask me things brought me out in a cold sweat. However, I steeled myself and entered the fray.

Now I must just take the opportunity to say that I actually did properly enjoy myself. I talked to loads of different people, I made friends with all the other shop floor assistants, who were all seventeen, I felt old (this was a less fun part), but I was constantly busy and overall I had a good experience.

Now I really did try. I'm a hard worker and I will give anything a bash. But no matter how many attempts and practices it took, nothing I folded looked any good. My main job, was to fold things, so this was obviously, a bit of a problem. I'm not 100% sure, but I did have suspicion that at one point a member of staff was actually told to go around after me and basically refold everything I had "folded" previously.

However, one definite highlight was that despite not being on the ski slopes, I had the opportunity to pretend to be like James Bond. I managed to acquire a walkie talkie you see. To clarify, acquire makes it sounds dramatic / that I stole it from somewhere - actually someone thrust it at me and ran off. So in the brief moment that I held this walkie talkie in my hand, I felt pretty cool. When you're starting at basically the rock bottom of cool you see,  it doesn't take much to feel cool when you're suddenly in the possession of something like a walkie talkie.

It took me just one attempt to use the walkie talkie to bring any ideas I had about being cool/like James Bond crashing down. Nothing feels quite like humiliation like hearing your own voice, quavering out garbled words, desperately trying to describe identifying features on a belt echoing across a packed shop floor. That was a joy. This was only made worse when I subsequently failed to grasp the really, very basic operating system of the walkie talkie and ended up having a battle with the stock room assistant who was actually trying to talk to someone else entirely about a scarf. It took about 4 exchanges which went something along the lines of...

"The blue scarf"
"No it's a brown belt"
"The SCARF"
"IT'S A BELT"

...Before someone took the walkie talkie off me (deliberately not saying confiscated) and put me out of my misery. I went and hid behind some jumpers and refolded some of my earlier efforts.

Another stand out moment was when in, I'm going to claim, the excitement of it all but really it was just a moment of quite spectacular stupidity, I somehow forgot entirely where I was working. I'm not joking. I forgot that I was working in a womens store. So when a very handsome (had to be handsome) man came up to me and asked me my opinion on two different jackets, I gave it to him, in my full capacity as an honest and direct human being.

One, I told him, would make him look a bit effeminate so....you know... perhaps -not- that one...

Unfortunately I took the subsequent stunned silence as an opportunity to direct my attention to the other.

Nice, very nice, but quite light, and as he was quite pale it could make him look a bit washed out so...y'know.
(NB: I honestly think I heard that washed out bullshit on tv once and stored it away happily in my subconscious for just such an occasion, nice one, past me).

He looked at me as if I was mad. I looked at him with what I hoped was the kind of look that said "Hey dude, I'm just here to fold clothes, not give opinions", but really probably just looked like a slightly over eager smile, waiting for confirmation that actually, I did know things about fashion and that I was a top employee.

However, once he'd (kindly) clarified for me that they weren't for him (and subtly implied that I actually wasn't such a top employee, more top deluded employee), we moved on fairly swiftly. That is to say I laughed uproariously and said THANK GOD very loudly. Every now and then it pays to have a laugh which threatens to break the sound barrier as it distracts you so much that you usually have no idea what it was you were just talking about. Usually it just makes you a slightly annoying/embarrassing person to go to the cinema/pub/theatre/shops/outside with, but this time it came to my rescue. Thankfully, he also found the funny side, we laughed and rode off into the sunset together.

It was always expected that I'd get some kind of story out of my brush with retail. I texted one of my friends when I got back saying I had a few funny stories to tell and she replied saying simply, "Knew it". Shit like this just happens to me. It's part and parcel of being fairly hopeless at life and only really having a proper grasp on what's going on about 7% of the time. Watch out world!*

That's it from me for now, until the next time I venture outdoors. Stay tuned!

*Actually world, you can probably take it easy for a while, I'd say your safe for a bit. Have a cup of tea. Mmm.