My lovely friends Emma and Grace and I went shopping yesterday.
We were in Forever 21, the store with cute clothes made with somewhat crappy material by children in sweatshops. Ironically, they have a bible verse on the bottom of each of their bags.
As a side note, although I am morally opposed to supporting stores that use child labour, I really have no choice because that is the criteria that the majority of stores fall under these days. At least, stores that are within my meager budget.
Anyways, the three of us were looking for clothing. We each found a few items and went to the dressing rooms to try them on. When we went into the fitting room, the clerk said, quite rudely, "Uhm, excuse me! More than one person isn't allowed to be in the dressing room at one time! You can't go in there."
I have a few things to say about that. First of all, we were clearly going into each others changing rooms to help assist with zippers, bows, etc., and to give critiques on the outfits. There isn't anything wrong with that. Secondly, what are they so opposed to? It's not like it's possible to steal anything when you're being watched like a hawk. We didn't even bring our merchandise into other people's dressing rooms. We just brought ourselves. Third, even if you have some sort of regulation or protocol regarding the amount of people in each dressing room, you do NOT need to be so completely rude about it.
I mean, really. We aren't going in there to swap clothes or stuff things into our bras in order to steal them, nor are we going into each others changing rooms to have a quickie. There's no problem.
After we left the store, we wandered around the mall for a little while after deciding to go back into Forever 21 to look around some more. We found a très chic peach coloured tunic on display. However, we couldn't reach it, because of two factors: 1) The shirt was hanging on the tallest section of the display shelf, about 9 feet high. 2) The tallest of the three of us is about 5 feet 5 inches tall. There was no sales clerk to be seen, so we couldn't ask an employee to fetch it for us. I spotted one of the long, metal, hooked rods that is used to get clothing down from high places, which is precisely what we needed to do. I went to grab the hook, and while I was walking over to the shirt (with a clear look of purpose on my face, might I add) in order to get it down, when a sales clerk-a different girl than the one from the changing rooms-walked in front of me. She looked at me with a condescending look and said "Can I have that, please?" in an
extremely rude tone. I nodded and handed her the hook, expecting for her to ask which item of clothing I needed so that she could get it for me. I was sadly mistaken. She snatched the hook from my hands, glared at me, turned on her heel and put the hook back where it had come from. Needless to say, I was extremely surprised and offended by both of these employees attitudes towards their customers. It took everything I had to restrain myself from confronting both of the girls (they acted far to immature to be called ladies or women). Had I decided to speak to them, I would have caused quite a scene. When I get worked up, I yell.
All that I can say is that, for the time being, Forever 21 has lost 3 very valuable customers.
Ta-ta.
Molly
