Retail Hell: How I Sold My Soul to the Store

by Freeman Hall

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!”

  What a gullible idiot Fashion Meltdown was. I wished she’d been my customer. With the decision made, I moved in for the extraction. Fashion Disaster was right on my heels.

  “Are you done with this?” I said, reaching for the suede bag. “My customer would like to see it.”

  As the words came out of my mouth, I knew I’d made a critical mistake.

  I felt like a zombie, so I wasn’t thinking clearly. What can I say?

  From experience, I knew what was going to happen next. You see, whenever there is only one left of something on sale, and two women suddenly start eyeing it for whatever reason, the one that picks it up first wins. And even though the winner may not really want it, if she’s a bitch, she’ll buy it out of spite, just to keep the other one from having it. It’s a common occurrence in the Handbag Jungle.

  And that’s exactly what went down here.

  “Someone else wants to buy it?” yelped Fashion Meltdown. “Is it the last one?”

  Of course, Douche opened her greedy fuckin’ Jaws trap and said, “Yes, they’ve been very popular today.”

  I wanted to scream when Douche said that. A sharky move if ever I saw one. If that wasn’t bad enough, then the sharky bitch continued, “Maybe you should get it along with the Coach? It’s so inexpensive.”

  Douche’s sale sword just cut my head off.

  Before I could say anything, Jules yelled from the Corral. Douche had a call. As Douche left, Fashion Meltdown gripped the suede hobo.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” she said, coddling it like a Fred Leighton diamond.

  “You only want it because I want it,” said Fashion Disaster.

  “I was looking at it first, but now I’m going to buy it!” replied Fashion Meltdown.

  “I can’t believe you’re being such a bitch about this. You don’t even want it.”

  “How do you know that?” said Meltdown, “I have an awesome pair of Steve Madden shoes this would look kick-ass with.”

  “You said you wanted that other bag. Now all of a sudden you want this one?” A showdown between Meltdown and Disaster was about to take place. As much as I would have enjoyed seeing these hipsters charge each other, rip their fugly clothes to shreds, and hopefully climax to hair pulling and nail scratching, all I could think about was getting the fuck out. I’d had enough of The Big Fancy’s Once a Year Sale.

  That’s once a year too much for me. Time to start drinking.

  I don’t know where the energy or creative power came from, but the words that saved me from major sale drama popped into my head. I wasted no time in delivering them:

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get you one from the stockroom of another store if you really want one, but I wouldn’t advise it.”

  Disaster and Meltdown broke their suede-bag-war stare with one another and turned their attention to me.

  “Why not?!” demanded Disaster
.

  “Because all of these bags were removed from the floor. We received an e-mail from the buyer telling us to pull them immediately.”

  “Why were you supposed to pull them off the floor?” asked Melt-down, now alarmed.

  “Apparently the black suede is bleeding. It’s rubbing off and ruining clothing.”

  Meltdown gasped in horror.

  Disaster looked unfazed. Maybe she was thinking of wearing it with all black and the bleeding suede wouldn’t matter. Maybe she wanted it to bleed. Who knew what Disaster was thinking?

  At that moment, overcome with Big Fancy Sale exhaustion, I held my breath, hoping against hope that my sudden spur-of-the-moment tactic to lie my ass off would save me from these bloodsucking bitches.

  Maybe I should add something about how the suede bag is cursed and the woman who carries it will be subject to a life of bad skin and bad taste in clothes. No, probably too much.

  “Well I don’t want it then,” said Disaster, walking away.

  “I don’t either,” said Meltdown, throwing it where it didn’t belong on top of the sale wallets.

  Seconds later, Douche came back, “Where’s my customer?”

  “Oh, she left,” I said, “She decided against the Coach and the suede bag. I don’t think she liked the quality.”

  Take that, you sharky bitch!

  “Aagh,” Douche said, waving me off and torpedoing toward a woman looking at sale backpacks.

  Just then a customer tapped me and asked, “Is everything on sale?”

  I stared at her, my eyeballs aching and feet throbbing.

  “You bet it is,” I replied, “and that woman named Douche over there will be glad to help you.”

  Then I took my sale-ravaged body home.

  Babysitting the Devil’s Spawn

  I love kids. I really do. But like most Retail Slaves in the entire world and universe, I don’t love kids who invade our stores with (or without) their parents and turn into pint-sized demons, shrieking and crying at the top of their lungs while annihilating everything in sight and leaving a path of merchandise devastation that we have to clean up.

  Devil Spawn indeed. Behind every one of those little devils is a parent with her head totally up her ass.

  The Corral at The Big Fancy was positioned along the main aisle right next to the mall doors, and while this was great for handbag exposure, people watching, and date hunting, it was a bitch when it came to Devil Spawn attacks. Just about every ten seconds a stroller or gang of children would pass by, leaving the odds highly in favor of kids fighting, having temper tantrums, and roughhousing, and, the abso-lute worst — a baby wailing. It was not easy to talk on the phone or try to sell handbags with that kind of hellacious background racket.

  “I want to hear that brat scream like I want to drink leather lotion,” Cammie once said to me after a woman let her baby cry like a banshee for fifteen minutes while she shopped. “What the fuck! Shut your fuckin’ kid up, lady!” Cammie never did so well with kids and always kept her distance.

  How we each handled children ranged from devilish to angelic. Like Cammie, my other coworkers with child phobias included Judy, Tiffany, Marci, and Douche. For whatever reasons, they had no maternal instincts and stayed clear of anyone under the age of fourteen.

  Jules, on the other hand, let her motherly skills and passion flow out all the time. Once I spotted her in the Marc Jacobs shop holding a baby while playing with a three-year-old girl and five-year-old boy. The mother was nowhere in sight. Luckily for Jules, these children were being Perfect Little Angels, instead of Devil Spawn, but I asked her, “What the hell? Are you charging for babysitting?” She winked, leaned in, and whispered, “Mom’s in the shoe department taking a few minutes rest for herself. She just bought a $2,000 Marc Jacobs. It’s the least I could do.”

  While I wouldn’t have gone as far as Jules, Marsha and I both tolerated children. If they were Perfect Little Angels, then it was fun times, but if they were Devil Spawn, we ran for the stockroom, although Marsha had no qualms about scolding unruly guttersnipes. She’d get right in their tiny faces and put on her scariest Disney Witch face, and say, “You stand there and behave. No screaming or running! I’m not messin’ around here! You are at The Big Fancy, not a playground! Do you understand me?” Some of them cried, but most stood paralyzed by fear. If parents bitched, she told them all to get the hell out.

  Golden Girl Marsha could get away with that, but Queer-Eye Handbag Guy couldn’t. I once reprimanded a destructive little female Devil Spawn for pulling at the glass shelves in the wall. Her mother was too busying looking at a Kate Spade in the mirror and not paying attention. When the Spawn didn’t listen and kept pulling on the glass, which could have fallen on her and killed her, I shouted, “DID YOU HEAR ME? I SAID, STOP PULLING ON THE GLASS! YOU’RE GOING TO HURT YOURSELF!” The little girl then started crying at my raised voice, and her uptight mother ran over and smacked me on the back of the head (lightly, or else I would have had her and her Devil Spawn arrested). “DON’T YOU PARENT MY CHILD!” she yelled at me before storming out.

  No problem, ma’am, next time I’ll just let the glass shelves fall and cut her fuckin’ head off, and you won’t hear one little peep from me.

  Although I have many hellacious stories involving Devil Spawn running amok at The Big Fancy, one of my most horrific happened on a quiet Thursday, late in the afternoon.

  In hindsight, I should have known something wicked was coming my way. Things were just too calm and peaceful in the Handbag Jungle. No phone ringing. No crazy customers. No Returners. No Nasty-Ass Thieves. No Suzy Davis-Johnson checking up on us. No General ordering us around. No Douche stealing sales.

  Just Cammie and me manning the fort, without customers, standing in the middle of the department hiding among a cluster of fixtures, and chitchatting about who we felt should win a Best Actor Academy Award.

  “Johnny Depp is long overdue,” I said.

  “The man is a god,” Cammie agreed, “I’d be his wench on the high seas any day.”

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a nauseating scent stole into our noses.

  “Do you fucking smell that?” she said, making a face. “It’s like rotting tomato juice.”

  “I think I’m gonna vomit,” I responded.

  Then the handbag fixtures rustled.

  Six children stepped out, surrounding us.

  Ages three to fifteen. Four boys. Two girls. Unkempt clothes. Bristly reddish hair. Freckled faces. Missing teeth. Pudgy bodies. Mean looking. They weren’t the kind of kids you wanted to buy candy for or give airplane rides to.

  They were the kind of kids who looked extremely angry for being dragged into a store not named Toys “R” Us, GameStop, or Build-A-Bear.

  The kind of kids who looked possessed by demons.

  I almost screamed as my horror-obsessed mind compared their stepping out of the handbag fixtures to Stephen King’s “Children of the Corn.”

  If you’ve never read King’s scary story or seen the classic horror film, let me give it to you in a nutshell: Led by the evil-looking kids Isaac and Malachi, all the children in a small town are hypnotized by a monster in the corn forcing them to kill all the adults. In the cheesy but memorable ’80s movie, the opening scene finds a bunch of seniors at a diner getting poisoned and slaughtered by the Children of the Corn.

  Of course, my overactive imagination ran wild with the prospect of the cult still existing.

  They’ve moved to the big city and upgraded to a Big Fancy Department Store. I’m dead!

  The Children of the Retail Corn were staring at us like we were their own personal playthings.

  You belong to us. There’s no escape.

  A round, disheveled woman with ratty dirty-blond hair appeared. Obviously Mother of Spawn. She pushed a covered stroller, which I’m sure had Rosemary’s Baby slumbering inside.

  “I need a new backpack,” said the Children of the Retail Corn’s Mother, “I’ve been looking everywhere. No one ha
s a good selection anymore. It’s just so hard to find a backpack.”

  “We have lots of backpacks,” I said, nervous, the Devil Spawn watching my every move.

  “NO!” one of them suddenly shouted, “NO, YOU DON’T!”

  Okay, now I know who Malachi is, and I’m about to wet myself.

  Cammie ran for the stockroom. “I’m fuckin’ out of here,” she said under her breath.

  Before I could protest, she had vanished, and the Mother of Spawn was all over me. “I need a backpack! Why is it so hard to find one these days? Stores used to carry thousands of them!”

  “Umm . . . Perlina makes really nice backpacks,” I stammered.

  The Spawn Mom ignored my offering, preferring to chat with herself. She continued rambling on about her backpack drought while pawing at handbags and not looking at me.

  Or her kids.

  If there was some kind of tribal warning sound with a conch shell, I sure as fuck did not hear it. If I had, I would have joined Cammie in the Devil Spawn Shelter.

  All at once the Children of the Retail Corn went berserk.

  The three boys began running around me in circles and shouting old-style Indian war cries, possibly preparing me to be tied up and have my head shrunken.

  The teen girl mauled a Juicy Couture bowler bag like a pit bull discovering a new chew toy. She tore out the wads of paper stuffing and threw it on the floor. One of the boys snatched up the discarded stuffing, ripped it into tiny shreds, and tossed it in the air, claiming it was snowing.

  The other, younger girl began yanking bags off shelves and kicking them across the floor to make a pile, which I assumed she was going to light on fire.

  All the while, Spawn Mom completely ignored the devilish behavior and said to me:

  “My backpack needs to have lots of pockets. And I want something in leather. . . .”

  I was about to answer her when suddenly one of the little red-headed monsters, who must have been three or four, started screaming savagely, ran up to my right leg, and wrapped his arms and legs around me like he was going to shimmy up a pole.

  Mortified and shocked, I looked down at the Devil Spawn attached to my leg.