I'm Lindsay Ferrier, a Nashville writer with a passion for family travel, exploring Tennessee, and raising kids without losing my mind in the process. This is where I share my discoveries, along with occasional deep thoughts, pop culture tangents and a sprinkling of snark. Want to get in touch? Use the CONTACT form at the top of the page.
January 31, 2006
>When I left home for college, my mom was all about the empty nesting.
“I just don’t know what I’m going to doooooo without her,” she moaned to her friends on the phone, prompting dozens of sympathetic ladies-who-lunch dates.
“I’m just too sadddddd to go to church this morning,” she whimpered to my father on Sundays, opting instead to loll in bed and watch Little House on the Prairie reruns alone.
“I must shop to keep my mind off of her,” she confided to the Neiman Marcus shoe salesman as he wedged a Ferragamo onto her foot.
It was no small wonder, then, that when I arrived home for my first month-long break from school, my mother insisted that I get a job. A 9-hour-a-day, five-day-a-week job. It would teach me a lesson, she said. And it did. It taught me that she didn’t want me around so much, after all.
Listlessly, I went to the nearest mall and filled out job applications at every acceptable store I could find. A few hours after I arrived home, a well-known lingerie chain called and asked if I could start the next morning. I stifled a sigh and agreed.
At first, the job didn’t seem like it would be so bad. I was assigned to stand in one of the store’s three rooms, asking shoppers if they needed help.
“Can I help you?” I asked a mousy middle-aged woman fingering a lace teddy.
“No,” she said nervously. “No thanks.”
“Okay,” I said, instantly backing off. After all, choosing slutwear was a personal matter. Nonchalantly, I went back to folding lace thongs.
“What are you doing?” the manager whispered angrily, sidling up to me from out of nowhere. “Why aren’t you helping that woman?”
“She said she didn’t want help,” I said.
“Did you ask her if she wanted to open a charge account and get 15 percent off her entire purchase?”
“No.”
“Did you tell her about our buy-two-get-one-free bra sale?”
“No.”
“You need to tell every customer those things!” she growled. “Now get back over there.”
Grimacing, I went back to the woman.
“Would-you-like-to-open-a-charge-account-with-us-today?” I said quickly.
The woman looked up, abashed, and thrust a flimsy red thing on a hanger behind her back. “No.”
“Because-you-get-15-percent-off-your-entire-purchase.”
“No thank you,” she stammered, shoving her lingerie selection back on the rack.
“Did-you-know-about-our-buy-two-get-one-free-bra-sale?” I continued, turning red.
“No!” the woman said, before turning to flee. “No thank you!“
Biting my lip, I turned and looked back at the manager, who smiled thinly and gave an approving nod. “She was probably a shoplifter anyway,” she said. “We get a lot of those.”
I doubt that nervous Nelly was planning on stealing anything, but you’d be amazed how many suburban matrons enter a mall lingerie store and “upgrade” their bras in the changing room. In fact, one of the most hated duties of a lingerie sales person is putting away items that were tried on and rejected. Inevitably, one out of every six or seven tangled designer-tagged bras on the floor is a well-worn Maidenform, discarded in favor of a newer, sexier model. Cringing, we’d report to the manager how many old bras we had found.
“You need to keep a closer eye on women when they’re changing,” she’d say cruelly, holding up the used bras like the head of a guillotined French monarch. “Or these will start coming out of your paycheck.”
Yeah. Keep a closer eye on them how, exactly? I could just picture myself casually sliding my compact mirror around the changing curtain to get a better look at a suspicious shopper. Or perhaps a direct approach would be more appropriate.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” I’d say as they came out. “I’m going to have to ask you to remove your shirt.”
Just as disturbing were the couples who picked out merry widows and push up bra and panty sets, then went in the fitting rooms together. I don’t even want to know what all went on behind those curtains, but some of them stayed back there a very long time. And they very rarely actually bought anything. Eww.
As Christmas approached, the window dressing grew more brazen as the men began flocking in to buy sweet nothings for their loved ones. The dynamic of the store changed entirely, from estrogen haven to sex shop.
“Hey, Baby,” they’d say, spying me in the corner. “I need some help finding something for my wife.”
“What does she like to wear?” I’d ask.
“I was thinking something like this,” they’d say, pointing at a cheesy red bustier and g-string.
“Okay, what’s her size?” I’d soon learned that my opinions on what kind of lingerie a woman might want were not needed.
“Well, she’s about your size.”
This was the answer I got every single time. Whether the buyer was 20 or 45 or 70, whether his wife had had 4 kids or gastric bypass surgery, she was ‘about my size.’ I was 18. I weighed 120 pounds. Mmkay.
At the time, their familiarity and their touchy-feeliness humiliated me. Couldn’t they see the budding poet before them? The sensitive soul? The obvious church-going virgin?
Now that I’m fairly wise to the ways of men, their thought pattern in this situation is so obvious. Any young girl working in a lingerie store must. like. sex. It was just that simple.
One day, a familiar face appeared before me.
“Hey, baby. I need some help finding something for my wife.”
It was Lonnie, an old friend of my father’s. I had grown up playing with Lonnie’s children, had run in and out of his house a thousand times.
But that was years ago, and an hour and a half away from here. Lonnie clearly didn’t recognize the adult me.
I helped him choose a tacky red teddy for his wife, who remarkably had lost 100 pounds since I’d seen her; I was told she was just my size. Lonnie was worse than most of the men, squeezing my elbow and getting way too close for comfort. As I led him to the register with his selection, he whispered in my ear, “Would you like to get together for lunch some time?”
I smiled sweetly. “I don’t think that’s going to work for me, Lonnie,” I said. “But I’m sure my father would love to see you again.” As his eyes widened, I turned and walked away. Damn, that felt good.
At last, Christmas came and went. On the 26th, we came in extra early to move the whore clothes in the windows to the sale racks. They were replaced by flannel pajamas and comfy knit wear. When the doors opened, scores of women solemnly filed in, clutching gift boxes to their chests. Sleazy see-through nighties, scratchy fishnets and rhinestone studded bras were exhanged for terry cloth robes, fleece slippers and ankle length nightgowns.
The fantasy that was Christmas had truly ended. And so had my job.
I went back to school not a girl, but a woman. A woman who had helped a perfect stranger find just the right outfit in which to lose her virginity. A woman who’d been propositioned by one of her father’s friends.
I never came home for a school break again.
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>Ah! A true story of live and learn! LOL!
>OMG! I want a job there now – it sounds so much better than here.
>Is it possible that we share a mother?!
>And I so don’t blame you. Tell me you went to work at a bookstore after that?
>Yes. I did. 🙂
>But! Did you get a discount on lingerie? These things matter… ;^)
>EWWWW! Your dad’s friend? I would have been soooooo grossed out by that.
>Ah, I love your stories! :)[Haha at everyone being just your size.]Jimbo = ewww.
>There’s only one explanation. Your mother, like the lovely young woman’s stepmother in just about any fairy tale you can mention, wanted to punish you for being 18 and weighing 120 pounds. So she made you take a job at the worst place in the world. Did it reek of potpourri back then?But look on the bright side–you learned a lot about men. And you got to rip Jimbo a new one.
>Did you ever notice how every man knows exactly where the Victoria Secret is in any mall.Funny story, Luce, as usual.
>Did you ever tell your dad about Jimbo’s lunch proposal? Even better – when Jimbo’s wife returned the purchase, was she “your size”? And, honestly, I thought it was pretty safe to assume that only Texas lingerie stores could sell to individuals named Jimbo (also Hank and/or Billy Ray). Good to know they’re everywhere! HA!
>I mostly buy Pat the 3 for $15 cotton undies with the just more than the band at the hip and get told by the sales women that Pat will like that and she does especially if I get a variety of colors. We make our own “whore clothes” with old stuff which gives me a chance to do some compassionate tearing. The most fun I had was when I thought I’d go out on a limb and buy a bra one time. When the saleswoman asked me what size, I didn’t have a clue. I suggested the store install an array of mannequin tops in the variety of sizes that bras come in and I would just close my eyes, walk along and feel each one until I found the right size. I got a laugh – apparently she hadn’t heard that one yet.
>Oh my, that was such a funny story! I think the reason why customers freak out like that is because they REALLY don’t like being asked while they’re shopping. I don’t. In fact, I hate it when a salesperson is behind me the whole time i’m looking at a rack. And as soon as he or she asks if I’d like to fit the dress i’m holding, I leave the story immediately (well I return the item first, of course). It’s just a pet peeve of mine, actually…
>Aaa! You brought my retail years back to me, in sharp, glaring focus!
>Yeah, I’ve worked in retail, too, and one thing I learned: NEVER ask the wife how she liked her Christmas lingerie. (As in, the husband’s girlfriend was the one who received the lingerie, and the wife got a new washer/dryer. Duh!)
>i love shopping in those lingerie stores, it’s a world made for women.
>Funny as always. I just can’t get enough. You need to know that I’ve literally laughed out loud, by myself or in a crowd, because I will see the Lisa Rinna picture with “Oh Shit is right” under it. Hilarious.
>Oh..that brought back the good ole retail days…yuck…Very funny though..
>I worked in the lingerie dept at Sears for a while. That’s a whole set of clientele you don’t even want to imagine.
>That type of Christmas purchase is what I call the fabric gift certificate. Hopefully all those guys packed the gift receipt. And how hard is it to sneak a look at your wife’s bras size before going to the mall. A VS in Tyson’s Corner VA causght a lot of flack for posing theie winow models a little too provocatively. I didn’t get there in time to see it and the paper didn’t include pictures.
>I LOVED this story!!!! Though I did my “retail time” in a mall-based toy store, I too had a boss that wouldn’t rest until I’d managed to harass every customer walking in the door. As if a thousand loud, battery-operated toys jittering around near the front of the store wasn’t enough of an assault on the senses.
>Wow, it did not occur to me working in lingerie would be so educational. The mall here moved Santa to the end of the Mall by Victoria Secret. VS then not only chose to dress the mannequins in whore wear, but position them in erotic poses. I’m sure it was a record turn out of Dads bringing their children to see Santa.
>isn’t it funny how men always think that buying lingerie is a “gift” to women? Please, you think we buy this shit for ourselves? you actually think we sleep in this shit? hahaha… men and their penises crack me up.LOLgood story
>What an icky life lesson to learn. I feel dirty after reading it. I never even thought about the poor salesgirl girl that would have to touch the thongs that were tried on but decided against. Ew. And the men. Double ew. I feel bad for you after reading this – and I didn’t think it was funny at all. Exellent writing (as usual) but not funny – sad. I buy all my sexy stuff online now. The mirrors at home are much nicer to my fat ass and there’s never a fear of the one-way mirror to make me paranoid & break out in a sweat. Sweating while trying on bras sucks. Am I rambling? I think we had too much wine at Raehan’s party – I mean on her front steps 😉
>After reading that I think I need a shower because I feel a little dirty! AHAHAHAHAHA! 🙂
>I hate shopping for ‘underthings’. If I want to buy from the well-known lingerie store, I would have to get my bra size online…my ample bosom just doesn’t fit in the demi-cups they carry in the store. God Bless Target.
>Being hit on by dirty old men–now there’s something OSHA should look into!
>Dr. Strangelove fans will recall a character called “Merkin Muffley” -my introduction to the word.