Dec 14, 2007

Back Stock Therapy

A couple of years ago I worked for a while as a salesperson in an upscale retail store, selling yoga clothes to wealthy women.

I used to fall asleep on the bus on my way home after work, my energy sucked away by hundreds of crazy shoppers who would auction their friend in exchange for the latest style of sweats in time for their next ashtanga class. I had never thought that yoga was really all that spiritual anyways.

Few times I even missed the bus stop, as I was too exhausted to wake up and interrupt my sweet end-of-working-day dreams. One day, though, I had a real nightmare; customers were throwing thousands of black stretchy pants out of the dressing rooms, clothes were piling endlessly on the table and I was suffocating. I woke up in panic, sweating and cold at the same time. "That's it", I thought, "I quit". That's how I found myself at the end of the bus line, in an unfriendly neighborhood, scared and unemployed.

Compared to other retail environments, monstrous creations of modern times such as Victoria's Secrets or Abercrombie & Fitch, the job wasn't all that bad. We enjoyed free yoga classes, lots of healthy snacks and some nice massages here and there. But we still had to deal with customers and fake our smiling happy face all day long. One of the rules of our job was that we could NEVER EVER say anything bad about customers while on the floor. People were fired for that. No matter how rude customers were, how big the mess they would leave behind, how snobby and high maintenance. No bad talking. Period.

But as all rules, even that one had its exception. We used to call it Back Stock Therapy. Once a week, everyone had to work his/her shift in the backstock, taking care of the inventory and organizing the new merchandise. During backstock we were not dealing with customers,we didn't have to smile all the time and we could dress the way we wanted. Most of all, we could talk about anything and we were allowed to rant and rave freely. Backstock shifts were heaven, they saved us from going insane and were always a lot of fun.

This blog is supposed to be my personal Back Stock Therapy, my own way to survive after years and years spent waiting tables and dealing with hungry and pretenciuos customers.

Remember: I'm not bad, I just turned that way.

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