Cleanup In Aisles 1 Through 10

I should talk about what goes through my mind while shopping, because I have noticed over the past few years that this particular issue causes people obvious stress.

I feel, when I am shopping, that I am a customer. Strange, I know...I also feel as if, as a customer, I am not there to pay you so that I can do your job for you. I know, this gets weirder by the minute.

I will use the example of the Ross/Marshalls/TJMaxx line of stores, since I shop those chains very often. I have spent large amounts of money in these shops.

I feel absolutely no need to, for instance, make sure I put things back on the hangers right-side out after trying them on. I feel absolutely no remorse when halfway through the store, I decide I don't want that red leather purse with the fringe, and as I pass a shelf with size 8.5 shoes, I put the purse there.

Now, I don't do these things purposely, to be annoying. I just do my shopping. I don't stop to think about how I can help the salespeople out in their jobs. I don't deliberately make as much of a mess as I can for them to pick up, but I also don't tiptoe around them. If customers never messed up the shelves, stock boys would have nothing to do. If customers always hung clothing back up on the hangers right, dressing room attendants (Insane Job, Part 2 forthcoming) would be standing around doing nothing but handing out numbers. Do your job. If you don't like your job, get a different one.

And let me just say, rolling your eyes at me and sighing a huge sigh has absolutely no effect on me. In fact, you're only prolonging your own pain, ensuring that I will put a pair of sunglasses in the kids toy section.

Also, my behavior changes according to my surroundings. When I am shopping in Bloomingdale's, where everything is in it's beautifully decorated place, I usually put things back where I found them. If you've never been to a Ross, it's not unusual to see a pink floral china plate amongst the picture frames; or a studded leather belt hanging on a rack with socks. And I'm not talking about Ross stores that I've been to!

At the finer stores, there are no dressing room Nazis. You take as many items in as you want, and you leave them in the dressing room when you are finished, for the quiet, invisible clothing fairies to come in and whisk them away. I respect that, so I tend to hang the items back up on the hangers nicely before I walk out of my dressing room.

So you see, I am not a bull in a china shop. I am a bull in Ross. I am a geisha girl in a china shop.

A funny story, my brother Eric used to work at Ross, and one day I was shopping there, and one of his coworkers saw me put an item I didn't want (which wasn't a pair of shoes) on a shoe rack. She later told him "Your sister is a BITCH!".

Now, this statment just proved to me what an idiot this woman was. To make a personal judgement call on a complete stranger purely on the basis of where they put an item they do not want to purchase is extremely immature.

I mean, there are plenty of other legitimate reasons that this woman could have called me a bitch, if she had only taken the time to get to know me.

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