Today was my first trip to The Dress Barn. Judging by my girlfriend’s laughter in light of this revelation, I’m the last person on earth to visit this store. I’d never heard of it until another girlfriend mentioned her horrible experience with a sales associate.


Anyway, Eva had a concert at her school tonight and it was my perfect excuse to buy a new top. I Googled the store, printed a map and off I went.


My first impression was pleasant although I was a bit troubled by the fact that the sales lady looked closer to the grave than she did to assisting me. Hey, I’m all for the elderly in the workplace but at some point we, the customers, end up pulling double duty. In my case it was shopping and worrying about her breaking her hip in pursuit of my happiness.


Hell, if coming from behind the counter to greet me left her winded then asking her to fetch something for me would’ve bloody killed her. Yeah, go to sleep with that on your conscience!


Back on topic.


After ditching the elderly sales lady, I found a couple of tops and went to the dressing room. To my surprise, all of the doors were locked so I waited for ten minutes for this bubblegum popping twenty year old to sort out the intricate mechanism that causes the door to…wait for it…open!!


Maybe it was my thinly veiled contempt for her but she saw fit to offer an explanation for the locks: They were meant to deter shoplifters.


Deter shoplifters!? What the hell!? If management was concerned about shoplifters they’d rethink their hiring criteria. You wanna deter shoplifters? Try not hiring an old woman who by virtue of her age alone warrants a call to the Guinness Book of World Records and a twenty-somethinger whose mental competency is questionable at best and downright lethal with a set of keys in her hands.


I’m a patient shopper, really I am. But this trip did my head in. Sorry, rant over.


In the end I returned home with nothing but a sweet tea from McDonald’s and I didn’t go to the concert. Eva and Greg went alone while I, the responsible parent, watched it on webcast. Actually, I’d forgotten about an interview scheduled for this evening so I’ve been busy since I walked though the door. Now, it’s going on midnight and I have a few more ‘thank you’ cards to fill out before I go to bed.

Goodnight!