Retail Hell Read Online Free Page A

L.A. wardrobe, I didn’t think twice about where to go first: a store where I could buy cool clothes, measure the inseams of hot men, and make loads of money.
    The buzz around town was The Big Fancy. A large, upscale department store famous for customer service, The Big Fancy carried the trendiest brands and paid their salespeople commissions. The idea of getting commissions played out in my head like a scene out of
Indecent
Proposal
, with me rolling around naked in a pile of money.
    How amazing would it be to write my Million-Dollar Screenplay while
driving my limited-edition Mercedes and living in Beverly Hills?
    I’d never been to The Big Fancy before (we didn’t have one in Reno), but when I stepped inside the Burbank store, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The place was like a golden marbled, mirrored castle full of beautiful things everywhere I looked. We’re talking four floors filled with everything from clothes and cosmetics to espresso machines and comforters. They carried the hippest trends from the world’s top designers. As I wandered through the men’s section, drooling over racks and tables of amazing clothes, my eyes went straight to a $50 designer tee emblazoned with a flying skull. It called out to me, “Freeman, you must buy me NOW!” The salespeople at The Big Fancy were smiling and looked happy and their customers were leaving with shopping bags packed full.
Who
wouldn’t
want to
work here while they write their Million-Dollar Screenplay?
    After flirting with a cute guy in customer service, I wasted no time filling out my application. Minutes later, I was sitting down with the H.R. manager, Two-Tone Tammy. Her name wasn’t really Two-Tone Tammy. That’s what I called her because she had two tones: Sicky Sweet and Fire-Breathing Dragon. One minute, she was the caring nanny who wanted to rock you to sleep; the next, she was a mean old ogre who wanted to eat you alive. Two-Tone was a blubbery woman in her mid-thirties with frizzy prematurely gray hair, bulging eyes like a bulldog, and style that could only be described as Uglier Betty. When I met her, she had on a thick navy blue cable-knit sweater, a gauzy pink gypsy skirt, and sparkly red ballet shoes.
    “I’d really like to work in Men’s Clothing, ” I told her as I tried not to stare at her red slippers.
    “I’m so very sorry, ” Two-Tone said in her Sweet voice, “You have excellent experience and references, but we just don’t have any openings in our men’s areas. In fact there’s a waiting list.”
    A waiting list to sell pants? What? Do you people advertise in the Gay
Yellow Pages?
    “Would you consider working in another area?”
    Thinking Two-Tone might offer me something in one of the departments that sell Egyptian cotton sheets, overpriced blenders, ceramic mugs filled with candy, or maybe even a gig in Customer Service, I said, “Yes, I’m open to anything. I just moved to L.A. and I need a job.”
    Big mistake.
    Never sound desperate and always hold out for what you want. If you want to measure men’s inseams, don’t stop until you get there. Stupidly I panicked.
    I need a job. Must grab whatever job I can.
I’m
sleeping on a couch.
    “We have an opening in our handbag department, ” she said.
    “Handbags?”
    At first, I wasn’t sure what that was … the word sounded foreign.
    I know what a hand-job is. But handbags?
    Was that something to do with the janitorial staff? Garbage? Cleaning bathrooms?
    Then it dawned on me, “Do you mean women’s purses?”
    “We don’t refer to them as purses here, ” Two-Tone said, “They’re called handbags, and I think you would be great in that area because of your free-spirit personality.”
    “Sell purses?” I said, wondering what she meant by
free-spirit
personality.
    “Well, we have men in Ladies’ Shoes, Cosmetics, and even in Women’s Designer. Our motto is creativity through diversity. We like to mix things up. I can see you working in