Blunder Number 2: Birds, birds everywhere

Before the doors are unlocked every morning at Podiatry and the quivering ball of humanity that had previously been pawing at the windows for entry is finally allowed to surge through our faux-rustic doors to begin grabbing at that particular day’s assortment of luxuries, we have a morning meeting.  It is at this moment that we learn a litany of facts about how the company as a whole is performing, how our particular branch fares in comparison, and how much money we are expected to weasel out of our customers for the day. 

(Personally I feel that, although this information can be somewhat interesting at times, it is of little use for us, the underlings, to actually know.  I believe that they throw these numbers at us in an effort to coax us into feeling that we have some kind of true stake or ownership in the swirling shitstorm of corporate, bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo that takes place entirely outside of our awareness or control.  Whether or not the company makes their sales quota for the day does not mean that my hourly wage rises to a reasonable rate or falls to the slave labor category.) 

If time permits, after we do the numbers, we participate in a product-knowledge-building activity.  I previously explained JIVETIME!, wherein we select and try on clothes from the salesfloor based on some kind of game-like prompt and then compete to have the best outfit (I’m not kidding).  This is but one example of product-knowledge-building during morning meetings.  Some activities consist simply of reading about and discussing the design philosophy behind the latest fashions and “concepts” as they call them.

The other morning’s product knowledge chat began with a prompting question from Zebulon: “So what are the new trends you see in the pieces we’ve been receiving and putting out for the fall collection?”  

Ask me to see trends in national literary movements over the span of a couple of centuries, and I'm dandy.  Ask me to spot trends in some clothes in a store, and I start to sweat.  

There are two ways to fool someone into thinking you have some kind of knowledge.  The first is to answer confidently but with something vague.  The confidence throws them off of the scent of your stupidity, and the vagueness hints at the possibility of knowledge.  The second tactic is to listen to the expert knowledge of others then do some creative semantic tweaking; say what they say using bigger words or with a different example.  

Maybe I hadn't consumed quite enough coffee for my brain to be properly functioning at the time, but I was the one to voluntarily vomit out the first answer, unfortunately employing neither tactic.  "Well, I've noticed a lot of bird prints lately," I said, looking around for some nods of approval.  Stares.  "You know, there are birds on things?  Like on that shirt over there?  And that...thing...over there?"  

More stares. 

Zebulon finally spoke, "Yeah, but, I was kinda talking more about, like, textures and themes, you know?  I mean, Podiatry kinda always has a bird motif going on."  Everyone nodded.  I realized she was right.  Apart from knowing for sure that there will be expensive things, you can almost always count on there being bird things in Podiatry.  Not everywhere, but somewhere there's a bird, watching you.  

"Well, what I was getting at was how our new stuff is really, you know, nerdy chic, like lots of structured, masculine stuff with an edge."  Tiny Tim chimed in, "Yeah, it's like, very...collegiate....but feminine."  Way to use tactic number 2, TT: semantic scrambling of stuff people already said. 

Much like my cape of fear incident, the magnitude of the failure did not encourage me to work hard at recovery.  It was an admit defeat and retreat moment.  The punctures are forming fast in my hot-air balloon of a story; how much longer can I stay aloft over the expensive, bourgeois, retail landscape that is Podiatry?

THE CAPE OF FEAR

As my time at Podiatry wears on (clothing retail pun intended), Nelson’s glossy facade is beginning to weather much like a golden obelisk marking the middle of some Italian piazza that has been exposed to hundreds of years of precipitation.  Whereas in the early days, my performance shone brilliantly, my bit has become harder to sustain as the rust gathers on my facade and the cracks begin to show.  I feel like Sinbad’s character in the smash-hit film and timeless classic Houseguest; initially able to fool the world into believing him to be a world-renowned dentist only to become subjected to a series of ever more difficult tasks impossible to fake.  And where did he end up?  Well, if I remember the plot correctly, AND I DO BECAUSE I LOVE THAT MOVIE AND WILL UNTIL THE DAY I DIE,  even though his true identity is discovered, he still ends up with a sweet book deal and a red Porsche.

I fear that, soon, my identity will be found out.  (But worry not, dear readers, for I have no doubt that a career as a novelist and a new automobile is in my future just like it was for Kevin Frank of Houseguest.)  Why does Nelson fear that the Podiatry community may soon turn on him and  instead of lavishing him with applause, throw weeks-old, moldy tomatoes at him on stage from their seats in the audience?  3 substantial blunders, my friends.

First, the cape of fear.  I was on a fitting-room roll for two months, relying on my master instincts to kick in and give me the perfect hook-line-and-sinker when customers came out looking like clowns.  “You look dashing,” I could say with a wink, and they’d head for the register, wallets already drawn.  That is until I met the cape of fear.

More sweater than cape, these hideous things had been hanging in the sale room for ages, cast aside by the sane, inspected cautiously by the adventurous, and touched by the fools.  But until this day, no human had been asinine enough to actually TRY ONE ON.  Out comes...we’ll call her Elmo...wrapped in the cape.

Let me try to explain what this thing is.  Pattern and colors: (I’ve got Sinbad on the mind, so I’ll keep going with him as my referent for awhile) A mix between a Cosby sweater and the perplexing conglomeration of shapes and colors you’d see on one of the jumpsuits Sinbad wore in his early 90’s stand-up specials.  Cut: A sweater, one side of which came down to the hip, the other side of which hung like a towel on a clothesline all the way down to the floor.  

“How do you wear this?”  she asked, tentatively. 

I knew I was in a bind.  “Uh,” I stammered, unable to truly recover from the disgust bubbling up in my body in reaction to this garment, “I, uh....” her stare went straight through Nelson and into my true self.  I rushed over to where she was standing in the mirror, trying to recover.  “You...TIE it!” I said quickly, grabbing the yard of extra material and twisting it into a knot with the other side which gave it a kind of straightjacket look.  

She regarded herself in the mirror and said, skeptically, “I...don’t think that’s quite right.”          

“Well,” I said, about to proffer another response, but realized that the hole I’d dug was insurmountable.  My character deflated entirely.  “I...DON’T KNOW,” I admitted and shrunk into the shadows to lick the wounds of defeat by humbly folding $100 pairs of yoga pants for backstock.

The other two blunders to follow...