Shop Assistants

 Hi there

I know I've gone on before about being annoyingly greeted by shop assistants, but it  still irks me.

Forget about them calling me 'Sweetie", "Dear", "love" which I detest, but at a very small itty-bitty tiny pinch, I can live with that.  What really riles me up is assistants who have obviously all been schooled on how to feel at one with a customer by pointing out that they love a piece of your jewellery, or clothing, or accessory.   Anything to get you onto their side, to cement that bond so that you'll buy out the entire shop.

"Oh, I just luuuurve that skirt.  It really suits you...."

... but sometimes the assistant just can't find anything you're wearing that they could even consider putting on their Top Ten.  Last week, a young male shop assistant said to me, "I like your, er, um...tan?"..

Lots have liked my watch.  My sandals.  My winter woollie beanie.  The actual colour I'm wearing actually sets many assistants on a lovefest:  "What a beautiful green!  Blue!  Red!

Once, I wandered into a clothing shop directly after a long hike when I'd been sweaty and tired, wearing rumpled clothes that even charity shops would turn their noses up at.  The assistant went into raptures over my hiking stick.

Another time, in an exclusively posh dress shop on Waiheke Island, when I wasn't clad in the most-ironed of blouses. the plum-in-her-mouth assistant exclaimed rapturously over my wonderful choice of top.

Triumphantly, she ended up on "You'll never guess....?  I have the exact same blouse!"

Now, my top was colourful and it had pretty-patterned birds all over it, but I knew something that this desperate-for-a-sale expensively-dressed woman would never have known in a month of Sundays -

"Yeah, I bought it at The Warehouse, " I said.

The look on her face was priceless...  

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