Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Eating My Words

Hi All,
I need to make a funny confession, and offer some advice based on my previous post about "shady shopping secrets".. Advice #1-- DO NOT ATTEMPT PICS in the dressing-rooms at Kitson in LA!!

Let me explain... Up til now in my career of shopping, I had yet to get caught taking secret pics in the dressing room (which always surprised me greatly)..... That all came to a crash and burn halt during our LA shopping trip last month while shopping at Kitson.. My boss handed me a shirt to take in the dressing room to "try on" and take a picture because she liked the graphic technique but it wasn't worth buying for $100 bucks or whatever... So I was in there snapping away, and through the slit in the curtain I see the sales girl running up and she pulls open the curtain and yells "You can't take pictures in here!!" So playing dumb, I was like "What oh really? Ok, sorry I'll stop.." And I thought it would end there... But nooo, she ran over and got the security guard who came over and told me I had to leave the store.. So at that point (and now reading back through this), I felt like a complete criminal--> because they treated me like I was a big huge shoplifter like Winona! I mean seriously, I worked in retail for years and people always wanted to take pictures in the dressing rooms to show their friends.. But anyways, they wouldn't let me buy anything, and the manager came over and demanded to see my camera, and I said nope because it's my property, and he told me I was "really creepy and weird for taking pics of myself" and needed to leave the store pronto. Ha! The nerve.. Maybe it felt even worse/more humiliating because there was no way I could fake that I didn't speak english or the native tongue like i would if I was in another country! I felt like a total shopping pariah the rest of the day and was convinced they had called all the stores on the street to warn them about us! aaah, the backlash..
The event turned out to be the highlight of our trip (once we got over the embarrassment of being walked out of the store) and we laughed about it for days. But after thinking about it a lot I realized it could have been worse and I need to be more respectful and careful! I understand that they have to protect their merchandise and their store, but I still don't think they needed to be so mean about it!
One bright side to the humiliation is that Kitson is actually my LEAST FAVORITE store in the world (well, tied with Walmart whose bad lighting and messy displays give me major anxiety) so being officially banned from the store is actually kind of a perk. I won't have to go in there on the next LA trip which is a good thing! No more Paris Hilton brand jeans, and pretentious sales workers that make me wanna puke. (Now I'm just being immature).....
I wanted to share my funny/humiliating story because admitting all my inner most embarrassing moments is somehow very liberating and humbling to me. It sucks getting caught and having people call you a freak! It's like the bad feeling in your stomach you get when your caught doing something you shouldn't (like using someone else creamer in the office fridge) or talking about someone who is standing right behind you! haha... well, maybe that's worse!

Does anyone else have an embarrassing situation you wanna share??? xoxo

6 comments:

michele said...

That is so classic. Here's mine:

We were at a resort in Big Sur a few years ago for the second time and since I had remembered that there was a microwave in the bar area of the suite I had made a meal that I could warm up for dinner. There is a restaurant on premises which is excellent but we only wanted to eat dinner there one time. While David was in the main room starting a fire in the fireplace for our romantic dinner I began assembling our dinner: previously cooked chicken, rice pilaf and broccoli. I put the food on plates and prepared to zap them. This microwave seemed smaller than normal but I figured it was a hotel sized model and pretty fancy since I needed to put a code in to get it to open. I stood there trying to input a code, wondering all the while why a microwave should require a code to use. At the point of total frustration and just before I reached for the phone to call the concierge to complain, I realized that I was attempting to put our dinner into, wait for it... (unless you figured this our long before I did) the safe!

I was laughing so hard that David came to see what I was happening. At least I only made a fool of myself in front of him, not an uncommon event, so no big deal. Dinner was room temp but still good.

Karen said...

Abbie, you are so adorable. Thanks for the laugh.

Rachel Johnson said...

And thanks for the laugh too Michele. A microwave with a combination?!! Both stories are hilarious!!

CrissyB said...

Oh Wow!! When I worked for a trends company in LA, we had to visit Kitson too, but them girls had that down to a science, lol, we had to take pictures of the front window display, WE literally "snapped and dashed", right in front of the security guards. All in all, those people are real A-holes, and that store is trash, the clothing is way over-rated and makes me gag..and YES, THE DISPLAYING...I MEAN WHAT THE "F"!

You shoulda' called him a freak for thinking "affliction" and "true religion" jeans are still the thing.

BLEH!

Libby said...

Yikes, sorry for the mishap. My mom and I did the whole dressing room photog thing and a few times, salesgirls busted us. It was pretty embarrassing and we felt totally lame, but whatever.

The StaceNeedle said...

Abbs, this post had me rolling! Thanks for your compliments on my photo. I was most surprised at how well it turned out, but feel totally cool now. :)

So this doesn't have to do with shopping, but once I went to the post office to drop some mail in the blue box and as I got up to it I thought "why would they put the box on the passenger side?" so I unbuckled my seatbelt, scooted to the otherside and finished stamping and sealing my letters, only to look up and see a car nose to nose with mine and a really mad driver. Wrong way in a one way... I seriously laughed for hours and was sad that I was alone and couldn't have laughed with an embarrassed passenger. Thanks for asking! PS. the safe story was funny too!