Tales from a Mall

So we spent the better part of Saturday wrapping up our Christmas shopping.

And while trudging like an angry child behind my wife as she speed-walked from store to store, I realized something about retail employees: After a while they become like the products they sell.

You know how they say husbands and wives start to look like each other after so many years of marriage? It's sort of like that.

It's also similar to bank teller syndrome, where the tellers give you attitude as though you've asked them to give you their personal money.

Seriously, we went into a couple of low rent stores, and the clerks behaved as though they couldn't care less about the product or selling it. They were like the Clerks. And we went into high end stores - an even worse experience, in my opinion - and the clerks were haughty and, like the bank tellers, acted like we were invading their space and taking from their home wardrobes by trying to buy stuff. And not to be a snot, but I couldn't help but think that the employees at both types of stores were probably in similar financial boats. So why the difference in 'tudes?

Weird phenomenon to me. Maybe it just meant the more valuable the product the more pride the employees took in their jobs. Likewise for the cheaper products and non-existent pride of those employees.

There may be something to this. In high school we were forced starting in my senior year to wear uniforms. Every student protested vehemently. But when were finally in our khakis, blue blazers, and Dead Poets Society neckties I have to admit we stood up straighter, held our heads higher and walked with a little more pep. And though my buddies and I would never have admitted it to the faculty, it was all 'cause we felt more high class ('cause our uniforms were more respectable than our "civilian" threads), silly as that might have been.