My Journey Into the Dark Heart of Retail
On cultural appropriation and boxy tank tops at The Limited
At 16, I believed I had a remarkable gift for retail. Hope, my manager at The Limited, thought otherwise.
“Why didn’t that customer buy the shell?” Hope asked one day, after she saw me returning the stiff, boxy tank top to the rack. “I thought she loved it?”
I pursed my lips. “She… didn’t like the color.” It was a blatant lie. My actual conversation with the customer had gone something like this:
Customer: “What do you think about this top with these pants?”
Me: “Ermmmmmmm…”
Customer: “You don’t like it?”
Me: “If looking like a maraca is what you’re going for, then by all means.” I shook an invisible set of maracas to illustrate my point.
The customer looked at herself in the mirror, her slim, long legs clad in a pair of capris the color of old wood, topped by a boxy red textured shell that made her look exactly like… “Damn, I do look like a maraca. Thank you.” She peeled off the top as she went back in her dressing room.
“No prob!” I called, continuing to neatly fold T-shirts even as I did God’s work.
I’d impale myself on a wire hanger…
