Notes From A Non-Breeder: Shopgirl
Behind the counter at a high-end baby boutique.
by Kathryn Savage
February 5, 2009
"Oh, what scent am I wearing? Why, that's just some soothing lavender oil," I imagined myself saying. "It calms the babies." What I didn't expect were teams of nannies with lists, passive-aggressive couples who wanted their baby to slobber all over something hand-carved from organic wood, and the baby-talkers: "Oh, Shannon, isn't this the itsiest, bitsiest, wootest, widdle onesie?" Then there was the strangest breed of them all: the parents of baby models. "Our little Tyson is the face of Baby Gap! Have you seen his pictorial in Cookie?"
Sales were important, and I came to love the parents of baby models and to tend to them with sick, cunning glee. Here were the high rollers, easily dropping thousands in a single afternoon. I'd snatch the Polaroid camera from their manicured hands and together we'd fancy little Sophia and little Vince in slimming jeans.
"Oh, yes, those jeans look fabulous!" I'd coo excitedly, an actor playing a familiar part. Inevitably, a situation would occur. Could these models have a diaper change in the middle of the store? "Of course! Can I get you a warm towel for the little angel's bottom?" I became an expert at manipulation, the secret to closing sales: organic clothing, Swedish toys, ergonomic high chairs. I could convince parents they needed anything. I could sell it all.
It wasn't hard to put myself in the kids' shoes. I was one of those spoiled only children with a toy-packed playroom. I built my own three-story, lighted dollhouse with my grandma. So why did I feel guilty pushing thousand-dollar strollers and slimming baby denim on loaded parents? They could afford it. The kids couldn't care less, but so what? The parents wanted it. My boss wanted to make the sales. When I talked parents into buying bedazzled onesies, no one lost.
Of course, when they didn't buy stuff, I got in trouble. During the summer months, when families vacationed, business slowed. My boss panicked and sales reps were ushered in to impart exciting new product knowledge and help us sell, sell, sell! Oddly sexy, leggy and exotic, those stroller reps showed up full of information, like how to transform the carriage into an off-roading force easily bypassing snow piles and sand dunes.
"Are you writing this down?" my boss barked. "I just ordered a ton of these."
I developed a berserk vocabulary.
The holidays were a different kind of hell: a season filled with anger, thieves and gift-wrapping. It was our busiest time of year, and sales meetings were replaced with frantic calls to suppliers: "More Imps and Elves!" "More BoBo Brooklyn!" "No, I haven't heard back from Kiwi Industries. I'm working on it."
I developed a berserk vocabulary, and once prevented a man in a sweaty, sauce-stained shirt from pocketing all the tiny shoes lining the shoe display. It was exciting, even as gift-wrapping proved to be a new form of torture.
And it was the holidays when it dawned on me — midway through bastardizing the wrap job on a silk infant's cape with my dry, paper-cut hands, in the middle of an overheated crowd of angry shoppers — that I had to get out. Suddenly, it had all started to seem kind of sordid. The sheer amount of money being spent on things that weren't remotely necessary. What happened to rain puddles, and sandlots and recklessness? I thought, looking around at the hundred-dollar teethers. What happened to cheap clothes — and childhood?
I looked out from behind the register and saw the UPS man struggling through the front door, wheeling in — yet again — four huge boxes. I saw a toddler stomping excitedly towards the display potty — that never ended well. A young dad was checking me out while his infant son bounced and slobbered in a Baby Bjorn across his chest. Like someone midway through a Big Mac suddenly deciding "no more meat," mine was an instant realization. If I stay here, I realized, I'm never going to want to have kids. And I do want kids. At least, I want to want kids someday.
It struck me that the world of frantic parents and model babies and miniature slim fit had nothing to do with the happy parts of raising children. Who wants the have a food fight in dry clean only? At that moment at the gift table, I resolved that the next infant crying and pulling my hair would be my own.
And then I went back. A few months later, a friend announced her pregnancy, giving me a chance to put my encyclopedic knowledge of children's apparel toward styling her offspring. My shower present included a tattoo-print swaddling blanket and socks that looked like Chuck Taylor All-Stars. Looking around at all those dresses, shirts and shoes, I was surprised by how much I missed it. From the outside of the industry I could again see the clothes as simply small, delicate and cute. And so on the outside is where I'll stay.
©2009 Babble
About the Author
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Kathryn Savage lives in Minneapolis with her husband and her pit bull. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The Rake and Nerve. |
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