Last Friday my husband suggested taking me out to buy some clothes. I was looking and feeling a bit better, and if I felt up to it, he was happy to come with me. My clothes are in a shocking state (being large I am limited in my choice of retailers) and I desperately needed new trousers. We got a train, and the shop I needed was just a kick in the bum from the station itself. Great. What could go wrong?
Well, the shop, (It-that-shall-not-be-named) for a start. Yes, they allowed me to use the disabled cubicle, but my husband was not allowed to come in to help me because...'We've had complaints about men in the changing rooms.'
Okay, could he at least sit outside (they used to have a settee nearby where people could wait) so I could show him my clothes to check if they were okay? I explained my vision is very bad and I wouldn't be able to see for myself.
No, that wasn't possible either. Because.... 'they'd had complaints about men sitting NEAR the changing rooms.'
In fact, they'd even had complaints about men being anywhere near the entrance to the changing rooms. The best they could offer was that my husband could sit in the shoe department and wait for me there. Which meant I had to change by myself, and then leave the changing room to show him my clothes - highly embarrassing when most of them didn't fit. I was made to feel as though I had walked into their shop with some sort of pervert in tow.
I tried to explain that I needed help changing, but the assistant was unmoved. 'I'll help you,' she said. Only I don't like strangers seeing me undressed. I doubt she would like it either.
Anyway, while I was struggling to manage by myself (I really did need new clothes or I wouldn't have bothered) some other women came in, soon followed by their adult sons who stood at the door of the changing rooms for ages, chatting away.
I queried this - why could they be present and not my husband when I needed him - and was told that 'they were the customer's children.'
I explained that my companion was my husband of many years and this seemed like one rule for some and a different rule for others. I was then told that my husband could also stand at the entrance to the changing room now (only of course, with two adult males already there, there wasn't any room.)
Well, I struggled with the clothes.... needed a pair of trousers in a certain size but nobody could possibly look in the store room to see if they had any. I found three tee shirts I liked and asked them to put them to one side and I would definitely buy them later.... only of course, when I went to get them, someone had removed them and nobody knew where they now were. (You might think they had been returned to the clothes rails, but no.... heaven knows where they went, outer space, probably.)
So the upshot of all this is that I spent ONE AND A HALF totally useless hours, struggling in that shop, my husband made to feel like a peeping tom, and came away with nothing.
Except of course, the resolve never to go there again.
This story has a happy ending.... eventually I visited another shop and the difference couldn't have been greater. Nothing was too much trouble, trousers were found in the stock room, and I came away with exactly what I wanted.
Now why the hell couldn't the first shop - It-that-shall-not-be-named - have been more like that?
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