Each issue of Galaxy Brain will contain one chapter of Kathryn McLeod’s fantastic book, ” THAT LOOKS GOOD ON YOU–YOU SHOULD BUY IT! This is the seventh chapter. You can read the other chapters here:

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six

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Chapter Seven

“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.” G.K. Chesterton

“I want a Salt bread n Cheeze.” Rihanna

Okay, exhale.

Now inhale again because we’re heading back to chapter two.

I’ve finished watching “Welcome to Chestertons”, met the university girls, put on all my snowiest-winter-in-Ottawa-ever gear, and I’m heading back through the store to go home, Gwen a pace or two behind me. As I pass the big round table stacked with cashmere sweaters, the table located in front of the doors, Gwen shouts what seems an oddly personal question.

“Katie? Where are you going?”

“Oh… well… okay… I thought I’d buy some bus tickets at the OC Transpo outlet here at the mall and then, you know, wait out on Rideau Street in hopes that a bus shows up eventually.”

“You can’t just leave the store. I have to check your purse first.”

“Yup. Thanks. I have my purse. That’s where I keep my OC Transpo nest egg.”

“No. I said I have to check it. You can’t just leave the store. After every shift a manager or assistant manager, or sometimes Anna if it can’t be avoided, checks your purse at this table before you exit the store. We all do it. My bags get checked, too, by whoever’s replacing me on shift or a sales associate at closing. I thought I explained about the mandatory bag check at the table in front of the doors before you’re allowed to leave the store.”

“No. No I think I’d remember hearing about a post-shift shakedown. Like here? At this table? In front of the whole store? Plus every Tom, Dick and Mary passing by in the mall?”

“Yes. That’s the whole point.”

“What?”

“Showing our customers how seriously Chestertons takes loss prevention.”

“So, you check customers’ bags before they leave the store, too?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Look, Katie, it’s for your own protection. You’ve been in the back where all the stock is. Theft costs all of us and it’s important to show our customers that Chestertons takes loss prevention seriously. Just open your purse, I’ll take a look inside, and we’re done.”

Bear in mind that my purse, which is flat, stands about six inches tall by eight inches wide.

Anyway, like I said, I don’t know why it didn’t end there and I didn’t tell Gwen to, what was it again? Take my job at Chestertons and shove it up Anna’s ass?

It was hard to take, the bag check. But, like married sex, I got used to it. In fact, unlike married sex, I started reveling in it, although once Gwen caught on that I was reveling in it she’d barely glance at my open purse to cut short my revelry.

The thing is, everybody, including Gwen, including HQ, knew that it was customers who were stealing clothes, not staff. That’s because the only reason younger staff would want them would be to wear them at Chestertons. And if they stole them, everybody would know they’d stolen them. And older staff wouldn’t steal them for pretty much the same reason.

Like women everywhere in this part of the world, if we weren’t at work, we were in yoga pants and tee-shirts with slogans on them like “Feminism: the radical notion that women are people”.

Of course, sales associates did occasionally buy clothes from Chestertons, the pressure from management being relentless, but it wasn’t anything like when a customer made a purchase. Not even a bit. It was like being a contestant on America’s Next Top Model, complete with Tyra Banks critiquing, and followed by an elaborate series of form signings making it clear, just in case it wasn’t already, that you still weren’t a customer, you were an employee making a purchase from your employer.

But then once the critiquing was over, and the forms signed, your purchase would be carefully wrapped in tissue, like you were the most special customer ever, put in one of Chestertons elaborately decorated paper bags, as opposed to a regular plastic one, and the manager or assistant manager would come out from behind the counter and hand over your purchase, adding, “Thank you for shopping at Chestertons.”

If the above brings to mind an abusive relationship, you’re not alone.

It was totally effed up.

But probably the main reason why nobody thought of me as a sales associate for the entire two years I was a sales associate was because I didn’t shy away from making it known that I was working at Chestertons to outfit myself in groceries, not clothes. The one and only shift, apart from that one with Anna and the suit, I expressed interest in an item for sale at Chestertons, in this case a shirt, everyone immediately started clamouring for me to try it on.

So I did, I did try it on. But even that part of the job of sales associate I didn’t do right.

“Did you try it on?”

“Yup.”

“But we didn’t see it on you.”

“Well I didn’t come out of the dressing room because it didn’t look good on me.”

“Oh you have to come out of the dressing room. You can’t just try it on and decide for yourself. You have to show us. We’ll decide if it doesn’t look good on you.”

“But you’ll just say like Anna does, ‘That looks good on you, you should buy it.’”

“No we won’t. That’s just for customers. We’ll tell you the truth. Right, Gwen?”

(That’s Carol talking, by the way. You don’t know her yet.)

“Absolutely. I don’t want you wearing something from the store that doesn’t look good on you. It only helps to sell the clothes if it looks good on you.”

“So if it looks good and helps sell the clothes, why not give it to me?”

“Katie, don’t be ridiculous. Chestertons is a business, not a charity. And don’t forget your discount. Most stores don’t give a 60% discount on new merchandise. C’mon. Go try it on again. And this time come out and show us.”

And it was true. Everyone said what they really thought, especially Gwen.

“Oh my god, that does look awful on you. Take it off. Hurry up. I don’t want a customer seeing you in it. Ruth? You try that shirt on. Maybe it’s just Katie. I certainly hope that shirt doesn’t look like that on everybody. Otherwise, how will we sell it? Maybe we should pair it with the Burberry blazer instead of having it on its own. Our customers like the Burberry blazer.”

But then Ruth tried it on and Gwen was reassured that it looked okay, everything was fine, move it along, nothing to see here, it wasn’t the shirt, nothing wrong with the shirt.

Carol disagreed.

“I think it looks like shit on both of them. Sorry, Ruth. But it’s true.”

Which it wasn’t, but everybody had a role to play in the store and Carol’s was to be mean and terrorize a dithering customer at the cash into making snap decisions by being aggressively impatient, like she had to get to the hospital to perform brain surgery in five minutes or her patient would get up and leave the hospital.

“Well do you want it or doncha? C’mon it’s not like you’re deciding whether or not to have a baby here. At least, you’re taking more time thinking about buying this sweater than I did about having my daughter. It looked good on you, you should buy it. Sale ends today. Hey 90 days return if you don’t like it but the lady behind you is gonna implode if you don’t speed it up. Credit or debit? Cash? C’mon I don’t have all day. Next! Okay? You’re gonna buy it? Good call. I was just about to leap over the counter and grab it back from you, buy it myself, return it, and put it back on the shelf for somebody else. Time is money.”

Maybe put on some soothing music while you read “Starring Carol As Carol”.

But it was the bulletin board above the hobbit counter that revealed Chestertons’ employee bag check loss prevention strategy as baloney. The bulletin board was where Gwen posted such various and sundry as the latest workplace rules and regulations, sales techniques, made up “heart” stories (involving sales associates elsewhere never identified going that extra mile for a customer and receiving heartfelt thanks in return), upcoming brand moments (new inventory), make-up tips to reflect the right image, DOs and DON’Ts – and lists.

It was in juxtaposing a couple of lists, List A – the store’s “hot spots” to List B – items stolen by customers in my first year at Chestertons, that revealed the employee bag check loss prevention strategy as baloney.

List A – The store’s “hot spots”:

Missy and Petite front

Missy and Petite back

Missy and Petite sides

Unlocked jewelry case in middle of store

Fitting rooms

Notice what isn’t a hotspot for theft? That’s right, the stockroom, the one place in the store where customers were not allowed but staff were.

Even when toilet paper went missing from our washroom it was customer, not employee, theft.

And while Gwen obsessed over coverage at the front, which was pretty much impossible to maintain given chronic under-staffing, customers were more likely to try on whatever they wanted to steal first, to make sure it fit. Why steal a sweater only to get it home and find out it’s too tight, or there’s a snag at the left nipple because a non-thieving customer wore it, snagged it when she took it off, and returned it for a full refund. And it got put back on the rack for re-sale before Anna had a chance to work her tailoring magic on the snag, which she did by pulling errant threads through to the underside where customers never thought to look.

Of course, we were under strict orders to never, ever, no matter how obvious it seemed, accuse a customer of shoplifting, or do or say anything that might cause a customer to suspect she was being accused of shoplifting. Instead, ask her if she’d like to use the fitting room (again), in the hope that she’d realize you were on to her, and take the opportunity to leave behind in the fitting room whatever it was she was planning to steal.

As opposed to replying, “Nah, I’m good, thanks”, and walking out the door.

Here now is List B – Items stolen by customers in my first year at Chestertons, a haul that would have rung in at well over forty thousand dollars, had any of it been rung in.

41 earrings

50 necklaces

26 bracelets

36 belts

32 scarves

28 pairs of shoes + 5 individual shoes

117 sweaters

99 pairs of pants

73 tee-shirts

56 dresses

There was no count for the number of nylon camisoles stolen but I would hazard a guess at all of them. That’s because they were nylon and rang in at $44.50 but fit easily and unnoticed under even the flimsiest of shirts.

Oh heck, just for fun, here’s Gwen’s list of DOs and DON’Ts:

1) DO keep top of mind at all times: loss prevention!

2) DO work to increase your sales: exceed goals!

3) DO help keep the store clean and tidy!

4) DON’T bother me with schedule changes once schedule has been posted!

5) DO wear more Chestertons!

6) DON’T come to work dressed like you work on the first or second floor!

7) DON’T discuss personal matters on the floor! No one wants to hear about your problems!

8) DO BE ON TIME!

9) DO keep track of store promotions

10) DON’T mention upcoming promotions unless the customer asks specifically!

11) CLEAN FRIDGE!

12) CHANGE VACUUM BAG!

No one thought asking a customer if she’d like to use the fitting room (again) was a very effective loss prevention strategy, although it worked once, sort of, when Ruth, Anna and I tag teamed a girl I suspected of having tucked a Christmas sweater under the coat that she was carrying over her arm.

By the way, to sales people, a customer walking around the store with her coat over her arm screams “SHOPLIFTER!”, but I didn’t know that then. I just happened to have my eye on this customer because she looked like the accomplice of a no account thieving jerk who stole one of the aforementioned big red strawberry Christmas novelty sweaters one night when I was working with Gwen.

It was awful, the feeling that came over me when I experienced my first shoplifter. I’d been working at Chestertons for about three or four months, the big red strawberry Christmas novelty sweater still (criminally, really) at full price.

It was just me and Gwen in the store, about an hour before closing, when two teenaged girls wandered in looking not at all like a couple of no account thieving jerks.

“Can I help you?”

“No, I just want to look around for a gift for my mom. It’s her birthday coming up and I want to get her something from Chestertons.”

“Oh, well, we just got these strawberry sweaters. I like them. I bet your mom would, too.”

(And yes, reading that back I, too, see the ass-biting karma invitation.)

“Uh, yeah, okay. I’ll carry it around and see if I can match it with something else.”

“Sure. I’m here if you need any more help. Cold out, eh?”

“It’s not so bad. Could be worse. And it’s warm in here, which is why we aren’t wearing our coats. We’re just going to go over to check out your petites section.”

“Right. Look around. Lots to choose from and that sweater is full price. We have nice sweaters on sale, too. They’re around the other side.”

(Aha! Redemption!)

“Awesome!”

And while this blah blah was going down I happened to notice that there were four sweaters left in the pile on the table, the fifth being carried around by one of the girls.

(After Esther left, we started putting out just one size run of everything, with doubles for mediums, and keeping the rest in the back. Reason? Customers marauding through stuffed racks and towering stacks meant tidying the store for the next day was taking too long at closing, costing Chestertons a few extra bucks in wage costs. So instead, we spent our shifts running back and forth to the stock room, which had become a disaster zone, looking for sizes that were never replaced after customers purchased them.)

(Oh, and it was around this time that we started noticing how random the new arrivals were getting, with entire sizes or colours missing, or twenty smalls but only one large, or too many sweaters in Pink Fantasy (aka “pepto bismol”) and too few in Desert Storm (beige). The size run put out was one small, two mediums, one large, one extra-large. Ditto in petites except instead of extra-large petite, there was P for petite, which was smaller than sP, small petite, a source of endless confusion for both customers and sales associates and you now, too.)

(Oh, and also, if back in the day you were a 6, or maybe an 8, you were a 2 at Chestertons, except that our Chestertons didn’t carry 2 until later in my brilliant career, just 2p, the smallest regular/misses size being 4. I was swimming in a 4, while, as noted earlier, a 2p cut into my vagina and pinched my armpits. But that actually worked out for me because my try-on-a-thon, which was not as fun as advertised by the university girls, was cut short by Gwen. One shirt, one pair of pants, and I was done.)

All this time, Gwen was around and about, announcing every now and again that she’d be going to the back soon to work on the schedule. I heard her say “hello girls” followed by a bit of blah blah. Then she went around to the other side, the back side of petites, and I was aware of the girls being in a huddle in the corner at the front, out of sight from my angle in misses.

I just assumed they were debating whether or not to get the sweater and I didn’t want to be any pushier than I already had been, so I gave them space.

Then a couple of new customers came in and I was distracted with them. I was aware of the girls, still, but I thought they’d moved on to check out the sale section at the back of petites, where Gwen was. Then the new customers left, because people who wander into a ladieswear store an hour or so before closing are just killing time. That’s when I realized the girls weren’t in the store anymore.

“So Katie, did the girls buy the strawberry sweater?”

“No, they didn’t. They left the store.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. The thing is, shit, I’m pretty sure they stole the sweater.”

“How do you know?”

“There were four sweaters in the pile, the girls had the fifth. They were carrying it around with them. There’s still four in the pile.”

“Well maybe they put it down somewhere in petites.”

And we started looking around the store but after a few minutes we both knew.

“No, Gwen. I’m sorry. They stole it. For sure they stole it. Those no account thieving jerks stole that stupid strawberry sweater!”

Wow. I was surprised by how angry I was, but I was, I was really angry.

“Well, of course. It was a hundred and sixty dollar sweater, Katie. What teenaged girl is going to buy her mother a hundred and sixty dollar sweater for her birthday.”

“Yeah, shit. They were so polite, too.”

“Those are the ones you have to watch out for, the polite ones. Also the ones who try to put you off by being rude. Teenaged girls are horrible people, Katie. Never trust a teenaged girl in Chestertons.”

“Ugh. I’m so mad at myself. What a dupe. I didn’t want them to think I was that sales person, you know? Not trusting them because they’re teenaged girls. Shit.”

“Hey, Katie. Shake it off. It happens. Lesson learned.”

“I can’t, though. It pisses me off. How can you stand it? This is going to drive me nuts. It’s not about Chestertons, Gwen, it’s about me. They disrespected me.”

“Katie, you’re going to have to get over it. And it IS about Chestertons and it has NOTHING to do with you. This is retail, Katie. Nothing is about you, it’s all about sales. And loss prevention, of course. Would you recognize them if they came in again?”

“Oh yeah. I’ll recognize them. It was the taller one with the dyed red hair and glasses who stole it. The other one, the chubbier one with the skin problem was just along for the ride.”

Like I said, it surprised me that I took it as hard as I did and I had a brief fantasy of running into the no account thieving jerks at the bus stop and confronting them. But then in my fantasy one of the no account thieving jerk’s fathers would turn out to be a lawyer and I’d be sued – maybe even by Chestertons!

I really should stop fantasizing. All my fantasies end with me being sued.

But if it surprised me that I took it as hard as I did it surprised everyone else even more. And then Tj pointed out that it was disgusting how Chestertons didn’t do anything to prevent its customers from stealing, even though it caused employees stress when they did.

Ah, Tj. Every workplace should have a Tj. Worker justice warrior at large.

“Also, Katie, my dad says Chestertons is full of shit because we’re not paid to be security, we’re not even paid to do sales. And for sure we’re not paid to do customer service. We’re paid to scan and bag. He says we’re idiots to care. Let customers steal as much as they want. Thieves are Chestertons’ problem, not yours, he says. Scan. Bag. That’s it. Like at Dollarama, he said I’d be scanning and bagging for the same minimum wage I make here. Why do more for the same pay just because it’s a different store?”

“I’m starting to think I should adopt your dad as my dad. How old is he?”

“Old. Like, fifty?”

“Oh. Okay. Never mind. Too old.”

Then, a year later, a girl came into the store and I recognized her as the friend of the no account thieving jerk who stole the strawberry sweater. She’d slimmed down and her skin had cleared up but it was her. And sure enough, she headed to where every teenaged girl in Ottawa had been headed for a couple of weeks, over to a corner of petites that still housed a novelty Christmas sweater, this year featuring a big blue penguin on the front, most definitely not worth $169, which is what the price of novelty Christmas sweaters had risen to over the year.

We joked it was because the government of Ontario had raised the minimum wage another 25 cents.

And so I watched while she slid the coveted sweater from the slippery hanger that ensured most of Chestertons’ merchandise would be on the floor at one time or another and switched the winter coat she was carrying over one arm to the other.

“Hi there, can I help you?”

“No, I’m just looking.”

“Oh, okay.” And then Ruth and Anna suddenly materialized, having the sixth sense seasoned sales associates have about shoplifters, I guess, and I said, “Mrs. Hingham was in earlier, did you see her? She was looking at the Christmas sweaters.”

(Hingham was the birthplace of Eleanor Chesterton, Mrs. Hingham was code for “Shoplifter!”)

“Yes, Katie, I did see her. Oh hello. Can I help you? Are you shopping for your mother? Let me show you where our sale items are because I’m sure you don’t want to pay regular price when you can get something every bit as nice, if a bit off season, for less.”

And Ruth, whose pet peeves are shoplifters and litterbugs, took over from there with Anna offering to take our shoplifter’s coat for her (which is actually not a very good strategy at all because the idea is to get the shoplifter to leave the item behind without anybody having to acknowledge that she was going to steal it) and at first we thought she’d brazened it out, but then Anna found the sweater on the floor. She’d stashed it in behind the hanging sweaters in the sales section, where Ruth had taken her.

“I can’t believe we stopped her from stealing that sweater. She’d know there aren’t any theft tags in our clothes because she was with the girl who stole the strawberry sweater last year.”

“Katie, as you know, shoplifters and litterbugs are my pet peeves, but it’s actually quite brazen to leave a store with a stolen item, if you sense staff have caught on to you, even when you know there’s no theft tag. She didn’t know, for instance, that we wouldn’t come after her or call security. She doesn’t know what our reaction will be. We don’t know what our reaction will be, honestly. All she knew was that we were on to her and that she’d better find a way to ditch the sweater. People know when they’re caught. And Anna and I know just how much space to give them while they find a way out of the predicament they’ve put themselves in, don’t we, A.”

“Oh yeah, me and R, we know how to make customers buy instead of steal. Who’s Mrs. Hingham?”

Ah, Anna. She told me once that when she was growing up in her father’s store in Portugal that her father threatened to chop off a guy’s hands for trying to steal a pair of socks.

“He said why would I call the cops when I can just chop off your hands with this butcher knife I keep behind the counter? Chestertons is so stupid about thiefs. They need theft tags, too. Our customers are stealing so many clothes it’s getting harder and harder to make our goals. How are we supposed to make our goals when they steal the clothes? And how come we can’t say anything? They’re too afraid of being sued The Chestertons.”

Later, when I was telling Lindsay about it, she started laughing, “Ever notice how whenever a brown person comes into the store every second word out of Gwen’s mouth is Mrs. Hingham?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad. Good thing they don’t know. Chestertons would be drowning in human rights complaints.”

“It’s our regular customers who are stealing, the Rockcliffe beeyatches. I’ve even seen them shopping here in stuff I happen to know they’ve stolen. It serves Chestertons right.

“How can Anna not know that Mrs. Hingham means shoplifter? It’s been the code for twenty-five years, hasn’t it?”

“How the hell would I know? I’ve only been here a year.”

“You’ve only been here a year and you’re assistant manager?”

“I started off as assistant manager. I’m not going to waste my time with 20 hours a week. No way. Gwen was in the window setting up a mannequin. I figured, hey, no assistant manager. So I came back with my awesome bullshit resume the next day and she was like, ‘When can you start?’ So I told her I was going on a vacation, although actually a sexcation, to Jamaica and could start in two weeks. Done. You need an awesome bullshit resume, Katie. Want me to do one for you?”

“Well, it already is kind of bullshitty. But if I want awesome added, I’ll let you know.”

Anyway, I thought the bag check had stopped bothering me the first time I closed with Gwen and she opened up all her bags for my inspection, which I took my time with, let me tell you. But it actually stopped bothering me after the strawberry sweater was stolen. That’s when I started reveling in it.

“Hey, Chestertons’ customers, look at me not being a no-account thieving jerk!”

But Steverino wouldn’t set foot in the store because of it. He’d sit on a bench down the hall if he was meeting me after my shift and we were off for dinner and a movie, which worked out to two shifts, so forget dinner.

Forget the movie, too.

Of course, it wasn’t just Steverino who thought it was humiliating. Everybody I told thought it was humiliating. The bag check, I mean, not being too cheap to spring for dinner and a movie, and that’s a food court dinner at another mall and a Tuesday night movie, too.

Anyway, when Gwen heard about me foiling the second theft attempt she was thrilled in a way that only Gwen could be thrilled.

“Okay, so the universe balanced itself out and no more feeling guilty about the strawberry sweater. We’re done with the strawberry sweater. The strawberry sweater was ugly and not worth stealing. All the leftovers ended up at the outlet. And that’s awesome you used Mrs. Hingham. Ruth and Anna knew just what to do. Way to go, team.”

And when Anna asked again “Who’s Mrs. Hingham?” we all just pretended not to hear and went back to guarding the merchandise from Chestertons’ no-account thieving jerk customers.