Tales From Behind The Fitting Room Curtain

By Molly Hanger

Preparing for sales events, tills that don’t work, the last-minute Christmas shopper and customers who take their prayer mat into the fitting room... Just a few of the day-to-day challenges of working in retail. And have you ever wondered what the retail assistant is really thinking when you surreptitiously sneak back a dress that you’ve actually worn but don’t want to keep?

Well now’s your chance to find out. Molly Hanger reveals all this and much more in Tales from behind the fitting room curtain – an amusing account of life from the other side of the curtain. For those who work in retail – and for those who just love to shop.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Molly Hanger
• Release date: Dec 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310747724

Book preview

Foreword

Dedicated to every sales person who has graced the shop floor in retail. I salute you for your endurance in a field of work where there is little thanks for the service we provide. For those of you who have ever wondered why we enter this world of high drama for low pay on a daily basis to be at your beck and call, be entertained by how we view you, the customer, and marvel at the skills we have developed over time which allow you to enter into our world on the shop floor, to the time you leave with your purchase clasped in hand.

My Why

Why did I enter this crazy world of Retail as a career? Ask that question of everything you do in life. There is always a Why and a definitive moment in time.

In my case, my why happened in Los Angeles in the summer of 2008. I was sat alone outside in the evening, a beautiful skyline, warm with a breeze that danced around along with the chatter and laughter of surrounding tables. There I was pondering the flight times of the following day and the routine I was going back to and no amount of rye and dry was going to alter that or mask the mountain of washing I faced on touchdown at Heathrow.

Jennifer, my daughter, had sailed through prep school, and as a mother I had become redundant, as we all do when they become a full time student at such a tender age, discovering her new world of school life. Like it or not my services as a mother were no longer required during daytime hours between 8 and 4. I had taken the option of staying at home to be a full time mother, walked away from a career and found myself with time to spare. Desperate now to flee the routine of housework and morning breaks which consisted of tuning in to daytime television only to be met with the latest recipe that can be done as quick as the presenter (well in their world! Reality is slightly different as we all know when you only have one oven and one pair of hands and not ‘one I prepared earlier just in case’) or better still coffee in hand peruse the morning paper to stare in amazement as to what diet is going to shift the excess being pregnant leaves behind – but never mind, girls, turn the page and the latest craze in magic knickers will hide it all for you, even if it does push it up and out somewhere else! Saints preserve us was this really it? I had lost that 9-5 routine six years ago and I missed it. The problem now as I twizzled the ice round the glass for the umpteenth time was what would fit around school hours?

I never thought about retail, unless of course I was shopping and I had a degree in that earned over so many years – in fact I had a bloody Distinction as my then husband and credit card could testify to! After multi-tasking as a mother for six years it wouldn’t be that bad or hard and I would get back that independence and my own money, more to the point. Sales girls always seemed to possess that certain confidence and smile to boot. If I could tackle the world of Insurance for 23 years then surely retail would be a walk in the park? Little did I know at this point the demands of the shop floor and the skills necessary to open and close a sale