Somewhere along the path I’ve taken a wrong turn. From the looks of things, it would appear I am standing in a rubbish trap. I don’t know how else to describe it. Seems the only things I’ve been writing about are things you’d find in a person’s rubbish pile. It’s a bad sign.
Where’s the news and current weather? Where’s my spin on world events? Where’s my ability to describe yesterday’s shopping trip - my first clothes shopping in roughly two years - where I discovered I felt lost and unprepared to make fashion decisions? Buried under a huge pile of rubbish, that’s where it’s at. Somewhere under that heap of woe is me crap lies a small pile of fresh thoughts and ideas. I’m just hoping I had the sense seal them up tight in some sort of ziploc contraption before everything went rubbish on me.
I did have one idea yesterday, while I was wandering around lost among the racks of clothes. It occurred to me that stores are missing out on a great opportunity to boost sales by ignoring shoppers just like me. I am surely not the only man in town who has lost his sense of fashion direction. I imagine there are great numbers of us. We are a force to be reckoned with. We are a potential cash crop. And the technology to harvest us is already in place.
First, there are cameras everywhere, already watching our every move. Someone, somewhere already possesses the ability to know when I am lost. The problem, it would seem, is that they aren’t watching me to help me, but rather to make sure I am not trying to steal anything. Steal? For god’s sake, I can’t even decide what it is I would buy! The eyes behind the cameras are missing the whole point. The vast majority of people like me aren’t looking to steal something. Far from it. We’re just looking for direction. We need reassurance. We need suggestion. We need, like it or not, a woman’s opinion.
And that’s my idea. Undercover women employees who seek out the lost and confused male shopper to help him with his purchase. Women with little, invisible microphones tucked into one of their ears so that the person behind the hidden cameras, who watches all and sees everything like a great and powerful Oz, can whisper to the secret, undercover woman employee, “Lost man. Early 40’s. Appears to be having minor trouble making a shorts decision and major trouble picking out a short sleeved shirt. Seems to lean towards blues and greens.
And then the woman, who looks nothing like a store employee at all, no smock or cheap plastic name badge or attitude that she’d rather be anywhere else in the world, would casually approach, looking like she is doing some shopping herself. She would glance at the racks of men’s clothes, pretending to look for something special. Maybe for her father, maybe her husband. Or it might be for a small boy or even a lover. This would all depend on what has been whispered into her ear and how it pertains to your apparent shopping trouble.
The undercover woman would move into your life so slowly that you wouldn’t even know what was happening. Even if you knew about the undercover women sales force you would be taken off guard because, let’s face it, we want to be. Lost shopping men are like this. We’re desperate for advice. Like I said, we’re a cash crop, just ripe for the picking.
I don’t need to give you a detailed play by play about how this thing pans out. You know how it works. She makes eye contact while he has a particular shirt or pair of pants or shoes in his hands, then says something innocent and subtle, like ”Oh, those are nice,” then moves away for a bit, leaving the lost shopping man to ponder his next move. Maybe she says more, maybe not. Maybe she doesn’t have to. Maybe she only has to pick up certain shirts and smile approvingly to sway the lost shopping man. Or maybe she moves in close and strikes up a conversation, and the lost shopping man ends up with a whole shopping cart of clothes that he now knows are perfect.
And the undercover woman, when she begins to sense that the lost shopping man has been pushed as far as he can go, simply looks up into one of the hidden cameras, gives an almost imperceptible thumbs up, and waits for the whisper in her ear - her next assignment. The earpiece is rarely silent.
Shoe aisle 3. Single father with rambunctious eight year old son. Let me check the tapes . . . yes, just as I thought. He’s already survived the sock and underwear department, as well as convinced the boy the try on four different pairs of pants. The two have argued briefly, but the father looks like a pushover. The boy does most of the talking. Both the father and the boy look hungry and may have grocery shopping still to do. The father is obviously tired and may be getting cranky. Approach with caution.
“Nothing I haven’t handled a million times,” the undercover woman thinks to herself as she calculates commissions in her head and begins her innocent-looking approach towards the shoe department.