Years ago, after graduation from high school, I was blessed with a job in one of the large department stores in North County, St. Louis, MO.  I was a Dressing Room Checker, in Ladies Causual Wear.

It was my job to make sure the female customers entered the dressing rooms with only 4 items of clothing, and exited with only 4 items.  There were ladies that obligingly allowed me to count the assorted skirts, blouses, and sweaters that they wanted to try on.  Then there were ladies who couldn’t understand that each piece of clothing counted as one item.  One lady gathered clothes from several racks and tried to explain that she was trying to put together a suit.  I tried to explain that, even though the 3 skirts, 3 blouses, and 3 sweaters might go very well together as suits, each piece had to be counted separately.  After much discussion, she agreed to try on one suit at a time, while I held the rest at my station near the entrance of the dressing rooms.

I once had a little white-haired, elderly woman, with big blue eyes, and a sweet smile, accompanied by her 30-something daughter (also with blue eyes and a sweet smile).  They arrived with 4 lovely dresses, each.  They seemed like such nice ladies, that I put them in rooms next to each other so that they could compare dresses.  As soon as I walked away, the daughter decided to share a room with her mother.  As the department began filling with customers, the daughter began going back and forth, bringing in and taking out clothes for herself and her mother.  After finally deciding not to buy anything, I caught the daughter trying to hang clothes in my station, while her mother (surprised at being caught) laughed, saying I should have been there to take the clothes.  Her daughter said to me, rather snidely, I felt, “We left the other clothes.  We felt someone else should hang them up and take them out!”  As they haughtly walked away, I suddenly felt as if I had been the maid, being dismissed.  The real shocker came when I checked their rooms.  The other unwanted outfits were inside out, and tossed on the floor like rags!  Although there was a small wastebasket in each room, used tissue was all over the floor.  The empty hangers were on the hooks.  (And they looked like such classy, middle class women.)