When Beauty Gets Ugly: "Surviving the Summer Slowness"

Ahh, summer. I have to say, I love it most of all…except for when I’m working. But that’s all of us, right? I mean, this time of year is P-A-ainful for working retail. Especially beauty retail. Everyone’s on vacation or going on vacation. People are wearing less makeup for the season, or they’re shopping for cute summer clothes, not summer makeup. Any way you slice it, summer hours can drag on endlessly when you’re missing the best of them—that is, when you’re trapped inside a windowless, heavily air-conditioned store all day, doing what amounts to a whole lot of nothing.

For me, it really affects my mood…because if there’s one thing I hate, it’s being stuck in cold-ass air conditioning. I hate being cold as much as I hate being stuck. Maybe more. So when Lipstick Lady walks up to my counter, smile on her face and smelling of warm summer air—I find myself having to dig deep for the niceness I know is in me somewhere.

I don’t know if any of you ever reach that point—the one where it’s been so long since you’ve helped someone, you’re just not in the mood to help anyone anymore. Let alone the damn near albino woman who walks up wanting the same nude lipstick she read Nicki Minaj wears—with the unshakable impression it’s going to look exactly the same on her. You then have to spend the next half hour or so, convincing her slowly that she needs the right kind of nude—not the one she read about in a magazine.

Maybe she gets it, maybe she doesn’t. For me, I just focus on surviving the moment.

This is also the time of year when everyone starts asking you where the bathroom is. I don’t know how many times I’ve wished for a sign I can hold, which would save me from having say the same thing over and over and over. Floods of people come wandering in from the heat, looking for quick relief from the sun and their full bladders. Every other question I hear is, “Where’s your restroom?”

Good thing our bathroom isn’t totally tricky to find or anything. Oh, wait…

So how do we survive summer?

Well, we do a lot of chatting, which helps kill some time. We organize and reorganize our counters and drawers (or maybe that’s just me;). We take an extra break, or two (or more)—all of this for the sake of our sanity. And if we can sneak it in, we do makeup on ourselves or each other—which is my preferred method for killing time.

I’ll admit freely that I both truly love, and totally dread this time of year. Which I find an unusual and interesting contradiction.

…So how do I survive summer? One glorious and painful moment at a time;)…

 

Happy summer to you all! And happy shopping:)

 

*If you have any great tips for beating the summer blah session...let me know!*

 

 

 

 

When Beauty Gets Ugly: "Energy Vampires" and "Shopping with Husbands"

Energy Vampire – n. A person who feeds off the energy of humans they come in contact with.

A customer said the most interesting thing to me the other day. Not interesting ‘Oh’, but interesting as in ‘What? Well, FU lady’. Sure, we weren’t really hitting it off to begin with—you know how sometimes you and a customer just don’t click? Well, there I was putting on this woman’s eyeliner as she sat in the chair—her arms crossed tight against her chest and her lips pursed. I got the impression she was barely tolerating my existence.

Out of nowhere, she says to me, “I don’t know how you people do it sometimes. Look at that woman over there…”

I pause and glance over my shoulder. There’s a lone salesperson walking through her area, looking over her cases.

The woman continues with, “You people have to spend so much of your time doing nothing, I don’t know how you do it—”

(...and here’s where it gets good…)

She goes on to say, “I know you people who work retail are born to do this job, but still…I don’t know how you tolerate it.”

Wait, what? Did she seriously just say that?

What’s funny is, I understood she wasn’t intentionally trying to be rude or insulting. But that didn’t stop me from resenting the hell out of her. I mean, some of the smartest and most talented people I’ve met work in retail. Anyway, by the time we wrapped it up, I was done with her. I was spent. Drained. Ready to break away from everything and recharge—too bad they don’t let you do it with margaritas, huh?

Because some customers just do that to you.

And all that brings me to my main topic. I’ve been pondering how to start this subject for a while. I mean, how do you describe ‘Energy Vampire’ to someone who doesn’t work in retail? Because unlike other customer archetypes I’ve covered, the Energy Vampire doesn’t have any typical characteristics. They can be anyone, anywhere. Sometimes they’re nice, sometimes they’re shy. Sometimes they’re other things and other words I have no need to say here. As with the woman above, you all know what I mean.

So what is the Energy Vampire? Well, they are the customers we get, probably more frequently than most, that drain us completely. When we’re done with them, it’s generally time to call it a day and start drinking.

There’s really no rules here. Most times, but not always, they take a lot of our time. Sometimes it’s searching for lipstick (What? Lipstick? No way...), sometimes it’s just a quick touch-up. Sometimes it’s eyeliner, or skincare, or foundation…and on and on and on.

Bottom line is, there’s no way to spot this person until you’re already ass-deep in helping them. Suddenly it’ll just hit you as you’re reaching for that next color. You feel weak, tired. It becomes harder and harder to think of things to talk about. There’s this little whining voice inside you saying, “I hope this is the last one.” When it’s not, you damn near whimper with fatigue. Unfortunately, this goes on and on and on…seemingly forever and ever. Amen. Too bad garlic and crosses don’t work on these vampires...and anyone who doesn’t believe in the dreaded E.V., obviously wasn’t born to work retail.

 

Who of you out there are familiar with this particular scenario:

A husband and wife walk up to your counter. The husband reaches you first, his eyes bright with humor. He lifts his lips in a cheery smile and says, “So, can you make me look beautiful?”

Ha, ha. Heh.

After giving him my standard, ‘you’re so funny’ laugh, I say something like, “Sure…you want a little blush, a little lipstick?” Everybody laughs. Kind of. To be fair, that joke was funny the first two or three times I heard it. But over a decade later, and after hearing it a hundred times over, it kind of loses its charm—and my laugh is no longer capable of being genuine.

Besides, at this point I’m too busy trying to figure out what kind of experience this is going to be. Good? Or bad…

Husbands, especially controlling ones, are the banes of our existence. There’s nothing so frustrating as hearing a woman say, “I need to ask my husband first before I buy” or “Oh, I really love this color but...my husband doesn’t like it when I where [pink, red, bright, nude, or even just] lipstick.”

No. No, no, no, NO! You husbands do not get to tell your wives what to do or wear—especially if it makes them feel pretty. My hubby doesn’t like it when I do my bright and crazy makeup—and you know what I tell him? Tough shit. It’s me. It’s who I am.

So when I see a husband and wife walk up together, I’m wondering if he’s going to be the husband that gives encouraging feedback or wanders off until we’re done, or the husband that hangs over my shoulder and tells me what to put, or what not to put, on his wife’s face.

Ugh…Worst moment ever: being told what to do by a man who knows absolutely nothing about makeup. No, sir, that camel eyeshadow will not look good or natural on your pink-porcelain skinned wife.

What? You want me to put it on anyway? Sure…obviously I don’t know what I’m doing.

What? It didn’t look right so maybe I should have used a different brush? Sure....that’ll make it look better…

I’m sorry, did you say you want me to put that brick-red lipstick on her too?  Okay, but just remember…you asked for it, bud.

Thanks for sticking with me—this was an especially long one!

 

Cheers to all my peeps out there, and happy selling;)!

 

 

 

When Beauty Gets Ugly: "Beauty Disaster Montage"

I know we all can relate to a plain old, flat out, exhausting week. I’m going to touch a bit on the whole theme thing for a minute because I swear, it seems like whenever the crazies come, they come in droves. The most hilarious thing—that I just realized at this very moment as I sit here typing—is that so many of my infamous customer archetypes came to see me this week.

That’s why this post was such a long time coming—I had no idea where to start. My first thought was gifts…because that’s always a fun thing to talk about. Gift Events have the unique, wonderful ability of bringing out the hag in haggle. It never fails that when the foreign bus coughs out its load (no really, I’m not being jerk—there really is a foreign bus), the topic of gifts always comes up.

That was my first clue that this was going to be a bad week.

I was bombarded by a family of five travelers from _____ (I will let the experts out there fill in the blank) who insisted on receiving five gifts from La Mer—plus five gift bags from the department. To be fair, they were purchasing over a thousand dollars’ worth of product. However, I stood fast and refused them—mainly because they threatened me with online ordering. I do not deal well with threats. And seeing as I don’t work on commission and this wasn’t my line, I didn’t need the sale.

So I brought them down to a more realistic, more acceptable limit. Bully for me.

Yet low and behold, at the very moment I was putting their gifts together, I caught sight of The Endlessly Annoying and Always Indecisive Woman—and it was just my luck that she was waiting for me.

Trust me, I did not hold back the groan. I even cursed under my breath—which happened to be loud enough for a coworker to hear.

Luckily, we were both on the same page.

And here’s where I’m forced to bite my tongue. She only took up a half hour of my time (most of which was spent looking for a gift bag with decent sewing on the inner lining…ugh). But she purchased from my line, AND I only had to try on three orange nail polish colors—just three…mostly because I lied and said they were the only orange nail polishes in the department (don’t you judge me).

All in all, I consider this to be a major victory.

Other visits this week included the Constant Returner, the Sample Whore, and always, always the Lipstick Lady (Bless her heart…she never really leaves, you know. I’m convinced she has a secret home built under one of the clothing racks).

And last, but don’t you dare ever call her least, was the Know-It-All.

Oh, I can see that hair coming a mile away—not to mention the contouring. It was a blessed day for me as it was the day I chose to wear my flats. There are some benefits to being S.A.H. (Short As Hell), when I’m in flats I don’t have to bend over to hide from people. All I have to do is lean forward a bit and poof! I’m gone.

So I spent a good fifteen minutes leaning forward and circling the five foot wall of the counter I had to hide behind. I’m sure it was a great moment for the LP people (the Eyes in the Sky), watching me move like a gerbil on a wheel as I avoided making eye contact with this woman.

Do I feel bad that one of my good friends was forced to help her?

Yes.

Would I do it again?

You bet your ass I would.

 

What? It was a really bad week…

 

Cheers to you all! And happy shopping…

To BS: I didn’t forget, I promise;)

 

Tune in next time as I finally call out ‘The Energy Vampire’ and ‘Shopping with the Hubby’!

 

When Beauty Gets Ugly: "Makeup Messes"

 

One thing about working with the public is—they never cease to surprise and amaze. It seems as if every week I have a new story to tell about a person who did/wore/said something crazy. Each and every time, I laugh or remark on it. And I file it away. As a writer, I love to catalog the people I meet—especially the remarkable ones. You never know when you may need to mix and match those personality quirks for a good story or side character.

And man, do I have a lot.

I still remember my first ‘huh’ moment in cosmetics. I was trying to find a lipstick for an almost fortyish woman (Man, it always comes down to a lipstick, doesn’t it?), when she asked me if I had a color that would match her hair. I’m pretty sure I just stared at her, trying to figure out exactly what she meant by that. Was she saying she wanted it to compliment her hair? I mean, she wasn’t actually asking for an ashy brown/streaky blonde colored lipstick, was she?

I hesitated, taking a moment to scan my color wheel. Still unsure, I plucked out a beige nude lip color and held it out to her. My eyes jumped back and forth from her face to the tube. I was anxious over how she’d react to my pick. She lifted a brow, staring me down. She did not look amused. Then she grabbed the tube and held it up to her short, choppy locks.

“Does this look like it matches?” she asked me.

I couldn’t help picturing her lips covered with tiger stripes of blonde and brown color. The answer was nope, it sure didn’t. So I did the only thing my newbie brain could think of—I passed her off to a different makeup line.

We’ve all had our moments of ‘huh’ and ‘isn’t that person interesting’, haven’t we? I mean, we’ve all seen the women who’ve had way too much plastic surgery—you know, the ones who resemble the alien sketches shown on Unsolved Mysteries. And we’ve all seen the women who look like they never wash off their makeup. Yeah, some of them actually admit to just adding more makeup overtop yesterday’s worn and crusty color.

(This is where I take a moment to cringe)

We’ve all seen these people. They’re remarkable, sure, but still more commonplace. Yet every now and again, I’m confronted with someone who stands utterly alone and unique. Someone who, even though I consider myself a creator of fiction, I would never have believed if I hadn’t actually seen them with my own eyes. Like the woman I talked about in my Crazy People blog post. Anyone who’s read it knows exactly which one I’m talking about. For those of you who don’t, take a moment to read it.

And just like the mantra says—you never forget your first.

I’ll never forget the night I saw my first. This woman I can still visualize entirely and with perfect clarity to this day—that was how impactful she was. It all started with me helping her husband. The man was closing in on eighty (and I think I’m being a little generous here), and wanting some bath products for himself and his wife—who was standing with her back to me, looking at lipsticks across the aisle (See? It really is always about lipstick). My first thought was, Oh, you dirty, dirty old bird, you. His wife had blonde, curly hair that flowed all the way to her hips. And she was tall, thanks to the knee-high, shiny leather boots with four-inch heels she wore. Layered under them was the fishnet stockings (I know, such a cliché) covered, barely, by a black leather mini skirt.

I was amused—and certainly a little grossed out—when something very unexpected happened. She turned around.

I have no idea what my face did at that moment, but I’m sure it wasn’t pretty.

The woman blasted me with a brutal vision of heavily lined, sagging sallow skin—except for the area at her temples where she’d used industrial strength tape to tug back her flesh. The effect it had on her eyes was more than just unnerving. It was terrifying. Because there was so much loose skin, the taping had pulled the corners of her eyes far beyond the yellowing whites, leaving an elongated triangle of shiny, puffy red flesh for all to see—which she’d graciously highlighted with a thick chunk of uneven, black liquid liner. Her ancient blue eyes were cloudy with age, yet still they managed to pierce the comfy layers of my brain.

But worst of all for me, worse than even the eyes, was when she ran the pink lipstick she held back and forth over her mouth. Peeling skin, still stubbornly attached to her dry chapped lips, flicked back and forth, up and over, as she drove the lipstick again and again. I could see vestiges of an old dried out coral layered under them. The eighty year old woman, dressed like a twenty year old rocker chick, then handed the lipstick over.

“And this one,” she said.

A piece of the woman’s dried skin had managed to escape her, hitching a ride on the soon-to-be disposed of lipstick tester.

Like I said, I can only imagine what my face must have looked like.

Who says life isn’t still full of surprises? Probably someone who doesn’t work face to face with the public, I say.

Cheers to you all, and happy shopping!!

 

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And thank you all for taking the time to rant with me;)